A few months ago I asked for suggestions about how I could climb better on my new bike. I was feeling that I was worse at climbing on the new bike than on my other bikes despite having lower gears, and was unable to climb hills that I should have been able to climb.
I figured out the problem: my weight was too far back. I dropped the handlebars, and (as I thought) moved the saddle forward. That helped a little. Then I replaced the offset seatpost with a straight seatpost. While doing that I noticed that instead of moving the saddle all the way forward, I had moved the seatpost all the way forward on the saddle- so I had moved the saddle *back*. Oops. Moving it forward solved the problem completely. There are plenty of super steep dirt trails that I can't climb, but I am able to climb normally steep hills with no problem. Hurray! And that brings me to a question about frame design for short people. One of my riding partners is 5 feet tall. She's slender, and she climbs like a rocket, much faster than I can. But, oddly, even though we have the same low gears, she has trouble climbing the super steep roads that I love to tackle. She's afraid of them, says she can't balance. I know it's hard to design small frames without design compromises; is one of the compromises putting the rider too far back on the bike? On Fri, Apr 25, 2014 at 8:22 PM, Anne Paulson <[email protected]> wrote: > But now I understand. I thought when I bought my new Surly Krampus mountain > bike I'd be able to climb even steeper dirt roads than I now can climb on my > Atlanti. I thought, I have an absurdly low gear on the Krampus (15.6 inches, > something like that), I have all the traction in the world, I can climb > anything. > > But no. I'm finding that I climb *worse* on the Krampus. It's frustrating. > There are dirt sections that I have no trouble on with the Atlantis, with > smooth tires, that I can't climb on the Krampus with the knobbies. > > What's going on here? Front-end geometry? Wheel weight? Bottom bracket > height? -- -- Anne Paulson It isn't a contest. Enjoy the ride. -- -- Anne Paulson It isn't a contest. Enjoy the ride. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
