The other thread on brevets got me thinking. As someone for whom a long ride is 30 miles, it is very interesting to see what distances others like to ride, and how. Yesterday's ride for me was a great one, combining several things that I find pleasant:
a mid-way "useful" destination (bike shop visit); pushing myself (I realize that "pushing", and even more the result of that, is very relative to my ability) -- pushing a bigger gear than usual outbound because of the tailwind (75" and 80" gears); pushing against a stiff wind on the return, 72" with a mile or so in the 65"; 11 miles out with a small circuit, and 9 miles straight back). a bike that is fun to push hard (ish): the Ram with nice close gearing, and saddle and bar set up *just so* so that I can ride for extended periods in the hooks, elbows bent, slow cadence, large torque. a distance -- 20 miles -- that somewhat stretched me at the pace I was maintaining but that was long enough to get into stride and finish without being exhausted. I find though that after 30 years of this sort of riding -- short, hard* -- it is hard for me imaginatively and emotionally to break out of the habit. I want to push hard from the end of the driveway, so to speak. And even though I've learned -- it took me literally 8 years of trying -- to ride more slowly, particularly for the first 2-3 miles, I get impatient when I go too slowly. The down side of going hard is that you, or at least I, rather quickly get to a point where I've had enough and want to go home. Incidentally, one reason I love fixed so much is that it works so well for this sort of riding. * Hard used to be a lot harder when I was in my 30s and 40s; I'd routinely do just under 20 suburban miles in an hour; my usual routes were 18-20 miles taking me 55-65 minutes; or 15-16 mile one way commutes (sometimes expanded to 20) averaging 16-17 clock running across town, 7 miles climbing fixed, depending whether or not there was a wind off the mountains in the morning.) But at 59I can't push myself as I did at 49 or 39, and I keep meaning to try longer -- let's say 40 miles -- and slower rides. The main reason for buying the Ram at the very end of 2012 was to ride longer and easier; so far that hasn't happened. I'm not looking for advice, just thinking out loud. I have to say that I enjoy cycling even more now that I am 4 mph slower -- on the two legs yesterday I averaged 14.85 out and 13.69 in, but those numbers don't mean anything since I left Cyclemeter running as I stopped 3 times outbound to adjust and readjust a cleat, and inbound stopped at Sprouts to get some food. A typical run to the PO and grocery, clock running, 3 miles turned into 15, is 12.5-13.5. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
