TL:DR

I wanted to see whether my Catrike Expedition and I could successfully manage a two-day, extended event oriented specifically towards hill climbing. Everyone knows recumbent trikes aren’t great at going uphill, right?

This is a long one - scroll on down to “Wrapping Up” if you want to skip to the answer…

Why?:

Despite the fact that this year’s Hilly Hundred was the 53rd occurrence of the event, I only just learned about it this summer when someone mentioned it on Facebook. I looked it up - the event has a pretty informative website, which gave a pretty clear idea of how it was set up.

I was intrigued. I can’t say why exactly - group events are not really my thing - but this one drew me in a bit. I think a large part of it was the challenge that the event represented. I’d never ridden 100 miles over a two day period - in building distance this summer the closest I’ve gotten is 88 miles, with an extremely uneven distribution of 75 miles on one day, and 13 the following - not similar at all. And that 75 was and is my longest single distance ride to date.

And - of course - none of that is through hill country. In training I’ve tried to find routes that aren’t entirely flat. I’ve said here many times that Illinois isn’t the pancake-shaped land that everyone not from here pictures, and that is true, as far as it goes. But it’s certainly not a paragon of elevation changes either. My other two events of the season - the Freemondo and TŌSOC - did offer more climbing, both occurring in different parts of the Rock River valley. But for the most part, here in northern Illinois, even the river valley roads primarily have rolling hills - you may travel upwards for a while, and you can definitely feel it, but the word “steep” doesn’t generally apply.

Plus there is the phrase that you see over and over again: “Trikes aren’t good for climbing”. I’ve read it many times in online discussions, and been known to provide variations of it myself - things like “faster downhill, slower up” when being asked about how they compare to upright machines. It’s said so often that it has become, for me, an uncontested - but also untested - “fact”. And when I first started to ride the trike it seemed completely correct. It felt harder to climb on the trike than it had on my Cannondale SR400. Certainly on the trike you lack the ability to stand up on the pedals and climb. But then again, when I first moved to the trike I was also using my leg muscles differently, and was riding a heavier machine - the Cannondale weighs in at 22lbs, while my first trike, a Catrike Pocket, comes in 11lbs heavier. And there is a somewhat different technique to dealing with hills on the trike - since you really don’t have to worry about cross-chaining, there’s no need to select your gear going into the hill. Instead, whenever possible, you want to go into the rise as fast as you can, and then downshift all the way up to keep spinning. Of course, you can’t always count on going into a hill at speed - sometimes you are starting at the bottom. But in those cases, at least you have the benefit of low gearing, and there’s no expense of energy or effort towards maintaining balance at slow speeds.

All of which is to say that while I’ve continued to agree with the idea of trikes not being good for climbing, I haven’t really felt that way in practice for a while - hills are just a part of the ride. I think of my Catrike Expedition as being a great all around touring machine. But what if that tour actually included some real hill climbing? So it seemed like riding in this event would actually put that to the test.

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The Event

As noted above, this is a two day ride over the Saturday and Sunday of a weekend. But it’s really a three-day event, depending upon how you approach it. Ellettsville Indiana is about four and a half hours away for me, so I traveled down for the event the afternoon before. They have accommodations for tent and RV camping at the event site (which is the town’s high school and junior high complex), and also have an area in the junior high school for people to sleep in sleeping bags. Understanding that people will travel in ahead of time, all of that is open and available the Friday before.

There are several nice features that go with the accommodations. When you register you can sign up for breakfast at the high school on both days, as well as supper on Saturday. They have showers available - I’d actually never seen a shower trailer before:

Shower trailer

This was an awesome option to make available for anyone who is camping, particularly given that you are likely to get very sweaty at least couple of times into this experience. And - to their credit - the shower trailer is available late into the second day, which meant I could shower before driving the 4+ hours back home.

And one of the nicest items in terms of accommodation is that they have a secure bike storage area. This gives you a safe, indoor location to keep your machine when you aren’t riding. I hadn’t caught this on the website at first, and because I’d decided I was going to car camp, I was debating about whether I should bring along the roof rails to put my trike on the Outback’s roof for the overnights. That would have worked, of course, but it would have been additional work, and it would have left my machine out in the elements, and it did rain overnight on Saturday.

