My blog has moved to: zappoman.konamoxt.com
Today I had some errands to run… I need to head down to the “Rack Store”… as in bike rack store… the bike shop… and Radio Shack. We are going to go on a little road trip this summer (actually in 2 weeks) to Yellowstone. We are driving the new Prius, and so we need to get a bike rack installed on it. So I jumped on my fixie and headed to the store to get some roof rack parts…
4 comments July 2nd, 2007
Hey, check it out… my blog has moved… find me here: zappoman.konamoxt.com.
After spending the afternoon with my daughters selling lemonade on the Burke Gilman trail, I was given permission to go and do a quick brick workout. My plan was 1 hour of cycling, followed by 30 minutes of running. I figured I’d get about 18 miles and 4 miles.
In a fit of “what the heck”, I decided to ride my fixed gear bike, in FIXED mode. Maybe it was the weekend in San Francisco… although I really only saw about 6 fixies in the mother of all fixie towns… I guess it was just walking around SF all geeked out on the idea that I might see a bad ass fixie skidding down one of those gnarly hills. Never did, so I never got my fixie fix… so I had to do my best to give myself my own fixie fix.
Add comment July 1st, 2007
We want to be free! We want to be free to do what we want to do! We want to be free to ride. And we want to be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man.
- Heavenly Blues,
from the eulogy of the Loser,
from the classic Biker movie “The Wild Angels.”
Well, I’ve been busy busy busy the last week… but today I was stopped by Johnny Law for supposedly riding my bike inappropriately.
What!? Here’s my story… and I’m sticking to it!
So, seeing how it’s National Bike Month, I figure I should do as much bike commuting as possible. And since I wanted to go to the store and pick up a Mother’s Day Gift for my wife, I decided I’d ride my bike to the store. I also thought it would be clever to ride in street clothes as opposed to being decked out in my swanky biker race kit…. and I decided to ride my single speed bike… for fun… these all seemed like harmless decisions.
Now, maybe, just maybe, I had a little bit of an edge to me this morning. I was just wearing a ratty old t-shirt, and my Prana Knickers (aka clam-diggers, don’t call them capri pants!)… and I had my Camelbak “Hydrate or Die” backpack on… and I was also wearing my old-skool punk rock chain biker wallet…
I guess, the coppers, figured that I was some punk… my wife says I look like a bum when I wear my old clothes that don’t fit me because they are too big for me. I guess the fuzz just assumed that I was up to no good riding my “messenger style bike”… they must have watched “Quicksilver” too many times… I am a dead ringer for Kevin Bacon.
So there I am pedaling up a 5% grade hill, on a not very busy, mid-paced psuedo arterial but residential road… 3 lanes of one-way traffic… as I’m about half way down this block I see that the right lane is a turn only… so I pull over into the middle lane, which is the right most lane that is not a turn only-lane. Next thing I know I get the siren and lights behind me… WTF? What’s going on? I pull over… the cop pulls up beside me and says…
“You’re on a bike you shouldn’t be in the middle of the road!”
“What? I’m not allowed on the road? What?” - me, seriously, I’m dumbfounded.
“You need to be in the furthest right lane… the slow lane!” - now I notice there are actually two cops and they are kinda looking at each other like they’re trying to figure out what I actually did wrong so they can sound official.
“This lane is a turn only lane… I need to go straight. You want me to go straight from the turn only lane?”
“No, you can switch lanes when you get to the intersection.”
(This doesn’t sound safe to me at all… in fact, I’m thinking that if the cop saw me roll up to the intersection in the right turn only lane and then switch to the center lane at the intersection he would have given me a hard time about it… but I follow his directions and pull up to the intersection in the right most lane… now he’s sitting next to me in the center lane.)
“Excuse, me, but what do you want me to do again? I need to go straight, you want me to go straight from this lane?!”
“Yeah… just go straight from there… switch lanes in the intersection.”
What?! Is he serious? Where did this guy go to traffic school? That’s the craziest move in the book… I’m sure he’d bust me if he saw me do that. Ok… I comply…
Next thing I know, the light turns green, and the fuzz pulls off real fast like… I don’t think they wanted me asking any more questions like “What’s your badge number?”
Of course, down the road about 1 mile I get nearly run off the road by a couple locals who yell out the window at me “What are you crazy! Riding a bike in the road?!”
What?! Wow… I’m not riding my bike in that part of town again.
