Ruminations

Category: cycling

  • First Race

    First Race

    Have been riding bikes since I was seven, in college after my $100 K-Mart steel bike was smashed by a car for the second time (another story, long story short I flipped off the bike and was fine, bike was destroyed) I dug deep and spent around $270 on my Bianchi Mainstreet. Have had that…

  • cycling mishaps

    cycling mishaps

    I crashed while cycling recently and shattered my scapula, fractured elbow, and tore up my arm from the elbow down the forearm.  I’m not allowed to drive but, while I’m typing one-handed I can still work, if only remotely for now.  I haven’t taken any pain meds although they prescribed some pretty strong ones.  A…

  • refactor your heart (or, “how not to collapse on the road with cramping triceps while trying to learn the Swift Programming Language”)

    refactor your heart (or, “how not to collapse on the road with cramping triceps while trying to learn the Swift Programming Language”)

    I came across this post by Janie Clayton-Hasz where she paints a frightening picture of her spending every waking hour, plus hours where she is supposed to be sleeping, engaged in an epic struggle to ingest the vast sea of knowledge that is the iOS development platform.  I didn’t get it; I asked her on twitter…

  • Why cyclists should be able to roll through stop signs and ride through red lights

    Why cyclists should be able to roll through stop signs and ride through red lights

    RESEARCH AND COMMON SENSE SAY SLOWLY ROLLING THROUGH A STOP SIGN ON A BIKE SHOULDN’T BE ILLEGAL

  • How to be a Gentleman / Lady Cyclist

    How to be a Gentleman / Lady Cyclist

     

  • Velocipede Bike Camp – three days of struggle that made us stronger

    Velocipede Bike Camp – three days of struggle that made us stronger

    Team Velocipede organized a three day bike camp in Lost River State Park.  Apparently the river is called ‘lost’ because it disappears underground somewhere and comes back up, or at least that’s what I think based on a big wooden sign we blew by on the bikes.  We didn’t stop so it was hard to…

  • Simple Training Plan to Lose Weight, Ride Faster

    Simple Training Plan to Lose Weight, Ride Faster

    Millions of people own bicycles, and just about everyone who has one knows how to pedal it around the block. But surprisingly few people take full advantage of all that riding has to offer. For those who haven’t yet tapped into cycling’s benefits, the list is long: It burns calories at a steady clip, helps…

  • Hacking the ProForm Tour de France (part 2)

    Hacking the ProForm Tour de France (part 2)

    So tonight I rode Stage One of the 2012 Tour de France on the ProForm TDF bike.  Here’s a link to my ride on iFit.com.   It was a lot easier than I imagined it would be, as it was mostly flat.  I’m sure it will get a lot harder in the next stages as…

  • go wide

    go wide

    Tires: How Wide is too Wide? A placebo effect is very powerful. I know that when I raced, I loved riding my bike with its superlight wheels and hand-glued tires. How much was the wheels, how much the tires, and how much the fact that I rode the race wheels in races, when I had rested…

  • Hacking the ProForm Tour de France (part 1)

    Hacking the ProForm Tour de France (part 1)

    I have the version 2 of ProForm’s Le Tour De France bike trainer.  Unlike a lot of other folks who have been posting about this bike since v1 I haven’t had any mechanical problems with the bike, to date, but then again we’ve only put around 200 miles on this trainer in the two years we’ve…