I have found saddles to be about the most personal thing about a bike.
When I bought my first mtn bike I swapped the saddle for a Terry liberator. Great saddle. When I bought my road bike I didn’t like the factory saddle so I swapped the my Terry. It was worse. I went through about 5 different saddles before I found one I liked.
Good thing about an LBC they will let you swap saddles to find one that works.
I have 4 bikes and each has a different saddle. But each works on that bike.
It’s not just the saddle breaking in; it’s your butt breaking in to the saddle, too. No matter what kind of seat you use, your butt is going to be sore when you first start riding. You’ll get over it.
Fine, but I want to make doubly sure that I’m not breaking any important nerve bundles down there.
If you’re coming to cycling from fresh, an hours riding in a hilly park is overdoing it, it’s no wonder you felt so bad. Shorter sessions done frequently (daily if possible) will serve you better and give you far less chance of injuring yourself. Build up over time.
My advice? Keep the rubber side down.
I’ve had the bike now for a little over two months (bought it Memorial Day weekend (last weekend in May for you furriners out there)) and the biking is going fine - I go four-five nights on, one off, each night I ride for a minimum of 1 hour going anywhere from 9-15 miles over relatively flat road terrain. I took three weeks off from July 4th to July 23rd because of (1st) injury caused by bike accident, then (2nd) travel.
In weight, I’ve gone from 232 lbs. to the 215-219 range without changing my diet, but this week I’m counting calories to get that number down another 10-30 pounds by Christmas. My legs are in better shape than they’ve ever been in my life, and most of the weight that has come off has been (so far) below the waist. YMMV.
Since I ride at night I don’t try to do long distance street riding - no “let’s go from here to a point 20 miles away and back” for me, I would be too worried about getting killed by one of these suckass drivers. So I stay in my neighborhood routes where the cars are infrequent as well as a number of different office parks where the cars are non-existent. I found that the parking lot around my office is a nice .75 miles, which I ride frequently doing timed laps and leg-crunching exercises, and sometimes I’ll just pedal around there thinking of stuff.
… and shit. 
I’ve been reading a number of the websites linked to on this thread and they’ve been extremely helpful - tonight I tried out the instructions on how to properly place your feet on the pedal and it made a noticeable difference in my pedalling efficiency and ease.
Being the OP, that means I can ask the stupid questions, right? 'Cause here goes:
I have 24 gears on my bike. On my left hand I have 1-2-3, which controls the gears in the front of the chain mechanism thingy, on my right hand I have 1-8, which controls the chain mechanism thingy on the rear tire.
For both sets of gears, 1 is the “loosest” and the max # (3/8) is the “tightest”, so that 1.1 means that I’m pushing against air, and 3.8 means that I’m putting my legs to serious work (depending upon incline). I’ve also noticed some ratios, such like 3.4 is roughly equal in difficulty to 2.6 which is roughly equal in difficulty to 1.8 (I may be wrong on the specific L.R gear ratios, but the principal is the same).
Questions:
- (And this is the stupid one that nobody wants to ask, but I want to be sure I’m doing this correctly)… So, as you’re going uphill and it becomes more difficult to pedal, you’re changing gears towards 1.1, and as you’re flat or going downhill, you start shifting gears back towards 3.8, correct?
Most of the literature seems to be geared towards the long-distance biker, the guy who wants to go 50-400 miles+, their advice trending to the principal of saving your legs by keeping their rotations from 80-120 RPM.
- Does this mean that the cyclist is constantly changing gears? Or are their legs such machines that they can stay in the same gear far longer than I can?
However, I want to exercise as hard as I can for about an hour or so (sweat, beating heart when climbing hills, that sort of stuff). So what I’ve been doing is trying to do my course at increasingly difficult (towards 3.8) gears, but I don’t find much about riding this way. (Actually, I don’t have a question about this).
Agent 1 hour over hilly terrain for a guy who wants to lose 40 pounds is too much for your first few rides.
