Hill Lover

(A rough draft of a chapter)

This is the chapter where I share the biggest game changer for me when it comes to hill climbing.  I’m not a professional cyclist, and my ideas here are probably not entirely original, but I discovered this for myself and it’s something I’d love to share.  I’m talking about the pairing of mindful breathing with your pedalling to make the best use of your gear shifting.  Just as you watch a tachometer to shift gears on your car, you can listen to, and feel your breath to know when to shift gears on your bicycle. By the time I made it to Wyoming, I bought a bike jersey from a brand called Hill Killer.  I guess I thought it sounded badass or something.  By the end of my journey I wrote with a sharpie, “LOVER” over the “Killer”.  Hill Lover?!  Am I some sort of masochist?  No!  I started to see hills differently.  As I came to summit some of the big ones, I would actually say out loud to the hill, “thank you!”  They were mysterious entities that intimidated me, at times their true size hidden by the surrounding forest. They reminded me how small I am. They were opponents that gave me a challenge.  They were mentors that lifted me up and made me stronger.  They were friends when they gave me a downward grade on the other side.  Hills helped me to better understand and control my momentum in an intuitive way.  Hills tell me when to work hard and when to have fun but I can choose when to suffer.  A lot of our suffering is in the mind.  We feel sorry for ourselves.  It is tied to the anxiety of what’s to come, the anticipation of pain.  When you see the big climb ahead, ease the suffering and go to another place mentally with your breath.

Just like running, breathing and biking in rhythm can keep your body feeling good, but mindful breathing can also benefit your life throughout the day, keeping you present in the moment and calming anxieties.  The idea is to keep your exhale longer than your inhale. It is also ideal to breathe long and deeply.  Shallow breaths do not deliver as much oxygen to your body. Think “long breath, long life.”  On the inhale, fill your belly before your chest and notice any tension in your muscles. On the exhale, release that tension.  It is common to tense up in the shoulders, neck, and jaws thinking about that hill, or maybe your asshole is tight from thinking about work too much.  In a breath cycle you can give thanks to the air that sustains your life and feel it energize you. Think it sounds phony?  All it takes is focus, sincere love for yourself, and a little imagination, and you can revitalize your body and mind with your breath.  It can be a tool for disciplining the mind in meditation. In a calm, seated position or laying down, you can get down to only a few breaths per minute.  This is my foundational understanding of mindful breathing. Then I applied it to cycling.  Instead of letting your thoughts of suffering distract you from inner peace, your mindful breathing distracts you from the suffering, making inner peace more attainable. Pairing the breath with my pedal cadence became a moving meditation that allowed me to zone out on challenging hills.   Before you know it, after conserving energy and self-pity, you’re at the top with fuel in the tank to accelerate and upshift over the crest with surprising speed. 

Breathing on odd intervals of your pedalling allows you to alternate the downstroke of each leg and pair it with the beginning of your exhale for an extra push of strength and torque. This is similar with weightlifting or a yoga transition, you are exhaling when you exert the most effort.  If you inhale on two pedals (right, left), you exhale for three pedals (right, left, right).  Next you inhale two again (left, right) with your exhale starting on the left this time, and alternating so on.  Most people have a dominant leg, just like a dominant hand, so alternating legs on the exhale can help balance the strengthening of your legs, and mitigate the soreness of one leg relative to the other.  Having odd interval breathing may also lengthen the lifetime of your bike’s bottom bracket because torque will be more evenly distributed on the hardware.  It might all seem a little tricky at first, but it will come naturally in time.  It may be a little easier for musicians or percussionists who will become more interested with songs in 5/4 and 7/8.  However, if you think you have no rhythm, this will help.

Sometimes even intervals will make breathing more comfortable (3 in, 3 out), especially if you’re really exerting yourself.  Keep in mind, with even intervals you will be favoring one leg over the other on your exhale.  If you do this, you can always exhale on one leg for a couple minutes, then even it out by exhaling on your other leg for the same amount of time.  But sometimes you need to favor one leg to cope with soreness and prevent injury. Just know that if you favor your sore leg long enough, your strong leg will eventually get sore too.

This chart shows odd interval breathing. Each exhale lands on alternating legs. The exhales go at least one pedal stroke longer than the inhales. (2+3, 3+4, 4+5).  The lower numbers with shorter intervals mean more laborious breathing for low gears and going uphill, while the higher numbers with longer intervals mean easier breathing for higher gears and going downhill or on a level plane.  But if you are breathing comfortably you can increase the pedal strokes on your exhale. For example: inhale two, exhale five, or 3+6, 4+7, as long as they add up to an odd number, you are alternating legs for your exhale. As mentioned before, “long breath, long life”, try to avoid short breathing intervals that include a 1 (1 inhale, 1 exhale, or 1 inhale, 2 exhale).  Taking many short breaths is hyperventilation and your heart will be working overtime to deliver oxygen to your muscles.  On my most grueling uphill through the Teton Pass, I was breathing 2 in and 2 or 3 out.  I was in my lowest gear in a low cadence around 50-60 RPMs.  I was climbing at a pace that might have been slower than a brisk walk.  If you ever feel like you are breathing too quickly, you need to stop and take a rest.  Heck, take a rest anyways, look at that beautiful scenery and drink some water.  All this being said, it’s important for me to mention, there is no need to use this breath/pedal technique all the time. In fact, I encourage you to not use it all the time. Sometimes you have to just breathe naturally without thinking about it too much.  It would distract you from things like conversation with your bike buddy, or listening to an awesome song.  However, if you practice this method enough, you will find yourself doing it without thinking about it.

