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Hills and Flats



 
 
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Old May 17th 19, 12:26 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Andre Jute[_2_]
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Default Hills and Flats

On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 10:52:45 PM UTC+1, Duane wrote:
AMuzi wrote:
On 5/16/2019 12:08 PM, Andre Jute wrote:
On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 2:58:03 PM UTC+1, AMuzi wrote:
On 5/15/2019 11:53 PM, news18 wrote:
On Mon, 13 May 2019 09:33:12 -0700, Tom Kunich wrote:

Do you suppose climbing hills can put you into the same physical shape
as riding fast on the flats?

Shape isn't a defined physical state.
if you're after "fit' yes,
but fit for what?
Hills are more about power, where as flats are more endurance.


To quote the always quotable Rich Hammen in his newspaper
column 'Ask Captain America' when asked if one should train
by spinning small gears or pushing big gears. "To win, you
spin big gears."


What about those who came late to cycling and can't learn to spin, who mash on regardless?

Andre Jute
Don't shoot the cyclist, he's riding the road as made


Any riding is a good thing but of course victory will not be
yours.


Depends a lot on how you define victory.

--
duane


I define "victory" much like Tom appears to, as cycling adding to my fitness and longevity. But I'm not trying to build up either power or speed, I'm trying to build endurance. My entire riding area is hilly, so I have hills to work with. As a masher with a low cadence, I can use the Rohloff 14 speed hub gearbox on my everyday bike to change gears, or I can use the electric motor to fill in by either the throttle, the pedelec (assistance matched to my pedalling input, exactly the opposite of what I want on a hill where I want electric input as my pedal input declines), or one of the stepped programmes of assistance, nine in all of which I use 5 because that seems enough, or of course a combination of the Rohloff, the electronic programmes, and the throttle for fine tuning. Eventually it becomes second nature to fix your heart rate to the predetermined point and keep it relatively steady there.

Since two heart surgeries, my health has improved through cycling to where my original 38x16 tooth setup has become a 42x16 without stressing me any higher. I measure stress and desired output by my heart rate rather than by speed to distance, because my cardiologists don't want my heart rate to exceed 79%. Before I negotiated the new limit with the cardiologists, the therapists actually set a 70% level, and hated my Nordic Air Walker as bringing my heartate up "too fast", though my treadmill and rower meet with their approval. On my bike a Polar chest sender dispatches the reading to the app Polar Beat on my iPhone which is on the handlebars right in my sightline, so I know how near to target heart rate I am at all times; it also reports verbally every kilometer so that you know what's up when you have to pay attention to the road or the traffic. With practice you use only the top seven gears in the Rohloff with the five "gears" in the Bagang BBS controller (or the throttle) to maintain the target heartbeat whatever the terrain -- except, oddly, on the flat, where I run out of gears even with approximately 40% in three overdrive gears (I set gear 11, the direct gear, as the gear where my cadence maxes out on the flat) because my cadence just isn't fast enough.

Andre Jute
Bicycling used to be such fun before the math took over...
 




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