Shifting advice

[Catrin]

I just came in from a 20 mile ride in lovely cool temps with no humidity! Such a nice relief - and I finally got chased by dogs but this isn't the thread for that

I tried to keep everyone's advice in the back of my mind and started experimenting. First I tried to turn off my "internal speedometer" and to ignore the real one as much as I could - to pay more attention to how my legs actually felt and to my cadence. I noted a couple of things that were interesting:

1. My knees were far happier with the big chain than small or middle - this was something of a surprise! I wound up, outside of the up-side of a couple of quite steep rollers - in the big chain and in 3 or 4 in the rear.

2. My cadence, outside of climbing those steep rollers, was over 90 much of the time!

3. As I downshifted on the upside of the rollers, my cadence was certainly better than in the past - though no faster - ummm- scratch this as I am supposed to ignore speedometer...

4. My trainer, and all of you very experienced and knowledgeable women were all correct! Not that I doubted that for one instant..

The problem, if there is one, is due to almost always riding by myself. I learn bad habits that way...

5. My knees feel much better than my last ride - though they didn't feel all that bad.

Oh yes, for some strange reason, this happened twice. When I was on the big chain and shifted the rear from 2 down to 1, I was suddenly in the middle chain. This did not make sense, but it shifted back to the big ring without a problem...