I was talking to a fisherman in Yellowstone and he tells me about pedal cadence. “You don’t have toe clips?!  You don’t know about pedal cadence?!”  He was maybe the fourth person to recommend toe clips, but he was the first person to explain pedal cadence.  It was an exciting discovery for me.  If you’re not familiar, cadence is your number of pedal rotations per minute, that is, a count of 360 degree rotations made by one pedal.  Similar to RPMs in a car engine, you want to be in the gear that enables you to maintain an average cadence that conserves energy output. An ideal pedal cadence while maintaining a speed is 70 to 90 RPMs, while passenger car engines prefer 3,000-4,000 RPMs with a redline around 6,000-7,000. Olympic cyclists will be in the 100 to 120s just as race car engines are built to maintain much higher RPMs. High pedal cadence is known as ”spinning” while low cadence is known as ”grinding”.  Spinning has low torque while grinding has high torque.  Generally, you want to have a higher cadence that requires less energy, but just enough torque to maintain speed.  As you become more comfortable maintaining a higher cadence, you will find more hidden power when you want to accelerate into an upshift.  

From a fixed gear bike, to a single speed, next along the evolution is shifting gears!  They make you and your bike almost like a car!  The bike is the body of the car, and you are the engine and driver.  I once thought that shifting gears simply meant making pedalling more or less difficult.  I understood that when I shift down, the torque or resisting force is low and shifting up increases it.  Low gears are for uphill, high gears for downhill.  But there is more to it than that!!!  If you have ever driven a stick shift car, this might make more sense.  But if you drive automatic, turn down that radio for a minute and listen to the engine. 

From a stop, just like on a bike, you start in your lowest gear.  As you accelerate, you can watch the RPMs on your tachometer increase until your car shifts up, and the RPMs fall to a lower, more sustainable rate.  This continues as you accelerate onto the highway, faster and faster until you are in the top gear.  From there, you can only put the pedal to the floor and the RPMs will spike.  This will get you to your top speed soon enough but keep it up, and this is how your engine overheats.  Now take this knowledge of a car engine and apply it to your bike and body as one.  When you want to accelerate to a higher speed, you increase your pedal cadence and apply torque until you are at a desirable speed.  Then you shift up and return to your average cadence.  If you are riding on a level grade at 80 pedal RPMs, you are only shifting down as necessary to maintain your 80 RPMs as you ascend the hill.  But this is all too complicated.  I’m not going to keep track of all these numbers while I’m trudging up a hill!  You don’t need a scientific tachometer when you have your breath.  When your breath is paired to your cadence, the length of your breath cycle becomes an indicator of when it is time to shift. If I stayed in the same gear going up the hill, my breath cycles would lengthen relative to the incline of the hill and my decreased momentum.  It would be like driving your car in a high gear all the way up a hill- your RPMs decrease as your torque and energy output increase. Therefore, shifting gears not only helps maintain momentum, cadence, and energy consumption, but also a comfortable rate of breathing.  Listen to your body!  

Pedal cadence, shifting, and breathing are all important when it comes to flying up a hill, but you will add to the struggle if you don’t think about your momentum and plan ahead.  Increased momentum makes hills more fun, plain and simple. Whether you are on a flat plane or going down a hill, if you see another one just ahead, you need to pedal with increased effort to get in a higher gear at your comfortable cadence for maximum speed as you ascend.  The moment you feel your pedal cadence decrease, downshift.  Depending how severe the grade of the hill is, you may have to downshift early, just to keep that pedal cadence high.  You will find it more forgiving to maintain a high cadence than downshifting too late.  By that time you have lost momentum and that gear is more difficult than it could have been five seconds ago.  If you really are wiped out at the top of the hill, don’t stop unless you need to barf.  Just like finishing a run, you don’t sit down, you walk around for a while.  Catch your breath, relax.  If you have another hill ahead, take your time so you can give yourself maximum distance to attack it again.  You won’t want to attack it when you are already half way up.  But let’s say it’s a downhill on the other side!  Once you have judged the distance of the downhill and another potential uphill, you have two choices.  Either start pedaling again in a high gear and achieve maximum speed, or TAKE IT EASY!  Going down a big hill and letting gravity do all the work is a great joy.  Flying up a hill is also a great joy.

Thanks for reading, and happy trails!

-Clark