All-in-all, this was a well organized and supported event. There were many volunteers, all pleasant and helpful when you needed them. The routes - there are long and short routes set up for each day, 38.4 and 50.6 miles on day one, and 38.7 and 53 miles on day two - each have three rest stops built in. And to say “rest stop” is really to undersell them. Each stop has fruit and carbs available…

…and a water truck. I actually left behind one of my spare water bottles on day two to save a little weight because I knew I’d be able to re-fill. There are bathroom facilities (porta-potties) at each area. The second stop on both days, which I heard several veterans of the ride refer to as the “lunch” stop, had Schwann’s ice cream available. And each of them had both a medical station and a bike repair crew. And all but the last one on day two had live music playing:

The music was in a variety of formats - some folk, some New Orleans style jazz, some 50’s rock. And the rest stops gave an opportunity to see the huge variety of bike types that were in the event. Obviously there was an abundance of the high-end road bikes that you would expect, but there was quite a bit more variety than I would have anticipated.

I saw at least two or three tandem bikes in the event:

And there were a number of folks with e-bikes of different types. This wasn’t surprising in and of itself, but I was a little surprised to see a couple of folks riding electric cargo bikes with the long, low-slung cargo area on the back. I unfortunately didn’t catch a picture of them, but they were there. And - to my surprise - there was a tiny handful of trikes:

I actually saw three in addition to my own - I ran into one person the morning of the first day prepping his orange TerraTrike, and saw it later in the storage area, but I never encountered him on the ride itself. I saw the other two on day two, though the owner of one said that she was there for the first day as well. The ride has a casual start - they just ask that you begin no later than 10AM so you can be done at a reasonable time for the volunteers to get a break - so it’s quite possible to miss someone if they start at a different time than you.

But given that I usually see none at these events, it was very cool to encounter some this time around. And it suggested that I wasn’t the only person thinking a trike was a perfectly acceptable machine to take along.

The Ride

This is a well laid out course. The organizers provide you with paper maps of the route, it’s pretty well marked out with the typical symbols at intersections, and it’s available through Ride with GPS so that you can have turn by turn directions.

Though Ellettsville is just northwest of Bloomington Indiana, and not terribly far from Indianapolis, the routes are mostly rural. And a fair portion of the route takes you through the Morgan-Monroe State Forest, which provides for some awesome views:

And even when you weren’t in the forest, the route often alternated between open agricultural regions - corn and soybeans are the name of the game here, as they are back home for me - and tree-covered byways. And sometimes there’s a mix:

Probably due to the hilly nature of the region, this part of Indiana did not succumb to the square-mile grid system that we have in much of northern Illinois. This means that you get to ride on roads that wind and twist their way through the countryside even as they rise and fall.

Because it rained overnight ahead of day two, there were sections within the state forest where the roads were still wet. On the downhill sections I had a few occasions where I could feel the rear wheel step out a little sideways as I navigated through the curves. This is mostly fun, but I did find that I needed to remind myself that I had no earthly idea what I’d encounter around the next curve, and I slowed myself down a bit.

On the first day, the long route takes you past kind of an informal additional rest stop - a little shop for the Musgrave Orchard.

They had fresh cider and water for those who were interested (it’s also served at the formal rest stops). I always bring a little cash along on the trike for just these sorts of opportunities, so I stopped and picked up a pint of cider for the ride.

This was about 2/3’s of the way through day one, which meant I was at a point where that cold cider was especially refreshing.

Probably one of the more challenging things for me to adjust to was the size of the event in terms of number of people. You can see from the rest stop pictures that this is a very well attended event (and I heard rumblings from some that enrollment was down this year - probably an effect of the pandemic, which had cancelled it last year). I’d anticipated that - it’s clearly noted on the website. But since I don’t often do group rides, and never have done one this big, I found there were some new challenges for me based on that.

For example, it’s a different riding style on the road. When I ride on my own out in the country, I generally take my lane and I find this works well. In a group, understandably, you want to ride to the right and pass on the left, ideally with that passing occurring in the same lane. Because of the volume of people, I was rarely, and maybe never, in a spot where I didn’t have other bikes at least in view, and often was mixed into a group. This meant that, at times, those other people were an obstacle to contend with. So, for example, there were downhill sections from time to time where I could not get up to top speed heading into the next rise because I couldn't get around the people in front of me; and similarly there were uphill components where I wasn’t able to maintain the speed I entered the hill with because of people in my way. It’s a simple reality of the event, to be sure, but it was one I hadn’t considered going into it.

