Amazing what TITS can do for us!
First -- the other day, I was about to go for a ride, and thought, y'know, I wonder if my saddle angle is what's causing the minor issues I'm having lately. I went out and looked, adjusted the nose down a hair. I'm not even sure I can really see the difference. My body felt it, though! No tender spots at the end of the ride! If it weren't for all of you wonderful ladies here, I never would have thought of that, so thank you!
Knot has talked about pronating and feet a bit lately -- I gave that some thought on Sunday's ride too. I found that I an think about the angle my feet are sitting at on the pedals, but "lifting the inside edge" helped my feet immensely, so it would be cool to talk about what I need to look into for that issue too, at some point. I'll go searching the hot spots/foot issues threads, and maybe start a new one if needed though. Something interesting to consider would be if there are exercises/stretches that a girl might do to make an actual physical correction to this issue rather than orthotics and such. Just how much CAN we retrain our bodies?
But, my cool TITS discovery the other day -- I've been playing with more time in the drops on my new bike (well, 550+ miles now) and before Sunday, I'd carefully moved one hand at a time to new positions. Without thinking at one point, I just moved both hands -- no hands on the bars at all, and I didn't "flop" into whichever position I was headed for, I just moved my hands as needed with lovely control. My body's stronger! Imagine my surprise!
So I did it consciously and discovered I could do it at will, over and over again! RACED up to catch DH and said "Look what I can do!" then shifted my hands up/down several times in a row. He immediately said QUIT THAT! with that worried that I was about to do myself in tone...
So, when he can see what I'm doing, I do my careful hand shift, but when he's not where he can see ;) (I'm already forbidden to move my hands at 15+mph, but again, if he can't see, I'm not as shaky with that maneuver as I was once upon a time either!)
Drops position is getting more comfortable with time too. The road bike in general is quite a change from the comfort-bike I started with last year, but I like it a lot!
Long way to go yet, but this new little skill made it an especially fun ride! (the new seat angle and paying more attention to my feet made me wish it was a longer ride, cuz my parts were so much happier!)
Karen in Boise
