Another Columbia Valley sunset...
Rode two laps on the Shaved Knob off the South Pass Rd. late this afternoon.
Been thinking a lot about the importance of lateral climbing. By this I mean the
zigging and zagging back and forth across the road or trail as you climb.
The basic idea of lateral climbing is familiar to just about everybody who climbed
hills on a leaden Schwinn as a kid, and is of course a staple of singlespeed riders today.
It comes naturally to hardtail riders too because they are always adjusting course to
follow the smoothest line (this is part of why hardtails still provide the best
fundamental mountain bike training, even though full suspension bikes now are preferable
in many circumstances).
Zigging enables you to effectively deliver little bursts of acceleration: by zigging you briefly increase the bike's relative angle of attack (the tighter the turn, the greater the acceleration, up to the stall point, where the front tire begins to push dirt instead of roll on it).
Thus you can zig from one lane of a gravel road to the other (slightly higher) one, using the brief acceleration boost to carry you over the center hump and effectively gain you a as much as half a vert with no increase in energy output. This may not seem like much, but repeated over and over during the course of a two hour ride, it adds up.
Zigging also enables you to stay in the higher gear, stay seated, and stay spinning in climbing situations where you'd otherwise have to shift gears, crank really hard or stand up. This is is big advantage too, because the bigger gear you can spin, the faster you will climb with a given amount of effort.
It also gives you more flexibility -- when you're climbing you can always give up a gear (i.e., shift to a lower gear), but it's hard to get them back.
Sometimes you want to cut back and forth across an entire logging road, and other times
one lane is enough to get the benefits. In fact, it's often effective to just stay in one
lane and cut back and forth off the raised hump that often forms in the in the middle of
logging roads.
I've found that rhythm helps too. Often I try to crank hard just before -- and just as
I start into -- my zig. This combined with the relative acceleration of the turn, gives me
maximum impulse. If the situation allows, I let this carry me for an instant of relatively
easy effort, then crank hard again as I prepare to zag back in the other direction. Over
and over and over again...
Approximately 1200 verts.
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