And of course, because of the large variety of people there, not everyone really understood the rules that go with a group ride, so you got a variety of levels of compliance. And to be completely fair and honest, I do groups very rarely, so I’m sure my application of the rules was less than perfect as well.

The Hills

Of course, ultimately this thing is all about the hills - it’s right there in the name. The entire course on both days largely consists of at least rolling hills - very little of the course is on the type of flat territory that I commonly see when I ride out my driveway. Mixed into that rolling landscape are a few significant rises and falls. This is the elevation graph from Ride with GPS for day one…

…and the one for day two:

But while most of it is rolling, there are some significant hill climbs in the mix, with grades reportedly ranging from 10% to 20%. Some of the hills are recognized with their own names - I specifically recall three - Camel Back, Bean Blossom, and Mount Tabor - though there are probably others.

Camel Back appears on day one, towards the end of the ride. Just ahead of it were two consecutive hills that I don’t believe had names, but were quite steep with no real downhill lead-in. I crawled up the first one, entering it in first gear and grinding my way up the hill, pressing against the back of the seat for leverage. Reaching the top of the first had my thighs burning towards the end, but I felt a sense of accomplishment. When I reached the second, I was stuck with the same approach, and when I hit the top I had to stop and rest.

That rest stop took place in someone’s driveway. I would have felt bad about that, but I was neither the first nor the only person to make that choice. The house was for sale, and chatting with a couple of the other folks there while recovering we wondered if they weren’t moving to get away from all of these damn cyclists in their driveway…

I’d guess that I paused there for at least 15 minutes, which absolutely sounds like, and is, a long break. But I’d skipped the third rest station, reasoning that it was only 9 miles from the end of the ride, so I wouldn’t need it. I wonder, though, if I’d have had an easier time with those two hills if I’d taken that break.

In any event, the top of the second hill also provided a considerable drop that led into Camel Back, so I was able - after some rest - to apply the better hill-climbing strategy: I entered it going fast, and shifted down all the way up.

The other two climbs are on day two, again towards the end of the ride. Bean Blossom came up first. I didn’t catch a picture of the sign, but I believe it said it was 1.4 miles (I see pictures from prior versions of the event that put it at two miles, but I think the route may have been a little different) with a maximum 17% grade. This is right in the state forest, and what little I could look at of the scenery while riding it was beautiful. But climbing this took most of my attention, as (I’m sure on purpose) there was absolutely no downhill on the approach. It was a grind all the way up. Once you get to the top tho, you get to appreciate the view:

I - and many others - rested there for a bit. The reward of the long climb is that there is also a long, sweeping and curving downhill sweeping through the state forest.

And then - at almost 50 miles in - you encounter what they call Mount Tabor. I’d heard several people reference this, particularly at the second rest stop on day two, because it follows a few miles after that stop. I spent some time at that stop talking with Jim and Sherry - Sherry was one of the handful of other trikers on the ride, and Jim was her husband. They were a delightful couple, and they helped me mentally prepare for this particular challenge. And everything they said about it turned out to be true.

Mount Tabor is not long - 0.2-0.3 miles or so. But it’s at a 20.2% grade. And you enter it coming around a corner with absolutely no downhill lead-in. It is absolutely the steepest thing I’ve ever ridden up on any human-powered machine - upright or recumbent.

I shifted all the way down, and started in.

The Question

Being in an event with only a tiny smattering of trikes I did have people periodically ask me questions about my machine. Now one soul - who I’m pretty sure thought he was being very clever - asked me how many cases of beer I could carry on my trike (at least two if I hook up the trailer). But this being a hill climbing event, you can imagine what the primary question was:

How is that thing at climbing hills?

I’d expected the question, and typically gave the standard answer first - “slower on the way up, faster on the way down”. For folks who were interested in more detail, I talked about the difference in strategy from an upright as well.

But of course, I was also at this event to provide a more detailed answer to that very question for myself. And what I found was a more nuanced outcome that surprised and pleased me.

Was I slower on the way up? I think the real answer is: it depends.

