CheGiantForLife

When you ride up a 13% grade in gear 1, there is no way that can be equated to a flat ride of any duration, whatsoever.
30 seconds of that is more chest exploding heart rate than an hour of flat riding.

WhyFi

Normally, you could extrapolate from my post on page 1, where I mathed it out for you, and conclude that 30 sec of chest exploding heart rate on a 13% grade = 30 sec of chest exploding heart rate on the flat...

... but no math can account for the terror of Gear 1.

livedarklions

You really need to speak for yourself, that's certainly not true for me.

You really can't generate a "chest exploding" heart rate riding on the flats? Try going really really fast, faster than you ever have before and sustain that speed for as long as you can. You can definitely max out your HR doing so. Ask the people on this forum who do HIIT if they agree with your statement. My guess is you don't ride fast enough to understand the dynamics of wind resistance in order to say something as silly as that.

Also, one can do a crisscross pattern on a 13% grade that essentially creates a switchback, lowering the effective grade. If you're going straight up a 13% grade, you definitely have a minimum level of effort higher than the minimum amount of effort on the flats because otherwise you can't maintain enough forward progress to keep your balance on the bike. If you switchback, you reduce the minimum. .


I'll give you the real very practical difference between max effort on a hill vs. on the flats--on a hill, you're far more likely to overheat as the air isn't going fast enough to evaporate your perspiration. I've had to take breaks in the middle of steady 13% grades, but that's because I was more worried about heat exhaustion than my heart rate. Going fast on the flats in the high 90 degree weather is an interesting contrast--the air flow is a bit of a relief, but your vitals are definitely racing. For me, it's actually easier to push myself to the point of getting winded on the flats in hot weather than it is to do so on a climb where I'd probably need a water break in the shade before I actually got to that point.

You really need to get out of the habit of telling people who actually ride their bikes significant amounts what is or isn't possible.

ofajen

If you are used to riding on the flats at a leisurely 12 mph and say 50 or 60 watts, then you likely won’t have a low enough gear to let you climb a 13% grade at the 1 mph that would let you pedal a normal cadence at that power.

Riders used to riding at 200 watts, on the other hand, will have less difficulty finding a gear that works on a steep climb at a speed they can manage. In this case more like 4 mph rather than 1 mph.

Otto

burnthesheep

Reading BF I always hear all the talk of "nerd" and "folks buying overly fancy racy things". This topic being the "nerd" one.

Then wonder, do folks think this also with wood working? "Yeah, Joe over there is a total wood working nerd. He owns all those fancy chisel kits and miter saws and tools and makes all that fancy custom joinery. We keep it simple with a hammer and nail and some 2x4's!!!! We don't need no rulers or squares."

Otherwise, folks constantly in cycling AND running mis-equate distance with fitness. Folks that ride a century each weekend and ride during the week are like "I'm fitter than that person who only rides that....". It's intensity and time. Not distance. Not elevation. It actually drives me nuts that run workouts are often listed in meters. Whose meters? A slow runner or fast runner? 4x400's for a fast runner is a totally different workout than for a slow one!

livedarklions

TBH, how I'm going to handle a hill like that is going to depend more on ambient temperature, wind direction, and how my legs are feeling than on concerns my heart is going to race.

livedarklions

I measure in miles because I don't want to install or use the equipment to measure intensity, and I do know that I'm fitter riding my centuries than I would be if I didn't. I don't think I'm mis-equating because the real question is fitness for what? I'm working out for my own purposes, not for comparison to other people's.

Sorry, I just can't fathom why anyone would be driven nuts by how someone else wants to characterize their own workouts. I also don't get the woodworking metaphor. Woodworking actually requires accurate measurements or the thing you're building will definitely be non-functional. If I ride a bunch of miles, I'm going to get some fitness benefit, I don't really care whether it meets your standards or not.

ofajen

Of course. I’m just pointing out that it shouldn’t be a surprise if a casual rider struggles up very steep hills, even in the lowest gear on the bike. Staying upright on the bike will require more watts than they are used to.

Otto

livedarklions

Yup, just agreeing with you that the considerations are different when you're someone who's used to putting out a big effort in all situations.

Also, I've been doing a lot of 95 degree weather hill climbing lately so it's kind of vivid in my mind.

CheGiantForLife

Impossible to replicate 13% grade effort on a flat.
Basic.

WhyFi

You're just not trying hard enough.
Acidic.

DaveLeeNC

I am not sure how exact you must be to 'replicate', but on truly flat ground a stronger rider can come pretty close to replicating a 13% grade on truly flat ground. 275 watts would take a 155'ish pound rider up a hill at around 5.5mph (13%grade). He would turn a 34/32 at 66 rpm.

