BACK ISSUES Archives - Page 245 of 292

Not the Best Idea

It\’s not the best idea to wear yourself out on the bike, is it? I was brought up with the \”Use it up, wear it out, make it do\” mantra. My mother lived through the Great Depression, and believed very much in that. I still will wear my blouses until they\’re threadbare. I often find it hard to throw things away, even when I don\’t have anywhere to keep them! When it comes to our bodies, however, we need to re-think such advice. For example, how many pedal strokes do we take during a long ride? Let\’s say I average 80 rpm during a ride that lasts 3:48:55. Round it up to three hours, forty-nine minutes, or 229 minutes. That\’s 18,320 pedal strokes. Double that for a hypothetical century, and we\’re talking about the knees doing a lot of repetitive motion. Nobody wants worn-out knees, or worn-out any body part. How can we prevent those dreaded overuse injuries? There\’s plenty of advice out there. Regarding the knees, exercises to strengthen the supporting muscles are helpful. When I first got going on two wheels, I\’d go sway-backed after 15-20 minutes of riding. Exercises to strengthen the core muscles got rid of that. It seems that every cycling book includes something about off-bike exercises: The Complete Book of Long-Distance Cycling; and Get Fast! are but two examples. Build up distance slowly; do those off-bike exercises to strengthen the \”supporting cast\”. Letting those muscles remain weak is not the best idea.

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Choose Your Weapon

BACK ISSUES / CAL

Choose your weapon! Keeping a bicycle in good working order does seem rather like a duel, doesn\’t it? A duel with the elements, that is. The frame gets splattered with gritty mud during a wet ride. The chain ends up a mess, too. After tires, they say, the bicycle\’s biggest maintenance problem is its chain. It needs to be cleaned and dried after a wet ride. It needs lube! So, choose your weapon! But there are so many different types of lube! Which one is best for my chain? Wet lube year-round would seem a good choice for me. Our average annual rainfall is 60 inches. On the other hand, we\’ll get long dry spells now and then; and during those times a dry lube would be better, I guess. I\’ve taken to using a self-cleaning lube. It\’s easier, and a little less messy. I\’m not splashing dirty, sudsy, oily water around. I also don\’t have to worry about proper disposal of that dirty water. As to getting excess lube off the chain, I\’m never sure I\’m doing it right. I think I\’m overly concerned that I\’ll get too much lube off the chain. If I have to handle the chain, such as if it comes off the small ring, my hands get black with oil. Yet a dry chain isn\’t the best idea, either. I\’ll keep dueling with it. Maybe one day I\’ll figure it out.

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Inch by Inch?

BACK ISSUES / CAL

Am I progressing merely inch by inch? Or even as quickly as that? Often enough I\’ve complained that my overall pace doesn\’t seem to be improving any too fast. For years I\’ve had \”increase my pace to 15 mph\” as a goal; and haven\’t attained it yet. Well, let me stop and think a minute. Yes, I\’m still unable to cruise at 15 mph for several hours; but I\’m also better at going 15 mph for several miles. Time was when reaching 15 mph at all was very hard, even when I had a stiff tailwind! Last Saturday I rode home 14.5 miles against a wind of 13-15 mph. My average speed over those miles was 9.45 mph, which seems awfully slow. On second thought, such a wind used to push me back to a lower speed than that! Last Tuesday I decided to see whether I could get up to 20 mph. I didn\’t only get there; I sustained it for a full minute! I even hit a peak speed of 21+ mph. The flip side of increasing my pace, I suppose, is being able to go for a recovery ride and stay in heart rate Zone 1. It used to be very hard to stay in Zone 1; lately I\’ve been on easy rides and stayed below Zone 1! My Garmin lets me keep tabs on myself as I ride. Adding it all up, it looks like I might be getting somewhere, even if I\’m merely plodding along inch by inch.

