What a Weird & Wondeful place the Interweb is...

[Demonclimber]

Couldn't follow all of the maths but....

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/03/whats-the-steepest-gradient-for-a-road-bike/

 

[ColinJ]

I could follow the maths, and it is the kind of thing that I am interested in but the author was guessing some of the numbers, which makes the whole thing arbitrary ...

When it comes down to it, if you had low enough gears, were riding a tricycle (so you could balance at very low speeds) and had enough friction between your tyres and the road, you could get up practically any road climb - eventually!

I have ridden up some slopes at 25-30% and it becomes a battle between leaning forward to keep the front of the bike on the road, and leaning back to weight the rear wheel to stop the tyre slipping. In wet conditions, it is very hard to achieve both at the same time!

 

[thom]

Couldn't follow all of the maths but....

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/03/whats-the-steepest-gradient-for-a-road-bike/

A nice playful and illustrative article.

One of the things he didn't take into account is the lack of efficiency of the bike as a machine, meaning a lot of the power output made by the rider does not transmit to moving the bike. I saw an estimate that over 50% of your power is lost but am not sure on this.

 

[Demonclimber]

I could follow the maths, and it is the kind of thing that I am interested in but the author was guessing some of the numbers, which makes the whole thing arbitrary ...

When it comes down to it, if you had low enough gears, were riding a tricycle (so you could balance at very low speeds) and had enough friction between your tyres and the road, you could get up practically any road climb - eventually!

I have ridden up some slopes at 25-30% and it becomes a battle between leaning forward to keep the front of the bike on the road, and leaning back to weight the rear wheel to stop the tyre slipping. In wet conditions, it is very hard to achieve both at the same time!

Indeed it is - a memorable ride earlier this year on the Hardknott Pass from the Eskdale side ended up in an extremely graceful sideways slow motion fall onto the road when leaning forward something vs leaning back something got cancelled out by something else and all forward momentum came to a stop! Luckily no cars were close and I must confess to laying there for a moment giggling to myself!

 

[Globalti]

As an ancillary point to that; my cycling buddy and I have a "hooligan" ride, which we do on Wednesday evenings. It's 17.7 miles with 1030 feet of climbing and our best time ever was exactly one hour when we invited along a very fit and skinny former British hillclimb champion and it all got a bit competitive. Going the usual way, clockwise, there are two long drags and a couple of short fast downhills, which turn into short sharp climbs going anti-clockwise. (Locals will know the first few hundred yards of Waddington Fell from Waddie, as far as the emergency escape lane and the left turn on Cross Lane towards Bashall Eves).

Now, as a pair our best time round clockwise is 64 minutes, yet last Wednesday we went anticlockwise for a change and achieved 61 minutes without too much effort, we thought. When we sat down to think about it we couldn't work out whether the topography anti-clockwise would have favoured a faster speed or not and the more we thought about it the more addled our brains became.

I'm still trying to figure it out now! Are you better off doing long slow drags and short fast downhills or short sharp climbs and long fast downhills?

 

[ColinJ]

I'm still trying to figure it out now! Are you better off doing long slow drags and short fast downhills or short sharp climbs and long fast downhills?

I think the drag up followed by the steep descent would be quicker. A significant amount of the potential energy you had banked on your steep climb would be lost to wind resistance on the long fast descent . Ok, you'd also lose energy on the faster steep descent, but that would be over a much shorter distance.

I'll plug some numbers into a calculator for 1 km up at 20% and 10 km down at 2%, vs 10 km up at 2% and 1 km down at 20% ...

Ok, with the numbers I used, the 2% climb & 20% descent would take 31.17 minutes. The 20% climb and 2% descent would take ... 34.41 minutes - yay!

(That's assuming non-technical descents where you don't have to brake.)

 

[byegad]

Riding a recumbent trike, this overweight, Arthritic and Asthmatic 62 year old can plod up 25% using a 12" bottom gear without stopping, and climb a 33% grade with stops. On a wet tarmac road, rather than the dry tar and chippings surfaces that you find in the North Yorks Moors, I suspect traction would be an issue but I had no wheel spin on the 33% even when restarting. Drop the gearing to stupidly low numbers (I'm aware 12" is stupidly low to most people but... ) say 6" and the limit would always be available traction rather than this less than perfect rider's ability.

 

[Cycling Dan]

If you think this is the "weird" part of the internet, you are in for a shock. This isn't even close to the weird part.
Taster- I dare not go any further

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FavUpD_IjVY

View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ot9JtiHhiU&list=PLE0E242826B29FADF&feature=player_detailpage

 

[Gravity Aided]

I don't remember Sauron saying anything like that in the book, but it sure is a catchy little tune. Has a little more beat than "The Road Goes Ever On"

 

[Cycling Dan]

I don't remember Sauron saying anything like that in the book, but it sure is a catchy little tune. Has a little more beat than "The Road Goes Ever On"

A song by a German porn star. The internet made it a hit as they used it with harry potter footage lip synced to make harry and Ron gay and Hermione a lesbian. A really good video.

There are loads of copies so the real view count will be much higher

A funny but weird video.

 

[Gravity Aided]

http://imgur.com/r/pics/TjRgMie

 

[Shut Up Legs]

I can't imagine riding a 27% grade on a road bike . I found this ride hard enough, and I was using 34/28 as my lowest gear.

 

[Gravity Aided]

http://wapc.mlb.com/stl/play/?content_id=30823347&topic_id=8877482&c_id=stl
St. Louis Cardinals Players throwing sunflower seeds at sausage costumed runners during a game with the Milwaukee Brewers.