Cycling Evolution

Honestly, when I asked for a new bike for my birthday this year, I had no idea that I would find myself fast-tracking towards a century ride a month later! A leisurely ride to Laurier Park to see the set-up of the Strawberry Festival where I discovered that Trysten had outgrown his bike and was the perfect fit for my "old" bike was the trigger to this whole chain of events.

The very next day I had my new race bike in my favorite colour "Cranberry Red". I had selected it because I wanted a serious bike for future, then unknown, athletic events. I still had no clue how quickly an event would come along!

It wasn't until the eve of my 40th birthday that the specific challenge to ride a 100 miles was thrown down and I couldn't resist saying yes.

From that time I have tried to ride every day to/from work and with my family. This escalated to a 50+ mile ride on Canada Day where I rode from my home in LaSalle to Amherstburg to Colchester to Kingsville to Leamington and again later at Point Pelee.

Since that day I have ridden very little. I've done a couple trips to work & back to keep myself adjusted to the saddle, but with such short recovery time after the July 1st ride, I need to make sure my muscles have recuperated fully.

In this compressed training time I have learned a lot about "serious" riding and have done my best to assimilate and execute my new knowledge. Here are some tidbits of technical info that I picked up:

1) You're supposed to have more than one bike
It appears that serious cyclists have many bikes and the bike store owners capitalize on this. I've heard about two bike enthusiasts in the past couple weeks who own 15+ bikes each! When I was debating what kind of bike to buy they assumed I was keeping my mountain bike and encouraged me not to worry about the limitations a racing bike may have. They couldn't grasp someone only having one bike and needing that one bike to do everything. Shawn too was concerned that my racing bike wouldn't be appropriate for our family rides. We ended up finding a race bike that I feel very comfortable on and works fine for all the kinds of rides I do--specifically pavement riding. I never liked gravel or dirt trails anyways!

2) You gotta be careful what you put on a "serious" race bike.
Shawn told me that it was the law that every bike have a bell. On a tune-up visit to Courtesy Bikes I asked John, the owner, to install a bell on my new bike. The look he gave me was incredulous.

"You're gonna put a bell on this bike?" he asks me in a tone that dared me to try and make him.

"Isn't it the law?" I said in a defensive, high-pitched nervous tone that I hate.

"Yes," he admits, "but no police officer is going to write you a ticket for not having one unless you are being a jerk and he's looking for something to book you on."

The point made is that you don't put anything but a bike meter on a "real" racing bike. Shawn installed a light but I think John would have frowned on that one too. The reasoning is that you want the bike to be as light weight as possible for races and you don't want to clutter & weigh down your bike with accessories.

3) Keep your chin tucked in
My 50+ mile ride to Leamington taught me many things in preparation for my century ride. After a few hours I noticed my neck starting to ache and realized quickly that it was because I was holding it out of line with my body in an effort to see the road in front of me. If I tucked my chin and used my eyes to look upward & forward, my helmet blocked my view. Fortunately, the visor piece that was doing this was easily removed from my helmet but I still find that I have to remind myself to tuck in that chin!

4) Tilt seat up not down
Saddle issues have emerged in the wake of my more frequent riding. Heat & pressure build up and at one point on my long ride I literally went off the road because I was distracted by my wiggling and readjusting to find a more comfortable position. Afterwards I took John's advise and readjusted my seat to tilt up slightly in the front instead of down. Mistakenly, I had thought tilting it down would alleviate pressure in crotch area and while down in my drops it seemed to but when I sat upright later in the ride, the position of the seat restricted me from sitting up properly. This resulted in a lot of discomfort and a sore lower back! I think it also put more of my body weight into my arms which resulted in numb hands.

5) Spinning
Another thing John took issue with was that my bike was in it's highest gear. I admitted to him that I have a tendency to put my bike in the hardest gear and just pedal at whatever pace feels best to me...usually quite slow! More attitude from John. I already know spinning at a lower gear is better...yada..yada..yada...but I kind of like my way better. He regales me with the multiple reasons why it is better to be in a lower gear, spinning fast. Supposedly it will help me go faster, protect my knees from injury, build up my strength, keep my legs muscles from burning out quickly and trim down my figure. Wait! Did he just suggest that my figure needs trimming? He must have seen something flash in my eyes because he backpedalled and used charming humour to soften the comment. He gets away with this because he's an expert and he's right. Plus, my knees hurt. I've been practising "spinning" ever since. You spin as fast as you can at a lower gear and only go up in gear if your butt starts bouncing out of the saddle.

6) Gear shifting
I don't know where I heard this one. I think it was Michelle Vaughan. Anyways, supposedly as you approach a stop you are supposed to gear down so that when you begin pedalling again, you don't have to push real hard and get out of your saddle to get going. I've experienced this quite a bit in light of my previous high gear habit and it is hard on the knees. I've been practising gearing down for stops and find it to be quite natural now.

7) Signalling
While training for my triathlon a couple years ago I was advised politely to begin signalling. I hadn't done this since grade school. I figured with all the road riding I was doing, I should signal appropriately. It was a couple days before Shawn joined me on a work commute and noticed that I had my left/right signals mixed up. How embarrassing!!! I wonder how many drivers I enraged.

Stay tuned for more cycling wisdom in later blogs!