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Pain Cave Again

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The pain cave might not be so bad if only it had a view like this one. I don\’t see how anyone can disagree with the fact that indoor cycling means zero risk of being hit by a car, barring an extremely freakish accident. You hear now and then of a car leaving the roadway and bashing its way through the wall of someone\’s home. But for the sake of argument, let\’s say that it won\’t happen. Yes, indoor cycling does away with traffic signals, stop signs, and having to dodge potholes. Want climbing? Use the trainer\’s climbing block! It can let you choose your \”grade\”, depending on how hard a workout you want. It doesn\’t have to be raining for your bicycle to get quite mucky. If the ground is wet from recent rain, or even heavy fog, I get home with a mud-spattered bike, which I find quite annoying. \”Ride\” indoors and you\’ll at least avoid that. I\’m completely ignorant of Zwift and other such applications, and I\’ll let them be. I\’m quite content with my Garmin. As to the cons of indoor riding — yes, it\’s monotonous in the extreme. Time crawls. If I do hard efforts, the whole place shakes and rattles. But as the article says, it\’s better than no ride at all.

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Will I Remember?

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Will I remember this, or not? I\’m not the greatest at mechanical things to begin with. I recently had the rear derailer on my hybrid replaced. I had started having problems with the shifting. When I tried to shift from the biggest cog (#1) to the second biggest (#2), it didn\’t feel like I was in second gear. I kept hearing odd, clicking sounds. After at least a minute, the bike might actually shift. Keep that up too long, and I\’m liable to wear out the cassette! After work I stopped by the bike shop. They showed me how to adjust the rear derailer. There\’s a kind of elongated knob where the cable goes into the handlebars. I think I see it in this pic. Look carefully at this right-hand brake lever; see that dark-colored thing? It\’s just above a similar-shaped knob that\’s silver/white. If I\’m having trouble shifting to smaller cogs (i.e. harder gears), turn that knob away from the saddle. Don\’t do much at one time; not even a full turn. If shifting from small cogs back to larger ones is a problem, do the opposite. Will I remember that? I hope that my having composed this blog will help.

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Doggone It!

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Doggone it! There\’s that mutt again! Oh, that hair-raising moment while cycling when we realize that a dog is chasing us! I find it very unsettling, especially when the dog in question is not only running after me, but growling. There\’s one street where a particular dog would chase me if I rode past; and to make it more worrisome, that mutt seemed to be going right for my front wheel, as if it knew that that was a sure way to bring me down! I\’d like to know why that dog\’s owner didn\’t do more to keep it in the yard. I took to avoiding that street if possible. But what if you can\’t avoid a certain route if you\’re to ride, and there\’s always Dog Trouble along the way? If possible, sprint to get well ahead of the dog. Shout things such as NO! BACK! STAY! BAD DOG!!! It\’s true that you do need to be able to ride fast. One time I was up to 15 mph, and that nuisance dog was still keeping up with me. Squirting the dog with water, or spraying it with pepper, are possibilities; but you need to be very sure of your bike-handling skills before trying these things. You don\’t want to lose your balance and fall, or swerve into the path of a car, because you\’re trying to fend off a canine attacker. If a dog is a persistent problem, report it to the authorities. Doggone it, no dog should be running loose in the first place. It\’s dangerous to the dog and to us.

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Ooh, ooh, OUCH!

BACK ISSUES / CAL

I had the idea that \”pain cave\” meant the state you’re in during prolonged, hard efforts: legs burning, heart pounding through your ribs, lungs gasping for air. More specifically, I was thinking of such efforts done outdoors. Actually it seems that “pain cave” means an indoor room in which to do these exhausting workouts! I\’ll have to do without such a pain cave. I have a trainer, but reserve it for days when conditions outdoors are truly terrible. Besides, let\’s face it, pedaling away while my bike is hooked into that trainer is very much a pain in the neck. For me, setting up a pain cave would be impractical in any case. I don\’t have a room I can reserve exclusively for the purpose. I can\’t afford to buy more equipment. \”Riding\” in the trainer gets noisy, and that\’s not so good when you live in an apartment. I\’ve seen mention of an indoor-trainer system that lets you see the \”course\” you\’re following on your TV screen. I don\’t have a TV, so I\’ll have to skip that. It sounds good, though. It would ease some of the monotony of indoor \”riding\”, when time seems to stand still. That, I think, is the biggest \”pain\” of all!

