Yeah, 34/28. Some brave souls I saw on 34/23. I have gotten up a lot of these hills on 34/23 but it suuuuucks and trust me, I don't want to do hill #2 after that.

There's a regular hill ride on wednesdays spring through summer. First time I did it I showed up on a 34/23, in the middle of my racing season, feeling very strong.

I was the first person up the first big hill. 2nd up the 2nd hill. Dead last on every one after that including walking a few. Lesson learned, slow the **** down.

Man that must be hard. I just checked my rings and counted 30/25 for my easiest gear!

In a way it's what you're used to. I have found that with some hills, no matter what my gearing, I will always climb them in the lowest gear I have. There's a hill on my way home, not really a bad one, just like 2 minutes of maybe 6-8% grade. I did it 100 times at 34/23 with no trouble, never dreaded it or anything.

I put a 11-28 on the back and now every time I climb it in 28. Same goes for the awful ****ing hill just outside my office on the way home.

Easier gearing makes you softer, there's no doubt. I installed the 11-28 because the hugel was not going to be possible without it.

Will I do the Hugel next year? Probably. I would like to do the whole thing. But... it's not really something I'm interested in. I am not a climber and never will be, and if you're not a climber, you have to trudge through it at 14mph. You successfully "do" it but to me it's not a success. I am not interested in crawling up hills at 5mph. If I can't be one of the guys who blasts up them then I kinda want to do something else.

That said I am going to try to make hill rides part of my regular rotation. Around my neck of the woods rides average around 25-30 feet of elevation per mile. Hugel is 100 feet/mile. I should be doing more rides with 50-60 feet/mile.

Took a quick look at the html gear calculator:
http://gear-calculator.com/
Actually not much difference between a 30/25 and a 34/28. 33.7 and 34.1 gear inches, respectively. Now my 34/32. that is 29.8 gear inches. Now we're talking, lol.

Actually, just took off my 11/32 and went back to the 11/28. I don't need that granny gear around here and I'm not planning on doing any hill climbs for a while.

A funny/scary thing happened on the Tour das Hugel... At the tail end of the first segment I was descending very fast down a steep hill when the dude in front of me dropped his phone. He was probably 100 feet in front of me. It bounced all over the place and I veered to miss it but at the last second it bounced directly toward me and went under my wheel.

The front wheel skidded for a heart-stopping second but then it was over.

I also kinda forgot to mention that I ended up at pretty much the complete tail end of the event, because I saw a friend of mine on the side of the road changing a tire, and stopped to help him/ride with him. Then he got *another* flat. That 20 or 30 minutes of down time meant that even the slowest riders passed us by. We hardly saw anyone after that.

Woah, Chris Carmichael, who wrote "The Time Crunched Cyclist" as well some other cycling books, coaching Lance Armstrong and racing the for 7/11 team, is coming to give a talk to my cycling club. Apparently also going to ride with us the saturday after. Neat.

One of the worst rides in years today. I rode in to work, doing some intervals on the way in, which was fine. On the way home there was a 25 mph headwind from the north and temps dropped 20 degrees over the course of my ride home. My garmin said 35, I was dressed for about 50 and the wind was just brutal. I think I averaged about 13mph and there were long stretches, like the last 10 mi, where I didn't break 11.5mph. I was literally in my lowest gear grinding it out.

Lol welcome to an average day in the British winter. At least it wasn't raining!

If I lived there, I'd probably be prepared for it. But also I'd probably still hate it.

There's about an 8 mile stretch that goes through a nature reserve so it's pretty well shielded from the wind. I probably avged 15 through there which is below normal but OK. But as soon as I crested the hill and got out onto the road it was like hitting an icy brick wall.

From that point on I literally just thought about calling my wife to come get me every second.

A normal ride home, if I'm not doing a workout, my avg bpm would be about 135 and my power average probably 140 or less. Yesterday: avg HR=150, power=165

I was toast when I got home. I started eating as soon as I walked in the door and didn't stop until I felt normal again.

Yeah, every time I go out on my bike over winter I am fully prepared with all the gear, but it still only takes about 5 minutes until I'm thoroughly miserable due to cold/wind/rain! It's weird that I am absolutely fine running in any weather, rain, wind, snow, ice, cold, but put me on a bike and I'm only happy if the sun is shining and it's perfectly still.

