If you have to choose, choose quality over quantity
My lungs feel my favorite way my lungs can feel. Every breath I take tells me the whereabouts of each alveolus. They feel raw, like they were scraped clean and opened up anew after a period of dormancy. Every breath tells me their exact shape and depth, where my lungs end and where my diaphragm begins. I feel high, as though my freshly cleaned lungs are letting too much oxygen into the system and it’s not quite sure what to do with it other than to make everything feel more Awesome.
Cycling is, unequivocally, without question, a drug.
At my back lies a winter of frustration; my training has been behind all year with me neither having nor making the time to get the hours in that I am used to. I’ve never been a thoroughbred, but this winter I haven’t even been a donkey. I’ve been a mule. It feels good to say it out loud, actually.
“Hi, my name is Frank. I’m a mule.”
“Hi, Frank.”
I’ve always favored the 2 hour ride over one, three hours over two, four over three. The best rides are sun-up to sun-down endeavors that have me crawling into the kitchen or pub for a recovery session. On one notable occasion I got off my bike and sat at the side of the road in the pouring rain, just to contemplate how I might manage to ride up the final steep ramp to get back home. (Spoiler alert: I finally arrived at the conclusion to climb aboard my bike and pedal up the hill, something that seems a lot more obvious in hindsight than it did at the time.)
I’ve become more opportunistic in my training since arriving at some basic condition through getting my head kicked in for nine days at Keepers Tour. Since then, I cherish those small windows in my schedule that allow for a quick ride and jump at the opportunity, even if it’s just for an hour. The shorter the ride, the harder the ride. No mercy. Stop lights? Interval to the next one, like some idiot Cycleway Hero. Climb? Hit it until the lights go out. False flat into the wind? 53×11 and out of the saddle until the legs turn into Jell-O.
Today’s ride was 90 minutes. Full gas, start to finish; I was a Cat 5 on Race Day, born again. If I was stopped at a light, it was a double-down sprint to make up for lost time like a dog let off its leash trying to catch up to where it would have been if it had been loose the whole time. Everything my mind asked for, my body gave. Everything my body needed, The V provided. Today was a reminder that if quantity and quality are on offer, take them both. But if you have to pick one, quality will go a long way to make up for quantity. I’d rather ride a little every day than not ride every day. And a short ride, done right, can put you in the box just the same.
In the immortal words of The Prophet, “Ride as much or as little, or as long or as short as you feel. But ride.”
Vive la Vie Velominatus.
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@frank
You might be right. That was my first thought once I accused you of mounting your control levers too high. I did install them myself though -- focused on the transition from the ramp section to the hood. I think of it as riding down on the hoods now. And then staying in the drops, where I spend 60 percent of my time now.
@frank
You always tell people to get fucked when they are right and you are wrong?
Personally I don't care about any rules but if rule 46 exists @Teocalli is right, you are definitely violating it. It's really easy to see, without even wasting time to measure it with a spirit level. That's the reason @unversio thinks your ergos are too high, because you have too much tilt on the bars. You add tilt to create flat transition to the hoods. Getting pretty close to Brett's tilt on his Merckx which is definitely wrong as far as bike handling goes, even though it might feel comfortable.
@TommyTubolare
Get fucked!
@unversio
I'm not going to engage in any pedantry regarding the angle of your hoods as Rule #46 is way too much trigonometry for me at this point. I will, however, covet that cockpit.
Yup, I'm on the interwebs coveting another man's cockpit.
@unversio
One of the reasons I'm resisting going to 11spd is the levers are so long which makes you mount them very high if you align them to the bottom of the bars like Roger DeVlaemink did.
@TommyTubolare
In all seriousness, having the hoods lower does little more just put pressure on the wrists. While the lead photo looks more extreme (a better angle below) having the hoods at such an angle that it feels very neutral is, in my opinion, much more effective and does fuck all to screw up the handling; it improves it, if anything.
So glad we're talking about this stuff and not the drivel in the article!
@frank
Primarily need to keep the right thumb lever comfortable when sprinting in the drops -- and continuing to shift. One big reason that I prefer Campagnolo is the thumb lever on their controls.
It's a 2-fer article for me coz:
and
@frank
Is that true? I had not noticed that my 10Sp Campag on the #9 are significantly different to my 11Sp. I'm away at the moment so can't leap up and measure them but will now look when I get back home. They are certainly longer that 1970s Nuovo Record, granted. While I was mainly poking fun originally (obviously) I think the serious point here is that if you want to use retro style bars then you need to accept that if you mount the levers at the top it will look odd as the levers will not hang vertically. The curve on modern bars is sculpted for the modern trend of the levers being level with the top of the bars. My point is reasonably illustrated below that I posted a little while back where current 11Sp is matched to retro bars. For me the other point is that my fingers are as vertically challenged as my legs so if I mounted the levers per @frank then I'd never reach them from the drops. Then again I guess the riposte I'd expect to that is if you are on the drops why the f are you trying to brake?
re: frank "get fucked" it's a mite pedantic, I might say, stuff your ruler and position trumps all, or, shall one say, "eat my dust"