Haha, I remember a thread a year or two ago about what's gone down over
the last few posts. Kind of turned into a -unicycling is the best and
nothing can touch it!- vs. -use your head- argument. I also remember Joe
getting in there... but, anyway, I second Joe. He knows what he's
talking about.

On a road bike, the conditions are so controlled and the choices of
gearing are so many and so close that you can dial in -exactly- the
power (literal power, force*distance/time) you need to put out to
maintain your speed. If you're diligent enough, you can get a much more
intense workout on a road bike than anything else. If you have a higher
gear, and you're complaining that it's too easy, take the higher gear.
You have no excuse not to .

My argument last time was that, even with a coker, the equivalent gear
ratio (or Total Gear Ratio, as someone put it here a while ago) just
isn't high enough to necessitate sufficient FORCE from your legs to give
you a workout at sane cadences.

With the geared 36er, depending on your balance and strenth, that may
or may not be true. Just riding on flat ground in high gear, there still
isn't enough gain to give your legs the same workout they'd get on a
bike, but the slightest of grades or headwinds will get you there. If I
go out riding on my geared 36 into the wind or up SHALLOW grades
(steeper grades mean low gear, which is way too easy), I get a pretty
darned thorough workout, and I get all the opportunity I need to
actually feel like I'm cranking something... but if I'm going with the
wind, I still feel like I want a bigger gear. Now, because I'm lazy on
my bike, I usually pick gears that give me a workout that's comparable
to or slightly less intense than what I do on my geared coker... so the
net effect is that I get nearly all my training on my uni now. If I
seriously want to ride hard, I'll take the bike, but the uni is so much
more fun, and is so "close enough" to my bike (in terms of how hard I
work) that it's worth it to take the uni. Also, it makes me ride more
because of how much fun it is. So if I ride 90% as hard on average,
twice as much because it's fun, I end up in better shape! Win/win! That
still doesn't mean a geared 36 is as good a fitness tool as a bike,
though. Just means I should be riding harder than I actually am. :-/


--
chuckaeronut

Uni to work to eat to live to uni to work to...!
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View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/73064


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