The Prophet was very clear on how best to ride an individual Time Trial; start as fast as possible and finish as fast as possible. As for the middle, his advice was to ride that as fast as possible.
The same can be said of climbing; as we covered in Part I and Part II of the Sur La Plaque series, the key to climbing well is to hit the bottom as hard as possible, and then move into the big ring as you go over the top in order to finish the climb as fast as possible. As for the middle section; well, hit that as hard as possible and focus on keeping your momentum going.
The trouble is with this pesky notion we have of “gauging our efforts”. Certainly, the perfectly measured climb would result in riding the whole of it à bloc before moving Sur La Plaque over the top, blast down the other side and – just as you hit escape velocity – explode spectacularly, using your perfectly honed LeMond Tuck to recover in time to crush it in the valley to the next climb where you repeat the process. Panache.
Panache is a dualistic thing; almost without exception do we admire it in others, and almost without exception are we too cowardly to hold it inside ourselves. Panache doesn’t speak of caution, or of measured action. It speaks of impulse – compulsion, even – to attack despite one’s better judgement. It speaks of throwing caution to the wind. It weighs heavy with the risk of exploding magnificently and trading angel’s wings for the devil’s anchor.
But those who venture freely into that realm have blown up so many times that it hardly features in their reasoning. Pain and climbing are inseparable; what difference does it make if you blow up and suffer a bit more for a bit longer? And, should we blow up often enough, we will learn how to suffer through and push to the top with grace. And perhaps by that same grace, will we recover enough to try again on the next climb.
Vive la chance. Vive le Grimpeur. Vive la Vie Velominatus.
Exhibit A: The master of Panache, Marco Pantani. And the master of blowing with grace, Richard Virenque. For a prime example of how to blow up properly, jump to 2:00.
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@frank FFS! Elite athletes? I've never timed getting my shoes on, but I'm pretty sure I could do it from scratch faster than that dicking around with them already on the pedals. Not to mention I'd have my shoes on and would be able to look where I;m going.
http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/article/retro-pro-bike-marco-pantanis-1998-bianchi-mega-pro-xl-24877/
I enjoyed looking into the details Pantani's bike, especially his measurements. Note on the discussion of cranksets Pantani rode a 54/44!
@frank
Shit balls, there must be some severely squashed testicles from those mounting techniques.
@graham d.m.
Less teeth+higher cadence=more faster
pantani flatting just before the stage's final climb? no big deal.
As it's climbery, seems like the place to put it - dunno if anyone else saw this on inrng's twitter feed. Can't say I've ever beer much of a Schleck fan but this is just sad.
http://inrng.tumblr.com/post/45273531978/a-french-parliamentarian-says-he-met-a-drunk-andy
@mouse
That's true, and I say ride what you like, mate. I'm not a high cadence guy, more of a slogger. But that being said, I'm working on foot speed/cadence and with more teeth that will be fastest (but obviously still fat and slow). For me, if I'm going hard it hurts no matter what, so I might as well turn more teeth, I guess.
@mouse
Only if you're getting a blood trasfusion every week or two. The high cadence phenom is a relic of blood doping, matey. Its too hard on your cardio.
What IS faster, though, is to ride at whatever cadence you body naturally finds in order to balance cardiovascular fitness and muscular fitness. Its different for everyone, and one is not better than the other unless it makes you personally go faster.
(And really, if less teeth was faster, as you equation suggests, we'd all be riding 1 to 1 gear ratios.)
@frank
I dislike the assumption that spinning = going slow, thus requiring a compact. You can spin on a standard while going fast, something the shop I bought my bike from couldn't understand, so I am stuck with a compact where the little ring is useless for 98% of riding.
Reading that it sounds like I am arguing against frank, which I am not, I'm arguing against compacts.
@DerHoggz
That is true, spin a bigger gear at the same cadence = go mo fasta. Mo betta. But therein lies the rub.
Being over or under-geared is always bad, and you just have to find the setup that works best for your individual needs. For example; I'm contemplating a compact for my gravel rig where climbing steep gravel roads would benefit from having a low enough gear.
Aside from that, its just pride.