. . . and the sooner you accept that and stop looking for ways to make riding uphill easier, the better you will learn how to climb.

So says Jonathan Vaughters. It's always enlightening when a pro talks about climbing, and Vaughters, the director of U.S.-based pro team Slipstream-Chipotle, is worth listening to. As a rider for U.S. Postal and Credit Agricole, he was so good against gravity that he set the record for the ascent of France's Mont Ventoux, the extinct volcano of racing legend.

Vaughters was featured last Friday in a cycling blog at the New York Times online. In fact, they gave him the whole column to wax eloquent on climbing. After a slow start he got down to business with his 5 rules for better climbing. It's great stuff. Here are brief excerpts:

• Get on with it.  "Climbing is painful, period. The sooner you just accept that and stop looking for ways around it, the better you will learn how to climb."
   

• Don't be self-conscious.  "If you are going about your business of climbing properly, you will be breathing like a water buffalo, sweating like a chain gang, and probably have snot dribbling off your chin."
   

• Relax:  "Gripping your handlebars with white knuckles and doing brake lever pull-ups does not make your pedals go around any faster."
   

• Pedal all the way around.  "If you just push the pedals down and let the chain go slack the other 250 degrees of the pedal stroke, you will be losing momentum with each and every dead spot."
   

• The little engine that could.  "You must synch your breath, your pedaling, and your thoughts in one monotonous, focused, and plodding rhythm."

Full story is here (hopefully the link works...you can also get the link from the RoadBikeRider.com free newsletter (today's newsletter).

http://theclimb.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/ready-to-edit-and-post-expert-advice-from-jonathan-vaughters/index.html?partner=TOPIXNEWS&ei=5099