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Matters of the Heart

BACK ISSUES / CAL

What matters of the heart? We\’re talking about cycling; not the dating scene. Well, when it comes to \”training\”, maybe I need to pay more attention to advice like this. My Garmin lets me see how much time I spent in which heart rate zones on any ride. All very well; but how do I sort out what it all means? Heart rate, I suspect, is rather like speed in that it can vary according to conditions. Riding against the wind is going to result in a higher heart rate than riding on a day when it\’s dead calm. For that reason, I find it hard to judge from my day-to-day rides whether my heart rate is indicating improved fitness. I do suspect that I need to make more efforts to get my HR into its maximum range if I\’m serious about increasing my cruising speed. And if I can improve my pace, I can cover more miles in X amount of time. I\’m rather time-crunched, after all. There is one thing I notice: riding up the access ramp to the MRT used to send my HR into the max range. Now it doesn\’t, so I guess I\’ve gotten somewhere. But it still feels hard. Since we\’re talking about matters of the heart, maybe I need to take to heart Greg LeMond\’s comment: \”It doesn\’t get easier, you just get faster.\”

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Un-Sunday Ride

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Un-Sunday Ride Today I did an UN-Sunday ride! Sunday is my usual long-ride day. As a rule, Saturday is for going to get groceries; and the time for other errands. It’s also the time to rest up for the Sunday long ride. This weekend I switched my schedule around, and did a longish, un-Sunday ride today. The forecast for tomorrow isn’t looking too good. Ergo I rode today. I decided not to try pushing myself. My legs still feel heavy and tired, possibly from day before yesterday’s hard efforts. Does this mean I made them too hard? I found Propel at the supermarket this morning, in pre-mixed in bottles. I thought it would be nice to have a break from Zym, and I got some Propel to take along on today’s ride. I prefer having the powder, though. It’s very easy to take along one or two of the packets. The grocery run was less than six miles; but all the same I wasn’t about to make a full-length “Sunday” ride. There was the leg fatigue. There was also the wind. You guessed it — it was a headwind on the way back home. I rode out to my usual pit-stop place; then came back. There were some pretty fierce gusts; and the wind seemed to be strengthening. I checked a weather site after I was home; and it showed the wind had been 13-15 mph. Half an hour later, the same site showed wind at 18 mph; and gusts up to 26 mph. I’m glad I got home when I did.

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Tending Bar?

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Sometimes preparing for a bicycle ride makes me feel that I\’m tending bar. I have to prepare take-along hydration. What to drink while cycling? For me, the shortest ride means bringing along a bottle of water; even two bottles if it\’s hot. For my weekly long ride, I use the Camel-Bak for my main water supply. Just in case the Camel-Bak runs too low, I bring an extra bottle of water in the seat tube\’s bottle cage. For long rides, water alone is unlikely to suffice; especially when the weather is hot. The array of drinks out there for hydration, energy, and so on, is bewildering. Maybe this will help with tending bar! My go-to product is Zym Berry. I like to start a ride of several hours with Zym because it contains caffeine. When the weather gets warm enough that I go through electrolyte drink faster, I pack along Nuun tablets. If the Zym runs out and I still have a ways to ride, I can drop a Nuun tablet into the spare water bottle. I\’m not sure I\’ve tried any carbohydrate sports drinks. I get the impression that they\’re best reserved for very long sessions in the saddle, when on-the-roll eating will be difficult. I may not need carb drinks unless I get into riding centuries or other long events on a regular basis; say, at least once a month. Anyway, I rather subscribe to the water-in-the-bottle, food-in-the-pocket philosophy.

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