Pacing Tips for Uphill Mountain Biking

Video Transcript

"Sometimes, you can come into a climb a little bit too fast. And that means you have to do wasteful stuff like brake going up a hill. So what ended up happening to me there is, you know, I might not have gone up the hill slowly, but I wasted a lot of energy. And if that was a considerably longer hill, something like a two or three minute climb, starting off in some big gear and having to brake going into the corner is just going to be really wasteful. So, it's good to know a climb. If you don't know a climb, take things coservatively. And remember, if you don't think you can finish a climb at the pace that you're going at the bottom, that means that you're blow up half way at the top before you get there. And that's going to make it a lot more unpleasant and a lot harder to finish to really finish good and clean. So, you know, I had to all sorts of silly things to not explode going up that hill. And, you know, I'm still pretty winded just from that little effort. So, a considerably harder, longer effort would have made it a lot worse. So, remember to look ahead and know as much as you can about the climb. When it's a longer climb, you know, a sort of thing , that you know, a fifteen, twenty minute climb a good way to make the time pass and make sure that you're staying focused is to pick an object off in the distance and mentally lasso an imaginary rope across it and pull yourself to that. Because like I said, looking far ahead is really important. You never want to look directly in front of you. You always want as far ahead of you as you can. And by choosing an object to go to when you're climbing, what you do is, you know, you break it down into doable sections and you also are, you know, are making you're that you're not just looking down directly at your front wheel. Instead looking far ahead so you naturally roll over things. So look ahead, pace yourself, don't go too hard at the start of a climb, make sure you do all your shifting before you get to a harder section so you're not power shifting under load and enjoy the ride."