Five things I hate about cycling: Hills
I don’t actually hate hills per se, just hate that I find them the biggest mental obstacle to getting out on my bike more.
In fact, I tend to savour the “burn” that hits you whilst you climb up them, and the post-exertion endorphins after the hill levels out. The feeling of achievement at the completion of a big climb is fantastic too.
The problem
What I don’t like is that when I contemplate going for a ride, the first thing that jumps into my head is “Nah, can’t be bothered”. This is probably because I live in Sheffield, erroneously renowned for being built on 7 hills, like Rome. This is wrong - Sheffield is worse, it has 8.
Leaving my house in Sheffield, I can cycle about 2 miles without pedalling, zipping down roads of seemingly ever increasing grade. The downside of this is that every single ride I ever take is followed by an ankle grinding crawl back up to somewhere high above the cloud line.
And it’s not just me. When London first trialled their cycle scheme, they had a problem with bikes disappearing from the stations at the top of hills, and the stations at the bottom being too full. The problem has been even worse in Paris and Barcelona, both cities that have more hills. In Sheffield, I suspect they would need some kind of continual conveyor belt, back up from town into Crookes.
The solution
This brings me onto the perfect solution for Hills – the city council needs to built a ski lift up to my house. Sorted.
This article is part of my Five things I hate about cycling series. Read the rest here…
July 28th, 2011 at 6:02 pm
Sorry Chris, I didn’t see you’d replied to my comment. Top gear is 52/13, which means to go at 55mpt, I need to be up at about 200rpm, which downhill is quite possible.
I’m not sure what speed I’d be able to go to before the tyre popped though!
June 23rd, 2011 at 6:55 am
87kph?! Isn’t that like 55mph?! I’ve managed 34mph, downhill, furiously peddling as fast as possible in top gear. Don’t think it would be possible on my bike to go much faster. What gear ratio have you got?
June 22nd, 2011 at 10:09 pm
I’d miss going down hills very quickly. Sadly, in Glasgow, I’ve never managed to hit 100kph, top speed recorded was about 87kph… damned corners. Had a brake or hit a concrete wall.
June 21st, 2011 at 1:20 pm
If I could just go downhill, I’d sell the car.
June 20th, 2011 at 7:07 pm
argh no hills are bad, but i agree that going down them is rather fun!
June 11th, 2011 at 8:34 am
I honestly think I would enjoy cycling somewhere perfectly flat, at least for a year or so. Then I’d miss downhills…
June 11th, 2011 at 8:32 am
You should try moving to Kansas – There was a study a while back on it – ‘If perfect flatness were a value of 1.00, they reported, the calculated flatness of a pancake would be 0.957 “which is pretty flat, but far from perfectly flat”. Kansas’s flatness however turned out to be 0.997, which they said might be described, mathematically, as “damn flat”‘.
June 11th, 2011 at 8:29 am
Hills are the best thing about cycling!