A Fine Time To Miss The Fat Tire Bike – Addendum 1
This is so bizarre to me; On my road bike I’ve got one of the hardest saddles my bike shop carries and it feels like silk on my butt. A top notch Bontrager gel mountain bike saddle and I’m literally stinging after 10 miles or so. I’m going to have to start tinkering with that thing a little bit to see if I can’t get my but in a better position. For one, I’ve gotta nose it up just a little bit and I’m going to have to look into the height – something is just off…
Anyway, I took the road bike out this morning after yesterday’s debacle. Lowering my saddle one millimeter the other day made a huge difference on my ride this morning. By normal standards I was right on the money at 19.7 mph average and I actually finished feeling better than when I started. A sure sign that I’ve got it locked in just right.
I forgot to mention in my little blurb about tinkering around on my bikes… I checked my hood alignment on my bars the other day and found that one of my hoods was about 1/8″ too high on the right side. I’ve been having an impossible time looking over my left shoulder after more than 15 or 16 miles because I would develop a “crick” in the right side of my neck… Well, now I know why. I was putting an uneven amount of pressure on my right arm because I didn’t have to reach quite as far to the hood. Now that I’ve got that properly straightened out, no more crick in my neck.
I used to think all of those people who talked about their bikes in terms of millimeters were nuts. I was wrong – they matter, every last one in some cases..
A Fine Time To Miss The Fat Tire Bike…
Some days luck just chooses to look the other way. I wrote yesterday, “…and the switch will get me onto the back roads where I can enjoy a little serenity and shelter from the daily traffic grind of my normal route…besides, I really am missing my mountain bike a bit”.
That said, I jumped on the old fat tire bike yesterday for a lively 15.5 mile ride on the back roads. By the third mile I began to realize how soft I’d become riding my road bike so much. And on the fourth mile, lady luck smacked me in the melon. It turns out, yesterday was the day that the county road commission was grating and treating back roads in my neck of the woods. Unfortunately I hit the back roads after the grate and before the treatment so it was like riding on dry cement powder. I was kicking up a rooster tail at 16 mph. Add to that a choking dust cloud with every passing car and my ride was sucking pretty good. I maintained 16 mph average for about 13 of the miles before the powder became too much. I slowed it down and just cruised back.
My daughter took a photo after I got back:
The ride was so nasty that I had to breathe through my nose just in the hope that my nose hair would do its job and filter out some of the dust.
This is going to be a busy weekend, so it’ll be an 18 miler this morning, a full slate of running and riding tomorrow with the awesome weather we’re supposed to have and possibly, gasp, a day off on Sunday – my sister is getting married… YES!
Fit Recovery 