Single minded speed

You know, I thought I had written this up before but a quick search of my own blog turned up nothing.

And that was a Google search, not the god-damned awful WordPress search. Linkedin, Facebook, WordPress – it doesn’t matter what, you are better off searching them with Google.

I started riding daily to work in (a guess) 2003 – so over a decade ago.

The first three months was on old rattler I had had in storage (mum’s garage) since my uni days.

I then bought a second hand racing bike off a friend, an old steel number from the early 1990’s.

That lasted a couple of years or so until bike envy seduced me into building my own carbon fiber road bike with top of the range SRAM running gear. It weighs less than 7 kg fully loaded. I built it myself with parts sourced out of the back of the factory in Taiwan (the frame) and Ebay. It cost me less than $1,500 for a bike that would retail for $10,000.

That is bloody expensive paint that the cafe racers buy into.

A friend, a lawyer with an ego, was about to buy a bike and I warned him of the cost of the paint job. He went ahead and paid for paint anyway. When quizzed he argued that a more experienced cycling colleague (he is part of a weekend warrior pack) explained to him that the paint represents ‘quality control’ and this ensures that the frame won’t snap in two like the ‘no-names’ frame that I have. Geez, all these frames are from the same handful of factories in Taiwan that OEM them to paint-job brands!

The real reason he paid for paint is to be a proper paid-up member of the pack. Lycra, potbelly and all. It’s just so important to fit in. Or to not fit in to their Lycra, collectively.

Back to the point of this article. This carbon bike marked my transfer to cycling cleats. I love the things since you have so much more power due to the push and pull effect. In the interests of staying alive in Sydney traffic I used Bebop cleats which are about 10x easier to get in and out of compared to the generally available numbers.

After riding this bike for a number of years I developed a problem with my Achilles and calf muscles. To cut a long story short, the repetitive action (the cadence) was shortening certain muscles and I wasn’t stretching enough to counteract this. So I then started stretching, which fixed the problem. But it’s just one more thing you have to do in a day that you would rather not.

Moving on, about two years ago, for no apparent reason I moved to a steel single speed bike which is very highly geared. This added about 10 minutes (only) to my daily hour or so of cycling. The upside was a bike I could leave anywhere without fear of theft (outside the pub for example), more exercise and a bike which has virtually zero maintenance. Those dérailleur gears on road bikes need constant tinkering, and who wants to become a bike mechanic?

There was one very unexpected benefit of the single speed. I decided not to use cleats on it (although I do have double sided pedals – one side is cleated and and the other not) which means I am pushing only. Together with the requirement to stand on the bike up hills, it totally ruins your cadence. But that also means that none of your muscles get overworked and hence the daily stretching regime is not required hence pulling back the 10 minutes deficit on the road.