Good Idea:
Riding your bike to work.
Bad Idea:
Riding your mountain bike to work.
Okay, it wasn't a bad idea, but it was a horrible ride home. Mostly, it was the headwind. I ran out of steam a few miles from home. The wind just sucked everything out of me. The last leg of my ride home was just slow, crampy and painful.
Before all that fatigue set in, I was still only averaging about 10 MPH into the wind, despite sweating up a storm. My riding position on that bike, it's gearing and tires, everything combines to make for a pretty inefficient trip. Fun, but inefficient. I don't think I'm going to be riding the full round trip on the Sorrento too often. It just takes too much effort, and isn't worth the trade-off. When it gets really cold out, I'm probably going to slip back into bike/bus mode full time.
I'm gonna go crash for a few hours. I feel like a puddle of goo.
Random Tunage:
Orbital - Style
Moonman - Galaxia
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Good Idea, Bad Idea
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7 comments:
dude you gotta get some slicks on that sorrento. knobs be the slow.
I've got slicks on the Outlook, but they're slick slicks, zero tread and don't fare well in rain and mud. What sucks is that I could have taken the road bike today, because all the bad stuff burned off before I got out of work.
What's the hurry? 10 MPH is fine on a bike.
You need a set of wheels set up with road tires like the Michelin Transworld and in as skinny as you can get on the rims 26 X 1.50 comes to mind.
This way when you want to mountian flip out the wheels to the one with knobs and when you know your going to be roading it then the ones with city tires.
Guys, keep in mind that I put the wheelset on the Outlook together in such a way that it will work on my Sorrento. They're Forte SlickCity ST tires. 1.25" wide, totally slick. They're smooth and mean on pavement and work well on the Sorrento. The point is that I was using the knobbies specifically because I thought I'd need to fight rain and possibly mud on the way home.
Usually, the Outlook wears the slicks and if there's some reason I don't use my road bike, the Outlook comes out to play and it does pretty well. They don't work well in bad weather, though.
I don't know why you'd need knobbies in the rain (except if you do go through mud). You're right, mountain bikes are highly inefficient on the road, although I discovered on a recent 35-ish mile road ride on my mountain bike that I got used to it after a while and subconsciously must have adjusted my riding style, because it started to feel more natural.
On the other hand, with a headwind, you're basically screwed.
I was in Burlington, VT last week. Took a 20 mile ride along Lake Champlain, the ten miles out were amazingly fun and easy. Upon returning, I dealt with some notorious headwind. Add the fact that I am now just an occasional rider, I was wasted by the end of the ride.
My confidence is up though, I believe I can do the 26 mile round trip to work and back in good time.
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