Need a shrink? Ride your bike...

Getting out on the bike has always been a type of mental therapy for me, and no doubt for most riders. On more than one occasion I’ve heard other riders say they go on long rides to clear their minds. When a lot of life drama clutters up the head, a good mind cleansing can definitely take place on a long ride. On those rides, the “I just gotta clear my head,” kind, most distressing thoughts that are on a crazy loop in the head, start to evaporate. The mind tunes into the body’s work of pedaling the bike, and a meditative state of zero thinking often emerges.

I just got off serving on a jury for a trial involving a brutal crime, and the evidence we jurors saw was not pretty. It was a seven-day trial, and while we jurors digested everything displayed and explained during the case, we couldn’t talk about it amongst ourselves or to anyone else during the trial, by orders of the judge. So we just soaked all this negativity in for days with no emotional outlet. It was a gnarly, ugly scenario to go through day after day. And the day it ended, after we jurors finally could talk to each other about it during deliberations, and after we delivered a verdict, I went home, got on my bike and just rode.

It was interesting during the ride because I had no problem not thinking about anything. Blank mind came naturally. I just pedaled a slow comfortable pace, and it was as if the pedaling gradually released the compacted negative thoughts and emotions built up in the recesses of my head, letting them free to dissipate into the wind. I just rode and rode, blank minded, in a kind of meditative state.

Another juror told me he was a very active bike rider, he said he’d gone on a three-hour ride after the trial session the day before, just to clear his head. He didn’t get home until dark. I just hope the other jurors had some similar way to get past the horrors of the trial. They’re not so easy to forget. I just look at my bike and say, thank you my friend, thank you.

Power from within

While riding last week, I didn't feel much energy, and in those cases, I just tell myself to forget about speed. I tell myself that the ride, this slow ride in which there’s not much power in the legs, is a chance to build a base and get power back into the legs.

Slow riding with occasional sprint intervals is a good way to go. I can always tell how my fitness is going by my recovery times. If I do an interval sprint, and at the end I’m huffing and puffing and feel like a rag doll with rubber legs and it takes some slow pedaling before my legs can power back up to a good cadence, then it’s clear: Not so fit, bro!

But no worries, I just keep piling up the slow base mileage. I like to imagine the quick recovery power of fitness after bursts of speed is like a reserve gas tank, full of gas. Being fit to me means I have a full reserve tank of gas ready to tap into right after an interval sprint. With that full reserve tank, the legs have power back almost immediately to get into strong cadence.

Ultimately pedal power comes from overall fitness, and it’s one of the great feelings to call upon reserve power and bam! it’s there, and you continue with good pace in no time at all.

But even when that reserve power is not there, I just figure, no big deal, relax. It’s just time to slowly build back that reserve with base miles ridden at whatever pace feels right, interspersed with sprint intervals. After awhile, the power builds back, the energy reserve and overall strength to ride with pace is back. The reserve tank is once again, full of gas.

Bike lock theory

Urban riders who commute on their bikes have a challenge: To keep their bikes from being stolen when locked on a public rack. Bike thieves use many ways to get past bike locks in seconds. One rider told of an old trick city bike thieves will do. They use a big, thick bike lock on an already locked bike. When the owner comes back, he or she can’t get their bike, since the big lock is holding it hostage. The thief then comes back in the middle of the night when nobody is around and unlocks the big lock, cuts the bike owner’s lock and makes off with the bike. This rider told of his response to that trick: He got a hacksaw, then flagged down a policeman and told him the situation. With the policeman’s approval, he sawed through the thief’s lock and got his bike back. He made sure to leave a little love note to the thief’s sawed-through lock.

It’s a real risk to leave your bike locked in a public place. If you really don't want your bike stolen, don't leave it alone, locked on a rack. That's when chances really go up that you'll lose it to a thief. The risk may be reduced, though, when it is locked on a rack with many other bikes, packed close together. But I think even in that scenario, you're still putting your bike up for grabs.

An inventor friend of mine asked my opinion of a bike lock prototype he’s working on. It would mount on the bike frame, with its retractable cables pulled from the mounted housing. The idea is that it's a convenient lock that allows for quick locking and unlocking without having to carry the lock separately. I told him it wouldn’t work against a bike thief, that the thin cables could be cut in seconds.

The only way it would work, I told him, would be if the owner stayed close enough to the bike to keep an eye on it. He seemed a bit offended by my opinion, but hey, he asked!

