Cycling - A New Found Form of Cardio
As avid motorcyclists, we're always looking for ways to improve our motorcycling experience. This can be anything from better suspension, better brakes, a better seating position, better throttle response, that perfect corner, anything at all. It's similar to the quest for nirvana. I guess you could say it's like a search for enlightenment. I could write on and on about this topic (an maybe I just gave myself an idea for another article!). In the mean time, I'm writing this article about bicycling and our quest for ever improving cardio and endurance on the track with our motorcycles.
If you watch any motorcycle road racing, you will find that serious road racers all use the same form of cross training - cycling. Why is this you may ask? At first, I myself didn't entirely get it. From my perspective, I could get the same benefit from any number of exercises. However, watching videos from the likes of Ben Bostrom will give some valuable insight as to why this is the case:
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The other day, I went with a friend to go mountain bike riding. This was to be the first time I've been back on a bicycle in 15 years. Prior to that, I had actually never ridden on a trail, period. All of the riding I had done had been around the playground/park area in the town homes I grew up in back home in Houston. We went to the Rowlett Creek Preserve Mountain Bike Trail in Garland, Texas. All total, we rode 11.75 miles. It took us about an hour and 45 minutes of total riding time with about a 15 minute rest in there. We rode a northern loop first of about 8 miles then the southern loop second of about 3.75 miles. I was quite the nervous one too. I was worried I would be holding the other two riders up. As it turns out...I did. The seat was really too tall for me, making it difficult to put down the force necessary. I had a hard time grasping the concept of no front brake and instead use mostly rear brake. This is due to the fact that I'm a motorcyclist at heart. On a motorcycle, the rear brake is weak (by design) that you use mostly your front. On a bicycle if you do this, you're going to tuck the front end, and end up in a face plant. Once I started to grasp this concept, I found I was able to carry a lot more speed more consistantly. Another issue I had was shifting gears. The set up on the bike I was riding was one where you shift both up and down using the right thumb. I just couldn't remember which lever was for a higher gear and which one was for a lower gear. To add to that, I never could seem to get changed to the correct gear in time for the chain to move over and be set before I came up to the next obsticle. Naturally, this created issues with being able to complete obsticles. This only added to my frustrations. However, it allowed me to learn, that's for sure.
From there, I decided that I did indeed want to get into cycling on a more regular basis. However, being that we live at least 30 minutes from any decent mountain biking, and being that I'm a speed junkie, I wanted a road bike. Turns out that Monte was in the same boat. We both realized that being able to walk out of our front door, hop on the bike, and go would make things a lot easier. Monte started searching on Craigslist and stumbled upon the following bike:
The previous owner had actually upgraded from this bike so he was wanting to part with it to recoup some of his money. He had recently replaced all of the component set with all Ultegra just a year ago. The wheels were also upgraded from what the bike came with so they're lighter and stiffer. The bike weighs in at around 16 lbs. if I remember correctly. The only down side? The wheels are 650s. Oh well. This gets us on a bike and let's us start to learn and figure out what we really want. It lets us get all of the gear, which isn't cheap either, and let's us get into better shape in the process. For the price we paid, we essentially bought a frame and got some nice wheels and a component set for free. We needed to change out the seat, buy some pedals and cleats and swap out the steering head and get a shorter stem and more narrow bars since we're a lot shorter than the guy we bought the bike from. What's funny is that he even agrees that he was entirely too tall for this frame size and had to adapt the bike to fit him.
Thus far, I've fallen in love. Of all of the bikes that we rode in parking lots this one is the smoothest, most likely due to the full carbon frame. We're still not sure if this one will end up being mine or Monte's and we probably won't know until it comes time to purchase a second bike. In either case, we both find time to ride and when we both want to ride at the same time, we call up some friends who happen to have some extra bikes and we all go ride together.
Here's to a new found form of cardio and a new found passion!
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