What an amazing joy it is to be actually on the bicycle road at 6AM. Everything is all so quiet and still. The few people that are out are too focused on getting to work or if they are outside, getting their work out in. Or in other words, no one bothers me, or for that matter seems too care if I am out there or tries to get my attention!
It also changes some of the way I pump the pedals. When I hit the street today , for example, I couldn’t just use some of the feeder roads that head for the hills, even though they were lightly traveled at this hour. Not wanting to bother with mounting lights, I made the decision to use quieter neighborhood streets as a warm up until there was sun.
This morning’s 20 mile loop was faster and I could feel my upper body getting more used to the work at hand. I also took my first iPhone picture. I have included it with this message. I also went up a 10% grade that slowed me to a crawl. I so wanted to use the strong muscles in my back to pull through it but I couldn’t. On the Eagle, it is all legs. Wow.
What I see from this is that since I can can climb out of the saddle on this machine, I have really got to start practicing my technique. Moving from all my many years and miles on a recumbent and then eight years on a regular HiWheel, I have got to go back in time to when I used to be a pretty strong climber. On an upright. It was then that I used to jockey the seat back and forth as I always was up the mountains of the East Bay faster than anyone I rode with.
I have also got to learn no hands and then how to lift my front wheel over curbs and other objects in the road instead of powering over them. And like an upright, I have also got to get used to the seat enough so that my genitals are not bothered.
I am also going to have to talk to my HiWheel brethren about the foot pedal connection. Unlike an upright or even a recumbent, this bike does not have clipless pedals or for that mater toe clips or any way of anchoring oneself to the pedals. I am realizing that part of the reason I did not want to come all the way out of the saddle on my 10 percenter was because my feet were sliding all over the soft rubber pedals. Hmmm…
I am learning a lot and will have a lot more to show and tell when I can get this EveryTrail program going again…..
THX 4 all of U!!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment