# Taped to the stem because you can't think

> A stage profile taped to a bike stem isn't information you don't have. It's three numbers you already know, put where you can see them for the ninety minutes you can't think straight.

August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/stage-profile-stem-note

A small strip of card, edges soft from tape. A jagged line climbing across it. 21.5 KM at the
base, AVG 7.4% beneath, MAX 12% flagged against the steepest stretch of the line.

Nothing on that card is news to the rider who taped it there. That's exactly why it works.

## What is a stem note actually for?

Not to tell you the climb is long — you already know that. It's there so you don't have to ask
yourself.

Partway into a long, steady gradient, a rider's own sense of distance stops being reliable.
Fatigue stretches a few minutes into what feels like far more. A card fixed to the stem, twelve
inches from your eyes, gives you a fixed external answer to "how much more of this is there" so you
never have to generate one yourself, at the exact point in the ride when generating one accurately
is the hardest thing you could be asked to do.

## Why does it work when a cycling computer already shows the same numbers?

Because reading a screen is a decision, and a taped card isn't.

A computer requires you to glance down, find the field, and interpret it — three small acts of
attention on a body that's already spending everything it has on the climb. A card taped where your
eyes rest anyway needs none of that. It's read the way you read a road sign out of the corner of an
eye, without deciding to look.

## What's the actual judgement in what goes on the card?

Not accuracy — the numbers come straight off the route. It's how little you can get away with.

Three figures is a stem note; ten is a spreadsheet nobody reads at kilometre fifteen. The distance,
the average and the single worst ramp are the three a rider actually needs mid-effort, because
they're the three that change what the next few minutes should feel like. Anything more detailed —
gradient by kilometre, feed-zone markers — belongs in a route book read the night before, not on a
card read while breathing hard.

## Can a real race's profile go on a shirt?

The climb's shape and its gradient figures are facts about a road; nobody owns a hill. A named
event's official route card, with its branding and its stage number, belongs to the organiser who
produced it.

A club's own club run, or a rider's own recurring local climb, is fair ground to print exactly as
ridden — the figures on this card describe a real gradient without claiming to be anyone's licensed
race material. Where a specific event's own stage profile is the actual point, that's the
organiser's document to license, the same as any race name or route number.

## Does the same card work for a training climb, not just a race?

If anything it works better, since a training climb gets ridden often enough for the numbers to
become genuinely familiar rather than read once and forgotten.

[A training block's own percentages](/stories/training-block-percentages) sit on the same
shelf — both are figures written down before the effort so the body doesn't have to work them out
mid-session. A stem note for a local hill you ride every week becomes less a piece of information
and more a small, specific object you associate with that particular climb, closer in spirit to
[a runner's own wrist band for a route they know well](/stories/marathon-pace-band) than to
anything read once and put away.

## Isn't it a bit much to tape a card to a bike for one hill?

Not compared with what riders already do for numbers that matter less.

[An archer's sight marks, taped to the bow limb, belong to one bow and one set of arrows and are
worthless to anyone else's kit](/stories/archery-sight-marks) — a stem note is the same
instinct in a different sport. If a number is going to matter for the next hour and you won't
remember it accurately under load, writing it down and sticking it where you'll see it isn't
excessive. It's just correctly rating your own attention.

## Does the card print well?

Yes — a rising line with a few figures against it is a strong, simple shape.

Keep the line itself as a hard, unbroken stroke rather than a soft gradient fill; the climb's shape
is the whole graphic and it survives fabric better as a clean silhouette than as shading. Black on
white holds the figures at a glance, and the single red is worth spending on the one number that
actually changes the effort — the maximum gradient, not the average.

## How do I get one made?

Describe the climb at [JustOG](/) — the distance, the gradients, and which figure to pick out. Pick
a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and
shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Twenty-one and a half kilometres, and the worst of it is still to come — but at least it's written
down.