Very interesting insights to be gleaned here, reading all of these varied approaches to the problem of how best to get up and down hills.
Of course the gearing is crucial and very personal but while in Sri Lanka last year ( 37*17 on my Raven) I began to engage with the hills on a mental level.
Bear with me...
It was a case of embracing the slopes/hills. There were 3 of us in the equation.
My bike/weight/gearing.
The hill/headwind/slope.
And me/my physical condition/fitness.
I endeavoured to balance the three issues.
It was a mental thing as well as the physics.
Does anyone else talk to themselves while riding? Or talk to their bike? Or the hill?
Well, it got me up them in a happy mood.
Such an excellent point! Yes, yes and yes. I need to find ways of fooling myself into loving hills - where the reality is probably otherwise. But much of the time making a game of it, or talking to myself, really does the trick.
I don't have a single thing I use, but sort of a range of several different mental activities, which when they work well really help both the climb as well as the enjoyment of the whole day.
long ago there used to be a Canadian commercial for a concept called participAction. Funny now, I can't remember how it went, but I used to play that over and over and spin to the cadence of the song in my mind, the way they said the word over and over. It was almost like a trick to get me slightly hypnotized. I sort of know I'm straining but the pain and in fact all of what I'm doing sort of disapears into the distance, as if I were in a slow moving memory. Sounds odd to describe, but it worked for me.
I also sometimes used to focus and be aware of the muscles and how they were working, and working in tandem with the breathing. It's almost as if I could slip into a slow moving world again, where I could feel the individual muscles pushing or not pushing. That is one reason why I've always liked to be clipped-in. It may be an illusion, but I can get into a zone where I can minutely change up how much I use the different muscles in slightly different ways, resulting in a bit of rest while I'm still full steam ahead, but mostly I think the benefit for me is purely mental, where it takes me out of the pain, and everything slows down. It used to work a lot better when I used to run because a track is perfectly predictable, and not as well with cycling because I snap out of my trance at every odd thing in front of me - potholes, tree branches, cars etc all make it hard to stay "in the zone". But still.
and then of course there are a few other things, like pretending some announcer is commenting in a fast auctioneer sort of way on the details of my bicycling form - but now the rain has stopped, the sun is out, and Mexican food for lunch awaits at a nearby restaurant.
This is a great subject to bring up to touch on Matt ... I'd love to hear more on this if anyone else has any tips on the mental aspect of taming the less favored aspects of our hobby/sport.