Pedaling 80-120 rpm, otherwise known as “spinning”. Do this, your knees will thanks you.
On rolling and hilly terrain, cyclist will be varying which gear they’re in, on flat ground, not so much.
On flat ground you want to keep the chain on the middle ring and just shift the back, the gear range will be fine. As you noticed, there is some overlap with the gears. Don’t worry about memorizing the whole thing.
Basically, middle ring for flat, go to the big ring for downhills, small ring for uphills.
Avoid extreme chain angles, known as “cross-chaining”. The combo of 1.1 you mentioned is an example. This puts a lot of side loads on the chain and wears it out faster.
Chain thingy=derailleur.
You don’t need to push yourself “as hard as you can” every day. That way lies madness, burnout, staleness and possible injury.
Riding at 70-80% of maximum heart rate is as hard as you need to go for fitness. Get a heart rate monitor.
I must be the exception, since I’ve always found that I tire much, much faster at high pedaling RPMs than at low. I much prefer upshifting and exerting some real force with my legs.
A few cyclists can get away with it. But it’s still better to try spinning first and not risk the knees.
Spinning at a high RPM does take practice. If you’re used to “mashing”, it won’t feel comfortable to spin.
I think you mean 1.8 for cross-chaining don’t you, pat? Not to be nitpicky, as I certainly bow to your cycling guruship (:)) and have learned much from your posts on the subject, but I just wanted to make sure that JohnT didn’t wind up cross-chaining when he thought he wasn’t, or find himself reluctant to use the 1.1 combo when climbing really steep hills or 3.8 going downhill.
Cross-chaining, JohnT, is when your chain is going from a gear close to the frame (leftward) at one end and away from the frame (rightward) at the other. So you don’t want to use combinations like 1.8 or 3.1, or even 1.7 or 3.2.
“upshifting”, a term I read a lot… that means making it harder, right? (or “going to 3.8”, using my numbers above)
About cadence. I can’t spin at 100 RPM. Legs just won’t do it. But I can rise all day at about 65-70 RPM as that is my natural rhythm.
My advise is to find your natural rhythm and vary your gears to maintain it.
I found a bike computer with a cadence sensor to be very handy for this.
There really is no substitute for doing the miles, if truth be known.
With miles, and lots of 'em, everything falls into place.
But the downside to that is you run the risk of creating a cycling widow, assuming you’re married. And there’s a reason why that term was invented. Think about it.
Cycling can be a wonderful pasttime, which keeps you amazingly fit AND allows you to see loads of beautiful countryside too - assuming you live nearby.
But like I said, there’s no substitute for the miles. That’s the fundamental truth behind the sport, always has been, always will. You just gotta stick at it. And it also helps if you’ve got good friends to train with.
If you ever get to ride with a pro, it is just mesmeric seeing how they spin. The slightest gradiant, down two gears, spin, spin, spin. Slightest jump in pace, up two gears, kapow, kapow, kapow..
Nope, I didn’t get that. All I got was that the author admitted he was carrying at least 40 extra pounds AND he had zero cycling fitness, possibly less than zero. Anyway you cut it, lifting that much weight up hills, with zero base fitness, is gonna make you hit the red zone no matter what gear you’re pushing.
There is only one way to get good in the hills, and that’s ride 'em every day and live in 'em, and do shitloads of miles so that your body fat percentage gets under 6%. Even if your body fat percentage is at 10%, the guy who trains harder with a lower body fat percentage is gonna smash you every time, until you train that hard and get that light.
Body fat and cycling are mutually exclusive, it’s as simple as that. Any road that lifts you 100m in height requires greater work if you’re carrying pounds you wish you could get rid of. People spend $10,000 to get a lighter race bike, but you can lose much more weight off your body, every time. Realistically? Until the skin on your cheeks can fold as easily as the skin on the back of your hand, you’ve still got more weight you can lose.
There are essentially two sorts of spinning - there’s flat road spinning, and there’s climb spinning - and believe it or not, you get specialists in both. As rule of thumb, Tour de France winners are world’s best practice in both.
