BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

My suggestion for getting better at climbing hills: ride a fixie or single speed everywhere for a summer, including hills like negley that make you grunt with every turn of the peddle, not knowing if it is actually gonna get around each time. Then ride a geared bike in granny gear on the dirty dozen hills. Part of it is mental, too. I have suggested this several times to people though. I couldn't make it up the hills last year without stopping and I think the fixie really helped. Though I am sure there are much better strategies, like just riding a lot, riding lots of hills in general, and dropping as much weight off of yourself as you can.

Edit: I am also by no means fast up hills. I just keep going. The dirty dozen hills are really hard unless you are just a good hill climber.

I'm all for training up for the DD, you have some good ideas there. A lot of it is mental, and for me a lot of it is a super granny gear that could climb up the side of buildings. So if you want to work at hill climbing 1. make sure your bike goes into a gear you can be comfortable at, then work up from there. 2. try out the mental thing by testing yourself on "hills" like Forbes Ave out of CMU up to Sq Hill (bike lane), Liberty (bike lane), a side street up out of Lawrenceville (one way), etc. to test yourself. I hate biking up S. Negley because the concrete breaks are terrible. And, make sure you work on sitting more than standing. That will help build your muscles. Just my two cents.

Edit: totally agree with "just keep going". just keep those pedals turning:)

The first step for me would be to make sure a 55 mile ride in the Pittsburgh area is easy enough to allow for some difficult extra physical activity.

Not that climbing the 13 hills isn't itself hard, but first things first.

Right now anything over about 35 miles and I'm done for the day. If I could do a metric century, then go out swing dancing or have fun swimming, it would be time to think about the hill part.

Starting in the spring/summer I will have to test the all-day sort of endurance more like you're suggesting. For the time being I don't have that sort of time or the gear... I'm pretty cold on my teeny little commute already.

I was thinking specifically in terms of somewhat grueling very local hills that were easy to get to/from from the western edge of squirrel hill.

From w. Sq. Hill you could make a loop that takes you down panther hollow > up greenfield ave thru schenlley park to cmu > down ph again > up Bates thru schenley back to cmu > then rinse repeat.

Sort of a giant distorted figure 8.

Then u have long & slow and short and steep climbs with a bit of a rest as you go thru the hollow.

With the bonus of not going more than a few miles from home.

- Soufoaklin Hill Climbing 8.5 mile loop

http://www.endomondo.com/routes/104097394

(sometimes i get bored @ work)

(You could also skip going thru CMU by crossing the bridge, going past the law building then down Joncaire to Bounadry.)

Double post.

@byogman: A simple one would be down Hazelwood Ave to Second Ave, then turn around and climb back up.

Or, if you wish to tackle a real DD hill, down Hazelwood, left on Second, then take the next left onto Flowers->Kilbourne->Tesla.

if you want a starting idea of what a dirty dozen hill feels like before you actually find yourself halfway up one, you can start with yarrow way going up from boundary street in panther hollow (right at the stop sign/90° turn). it's very short, but quite steep, and can give you a hint of what you're in for.

then, if you find that to your liking, a street like hoosac off of greenfield ave is a nice steep one. bonus points if you climb greenfield ave first!

Oh, yeah, Yarrow's a fun little hill. It's super-short, and there are never any cars around, but it's steep, so it's a good, low-stakes place to practice distributing your weight so that your front wheel doesn't pop up. (Anybody have a guess what the grade is there?)

ETA: I, too, feel like I should do Dirty Dozen training ride training rides. If other people would be interested, maybe we could get a group together and do hilly rides and hill repeats and stuff on a semi-regular basis, starting with tamer stuff and working up to more DD-like hills eventually. I should probably do some of that on my own this winter anyway, but I'd much rather do it with company (like you said, it would keep me honest, and being in a group would also make trafficky hills less worrisome)

I also would like to do some Dirty Dozen training rides. I'm pretty fit, but would like to go on a group ride where I hit some of the hills so I can get a feel for them before the actual race. Would anyone want do some this weekend if the weather eases up?