I’ve had my share of bikes stolen over the years, so I’ve become an advocate of trying to eliminate the possibility of my bike being stolen. On my cruiser bike, I use a thick metal strand cable and padlock that I drape over my shoulder. If I can’t bring the bike inside wherever I’m going, and I have to lock it to a stand outside, I make sure I stay close enough to keep it in my sight.

I don’t even have a lock for my road bike. Its lock isn't any cable. It consists of being kept inside the house with the burglar alarm set. But I must say, the key here is to have the alarm set. I’ve had bikes stolen right out of my garage because the damn alarm wasn’t set. Lesson learned. Several times. The hard way.

Til next time, make sure to pull on a helmet every time you get on the bike. Then, keep the rubber side down, and ride safely. But most importantly, have a blast.

-- Mark Eric Larson

Pro bike mechanics...good for your ride

Vince, a cycling buddy, recently recounted his experience at a local co-op style bike shop, where with the help of bike mechanics, cyclists can work on their bike for free with in-house tools. Vince hung around nearly an hour waiting for the on-site mechanic’s help. The guy, said Vince, was intently tending to the bike problems of a particularly hot woman. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to finish his work with her. Finally, Vince just left. He proceeded to a nearby bike store shop, where a mechanic fixed his bike problem in 15 minutes.

That story reminded me of the value of going to a bike store shop with good mechanics. It’s been my experience that most of them do. To me, a bike store shop is the way to go when the bike needs work. Sure, a rider can take a class on bike mechanics and learn to do things at home instead of paying for repairs. You might save money, but it’ll probably take you a lot longer. And, odds are, you may not do the fix correctly. And that’s no good at all! Then, you’ve really wasted a lot of time and still have a mechanical.

The situation reminds me of something Clint Eastwood said in one of his classic Dirty Harry movies:

“A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Even a rider with a lot of knowledge of bike mechanics isn’t likely to have a full array of bike tools and parts close at hand, let alone the how to make a bike work like a Swiss watch. Which is what a good bike mechanic can do, no problemo.

An experienced bike mechanic, in a fully equipped shop of bike stands, parts and tools, works on bikes all day long at least five days a week. His or her familiarity of transforming a bike with worn out parts, or out of adjustment components, into a finely tuned machine, is the difference maker. Most riders that work on his or her bike here and there, will never have the sure handedness and instinctive feel of excellent bike mechanical work that a pro mechanic has from working on bikes all the time.

I remember on my first bike, mondo years ago, I decided I was going to true one of the wheels on my Schwinn Varsity. I assumed it was just a matter of using a spoke wrench on a few of the spokes that looked to be putting the wheel off of a fully round rotation. So

I started in, turning a spoke at the base here and there, somehow thinking it would become a trued wheel with my efforts.

Well, uh, no. I ended up making the wheel more oblong than it had been! I then spent a long time getting it back to its original somewhat out-of-true shape, which I decided I could just live with. A perfectly true wheel wasn’t in the cards. Taking it to a bike mechanic didn’t even occur to me, probably because I was a broke college student.

Recently I had my trusty bike mechanic, Adaman, true the spokes on my road bike wheels a few rides after I’d bought a new wheelset. Now, Adaman is about as good a bike mechanic as there is and he told me how tricky it was, even for him, to true my wheels. But, he said, it was a piece of cake after he remembered the spokes on my particular wheels thread opposite a normal thread. So, he said, when you first think you’re tightening a spoke, you’re actually loosening it. Once he remembered that, it was no problem for him to adjust the spokes’ tension on each side of the wheel to make it spin perfectly round. For me, even if I knew the opposite thread bit, there’s no way I could have trued the wheels as quickly as Adaman. He’s experienced. I’m not.

So sure, a bike shop is going to charge you for parts and labor, and you may wince at the price. But in return, you get your bike riding as it should, finely tuned, with all components in sync. The other big bonus is that it usually doesn’t take a bike mechanic too long to fix your bike, so you’re usually back riding with little down time. No doubt, the stuff in most bike shops is overpriced. They have a building lease to pay, they have to keep the lights on and pay salaries. But if they have good mechanics, they’re well worth a visit when your bike needs work.

Java loving cyclists

A lot of cyclists like, even love, coffee, I’ve noticed. I’m one of them. And on a recent ride I met the above mentioned Vince, a fellow rider at a rest stop. He told me he is in the coffee roasting business. His dream is to set up a coffee/bike place where riders could stop for a cup, and if needed, have any mechanical issues on their bike worked on by an in-house mechanic. There are such places here and there, though I haven’t visited one. Definitely a good place to meet other riders, compare notes on riding, bikes, coffee, fun routes to ride, etc. I hope more of these rider meetup places crop up in the future, just to connect more riders with each other. What could be better?

