Been spending more time on the biek recently, trying to work on my weak event. I’ve noticed that when I’m tired, I tend to get down in my aerobars to climb hills. Thinking about it today, I realized that in the bars, I can grab the front of the bars and pull back hard, levering up against the elbow pads. When I’m climbing on the hoods I don’t pull up nearly as much, and I have a hard time pulling up as hard when I’m climbing in the drops, even out of the saddle. By pulling up, I can push down harder with my legs and get more force up the hill.
Now, the cyclists who are blowing by me up the hills are not in their aerobars if they even have them, so they must be doing something differently than I’m doing, or I just have obnoxiously weak legs.
Any tips or advice on how to climb more effectively? Is everyone else out there pulling on their handlebars in some way that I haven’t figured out yet?
On my road bike I climb on the hoods but on the tri bike I’m on the aero bars as much as possible. The road bike is a much more efficient climber but being on the hoods on the tri bike seems less efficient than the aero bars except on the steepest hills. It would be definately the opposite on the road bike.
Road bike, compact geometry (Giant TCR) with clip-on bars. 700cc wheels. I have a road bike fitting with aerobars configured as best we could without messing up the road bike fit.
Maybe you are pushing too big a gear?
Ha! I wish. I’ve been experimenting with gear ratios so today my easiest gear was 42/23. Normally I have 39/25,23,21,19 available and can go up the hill at 80-90 rpm on the hoods in 39/19 early in the workout or 39/21 later in the workout. After today, I’m going back to the 39 on the front and licking my wounds.
Maybe it was just a bad day today, but regardless I still feel a lot stronger up the hill when I can yank back hard on the aerobars. I don’t feel like I can pull back as hard without the leverage of the elbow pads. Maybe that’s normal?
Lee
P.S. The hill I’m referring to is part of the loop of Prospect Park, which is 3.4 miles. In a 2 hr workout I’ll do 12 loops, so I get to ride this hill quite a bit.
If you are on a tri bike as far as I have found the only way to fly up hills is a high cadence, like above 90 and at times above 100, if I drop into the low 80’s in my aerobars forget it. It is all about the gearing, you either have to suck it up and go to a 12-27 for the big hills, or go compact. I totally hosed my gear selection on the last race 11-23 and was passed by a guy twice my age up a hill, this would not have happened with my new compacts or just a lager gear in the back. Oh, and until my cadence drops below about 80 I an in the aerobars. Also the aero position is better for spinning than power anyways, I wonder how your legs feel after leveraging that extra power out of your aerobars, my experience is jello.
I am curious what type of aerobars are you using on your TCR? Full length like Syntace C2 Ultrlite or Streamliners or Carbon Stryke or are you using shorty aero bars i.e. Syntace XXS C2/SL, Profile-D Jammer GTs, or Oval Concepts A700 Slams.
If you are using full-length aerobars consider switching to shorty aerobars, because you won’t compromise comfort and therefore your strength due to wasted energy used to maintain the streched out aero position that occurs when using full-length bars on road geometry bikes.
It sounds as if this is something you need to experiement with. Each hill is different from steepness to length, etc. What I would do is get out there and do some hill intervals and time yourself in each position, in different gears, at a different cadence. The thing about climbing is that you aren’t going to be comfortable. You may need to do a combination of positions in order to maintain your speed, keeping in mind that the higher your overall average speed, the faster your time split will be. With a compact frame bike you should be able to climb well on the hoods and out of the saddle. If your speed drops below 17mph I wouldn’t stay in the aero bars, as your aerdynamic benefit diminishes and you get more power seated and on your hoods.
I’ve actually previewed a few race courses to figure out how I was going to climb on race day. During the preview, I do intervals on the hills. I get dialed in and know what I have to do on race day ----> suffer.
I did a sprint triathlon here in the UK last Sunday and reckoned I lost around 5 minutes by chosing my road bike (without tri bars) over my tri bike.
The reason I switched was the fact that I did the course last year on my tri bike and found the 42" bottom gear marginal and the 300m climb (1000feet) combined with the narrow roads, sharpish bend at times and the need to brake/change gear a challenge! I reckoned ordinary drop bars with STI shifters would save more time than I would lose from the better aerodynamics of the tri bike. I was wrong. (the bikes are the same weight - I used the same wheels). It was much less stressful on the road bike but I only closed on people up the hills - couldn’t cope elsewhere.
The problem is you aren’t pulling up on the pedals enough on the upstroke to offset the pushing on the downstroke that is lifting you upwards. If you pull up with the same force as you push down you can ride up hills no handed.
In fact in Bernard Hinault’s old book he recommended doing sprints no handed to improve form (must not have been much traffic around his house). If you focus on going up hills with relaxed hands, arms and shoulders it will force your pedaling to change to keep from grinding to a halt.
I won’t say you will be any faster having mastered that but you will be recruiting more leg muscles rather than upper body ones. If all you want to do is hill climbs you almost certainly will become faster but for tri there is always the possibility you would be faster overall letting those muscles slack off on the bike to be fresher on the run.