I'm the same way, I never mind running in the cold or even the rain, but on a bike it sucks. Maybe it's the speed you're moving at? Like it adds 15mph wind except when you have a tail wind (which is usually noticably warmer)

That's true. And the wind affects you so much more on a bike. Even a slight headwind can slow you down and I just find it demoralising to be trudging away into a headwind, struggly to sustain 10mph on the flat.

Yeah this is part of my theory about how expectations affects your output

The group I ride with operates under the idea that you should always ride into a headwind to start, and with a tailwind on the way home. And this makes a lot of sense. But something I've noticed is that people will do, say, 150 watts into the wind, complaining the whole time, and do 200+ with the tailwind, happy about it.

My theory is: when pedalling hard makes you go fast, it feels "right" and you don't mind working hard. When it doesn't, it's demoralizing and you automatically reduce your effort because it feels "wrong".

The only reason I was working hard last night is that it was getting dark and the final few miles to my house has
* lots of fast moving traffic
* little to no shoulder
* no light at all

It's really starting to suck and I hope they replace the roads soon. This area used to be out in the country but now there is lots of new development and the roads are too small/crappy for the traffic they carry. And everyone is super pissed because of it, too.

Absolutely. I'll nail it when I'm on a slight decline with a tailwind because it gives you such a lift and makes it feel like you're really performing. It's just a lot of fun. Reverse it and it just feels like you're not getting anything out of the effort you're putting in, so you just end up not motivated to put the effort in.

I have a bit of a problem with the wind in that I live very close to the West coast, and our prevailing wind direction is Westerly. Hence most rides end up going out with a tailwind and back into a headwind. Luckily though it also means that the rides start off uphill and finish downhill as the hills start pretty much on my doorstep.

Oddly enough, I rode saturday morning with 10 other brave souls, it was super cold, and I really enjoyed myself for the most part. I was much better prepared. The weather report was that it would be 25F at the start of the ride, warming to about 35F by the end.

In reality it was more like 17 or 18F at the start, and it probably did warm up to 35F. We rode into the wind and it was a cold slog to start, but once the sun came out we kind of got used to it. All of our bottles started to freeze. The tip of mine froze shut and when I tried to pry it open it broke off.

On the way back it was warmer and we had a tail wind. I commented to someone on the ride back that it was "nice" out now and he said "it's 35, on any other day you'd be complaining about how cold it is, it just seems 'nice' because it was so bad before." And I guess that's right.

The son of one of my friends died last night, hit by a car while riding not far from here. He was a gifted young racer, probably bound for a national racing team at the least. He was out riding yesterday evening and didn't come home. His mother found his body this morning driving around looking for him. I literally can't imagine. I cried at work. I feel like I can't tell my wife because she already worries about me a lot. He was 19 years old. ****.

Rough

Holy crap that's terrible.

Cycling does often scare me as I've heard of tons of people that I actually know or have had contact with who've been involved in bad accidents with cars. And I know what you mean about telling your wife.... I won't be telling mine about this.

my condolences, that's tragic & terrible!

and it's another hit n run. makes me so ***** angry!

That is terrible; what is the track record of the police to be able to track someone like this down? Is it effectively impossible without a camera or a tip from someone that saw it?

So sad. Words just don't cover the tragic loss of life. Road riding has been one of my life passions the last 5 or 6 years, but reminders like this make me wonder if it worth it. I also will not be mentioning this to my wife. I know random condolences from someone you only know on the internet probably don't mean much, but I am really sad for you and your friend, and his family.

I don't know if they can or not, but realistically they won't. In most cases where they catch the guy, there is usually no penalty. It's not even typical for charges to be filed. In this case I think there were probably no witnesses - the boy's body wasn't even found until the next morning.

As far as I know the only clue they have is that the car might be blue. I guess they found some paint or something.

My wife did find out after all. Another friend of mine posted about it - her daughter was friends with Tommy. I had also replied to someone else's post about it and she saw that too - she initially thought there were 2 deaths.

I found a link to an article about the hit and run. Maybe there is enough vehicle damage someone will figure it out.

http://keyetv.com/news/local/georget...d-teen-cyclist

Yeah that's the one. Look at the picture of the road, it's really considered ideal. Smooth pavement, low traffic, wide shoulder. I've ridden there many times.