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#311
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AG: Taking it Easy isn't Easy
The hills on one ride weren't as steep as I expected. As I climbed, I wondered: Is this a particularly easy route that I can recommend to others, or are my quads building up faster than I had hoped? I concluded that the main factor was that my two previous rides had been a little longer than I thought I was ready for, so I'd recently had a lot of intense practice in taking it easy on myself. ---------- Just going slow won't do it. You can ride so fast that you fall over in exhaustion before the end of the first mile -- and you can ride so slowly that you fall over in exhaustion before the end of the first mile. (Well, a track cyclist could ride that slow; most of us would fall over for other reasons.) Somewhere in between there is a sweet spot, and only experience can tell you what speed is least tiring. The optimum speed varies with time of day, terrain, current condition, what you've eaten lately, and everything else. Fortunately, once you have had experience, you can tell cruising speed from too fast and too slow continuously. ---------- One rule of taking it easy is don't strain, don't strain, don't strain. Shift down a little sooner than you absolutely have to, switchback when you could still keep climbing straight, rest when you come to a comfortable place. But sometimes a tiny bit of peak exertion can save a lot of low-level exertion. You have to learn to recognize those times, save the overdrive for when you need it, and space out the efforts so that you'll be recovered when you need to do it again. ---------- Since this essay is already too long, I'll make my comments on hills into a separate post. -- joy beeson at comcast dot net http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/ The above message is a Usenet post. I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site. |
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#312
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AG: Easy on the Hills
In rolling hills, you can use some of the energy spent climbing up one hill to help you climb the next hill. When you top a hill, keep turning the pedals, but don't push very hard. As you gain speed, tuck down in aerodynamic position. When you are going so fast that it's uncomfortable to pedal, coast. Watch for the moment when the next hill slows you enough to start pedalling gently again. Shift a tad sooner than needed, but not so soon that you spin uncomfortably. Odds are that you'll be more than halfway up before you run out of momentum. Don't use the above method on bad or unpredictable pavement, or places where visibility is poor. ---------------------- Riding is easier than walking, so most of the times that you get too tired to continue climbing, it's better to rest for a while than to walk up the hill. I was told to stand facing downhill while resting; what I actually do is to stay in the saddle, leaning heavily on the handlebars until I get my breath back. Well, I usually get bored, move off too soon, and end up resting again ten feet further along. The best way to rest is, of course, flat on your back -- ideally with your feet propped up on a wall or a tree. But places where you can do that without attracting ambulances are vanishingly rare. The top of one hill where I used to live featured a park with a wide flat-topped wall that was very high on the parking side, and easy to jump up on from the picnic-table side; I was never disturbed while resting there. For some reason, people don't bother you if you rest in a cemetery, and cemeteries usually have shade trees. (Check for poison ivy.) Passersby usually get the point when there is an entire racing team sprawled on the lawn. Continued next week -- joy beeson at comcast dot net http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/ The above message is a Usenet post. I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site. |
#313
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AG: Easy on the Hills
On 9/26/2015 10:46 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:
In rolling hills, you can use some of the energy spent climbing up one hill to help you climb the next hill. When you top a hill, keep turning the pedals, but don't push very hard. As you gain speed, tuck down in aerodynamic position. When you are going so fast that it's uncomfortable to pedal, coast. Watch for the moment when the next hill slows you enough to start pedalling gently again. ... Especially true for us on our tandem! For some reason, people don't bother you if you rest in a cemetery... Especially on Halloween! -- - Frank Krygowski |
#314
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AG: Easy on the Hills
