pedaling

[Kano]

-
I have a new Giant OCR3. Compared to every bike I've ever had, this one practically rides itself. I can't believe I'm not sore at all from riding it and that I kept up with my kids for 4+ miles. !

It is amazing how a nice bike feels, isn't it?

-
I am so confused about shifting at this point, I am not sure of anything except that I keep chanting to myself not to cross the chain (big to little ring). There are so many choices and I still forget which side controls which part of the chain. !

I don't have a good "mantra" for the left hand, but RIGHT REAR is helpful....

Keeping track of shifting from a physically big gear to a small gear can be tricky, and I still get it wrong occasionally even though on my bike, the little levers are pretty niftily intuitive: move the little lever to go to a little (physically) gear, and the big lever to move to a bigger one. I just say OOPS! as soon as I realize I've shifted the wrong direction, and shift again with the other lever!

-
I try to keep all of the gears in the middle because I can't change them very well. Every time I get to a hill, I think...can I make it to the other side in this gear? Because I am unlikely to be able to change while I am concentrating on not crashing on the downhill, and then trying to keep pedaling on the uphill. I can't figure out how (and when!) people change gears on hills. I'll be riding flat streets for as long as humanly possible. !

Something that helped me a lot with the gears: play with them a lot on the flats. That will help you get to know them. The more you play with them, the more your body will learn so that you don't have to think so hard about which lever to push to get to which gear. Listening to the bike helps here too -- that cross chaining thing, you can often do a little tweak to the front guy to make the noise go away!

If you have three rings up front, if you can get to the smallest one before you start up the hill, this will help make it easier to go up. Sounds like you've got a down before the up, though, and some folks like to build up as much momentum as possible before starting up on one of those, so they like to be in one of the bigger front rings -- more pedaling resistance. Then shift the front one down to as small as possible first, pretty much. It was a while before I even used my biggest front ring at all -- don't want to do that mashing thing! Also, gearing down before it gets hard to pedal on the up hill is a good idea. I kept trying to save a couple of gears for "what if" and found that it actually works better to get to the easiest one early!

Oh -- going down the hills -- I find that I feel more stable if I hold my knees kind of firm but not tense, close to the bike. Not exactly squeeze the frame, just close, maybe even gently touching with one knee, seems to reduce the wobbly feeling and vibration. I also coast for the most part going down hill, cuz sometimes it's hard to be in a gear that doesn't have you pedalling that crazy pedaling that doesn't really do anything but cause an unstable feeling!

-
Mostly, I keep telling myself...don't fall! I hate to be fearful. It makes me feel old, but crashing on a bike seems really scary to me. It's been years since I've ridden anything anywhere! !

This is a reasonable fear, in my opinion! We're not as close to the ground as we were when we were kids, and we don't bounce quite as well as we did back then either. We also don't heal as fast if we damage ourselves. The more you practice, though, the less you'll worry about it, I think!

Karen in Boise