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Biking question

The Tortoise's picture
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started by The Tortoise on May 31, 2007

How often do you get up off the saddle when you are riding? I tend to stay in the saddle except going up steep hills when I shift into a higher gear and grind it out. I would assume that some of it is preference, but there must also be some general rules of thumb to follow in terms of what will give me the best performance.

UFTriGator's picture
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UFTriGator posted 1 year ago.

While you're time-trialing, you will be almost exclusively in the saddle. Time-trialing is all about even power. Unless you're going up a wall at like 9 mph, you normally won't stand in a race. Even though you might be a bit slower up the hill, you'll have more left in your legs for the flats. In training, too, it's actually good to push up steep hills fairly often in the saddle to help build hip flexor strength. Just stand for about 30 sec every half hour or so to flush some lactic acid out of your legs. These are just general guidelines, though. You'll have to play around with it a bit to figure out what worksfor you best.

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-Matt
Not fast enough.

kkocan's picture
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kkocan posted 1 year ago.

I live in an area with tons of rolling hills, so it is hard to stay aero for too long without coming to a hill. I usually just sit and spin up the hills, UFTriGator is right in that it's a great way to build strength. Often I will go out on a hill ride and tell myself I am not allowed to stand on any big climb.

But I do try to get up out of the saddle every half hour or so, if even just for a few seconds, to stretch out the legs.

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2008 Main Races:
VA Beach Shamrock Marathon
Desoto TTT
WV Mountaineer HIM
IM Wisconsin

The Tortoise's picture
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The Tortoise posted 1 year ago.

Maybe I'll go back to my old method of not standing on the hills, then. I think I'll try staying in the saddle except for huge steep hills (of which there are actually plenty on my routes) and see how that works.