As you discovered even when you are riding a road bike with 23mm width tires, you certainly can ride on gravel and grass. Both surfaces will raise the heart rate, more then riding pavement.
Going uphill, you practiced staying seated and tried riding with high ankles(higher spin), ankles level, and ankles lower then your foot(lower spin). It was mentioned you practice applying pressure to the pedals all away around. Imagine scraping some dirt off your shoes at the bottom. As one pedal is pushing down the other leg is pulling up. At the very least the leg that is going up, should not be dead weight. Using half of Esso hill till later in season is good practice. :)
(Added a few hours later) You practiced going uphill shifting gears both up and down the cassette. You can soft pedal either seated or standing, but you must ensure that there is little pressure on the pedals, to allow the derailleur to shift correctly. Anticipation and shifting to the correct gear before you need it, is the key. Many a derailleur has been destroyed, because there was too much pressure on the pedals. You only need to soft pedal for a moment, to give the gears time to shift. Broken and twisted chains may also occur, if you do not shift correctly.
You tried riding uphill honking, which basically means you had a bit of a harder gear and low rpm and used your body weight to push the pedals down. You rocked the bicycle underneath you from side to side.
You also felt where to move your hips to get the best traction, as the tires would lose their grip if your hips were too far forward. If the hips are too far back, the front wheel will rise.
You experimented with different hand positions while going uphill. With a comfortable spin that did not require too much pedal pressure, you tried riding with your hands on the drops, on the brake hoods, middle of the bars and a new position you had not tried before. This position had your thumbs on top of the stem and your fingers on the top of bars in the middle. In this position, you raise your chest to a very upright position which helps open up the chest to breathe easier, as wind resistance is low, because of the slow speed.
The hill was not steep enough or trail wide enough to teach zigzagging going up, but another day we will go to a hill about a 5 minute ride away.
Of course all that climbing meant you had to come down a steep hill on loose gravel, which required some thought.
First mentioned to you is not to apply braking all the way down the hill, but to release and then re-apply pressure strongly and release again. This will save on brake pads and rims. Yes, I do have an old set of rims that have had the side-walls worn through.
You also need to look ahead and decide where is the best place to apply braking, on the loose surface. Your front brake has by far, the greater stopping power. From the very beginning it is always better to be safe, then sorry. as the ground is not nearly as forgiving as snow.
I had you practice moving hips back on the saddle or standing up a bit, with pedals level and gripping the seat, with the inner portion of your thigh. I showed you in real steep downhill conditions, that you can put your stomach on the saddle.
The arms should have a slight bend at the elbow, to absorb any little bumps, up, down or level.
I encourage you, to ride on the same trails on the bike, that you Nordic ski race on in the winter.
As per normal, your homework is to try and get in at least 10 hours of raised heart rate, per week. Every 10 days or so you should be doing a 3-4 hour ride for now.
Weights, stretching and other forms of activity, are in addition to the 10 hours.
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