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am i a pussy for struggling with the 7-ish degree gradient in pic related?
i borrowed my dad's spare bike which is a women's 26" 3 speed. it's heavy and too small for me (i'm a guy btw). only been out a few times. from what i've seen, normies walk with their bikes up this path or up the nearby road. but i don't want to be such a filthy casual, i want to ride all in one go and match if not beat the google maps time estimate for the full route in both directions.
i might be interested enough to ride for exercise and for fun but i'm not yet ready to spend the money on a proper bike. can i blame my current bike though for my struggles or do i just need to git gud?
>1st run
felt way too easy to accelerate* and i thought i needed higher gear ratios. but the matching section of pic related of the nearby road on the way back took me by surprise. i muscled through it at a very very slow pace. i thought the lowest gear wasn't low enough.
* in hindsight i think it was because i had plenty of glycogen
>2 days later, 2nd run
watched some GCN hillclimb videos, saw them maintain a good pace and i figured that maybe my lowest gear will be fine if i can just pedal faster. i expended very little energy before i went to the path in pic related instead of the road because it's free of cars to do a practice run. the climb was challenging but i managed to keep a good pace throughout and get to the top in one go.
>another 2 days later, 3rd run
pedaling felt heavy even from the start. now i can understand why the normies ride so slow. i expended much more energy on the way to the path because of traffic. i made it up the first half which is the steepest part, but i had to take a break and catch my breath before doing the second half.
