The Garmin Files

Hill climbing.  I love a good hill climb on the bike.  My favourite saying is "hills make you stronger".  And I truly believe that.  I have done many different century bike rides in the US and I notice that whenever there is a hill during the ride, the riders tend to fall off the back rather quickly.  Riders that blasted out of the gate are huffing and puffing to get themselves up the hill.  When I pass them, because I always do.  I never see them again.

And to be clear, I am not a particularly fast rider in the grand scheme of things. 

When you're doing a hill climb, there is nowhere to hide.  Riding flats?  Sure.  A good rider will find a pace line to tuck in to and enjoy the draft.  But on a hill, drafting becomes much more difficult.  Hills show all weaknesses.  At least at the weekend warrior level, which is where I am at. 

I am very fortunate.  Where I live I have several hills to climb and workout on.  If I am on a limited time frame, for me nothing beats finding a hill, doing some repeats, and enjoying the burn.  The other benefit of doing hill repeats or doing over/unders on a hill?  No stop lights.  So I find it is easy to get into a groove.

Funnily enough, I thought the hills I had to climb and workout on were pretty good.  But then a friend of mine shared some photos of where he lives and where works out and hill climbs.  His hills?  The French Alps.  So while I am excited about riding up my local ski hills, my friend is riding though glaciers, high mountains, and French villas.  I guess you always want what you don't have LOL.

Not me, as much as I wish it was! How amazing is that scenery!

Unfortunately for me, summer in my part of the world is coming to an end.  My days of hill climbing are dwindling.  Either the weather will turn and I will be enduring day after day of rain OR the daylight hours will not be long enough to enable any riding.  But that is a topic for another post.