a visit to a not so LBS

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

He made the observation almost immediately that I don't peddle effeciently. I apparently peddle with my toes pointing down at most of my stroke. He kept reminding me to peddle flat and put my heel down. So now at the end of the season, and after 2 years of riding a road bike, I am learning how to ride all over again. So tomorrow will be my first day out as an old dog learning new tricks. Has anyone else ever had this experience? ...shelly

Hi Shelly,
I've only been riding for 4 months, but have worked up to being able to do 40 mile rides now. As I improved, I kept raising my seat several times to avoid knee pain, but I kept finding I didn't notice much difference when I raised my seat each time. Then I finally realized that I was pedaling most of the time with my toes down and heels up. That was effectively bending my legs more, acting against my seat raising! Put my saddle back where it belonged and have been concentrating now on keeping my feet flat while pedaling. I keep catching my heels drifting up and toes pointing down, and correcting it over and over. After 2 weeks of this, I am getting better at it and i think my feet are starting to behave more now. It IS a whole re-training thing. But so good to catch this and correct it! An awful habit, and so easy to get into. I remember in my girlhood horse riding days (a few lifetimes ago), the instructors always yelling "Heels down!!!"

[spokewench]

I lead women's rides here in town and on one such ride I looked down at the 6 girls that were riding with me and 5 out of 6 were riding with their heels up. It was interesting trying to convince them to try to change their habits!

I was just floored that many of the ladies were doing the same thing!

[Bad JuJu]

I've had to work on the heels-down habit, too. Something that helped me was that I read somewhere that while pedaling, you should imagine putting your foot down to scrape something off the bottom of your shoe--not the toe, but the mid-to-rear sole. This has really helped me to keep my heels down, not that they don't drift up occasionally, but I'm building the habit of keeping them down most of the time.