Electronic shifters…worth it?

Recently chatted with a rider who had an electronic shifter on his bike. I’d only seen one other rider with that on his bike and both said they loved the system over the traditional manual shifting.

This second rider said the only thing he worries about is the shifter’s battery running out of juice while on a ride. So he has to make sure it’s charged enough to make it through whatever time he intends to spend in the saddle for each ride.

Here’s a good informational video on an electronic shifting system for a road bike, which costs in the neighborhood of $2,600 according to this guy. He says it’s still too early to tell whether they will become what all riders want on their bikes. But he predicts higher end bikes will all come equipped with them in the future. Anyway, this is a good primer on them, check it out…

Until next time, remember to strap on a helmet every time you get on the bike. Then keep the rubber side down, ride safely and, most importantly, have a blast!

-- Mark Eric Larson

Psoas I was saying, relax that back

There are a pair of muscles connected to each side of the spine and down through the quads, called psoas muscles. I got to know about them for the first time this week. They can tense up after a lot of miles riding low in the drops, and can refuse to relax once you straighten up in the saddle to end the ride.

I know. That little fun fact just happened to me!

When the psoas muscles get tensed up tight, you guessed it, they prevent your lower back muscles from relaxing. And when you straighten up on the bike after a long ride bent forward, you get a serious jab of lower back pain and stiffness.

I took a ride a few days ago, the third of the week, and worked on maximizing my speed throughout the 51-mile ride.

I banged hard the whole way, and continued all the way back to my house at a fast clip. I had been low on the drops for most of the ride. When I pulled upright to stop and punch in my time, at 2 hours, 50 minutes or so, my lower back muscles shot pain to my brain. ARRRRGH, MY BACK!!!

It was weird because my back felt fine for the whole ride. But as one back doctor put it on a video I recently watched, the psoas muscles, when used in a certain way over a long period of time, as in a ride sitting low and forward for hours on the bike, can essentially lock in to that position. This can also happen from sitting or walking for long periods of time. But when you change out of out of those long held positions, the psoas muscles can stay locked in, and pretty much don’t release the connected muscles. That’s where the lower back pain comes in.

I gingerly put the bike away, and took a couple of gelcaps with a glass of water. I sat in a massage chair to loosen up the lower back muscles. That helped a little. The next day, after my routine of leg and core stretches, it was better. But it still felt tense. The pain wasn’t all gone.

So I did some research and learned about the psoas muscles and discovered what can be done to relax them.

There are several effective remedies to loosen up these muscles, but this one, explained by Jody Mello, I think, is as good or better than any. It’s probably a good idea to do her suggested routine every day to keep lower back pain from long rides or other activity, at bay.

Check it out…

Til next time, remember to put on a helmet every time you get on the bike. Then keep the rubber side down, ride safely and have a blast.

-- Mark Eric Larson

A salty dog rides past the gloom

It’s a gray, cold fog tinged morning with little chance for sun. I’ve already put in two long rides for the week, working heavy legs back into shape after a short layoff. So I’m torn. Should I stay or should I go? Not feeling all that motivated, even a little depressed by the gloomy weather. I need to shake out of it and ride, instead of be in the house, doing other things, then brooding because I didn’t get on the bike.

Once I’m on the trail, it’s not too cold, my fingers are feeling it, but they’re far from numb. Still, it’s cold enough to focus on pedaling to keep warm. I’m not too bundled up, just a T-shirt under my jersey, so once I’m warmed up, the airflow will keep me from getting hot.

I look up to the midmorning sky and see the white circle that is the sun veiled behind the overcast. It would be great if it burned through the overcast, and heated things up. But for now, the clouds have the upper hand.

Not many riders on the trail today, the first few coming the other way are red-faced and cold, like they’d come out a lot earlier when it was a lot colder. I see a few older riders, even a few grandma lookalikes, but they’re bundled up, pedaling nice road bikes. I’m impressed.

I’m thinking the only riders out today are the salty dogs, the ones that will ride in cold, dreary, less than great conditions. I definitely qualify as a salty dog. We’re stubborn about getting our rides in, even if we have to suffer to do it!