On Sun, 27 Sep 2015 10:47:33 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote: For some reason, people don't bother you if you rest in a cemetery... Especially on Halloween! There are two cemeteries on the route to Larwill. Unfortunately, they are only a mile apart -- and less than seven miles from home. Seven miles from the end of a ride would be a good time to set a spell, but I never come back that way. The gas station in Larwill has a tiny table with two chairs; if I buy a newspaper, nobody notices me. They also serve made-on-the-premises pizza by the slice. (Now I'm eager for cool weather so that I can haul cheese fifteen miles without hauling ice thirty.) There's a cemetery on the road to Mentone, but I don't think that that is the road I plan to use the next time I go there. Checks Google Maps By George, it's right at the corner where I will turn west. -- joy beeson at comcast dot net http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/ The above message is a Usenet post. I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site. |
#315
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AG: Easy on the Hills
On 9/27/2015 1:04 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:
On Sun, 27 Sep 2015 10:47:33 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote: For some reason, people don't bother you if you rest in a cemetery... Especially on Halloween! There are two cemeteries on the route to Larwill. Unfortunately, they are only a mile apart -- and less than seven miles from home. Seven miles from the end of a ride would be a good time to set a spell, but I never come back that way. Hmm. Since we had mentioned Halloween, your phrase "set a spell" suggested a different meaning for a moment. (Witchcraft??? Oh, just a rest...) The gas station in Larwill has a tiny table with two chairs; if I buy a newspaper, nobody notices me. They also serve made-on-the-premises pizza by the slice. (Now I'm eager for cool weather so that I can haul cheese fifteen miles without hauling ice thirty.) There's a cemetery on the road to Mentone, but I don't think that that is the road I plan to use the next time I go there. Checks Google Maps By George, it's right at the corner where I will turn west. I've led many rides for my bike club over the decades. One I did several times was called "Tour de Tombs." We visited something like six or seven cemeteries, sometimes to see the graves of prominent local citizens, sometimes for some historic interest, but often just for the beautiful sculpture and architecture. I've read, and been told by a historian, that cemeteries functioned as parks in earlier America. They can be pleasant places indeed. One that I frequently ride through at night has a couple curious barred owls. They're surprisingly tame and friendly. -- - Frank Krygowski |
#316
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AG: Easy on the Hills
On Sun, 27 Sep 2015 16:28:51 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote: On 9/27/2015 1:04 PM, Joy Beeson wrote: On Sun, 27 Sep 2015 10:47:33 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote: For some reason, people don't bother you if you rest in a cemetery... Especially on Halloween! There are two cemeteries on the route to Larwill. Unfortunately, they are only a mile apart -- and less than seven miles from home. Seven miles from the end of a ride would be a good time to set a spell, but I never come back that way. Hmm. Since we had mentioned Halloween, your phrase "set a spell" suggested a different meaning for a moment. (Witchcraft??? Oh, just a rest...) Well, one could "sit a spell" while one "set a spell" :-) The gas station in Larwill has a tiny table with two chairs; if I buy a newspaper, nobody notices me. They also serve made-on-the-premises pizza by the slice. (Now I'm eager for cool weather so that I can haul cheese fifteen miles without hauling ice thirty.) There's a cemetery on the road to Mentone, but I don't think that that is the road I plan to use the next time I go there. Checks Google Maps By George, it's right at the corner where I will turn west. I've led many rides for my bike club over the decades. One I did several times was called "Tour de Tombs." We visited something like six or seven cemeteries, sometimes to see the graves of prominent local citizens, sometimes for some historic interest, but often just for the beautiful sculpture and architecture. I've read, and been told by a historian, that cemeteries functioned as parks in earlier America. They can be pleasant places indeed. One that I frequently ride through at night has a couple curious barred owls. They're surprisingly tame and friendly. -- cheers, John B. |
#317
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AG: You can't hide from a crazy driver.
