Wooden legs and what I remembered - April 22, 2011

I’ll blame the single speed.

I spent all winter powering up hills and into the wind with one gear.  I think overall it gave me a lot more power to work with, but without gears I lost something: cadence.

The good thing is this is easy to get back.  I will grit my teeth and move a little slower next week and work to get my natural cadence up.  Right now I am hovering around 80rpms and I finished last year around 95rpms.  There is a whole lesson on the biology of how my body burns through energy and different advantages to each type of riding as well as the different muscle fibers, in simple terms, I need to spin at a higher rate in order to augment my low power.

This morning with my wooden legs I figured that I would be slow and hurting until I remembered this.  My power and speed were down (my big “pushing” muscles are still down) but I keep a high cadence, made good time and didn’t have any additional soreness.  Once I get my muscle memory back my additional power will pick up and I should become less fatigued over longer rides.

The other good thing I learned is that if I have burned out one type of muscle strands, I can switch to the other and nearly literally take all the stress off the first set.  Twice this morning I tried to power up a hill and both times my legs yelled at me, but as soon as I began to spin they were perfectly fine.  Spinning causes a higher aerobic effect and that seems to work well with my body genetics.

I should have a couple of days to recover all my muscles over the weekend (other things are taking place of riding) and hopefully with rested legs and remembering to spin I should be good to get a couple hundred miles in next week.  I really need it.  June is approaching!