There’s a long power line strung across a wide grassy field flanking a section of the trail, and usually there are birds on it, checking out the view. Today, a lone mid sized hawk has the entire wire to himself. I look up and say, “Hi bird!” as has become a weird habit of mine. When there are more, I say “Hi birds!” Sometimes there aren’t any. But today I see a white great egret standing in the field near the trail, and I know what he or she is up to. The tall, majestic bird is standing silently, eyeing the lumpy grass around it for any snack ready rodents in striking distance. A couple years ago while on a ride, I saw a great egret further up the trail in this same field -- could be the same bird for all I know -- quickly snatch a mole, or mouse, or some such varmint, up from the ground. Its pointy beak went up in the air with the struggling little bugger, and in no time, that was that, live snack was down the hatch.

I’m in the middle of my first 14.5 mile split, and coming up is a spot at about the 12 mile mark where I check my time. I usually try to predict what it will be based on how my legs are feeling and my general sense of my speed so far. Most of the time I’m pretty close. Today, it doesn’t feel like I’ve been riding all that fast, even a bit slow. So I guess my time and look at the computer. Whoah, three minutes faster than I thought! I was way off, but in a good way. I get charged up to get on it for the last two miles of the split to see what kind of time I can get. There are a couple short hills over the this stretch, and when the energy is flowing it’s fun to bang it out all the way to the split finish.

I get to the split finish line with a medium fast time and that feels good. Because I really didn’t think I had the legs for a quickish pace early in the ride. The second split is nine miles with one long flat and about 1,000 feet of climbs that are short, medium and long. It’s tough to do fast. I have spots along some of the flats and false flats where I try to maximize my speed to bring my average mph up, since the climbs slow everything down. Today, I work on mashing it as much as I can overall, and it feels like I may have a strong time. I get to the end of the split, the halfway point of the ride at the end of an extended climb, and check my time. It’s about a half-minute slower than I would have liked, but a lot faster than for my two rides earlier in the week. So I’ll take it!

I stop to eat snacks but walk around instead of sitting down, since it’s easy to get cold and stiff sitting still for a few minutes.

On the way back, the nine-mile split is faster, going down all the climbs I rode up. Some wet downhill sections of pavement make me take it easy where I usually hammer for optimum speed. I had a recent slap-down fall from a slicked front tire. It raked up my right forearm enough to make me more mindful of the hazards of a wet road bike tire. I get to a long, flat section under some cliffs next to a lake where, if I have the legs, I go all out. There’s usually a headwind/tailwind, depending on the direction of the ride, and charging hard into a headwind is a pain-fest toward the end of the flat, which feels like about a mile long, but may be less. Today there’s no wind to fight, and that’s nice, but going fast either way brings the pain, and at the end of the flat I look down and see I’ve maintained a 21 mph pace, which is about as fast as I can expect from my legs. I huff and puff into a steady uphill section then try to get some momentum for the slight downhill and rollers ahead. This is the part of the split where the most time can be gained or lost, depending on how consistently strong high-gear pedaling can be maintained. There are short spots for backing off a bit, and they’re needed for energy on the last quarter mile flat where I try to get to 20-21-22 mph. I hit this section strong, then and after some varied uphill riding, and fast descent to the finish of the 9-mile split, I find my time is fast, but about 30 seconds below the time I wanted to make up from the climb up. Still, I’m at the start of the 14.5 mile final split with a brisk cumulative time. So I settle in to get the most pedal power I can out of the rest of the ride.

This is the toughest part of the ride to keep a strong pace, since it is where the cumulative fatigue of riding a lot of miles at a strong pace begins to set in. This is where I love it when a fast rider passes me. I’ll do all I can to catch the rider’s wheel, than relax with the fast pace. But today, there are very few riders, I’m not likely to get any help. Toward the final few miles, I really hit the pain cave, everything blurs around the vision of the trail ahead. I’m putting everything I have into a strong cadence, deep breathing. I flip into the highest gear for the last 200 yards of the split and do a stand up sprint to finish it out. I get a time 30 seconds under my goal, and I’m happy. The sun still hadn’t come out from behind the clouds when I got home, but it didn’t matter. I’d just had on of my fastest rides in the past two months. My day was made.

Til next time, remember to strap on a helmet every time you get on the bike. Then, keep the rubber side down, ride safely and have a blast.

-- Mark Eric Larson

Don't forget, bike tires get tired...

