"Jeanne" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:NYC XYZ said:Roger Zoul said:
Are you serious? All you do is pedal? Have you ever heard of muscle
fatigue? Pacing on climbs, etc? If you're not a cyclist, you have not
have
trained the muscles for cycling. You're making assumptions. Not all
centuries are flat, you know...the ones around here can have SERIOUS
climbing.Obviously I'm not talking about a jaunt through Stage Whatever of the
Tour de France over the Alps. But generally speaking, I just spin my
grannies. The most I've climbed seems to have been an 8% grade, which
doesn't sound like much but is supposed to be fairly steep --
especially on a recumbent! But in any case, I think my remarks still
apply: it's just one "step" in front of another, is all (again,
assuming it isn't a race).Quoted message said:Why do you assume this aloneness on a ride?
I conclude it because there can be no other explanation. It's not
physical -- "hard" isn't "impossible" (and there is a difference
between "hard" and "somewhat hard" and "very hard," etc.) -- so it must
be psychological. Well, if they had company, particularly good company
even, it wouldn't be so bad. So it must be the fact of being alone in
their "misery" which accounts for the sense of major accomplishment.Quoted message said:Have you ever attempted a ride with some serious climbing? At 230,
you're
going to have some serious pain making it up 9 to 12,000 ft of elevation
gain. Your legs will start showing signs of fatigue if you haven't
trained
them properly. It's not simply a matter of pedalling.Not sure what you have against the phrase "it's simply a matter of
pedalling" -- a bicycle involves pedalling, after all. Insofar as it's
to be powered, it's going to be powered by pedalling. As for what
powers the engine -- the rider -- well, that's various other things.
Other than food and water, it's psychological.And no, I haven't climbed 12K feet of elevation, I'm sure. But that's
neither here nor there. You can always take an extreme situation and
skew things that way. For the typical century, especially the ones
organized for the general riding public, it's just a matter of
pedalling.What you may not know is that on several well known century rides, 12K
feet of elevation climb is the norm (with some incredible descents). Are
they extreme century rides? I don't know. Lots of people ride them and I
would call them the general riding public. Sure you get the really
serious guys who finish under 6 hours but I would say many more take 10-12
hours to complete the rides. Maybe for the challenge, you should sign up
for one.I've ridden parts of the Bridge to Bridge Century that finishes on top of
Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina and the Assault on Mt. Mitchell
Century. I never finished either one. At some point, I just couldn't put
one pedal after another down but the rides were fun nonetheless.I think you're right about flat centuries to a certain extent. Some one
told me when I was a novice rider that if I could ride 40 miles, I could
do a century - it just took longer (much like your "Just pedal"
philosophy). But I needed to be able to ride 40 miles first. The first
day I went riding with a former roommate, we barely went 20 miles and we
were just exhausted.
Recumbent style of bikes are not happy doing a lot of climbing. However,
recumbents really shine on the flats. Hells Bells, if you fully fair a
recumbent, there is nothing any faster. But those damn hills will defeat us
every time.
Regards,
Ed Dolan the Great - Minnesota
aka
Saint Edward the Great - Order of the Perpetual Sorrows - Minnesota