@mbaker90, I'd hit up this thread: http://bike-pgh.org/bbpress/topic/2012-dirty-dozen-training-rides. Some people who are planning on doing the DD this year have already been doing training rides regularly.

These are great suggestions, thanks all. pbeaver, I saw something interesting on your distorted figure 8 I wanted to ask about. So, it looks like you take Boundary, cross under Forbes, but them immediately turn back around through CMU.

When I look at that intersection turned back as you would to go through CMU, I see control arms for a parking lot. Are you able to go straight through that lot front to back as advertised on your route? Google street view fails on this one, you try and head back toward the parking lot and it teleports you up to the overpass and Forbes. If there ever were a bike that did that I'd go down to the pond in schenley park a little more

reddan, Hazelwood avenue looks safe enough since there appears to be sidewalk the whole way that's an option.

What about the dirty dozen hill itself? Is it very lightly trafficked and at slow speed so I shouldn't worry about CRAWLING up in the road itself if I have my reflective vest and lights? Or should I just not go there at night (right now, that's the only time I can see doing training runs).

ahh, the loop i created starts at phipps conservatory, then goes west around flagstaff hill, R onto Frew st, then down thru CMU back streets, cuts thru the parking garage, then turns L 180 onto Boundary.

( it was kind of rushed, i'll clean it up a bit. )

the alternate routing would start @ Phipps, cross the Schenley bridge going past the art & law bldgs L onto South Bouquet St, L onto Joncaire (near Iron City Bikes), down the cobbles and R onto Boundary.

its about the same distance,

i guess the CMU part seems a lil tricky at first, but once you know it, it is pretty simple.

on the loop i drew the part on Boundary is always headed south to second ave.

the climbs are Bates & Greenfield ave.

the climibs is about 1/3 of the actual loop, its not super grueling, but more of a casual ride with some climbing mixed in.

flowers/kilbourne/tesla is so incredibly lightly trafficked that if you went there on the busiest day of the year, you could probably expect about five cars to pass you from the bottom to the top. you will be riding in the middle of the street the whole time, because there is no reason to do anything else, once you get off of second ave in hazelwood. it's all just residential streets.

tesla at its tippy-top, though, is pretty ri-goddamned-diculous for the average rider. especially after having come all the way up kilbourne. if you can make it from second ave all the way up flowers/kilbourne/tesla, you are pretty much capable of riding up any dirty dozen hill.

Flowers/Kilbourne/Tesla is lightly trafficked but that neighborhood is sketchy as heck. I don't know if I'd be recommending to go ride that route at night.

I'm off on Thursday and might go climb a bunch of hills (slowly, as always), if anybody wants to join me. I'd also be glad to do it again on Saturday and/or Sunday.

I'm also off this Thursday unless I get called into work. What time were you thinking?

I can do it whenever. Preferably not super-early in the morning.

If you are actually planning to ride the DD this year, you may be disappointed by my pace and choice of hills, haha. I would need quite a bit of training to even be able to do the training rides for the DD at this point.

ETA: Based on the thread that I posted earlier, reddan is leading a training ride this Sunday that you might also want to check out.

Thanks for the info about Flowers/Kilborne/Tesla. Won't do at night, then but early-ish some Sunday morning?

In fact, anyone want to keep me honest and make me try this Sunday? Based on what I'm hearing I'll poop out on Tesla very quickly, assuming I even get that far, but I'd like to see how far I can make it.

@byogman: Some of us will be riding the first half of the DD hills this Sunday, starting at 10 AM. I'd expect we'll be approaching Flowers-Tesla around noonish...I'll PM you my cell phone number, and you can send me a text or call if you wish to join us near the end.

Dan, I believe you meant to say second half.

Thanks, Brian. That is correct. SECOND half, not first.

Pbeaver and I are riding from Phipps at 12:15 today, if anybody is interested. We'll probably ride that loop he posted, and I'm glad to ride more miles after that as well. All are welcome.