Climbing Technique
[ posted by iain Friday, April 15, 2005 ]
I have a feeling the answer to this may be personal preference, but I was wondering what constitutes a good climbing position. I have never had any instruction on climbing correctly and I guess most cyclists just go with what feels best.
I started out cycling on mountain bikes and the thing to do was sit with your butt glued to the saddle and spin at a high cadence while using the bar ends. To some extent this has carried over into my road cycling but I find that against
conventional wisdom I seem to always end up sitting at the front of the saddle rather than sitting back. I have the correct saddle position with my kneecap above or just behind the axle and my handlebar is setup correctly. Apparently you get a leverage advantage sitting further back and I remember reading somewhere that you also use more of your muscles when sitting further back in the saddle thereby improving power. I guess the only way to find out is to do a couple of timed runs up a hill trying different positions.
Old man's vest
[ posted by phill Sunday, April 10, 2005 ]
Thanks to Iain for inviting me to contribute to the blog. I may have the answer to his clothing dilemmas - an old man's string vest!
It's quite warm over here in Italy at the moment, well at least it has been for the last month or so, today it's snowing on the hills, anyway the problem is that I tend to get very hot slogging up a climb for an hour then freeze sitting immobile on the bike for 1/2h of descending.
I saw some of the pros using this garment on TV so I thought I'd give it a go and despite being the most unattractive piece of clothing you could imagine it really works. At this time of year for ambient temperatures of around 10-20C I usually have the string vest, jersey, arm and leg warmers and a gilet, then for descending a lightweight windproof and thin hat that fits under the helmet. This combination generally covers all eventualities.
So go out and get a string vest, just don't *ever* be tempted to use it without a jersey over the top, it's a big fashion NO in any country (apart from maybe Australia).
