Bikes are Cool...Running...?

Not long after suffering the indignity of having my bike stolen from my back door, I got a new one. Well, it isn't exactly new. It was my friend Kyle's bike and he got it after his mom decided she didn't like it. It is a few years old and has spent its share of time outside, alone and probably a little sad.Still, it is a solid bike made by a good company--Specialized. It may not be new, but it is new to me (and, after all, this is really just about me). Just a few short hours after I discovered that my mountain bike was stolen I was able to pick this "new" one up. The tires were flat, the sprockets a bit rusted, and the cables were frayed. Otherwise, it is a great bike in pretty good shape. After some lubricant, some tire pumping, and reconnecting the brakes (interestingly Kyle found a problem with the brakes and his solution was to disconnect them entirely) it rode just fine. No, it rode like a dreamsicle...sweet, smooth, and cool.

In case you didn't know, not all bikes are the same. I had a mountain bike that was made to be ridden up and down hills on trails. It had a short, stocky frame with fat, knobby tires and straight handlebars. The cool professional road cyclists ride different bikes. They are a bit longer, have lighter frames and much narrower tires and those nifty curved handle bars. Rather than being a mountain bike or a road bike, the bike I got from Kyle is a hybrid....a bike with some of the characteristics of both. Now, there are hybrids and there are hybrids. Some hybrids take a road bike and give it a more rugged frame and wider tires, making a cool and flexible kind of bike. The bike Kyle gave me is the Love Boat kind of hybrid, designed for pleasure cruising in comfort and style. It has the handle bars set high so you ride upright and a big, fat, cushy saddle (if you are cool you refer to a bike seat as the saddle). It is a built for leisure cruising, which is why I've taken to calling it the Granny Cruiser. Now I am not going to pretend that I am a professional cyclist or a competitive cyclist or even a particularly fit novice cyclist. I do aspire to be at least the latter and that takes some fairly serious, long-distance riding. And really requires something approaching a road bike--something designed to be ridden on the roads quickly and over long distances. Sure, my mountain bike would have gotten me quite a ways today toward that goal, but I eventually would have wanted something designed to be ridden on roads. The great thing about the Granny Cruiser is that I can turn it into something that will operate more like the kind of hybrid that is designed to be ridden more seriously.

The day I got the Granny Cruiser from Kyle I quickly got it in riding condition. On Monday, I took the Granny Cruiser on our maiden voyage--a 20-mile ride around my normal loop. I was aware that the thinner tires with a smoother tread might actually allow me to go a little faster than I normally do on my mountain bike. Somewhere along the ride I decided I wanted to improve my average speed...and I figured this new bike would help me do that. I busted my hump the whole ride...kept pedaling down the hills, pushed hard up the hills, and adopted a low "time trial" position as often as I could. Despite my best efforts my speed didn't increase. In fact, I went a little slower on this 20-mile ride than I had averaged on my longer ride on Friday (13.4 mph vs 13.7 mph). Now I am as used to failure and backsliding as the next guy, but still I was a bit disappointed. I really thought I "ate up" that 20 miles in record time. There's a life lesson in that. If you think you've done something especially well or expect to do something especially well--you probably didn't or won't.

The Granny Cruiser is a fairly big and heavy bike. In fact, it might be a bit heavier than my mountain bike had been. That may have contributed some to the speed at which I rode. Also, the handle bars are set up high so that you have to sit upright when you ride. When you are just tooling around with an ice cream or beer in your hand, this isn't a big deal. When you are trying to go fast over a long distance sitting upright turns your chest into a sail. .The problem is that the sail doesn't help you go faster, it actually catches the wind, creates drag, and slows you down. I also found that the upright posture decreased the power of my pedaling and made constant, hard pedaling uncomfortable. I think some of my pace result was caused by the fact that I was riding upright. By the time I had finished riding I was convinced that I had to lower the bars and raise the seat before I rode it a long ways again.

Yesterday I took the Granny Cruiser to the bike shop to get some new shifter cables, lower the handlebars, and replacege then bent ones with a straight bar. The straight bar will allow me to ride with my torso more parallel to the ground, reducing wind drag. It also changes the positioning of my legs, producing more power with more comfort. After I see how the new bar configuration works I'll look into a new saddle. I like the one that is on there, but I think I'd be better off with a mountain bike saddle. It will be lighter than the barkalounger on there now, but still cushier than a true racing saddle--a good compromise until I can ride off a bit more of the junk in my trunk. Is it ironic that the less cushy my tushy, the less cushy the seat? Somewhere in there something's got to start hurting.

I was really hoping that my bike would be done today because I wanted to go on two 20-mile rides this week, followed by something longer on the weekend. At this point, I won't get the bike back until Friday night so I won't make that second shorter ride before the long weekend ride. To stay with my plan in some form I am left with an unappealing alternative--running. I am going to get up early tomorrow morning and take a nice run through the streets of Shandon. I'll join the rest of the Shandonistas on parade--the dog walkers, the grannys, the health impaired, and the road warriors (serious joggers with expensive shoes and heart monitors strapped to their chests). It'll be interesting to see how far I can run. I am thinking that if I can run more than 3 miles it will be a miracle. It is tempting to run the loop I usually ride but my brain thinks 7 miles is too far. I won't really know how bike riding translates into running fitness until I try it. As long as I don't psych myself out, I assume I'll be fine. Who knows, maybe by this time tomorrow I'll want to be a runner instead of a cyclist.

I doubt it. As Chet says, bikes are cool.

P.S. I went on my “run” this morning and learned a few valuable, painful lessons. First, my biking fitness does not translate in any way, shape, or form to running fitness. Running is a million times harder. With a bike you have those wheels and those gears and sprockets turning power into forward motion. I don’t know the physics but I do know that the energy you expend for each push of the pedal takes you a lot further on a bike than every step you take running. Gravity helps out a lot more on a bike and you can hide from your pain by not pedaling down hills. With running, you need every step to get to the next one and its just raw muscle power propelling you. It was brutal.

I ran (and walked) just over 3 miles and it took about 33 minutes—I averaged 11 minutes per mile. When I ran in high school I could consistently run 6.5 minute miles. Sure, I am not in high school anymore…remember it’s not the years, it’s the miles. I felt every kind of pain that I remember from my entire running career---tightness, pain in the Achilles I hurt my last year of high school, arm and shoulder fatigue. Oh yeah, and I almost threw up, too.

I sort of anticipated having a difficult time, but I didn’t imagine it would be that hard. In fact, I may have psyched myself out just a bit. I really didn’t think I could run very far and it turned out that I couldn’t run very far. One thing I didn’t anticipate was being passed by jogging grannies with dogs tied to their waists. That really didn’t help my morale much. I honestly think the pathetic runners like me just don’t show their faces on the mean streets of Shandon. They’ve been humiliated enough that they run on a treadmill in the safety of a gym or in a dark, secret room of their house. Maybe they have a secret club I could join.