It depends on what you are comparing yourself to. I was absolutely being passed on the uphills by people on high-end road bikes, which is, at this point, a familiar experience for me. But the thing is, the Expedition isn’t the trike equivalent of a high-end road bike. I would say that it is far more consistent with the idea of a long-distance touring bike. As such, it definitely weighs more - 15-20lbs more dry, and a little more still with my gear on it. As such, I don’t expect to be faster than those machines. By the same token, I wouldn't expect someone to run out and get an LP tank for the grill on their 18lb Trek Madone either.

But: When I was climbing most of those hills, even without a chance to enter them at speed, I was often passing people. I passed people on mountain bikes, steel touring bikes - I swear I even passed a few people on e-bikes on a couple of uphill sections. It’s hard to check speed when you are focused on climbing, but when I could I was usually moving along at around 4mph in first gear on the uphill slogs. Slow? Absolutely. But faster than some, and still moving uphill.

And when I could enter at speed, the technique I’ve described - which will almost certainly be familiar to veteran recumbent riders - worked marvelously. It always gets harder towards the top, of course, but I’d put the experience of spinning and shifting down up against any upright climb, standing in the pedals in low gear any day.

Which takes me back to…

Mount Tabor

I entered Mount Tabor in first gear, and barely moving. Thanks to Jim and Sherry I was mentally prepared for it. I was also prepared for the possibility that I’d have to get off and walk the trike. I had not had to do that up to this point, but it seemed a possibility here.

I braced against the seat and pushed against the pedals. I could barely hear anything over the sound of my own breathing. My legs were burning, I was drenched in fresh sweat, and my speed up the hill seemed glacial - I could not let go of the grips to look at my watch, but I’m sure I was not maintaining that 4mph speed from earlier hills.

And? The pattern stayed true, even at the exaggerated angle that this hill presented. The trike was slow, and hard to get up the hill. But I was passing people on the way up - some walking, and others struggling to stay upright, standing in the pedals. The ability of the trike to remain stable at very slow speeds was absolutely an advantage on this climb, and often on the ride overall.

I made it to the top on pedal power alone - no stopping, no walking.

I did, however, take a break at the top. I was happy to get there, but I still needed a rest.

The Other Way

The part that I’ve mostly left out of all of this so far is the additional bonus that goes with taking a trike out for this event: The downhills.

I did mention that there was a downhill section following Bean Blossom Hill that took a sweeping course through the state forest. And there were several others like that. I think, at this point, that I’m questioning the absolute truth of the idea that trikes are slower uphill (at least with comparable machines and riders), but that they are fast downhill is absolutely the case.

My hands down favorite example of this was a section on day two early into the ride. This was a long downhill curving to the left, just ahead of a turn into Cascades Golf Course. I hit my top speed for the day - about 38mph - going down and around that curve. It was a beautiful human-powered go-kart moment, leaning against the curve and passing, well, tons of people. That moment by itself may have made the whole event for me.

Wrapping Up

I wanted to see if I and my trike could manage an event focused on hill climbing, and I wanted to test the common, received wisdom that recumbents aren’t good at climbing hills.

I feel like I got the answers I was looking for on both counts. The Expedition and I managed to come through the entire event together - I never had to get off the trike and walk. And the relative disadvantage of not being able to stand up in the pedals appeared to be balanced by the advantages of the high speed lead in on many hills, and not needing to work to stay upright when going slow. There is a real-world benefit to having the option of just crawling up a hill.

When I look up things online about the event, in different forums, I find people talking about which machine they would take to the event and/or changing out their gear sets to different ranges to manage the hills. And if I’m being honest, I had considered asking MLW if I could take the Pocket for this event instead of the Expedition specifically because of the lower gear ratio the 20” wheel would give me over the 26” wheel on Expedition.

I didn’t, because in the end I wanted to see what my touring machine would do - to answer that question about whether it would still be useful if my “tour” took me into hilly country. The answer, I’m pleased to say, was a resounding “yes”.

Would I recommend this event to others? Absolutely! It’s well run and well supported. If challenging yourself to a long-distance hill climb group ride through beautiful countryside sounds good to you, this would absolutely be the way to go.

For myself, I’m not sure whether I’ll return. I enjoyed myself a great deal, but I also found the answers I came for. It’s a very long weekend away otherwise.

But then when I think about that long, curving downhill sweep… Maybe…