Go on the flats in a gear of 52/12 at 275 watts and 22.4mph/66 rpm (obviously a similar level of effort) and there you are. Depending on your power output and your gearing this may or may not work for you. It does not work for me because the rolling terrain in my riding area just screws it all up. I am just pretending like I could put out 275 watts for 30 minutes or so - maybe a decade or two back in time.

dave

livedarklions

Just when I think your comments can't get any dumber....

That's a claim, prove it. Do you understand what drag is and how it increases with speed?

I'll make it easy for you --try riding 20 mph into a 20 mph headwind and get back to us.


BTW, I notice that every time you use the word "basic", it's in the context of you proving you have little to no basic knowledge of bicycling.

CheGiantForLife

Riding in a tornado or wearing a parachute to create drag is not what I call real world.
In the real world, 13% grade is harder than flat grade. This is self=evident to normal folk.

WhyFi

fify.

livedarklions

Normal folk who don't know anything about bicycling.

Maybe you need this explained to you, you're obviously very confused. The issue on a 13% grade is that the minimum effort needed to keep enough forward momentum to keep the bike balanced is at the edge of your capabilities, in other words you are very close to the max effort you can make just to keep the bike moving. Obviously, on the flat, the minimum effort requirement is much, much smaller. What you don't seem to get is that there is actually nothing to stop you from making that same very hard effort on the flat that you do on the 13% grade other than your own unwillingness to do so.


No one said anything about a tornado, riding into a 20 mph headwind is no more outlandish than riding up a 13% grade. I rode about 25 miles into a 14 mph headwind on all sorts of grades during a 76 mile ride on Saturday. Between the climbing and the headwind, my speed was low, and I was pretty damn exhausted.

You might be using your muscles differently producing the 250 watts on the climb than the 250 watts on the flat, but the level of effort is still the same.

I don't do high intensity interval training (HIIT), but many people do so on the flat. If you were right, they couldn't.

DaveLeeNC

In terms of trying to roughly duplicate the effort of a 13% climb, but doing it on the flats, there is another issue. Assume that a 'mere mortal' biker intends to do that 13% climb at 175 watts. He gets on his 52/34 chainring 32/11 bike and goes 3.4 mph (he can probably stay upright here) and 40 rpm (NOT a good place to be, but that is the circumstances). That same 175 watts will get him over 18 mph on the flats, but the closest that he can come to mimicing his 13% climb will be in his 52/11 at 50 rpm. That is a huge difference at those very low rpm's. You need either wider gearing or more power (in this case). And there are a huge number of cyclists who won't even have this wide a set of gearing choices.

dave

livedarklions

I don't know that matching of slow cadence is needed to match effort as he seems to be defining it. He specifically said that "30 seconds" of 13% grade "is more chest exploding heart rate than an hour of flat riding."

I think if you're comparing effort in the weightlifting sense, maybe it makes sense to match high resistance/slow cadence, but otherwise, I think we might be talking apples vs. oranges here. "Chest exploding heart rate" sure sounds like FTP to me, and I think you can get there at different cadences.

BTW, I very seriously doubt he's ever climbed a 13% grade for more than a very few feet, if any.

CheGiantForLife

Related question for the team.
My chosen 20 min. loop is mostly either uphill or downhill, which I love.

For a given distance, which is harder for you?
A ride that is flat, or a ride that has a lot of up and down hills.
Or do you feel no difference?

Polaris OBark

Downhill is hardest, emotionally.

WhyFi

Strava or it didn't happen.

I have gears and the knowledge of how to use them. The rides where I take it easy feel easy to me. The rides where I ride hard feel hard to me.

livedarklions

Depends. How steep are the hills? Big difference between gently rolling hills and really big hills. Gently rolling hills aren't that much different from flats because the momentum from the downhill gets carried into the uphill enough that it sort of levels the effort, and the downhills aren't so steep that you're probably just coasting half of the distance. As the steepness of the hill increases, the bigger the difference between your likely effort going uphill vs, going downhill. On the flat, I can vary my effort at will between very hard and easy, so at a certain level the question is meaningless as I can, as discussed endlessly above, make my flat ride as hard as anything I encounter elsewhere.

Koyote

If it's a loop, it has exactly the same amounts of uphill and downhill. Try again.

livedarklions

The potholes seem to be especially bad this year, so I kind of feel that way right now. I am finding rapid descents (for me, I max out at about 38 mph before I deliberately slow) rather stressful.

livedarklions

Translating to competent English, I think he's saying less than half of it is flat.