6 comments May 8th, 2007
How about a cycling specific post? It seems like I haven’t written about cycling in a while, so today on my LSD ride (that’s Long Steady Distance) I did a lot of thinking about some cycling training topics that may be worth exploring. While I was pedaling away at a very steady (and a little slow) pace of 16mph, with a low low heart rate of around 110-120, I decided to do some one-legged intervals.
What? You’ve never heard of one-legged intervals before? Here’s a quick explanation of what they are and how they may help you in your cycling, triathlon, and maybe even your run training…
First of all, a little bit of background on pedal stroke. We all learn early on (when we first learn to ride a bike) that the majority of our power comes from pushing our legs downward on our pedal stroke from the 2′o’clock to the 6′o’clock positions on a pedal stroke. It is natural to feel this downward motion in each of your legs as they move from the top most position to the bottom most position in the pedal stroke. Since your legs are evenly spaced (exactly 180 degrees apart around the circumference of the circle which is your crank) you can easily generate sufficient power to pedal a bike by only applying this downward motion to each leg as you pedal.
In the diagram above and below, I’ve marked this portion of your pedal stroke in red. Some studies suggest that as much as 65% of the average cyclists power comes from this portion of the pedal stroke. However, you have additional opportunities to add power as your pedals and feet move the remaining distance around the circle.
The second easiest part of the stroke to learn is the additional backward thrust that can be added to the pedal as you move from approximately 5′o’clock to approximately 7′o’clock. I’ve heard this motion being described as wiping mud off your shoe, and I think that’s a very good description of the experience. I’ve colored this portion of the pedal stroke in orange, and it is often included in power calculations for the down stroke, as the muscles being used are primarily the same although the foot angle has changed and your calf muscles are more activated during this portion of the stroke.
If you are using clip less pedals (Note: I’ve never understood why the kind of pedal that you clip into is called clip less) then you have an opportunity to also add power to your upstroke. I’ve colored this section yellow, and it is estimated that as much as 25% of your power can be contributed from this portion of the stroke. Finally across the top, colored in green, you can contribute about 10% additional power.
There are many advantages to be gained by learning how to make “good circles” as you pedal. When you consider the fact that typical pro cyclists are only adding 65% of the power during their down stroke, there’s at least 35% additional power waiting to be had if you can learn to use the remaining portion of your pedal stroke. However, you also gain the advantage of using more, different muscles, and that will allow you to prevent fatigue on longer of faster rides. Finally, these different muscles have different abilities to generate power at different cadences, and different abilities to withstand lactate acid build up, and so if you can get good at using all of these various muscles you will have the ability to utilize different pedaling strategies over different terrains or race circumstances further increasing your advantage.
So how do you learn how to make good pedal strokes - good circles?
Well like everything, practice is the key. There are several drills that can help you, one of which is one-legged intervals.
What is a one-legged interval? Well, it is exactly what it sounds like… pedaling your bike with only one leg. Most people do this on a trainer in their home… probably because it can look kind of silly. Basically unclip one shoe, and pedal for 30-60 seconds.
While you do this pay particular attention to applying power throughout the full circle of the stroke. Don’t just “push down” and let the crank coast around to 2′0′clock. Scrape your foot across the bottom of the circle, pull up from 7 to 10′o’clock, and make a point to draw your leg up and over from 10′o’clock to 2′o’clock. If you are not making a full circle you will get feedback from your bike. If you are pushing too hard and not pulling enough, you will feel the crank “ease” as tension is removed from 7 to 2 o’clock.
One legged pedal also has the obvious benefit of allowing your to concentrate your muscular development on one leg at a time. You will probably notice pretty quickly the first time you try this exercise that it’s a lot easier to do with one of your legs than the other. You probably never realized you had a dominate leg, because when you’re pedaling with both legs your dominate leg masks the slight weakness in your other leg.
Another tool in learning to make good circles is riding a fixed gear bicycle. As I’ve discussed in the past, fixed gear bikes force you to keep your legs moving and as a result work to teach your muscles and nervous system to work in unison to move those legs in good circles.
When I do one-legged intervals, I usually try to go for 1/4 mile per leg. Then about 1/10th mile with both legs, then switch to the other leg and repeat. I like to add these in for about 4 to 8 repeats per leg when I’m on my LSD rides. You might want to practice a couple times on a trainer before you try it on the road. If you do, do these repeats out on the open road, expect a few strange looks from pedestrians and other cyclists.
4 comments April 20th, 2007