As for how your low rpm would go on a long climb? It depends how fast you’re going and how long the climb is.
Unless you’re actually training and racing with competitve cyclists, and unless you are actually measuring your speed on climbs against those guys, you’re probably not aware of just how much faster and harder the good guys can really go on climbs.
And they spin, they float like they’ve got angels on the pedals.
Think of it like this… imagine being able to do push ups, non stop, for an hour with hardly any heavy puffing. That’s what the good guys are like on climbs.
Congratulations! That is just terrific news!
And the good news is that you can now realistically aim for even more personal achievements. It’s not uncommon for adult men, well into their 40’s to take up cycling and end up back in a genuine 32" pair of jeans. To be fair, it takes time and commitment and patience, but it’s becoming increasingly common - that’s why they call cycling the “new golf”.
Your next goal could possibly involve moving on to a quality race bike and actually training with regular training groups - that’s a whole lotta fun.
Do you have any experience, Boo Boo Foo, with the best type of riding for people who have knee problems? I started riding about two months ago (on a 40 lb hybrid) and was at 260 lbs. and had a resting heart rate of 80 bpm at that time. I started out slowly and have worked my way up to where I’m currently riding between 30 to 40 miles a day with 50 mile rides thrown in on occasion. My weight has dropped by 16 lbs. and my resting heart rate has dropped to 66 bpm. (Exercise really works…who knew?) So I really want to keep it up.
Anyway, I’ve had mild arthritis in my knees for about ten years and over the last couple of years they seem to have been getting worse. They hurt at least somewhat most of the time now. In riding, I’ve noticed that they seem to be getting stronger and more flexible but the pain isn’t really going away. I would like to do a little hill climbing and maybe even work my way up to doing some touring but I don’t know if this is going to be possible given the situation with my knees. (Most of my riding has been on relatively flat roads and bike paths around town.)
I was gaining confidence because of the way my knees seemed to be improving and so about a week ago I tackled a relatively short but very steep hill four times by riding standing on the pedals for two climbs and spinning for two climbs. Given my weight and the steepness of the hill, I found that even spinning in the low gears still required a certain amount of mashing although nothing like standing on the pedals.
The result, as you might imagine, was that my knees were killing me two days later. After that I stopped riding for a few days, but I did go out for a 20-mile-ride that had some lengthy inclines with the local cycle club guys five days later and that ride seemed to make my knees quite a bit better.
So now I’m confused. Some strenuous riding seems to make my knees worse, and some seems to make them better. I don’t know now whether I should stick with mostly flat roads, which will limit my enjoyment of riding, or whether in time I’ll be strong enough and well enough to tackle hills and touring. So, bearing in mind that you’re not a medical professional and I’m not looking for medical advice, etc., I’m wondering if your experience with other riders is such that you might be able to recommend the best way to proceed from where I am now?
Starving, you’re right about the cross-chaining, had it reversed in my head.:smack:
Have you tried glucosamine for your knees? It does actually work to rebuild cartilage.
If you’re struggling up a hill, stand to climb.
It’s that 90 degree angle of the knee under high load that does the damage.
I’m quite aware that serious cyclists can outpace me, on hills or on the level. In fact, most people can outperform me in most athletic endeavors. But I’m not comparing against them; I’m comparing against myself.
And I can tackle any road in town, and most of the trails, without tiring, in high gear. I’ve never done an endurance run to find out just where my limit is, but given that I can completely cross the city and back without even starting to tire, I feel comfortable saying that wherever my limit is, it’s high enough.
Oh, and I should also say that I definitely agree with Boo Boo Foo that cycling is a great way to lose weight. Even just viewing a bike as a utilitarian way to get from Point A to Point B, as I do, and not biking just for the sake of biking. The summer that I started biking to work, I lost a good 15 pounds. I’ve since reached a new equilibrium, and I’m still a bit overweight, but only a bit.