\n\tThere's an old saying that goes something like this: "the smartest rider wins the race, not the strongest." Part of being a smart rider is being able to read the road and adjust your efforts accordingly. I've talked a lot on this blog about climbing position and climbing efficiency, but all the technique and efficiency in the world won't do you any good if you don't use it properly. So, that being said, let's take a look at how to read the road.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tBeing able to read the road will allow you to conserve energy and make moves on steeper slopes, or to prevent gaps from opening, keeping you in the group and in the draft.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tThe key to reading the road is to keep your head (or at least your eyes) up the road. You should always be scanning the road ahead to see what the terrain is throwing at you. In most cases, people will be looking for rises and hills in their way, so we'll focus on those.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen people see the road go upward, they tend to panic. But just a cursory look at the terrain and a little thought can reveal a lot about the climb ahead. Let's look at an example first:\n<\/p>\n
\n\t<\/a>\n<\/p>\n \n\tThis climb is relatively short (about 200 meters in length) and fairly benign at about 5% grade (photos are deceptive in showing the grade of climbs, unfortunately.) But take a long look at the climb and see what you can discern just from the photo.\n<\/p>\n \n\tWhat you should take a way from the photo is that the climb is fairly steady gradient and it has a summit that leads to a flat\/downhill. But how did we get there? First, look at the road up to the summit; you'll see a smooth slope with no substantial undulations. This means that you can ride the climb at a steady pace, without having to stand up and fight a steeper gradient, and you can evenly measure your effort across the climb. Following the road further up the climb, you'll look past the summit of the climb to some trees, telephone poles and a little bit of clear sky. After seeing that, you'll know that the road transitions from a climb to a flat\/downhill. In this case, because you can see the trees "shorten" up further from the summit, you'll know that the road dips down slightly. The fact that you can see open sky among the trees behind the summit also gives away the fact that the road dips into a slight downhill.\n<\/p>\n \n\tCombine those two pieces of information and you now know how to ride the climb: it's short and flattens\/drops after the summit, so you can ride it hard at an increasing pace, even hammer over the top and not be penalized too badly.\n<\/p>\n \n\tWith a nice short climb done, we can look at something a little longer. Take a look, see what you can see, and then read on:\n<\/p>\n\n\tMoving on up
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