When to Slow Down and When to Rest
We've talked about foot placement and short steps on the climb. This lesson is about the thing that happens above the neck, not below the knee. When to ease off, and when to actually stop.
Most people treat these as the same decision. They're not. Slowing down is something you do without stopping. Resting is something you do by stopping. You need both skills, and you need to know which one the moment is asking for.
Slowing down
This is your everyday tool. You use it constantly on a climb, sometimes without noticing you're doing it.
Here's the test I use. If you can't get a full sentence out without gasping partway through, you're going too fast for the grade you're on. Not too fast in general. Too fast for right now, on this hill, at this elevation. Up here the air is thin enough that people visiting from lower ground get surprised by how hard easy hills feel. That's not weakness. That's arithmetic.
The fix is small. Shorten your stride. Drop your pace maybe ten or fifteen percent. You'll feel like you're barely moving compared to how you started. That's fine. The whole point of the earlier lessons on pace was to get you comfortable holding something steady for ninety minutes, and steep ground is where that discipline actually gets tested. Slowing down on a climb isn't losing. It's the plan working.
Resting
Resting is different. Resting is when you stop moving entirely for somewhere between thirty seconds and two or three minutes, hands on your hips or your knees, and you let your breathing catch all the way up before you go again.
You need to rest when slowing down stops being enough. If you've shortened your stride, you've backed off the pace, and you're still breathing so hard you can't talk at all, not just in short sentences but not at all, that's your body telling you it needs a full stop, not a slower version of the same thing.
I'll be honest that I'm not naturally good at reading this moment for other people. If we're out as a group and someone in the back needs a full stop, I don't always catch it fast. I'm built to keep moving toward wherever we're headed, and I have had to train myself to look back more than feels natural. If you're struggling, tell me. Don't wait for me to notice. I'd rather you say something than grit through it because you think I've got my eye on you. I don't always.
The water part of resting
Rest stops are also when you drink. Not sip. Drink. This matters more up here than people expect, because the dry air pulls moisture out of you faster than you feel it happening, and you don't get the wet-shirt warning your body gives you at sea level.
I ran out of water on a July turnaround a few summers back, which at my age and this elevation was a foolish thing to let happen, and the walk back down taught me something I'd read a hundred times and never actually believed until my mouth was doing the arithmetic for me. Bring more than you think you need, and drink some at every rest stop whether you feel thirsty or not.
A story about socks, since we're on the subject of paying attention to your body
I'll tell you about a cold morning a while back. I wore cotton socks because I was in a hurry and didn't think about it, and about a mile in I hit a wet patch near the creek crossing. Cold water, cotton socks, and by the last mile my feet were two blocks of ice I was just sort of steering. Nothing dangerous happened. But I remember exactly how unpleasant it was, and I remember that the discomfort built slowly enough that I kept telling myself it was fine, right up until it very much wasn't.
That's the same pattern that gets people in trouble with pushing too far on a climb. The discomfort creeps. You keep telling yourself it's fine because it was fine a minute ago. The skill is catching it earlier than feels necessary, whether that's cold feet or a heart rate you can't talk through. I bought wool socks that same afternoon. I now own eleven pairs. Maria thinks that's excessive. I think it's evidence I learned something.
My opinion on this, plainly
Turn around before you want to. I've said this before and I'll keep saying it because people don't believe it until they've ignored it once. If you're deciding whether to rest and push on to some landmark you had your eye on, or turn around and save something for the way back, save something. You do not want to reach a turnaround point with an empty tank and then discover the return trip is uphill in the ways that matter, which it usually is, because tired legs don't care what the topo map says.
Before next time
Notice, on your next climb, the exact moment you'd normally push through instead of stopping. Just notice it. You don't have to change anything yet, but you can't manage what you haven't noticed first.