If you’ve run out of gears on a steep slope, surely it makes sense to hop off the bike and push? So why is it considered the ultimate cycling heresy by many?

Is it OK to get off your bike and walk up a hill?

I once struggled up Mont Ventoux during a sportive and joked to the rider overtaking me that if the road got any steeper I could at least climb off and walk. Judging from his expression, I might as well have told him his wife was having an affair with Lance Armstrong.

The implication was obvious – if I got off and walked, I’d be guilty of the ultimate cycling heresy.

When I got home, the first question I was asked – by cyclists and non-cyclists alike – was had I made it all the way to the top without walking. As if by walking for maybe just a few hundred metres of the 21km climb, I’d have rendered my achievement null and void.

I’ve never understood this mentality. Faced with the choice of running out of gears on a steepening slope – with the risk of grinding to a complete standstill and toppling sideways to the ground – or simply walking up the steep bit and remounting when the gradient eases, surely it’s a no brainer?

After all, walking isn’t as unethical as taking a tow, being pushed or jumping in a taxi. You are still progressing under your own steam, but using a different set of leg muscles. And ironically, with some of the latest, ultra-low gearing that’s now available for sportive riders, you wouldn’t necessarily be moving any more slowly than they are.

You could even argue that, compared with a cyclist using such performance-enhancing, technical trickery as a triple chain ring and dinner plate-sized, 34-tooth sprocket, your achievement was purer.

Yet despite this, one rider I know who got off and walked during his first ever group ride felt so humiliated he has never been on a group ride since.

So why is it frowned upon by so many?

According to Chris Balfour, who runs training camps in the Pyrenees, the problem is partly to do with road cycling’s recent and rapid transition from an egalitarian, inclusive sport to “the new golf”, where phoney etiquette and cosmetic detail is everything. He says:

Some of the snobbery and sneering which exists towards riders using ‘granny gears’ or who occasionally walk is really quite divisive and disappointing. We should celebrate [cycling’s] ‘everyman’ appeal, not slide to the worst of golfing ‘etiquette’ where newer and less able players are excluded or mocked behind their back in the clubhouse bar for ‘having the wrong swing’ or ‘wearing the wrong gear’.

And anyway, surely getting off and walking is acceptable if even professional riders sometimes do it? Some of the biggest names in the professional peloton were memorably reduced to doing exactly that during the Tirreno-Adriatico stage race two years ago.

Roger Hammond, Britain’s highest ever finisher in the toughest one-day race on the calendar, Paris-Roubaix, and now manager of pro team Madison Genesis, was forced to dismount and walk up the steep and slippery Koppenberg during the 2009 Tour of Flanders. His advice to anyone thinking of doing the same is:

It’s nothing to be ashamed of and not a failure, we’ve all been there. Try your best to avoid it though: preparation is the key, make sure you study the profiles of your proposed route and adjust your gearing to suit before you start. Always take into account fatigue and bad weather. It’s always better to ride if you can.

Chris Boardman, Olympic gold medalist, multiple Tour de France prologue winner and British Cycling’s policy advisor, is even more encouraging:

Failure is a subjective term: is it a fail if you have to get off and walk up a hill? Or a win because you’ve bitten off more than you can chew and are doing it anyway? I tend to lean heavily towards the latter. Some of the biggest technology improvements in bikes in recent years have been around gears. With 11 speed cassettes and three rings at the front, it’s possible to carry gears that will let you ride slower than walking if necessary with virtually no weight penalty. Having to walk just means, a) you learned something about bikes, or b) you are pushing yourself to do something challenging. Either way, in my book, that’s a win.

As for my own experience on the slopes of Ventoux, I eventually made it to the top under my own steam. Whether I walked any of it or not, should that really matter?