I set the clock radio last night. This morning it informed me that
during the night, two people who were fishing in the middle of a lake got run over by a reckless speedboat. You can't hide from a crazy driver. -- joy beeson at comcast dot net http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/ The above message is a Usenet post. I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site. |
#318
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AG: More Easy on the Hills
There are times when stopping to rest means walking the rest of the way. Out in the country, you can often wait for a time when nobody is around and re-start across the road, turning the start into a switchback as you gain speed. But in the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Guilderland Avenue as I climbed out of the Mohawk valley, this solution never occurred to me. I knew that if I stopped, I walked, and it was miles to the top. (Leastways I remember it that way; I'm not going to ask Google Maps to measure the climb. They aren't top maps, so I doubt that I could even if I were so inclined,) So I shifted into my lowest gear -- which was pretty low; I left "choose good gears" out of the "Take it Easy" essay, but that's probably just as well, as I gather that modern clusters come pre-selected, which may explain the fad for absurd numbers of cogs. So I shifted my gears to granny and I shifted my attitude to "I am climbing this hill. I have always been climbing this hill. I always will be climbing this hill. Climbing this hill is the only possible state of affairs." When I got too tired to push, I concentrated on pulling the pedals up and let my feet fall of their own weight. Of course I pushed some, if only to keep my balance, but I didn't think of that; I thought only pull, pull, pull. And somehow I always made it out of the valley, and when I got to the top, it wasn't any harder to ride from Schenectady to New Salem than it had been to ride from New Salem to Schenectady. ------------------------- Don't look up and say "Oh, what a huge hill! I must shift down some more." If the gear you are in now is just fine for the slope you are on now, it will continue to be just fine as that slope goes on and on and on. ------------------------- Sometimes walking is easier. The driveway out of the fairgrounds (where there is a farmers' market every Saturday) rises sharply just before it meets the road. I must come to a full and complete stop exactly where it would be a terrible strain to start moving again. So I get off, use the crosswalk, and remount on the other side. I also get off to cross a road when I have to wait for a chance and the pavement is bad or I need to cross anti-bike curbs. Getting off also reassures motorists that I'm not going to dash out randomly, and it makes it easier to move out between parked cars for a better view. -- joy beeson at comcast dot net http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/ The above message is a Usenet post. I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site. |
#319
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AG: Parking on a Pole
It has been brought to my attention that the art of parking on a pole is not hard-wired at birth, but must be learned. The process is very simple. Stop near the pole, a few inches away so that the bike will lean against the pole and its center of gravity has to be raised a bit before it can be knocked over. The curve of the saddle should rest against the pole. This prevents the bike from rolling forward. Nudge the pedal on your side with your foot until the pedal on the pole side rests firmly against the pole. This prevents the bike from rolling backward. So now it can't roll, the pole prevents it from falling to one side, and the lean prevents it from falling to the other side. The bike is stable. But sometimes a gust of wind (or a passing child) can give the bike enough of a push to overcome the weight pressing against the pole. Just to be sure, wind your cable lock around the pole and through the frame and both wheels. If the pole is one of a series intended for parking bikes -- wavy pipes that provide several poles for each pair of expensive anchor points are popular -- place your bike at right angles to the row of poles, so that you don't block other riders from using the other poles. If you want the bike locked, select a pole that is very tall, has something big at the top, or is a closed curve. (A post supporting a roof usually meets all three criteria.) -- joy beeson at comcast dot net http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/ The above message is a Usenet post. I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site. |
#320
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AG: Parking on a Pole
On 10/10/2015 10:24 PM, Joy Beeson wrote:
It has been brought to my attention that the art of parking on a pole is not hard-wired at birth, but must be learned. The process is very simple. Stop near the pole, a few inches away so that the bike will lean against the pole and its center of gravity has to be raised a bit before it can be knocked over. The curve of the saddle should rest against the pole. This prevents the bike from rolling forward. Nudge the pedal on your side with your foot until the pedal on the pole side rests firmly against the pole. This prevents the bike from rolling backward. So now it can't roll, the pole prevents it from falling to one side, and the lean prevents it from falling to the other side. The bike is stable. But sometimes a gust of wind (or a passing child) can give the bike enough of a push to overcome the weight pressing against the pole. Just to be sure, wind your cable lock around the pole and through the frame and both wheels. If the pole is one of a series intended for parking bikes -- wavy pipes that provide several poles for each pair of expensive anchor points are popular -- place your bike at right angles to the row of poles, so that you don't block other riders from using the other poles. If you want the bike locked, select a pole that is very tall, has something big at the top, or is a closed curve. (A post supporting a roof usually meets all three criteria.) Your subject line confused me at first. http://www.who2.com/sites/default/fi...elly-up-28.png When I first started "adult" cycling, my older British friend expressed surprise about my kickstand. He said "there's always _something_ to lean your bike against." And he showed me the pedal-on-a-curb trick: put the curbside pedal just back of straight down, prop the pedal on the curb and turn the front wheel against the curb. The crank acts as a kickstand. It's not super-secure, but it works. Then another guy (at a LAW rally) showed me a sort of multi-step plastic wedge he'd cut out of plexiglass. He'd squeeze the front brake lever, then cram the wedge into the lever's opening to hold that brake on. The front wheel was then unable to roll and the parked bike was much more stable. Blackburn picked up the idea and sold them for a while. http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5087/...71eb9ec3_o.jpg But they're easy to make. -- - Frank Krygowski |
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