Their height and size has nothing to do with it.

Sounds like you simply need to get fitter.

I ride 250 miles a week.

What would you say I need to work on fitness wise? Intervals?

Just sounds like youre lacking the power of your friends, 250 miles a week is alot. Sprinting up hills always helps.

Firstly, i doubt it's got anything to do with you being being shorter than them, so don't use that as an excuse, yes they've got the extra leverage but they've also got to put in the extra effort to keep those levers turning.

Ideally as most roadies will tell you(i'm not one)a fast cadnce is important and more efficient, but if spinning them like that hurts try digging in deep and grind out a bigger gear at lower cadence.

I'm sure there's alot more knowledgable riders out there than me, on thursday i did a 90miler over 5 hrs and still had short sprinting power at the end of it and no aches at all.

You could try riding with a different slower group to make you feel better ..most of this is in your mind and not feeling the pain will build your confidence, yes it will hurt, effort is meant to, to a degree..

Your problem is you're feeling the pain through anticipation of it hurting, how many times do you for instance do something and react as if it hurt, where it didn't really hurt at all, ie, stub toe, bash leg, etc......

And now seeing how much you normally ride, i'd say you may need to recover abit more between rides and do some stretching..perhaps, dunno i just wing riding bicickles..

you may well be too knackered to keep up. 250 miles a week is a lot if you are fitting those miles in around work, family etc.
What do your friends do in terms of training? If you keep chasing then in time you will eventually keep up with them.

my guess is overtrained and poor quality miles

They'll potentially have more weight to drag up the hills.

If you really want in increase your pain threshold then visit a Dominatrix.

I am feeling a little down today after a 40 mile road ride last night and need some help

simple solution - avoid riding on the road :o)

Oh, and a simple recommendation for life in general - if something hurts, stop doing it!

Its all about power to weight ratio going up hills, innit? Also, as other posters have said, spinning isn't the be all and end all. Ullrich was a 'grinder' and I bet he could beat your mates.

Find what hurts then train for it.

If you are weak on hills then incorporate them into rides. Do a short loop with hard hills several times. Maybe repeat it every fortnight and review after 6 weeks.

250 miles a week, take some time off, your body isn't going to be recovered enough to compete unless you are a pro level athlete with a good doctor/pharmacist.

Does it actually hurt, or are you just hitting your aerobic threshold and building up lactic acid. If it's your knees grinding then stop. Otherwise get some intervals training done to increase your threshold. Hill climbs are simple. Find a hill that takes you a good few minutes to climb ride up coast down, repeat. There's plenty of advice on Bikeradar for this kind of thing. I find commuting on a singlespeed helps, every hill is like an interval and have to really push to get away from the lights. Then you can increase your cadence by spinngin like a demon on the way down.

The other option is to do smoe cross training. I swim once a week (properly, not breastroke for 15 minutes but 100 length <50mins). Found this has helped fitness massively and uses more upper body so my legs aren't always tired.

Get married? Boosted my pain threshold by a factor of 1000.

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You've just lost all your rights to carry a Man card. Please return it to the authorities to receive your skirt.

25o miles is a weekend ride. When it gets hard do you give up and cry like a girl?

Cheers peeps, some good advice. Two of the guys do tri's and the other is a very good sports rider so the aim is to try and keep with them. I play field hockey once a week and train once so I think you could be right about the lack of recovery. But the quality of the miles isn't the problem as I live in the cotswolds so it's the best riding around for a roadie.

Quality of miles has nothing to do with where you live or wht you ride it's about what you do.

But if you play hockey and presumably work a full week on top of 250 miles ( = 12.5 hours+ road miles and way more for mtb miles) then overtraining has to be the answer.

You get fit when you rest between training rides.

yeah true, looks like a 3 rides a week until mountain mayhem

Lots of things can make a difference, even things like you riding a compact chainset and the others on 'standard'. For example one of my bikes has a cassette with a wide ratio of gears and if I change on a climb I just seem to drop back, that's going to be changed for a straight through cassette.
Weight? that's my problem now and hitting 50.

I guess your right. I am on a 2007 Giant SCR3 and they are all riding Allez Elites and Treks. But I have no idea what there set uo is.

Well SCR's are pretty relaxed compared to Elites and most Treks, I know I had a SCR Ltd, even raced it a few times and my training bike is a old Allez Elite so I know for a fact that your mates bikes even in the same hands will out climb your SCR.
So typically your SCR will have a higher front end, a longer wheelbase and longer rear stays than your mates bikes.
If you upped to a TCR you'd notice some difference, but I'm not saying that's were all your issues lay.

I remeber last winter training on that SCR and my mates had a top end Dura Ace carbon TCR, a dura Ace Colnago, a top dollar Scott and a Tarmac, yes it's the rider but there is a insy winsy bit to be gained in riding a three grand bike over a three hundred quid one.

It doesn't sound like over training, just that you're imagining that you're training. You'll be riding along at 15-18mph when you should be riding at 22-26mph. Get yourself a HRM and work out your zones and go out and ride for an hour in zone 3 (cover up your bike computer) and you'll see a difference.

You have no base miles and that is your problem, because of this when it starts getting hard you can't recover.

Cheers, more good advice.

I got the same advice as joxter is giving you from a guy called Mike Olheiser who was the worlds masters TT champion in 2008 and trained with Hincapie so I took the advice on board. Problem is I just don't have it in me and I'm doomed to be a racer that just hangs on in there.
Though I am starting to train hard at shorter distances rather than think every training ride should be about distance as all that's done is turn me into a rider that can ride for a long time but very slowly.

If you want any help or advice drop me an email and I'll help. I've done a resonable amount of training over the last few years.

Go to Catholic school?