When I first got my road bike a few years ago, it had racing tires on it. What I soon found out, was that those particular tires weren’t too durable. I flatted about three or four times just riding on a seemingly debris free bike trail over a period of a few weeks.
So I looked around for tires that were more roadworthy. I got some Continental Gatorskins, and they proved to be very stout. I only flatted once or twice with them over many rides. The tire I eventually settled on was a 23mm Conti Grand Prix 4 Season, a step up in toughness from Gatorskins. They have turned out to be incredibly durable, rarely flatting, if ever, and I’ve been able to ride them to the point where the rubber starts to wear away to show the underlying layers.
These tires are not cheap, but they’re worth it. Put ‘em on and you really minimize the potential for a puncture. These tires are so tough, they’ve led me to forget that they, too, eventually wear out and need to be replaced.
I abused an already well-worn rear Grand Prix tire when after a spoke break, the rear wheel was ovalized, and that made the tire rub against the rear fork. I needed to ride about three miles to get a ride home, since I was in a wilderness area. So I released the brake and rode slowly, one side of the tire rubbing against the fork the whole way. I bought a new wheel set and it was then that I should have replaced the back tire with a new one. Definitely would have been the wise and prudent thing to do.
But no. Even though I could see where the sidewall had rubbed against the fork, it looked OK enough, like the tire still had some miles in it. So I decided to keep riding on the wear heavy back tire, which easily had thousands of miles on it. I rode for a few rides more until during one ride, the back tire tube, seemingly out of the blue, exploded. It looked like a tear in the sidewall pushed into the high pressure of the tube, which under the weight of the bike, popped. When I replaced the tube, I discovered it was a bad idea to fully inflate it with a small tear in the sidewall of the tire. I discovered that after it was fully inflated for about 20 seconds before the high pressure on the tube forced it into the shred in the sidewall, and exploded. When I replaced that tube, I only inflated it enough to firm up the tire, then luckily, I was able to ride home on the compromised tire without any more tube explosions. If that hadn’t worked even with a tube inflated at less than full pressure, I would have been faced with the not so fun prospect of hooking the bike over my shoulder and walking to the closest place to get a ride home. I’ve done that a couple of times and it’s not fun, walking along in your cleats, (unless you have cleat covers, which I don’t) trying to get some nice person on the phone to come give you a ride home. Fortunately, I was at a spot where I wouldn’t have to walk more than a few hundred yards where there was a parking lot close to a highway.
Once I walked about a mile with my crippled bike over my shoulder to a park, and I didn’t know the name of the park. So when I did get a nice friend on the phone to pick me up, it took some research to figure out where the hell I was, and the street directions to get to me. Thank you smartphones!
Back in the days of yore when pay phones were the go-to emergency communications devices, I would have truly been stranded. Might have had to hitchhike my way back home if I A) couldn’t find a pay phone, B) could find a pay phone, but didn’t have any of the necessary coins to make a call, or C), couldn’t get anybody at a home or business I might walk to, to let me use their phone.
So even if we get stranded on our bikes, if we have a smartphone, we’re halfway home, way better off than back in the Ice Age. But then the task is finding someone to call who will come and pick you up. If that fails, it’s back to hitchhiking!
 So I replaced the bad tire, but hey, if I’d been smart I would have replaced the old tire after its sidewall had been abused and weakened from rubbing for a few miles against the fork. So I learned, yep, even the most durable tires need to be replaced. Yes, I know, that’s obvious! But when they work so well for so many miles, it’s easy to be lulled into thinking they’re always going to be bulletproof.
Uh, no. As Tarzan once said, “Live’n loin.”
Here’s a cycling tire discussion about the pros and cons of 23mm, 25mm and 28mm wide tires for different types of riding. Check it out. The 23mm Contis I have come in 25mm, and they’re surely a bit heavier and tougher than the 23mms. And they’re easier to change on and off the rim. But I like the 23mms because they’re good for both speed and puncture resistance. 
See what the Aussie dude’s thoughts are about it all. He’s a smart, no BS kinda cyclist…


Better Garmin mount
This is a little tweak I did to help me read my Garmin better. I had it mounted on the stem to the handlebars, which I found was too far down to get quick looks at the screen. So I put a Garmin extender mount on my Christmas list, and hey, got it! Put it on and it moved the mount a bit more forward in front of the handlebars. It’s a little thing, but much easier to see the Garmin without moving my big head. Anyway, you probably already have this figured out with your own forward mount. But if not, try it, it’s waay better!

Lookin’ for climbs
I just checked my 2014 ride mileage totals and hit 5,600 miles, the most in a year so far for me. In 2013 I rode 4,700 and in 2012 5,100. Not as much climbing in 2014 for me, which is something I want to change this year. Mountains, I’m a’comin’ to ya this year, hell or high water! For me, there’s nothing better than a tough mountain climb at high altitude followed by a freewheeling descent. Now that’s joy!

‘Til next time be sure and strap on a helmet every time you get on the bike. Then keep the rubber side down, ride safely and have a blast.
--Mark Eric Larson