6/8/09

calibrating.

good ride yesterday, but something felt....off.
I've been riding well, but just didn't feel 100%
confident, thought it might be the slightly
raised bar, or different geometry w/ the newly
installed fork.

at issue was this unnerving sensation of riding
'blind'. the normally predictable, wasn't. think
about where these episodes occured..logs, short
techy ups where you need to bring on the power
there, there and there, while picking the oh so
right line, time the low pedal to avoid the high
points. just wasn't quite clicking.

thought some more...the gear? always feared
changing it. changing it on the fix means you're
changing the length of your stride, everywhere.
play with numbers, never really worked 'em out
with this in mind....

qwik google reveals ~91.1" circum for a 29er tire.
32:19 gear rolls out to 153" per turn of the pedal.
32:18 rolls out to 162"...

9" difference. hmm, that's enough to mess with
ya, heal now lands where ball of foot used to,
takes more of a shwerve to allign the timing into
logs, a bit bigger flick, and the move needs
to start from further out.

now that I got my head wrapped around it, time
to adapt, the ninja needs practice.

ready to get Stoopid?

3 comments:

brett said...

Wow, you know, it's kinda cool that as you lose tech, you can think a bit less, or perhaps it's better stated that you think in different ways. Lose gears, no longer think about shifting, but start to think more about terrain and flow and power and line. Lose coasting, and that ups the ante even further with looking ahead, keeping flow, and planning moves in advance. Amazing what a gear change will do at that stage. I never thought about it before, either.

camps said...

Wonder how many of those pesky logs will be in your way at Breck?

mike said...

been thinking alot about this post since finding your blog. just started taking my fixed cross to the woods. nothing scary yet, not even 'real' single track... but plenty of roots and rocks and such.

unless you start a ride from the exact same spot, and move through the trail on the exact line, running the same gear will land you in the same spot (with same size tires...) but change it up - and somehow manage to magically hit everything noted just right - and yes, everything is off.

so, how does one time the spin for the terrain - as it is controlled by wheel flow... not much that i've found i can do with it - aside from wiggle a bit here and there on a line as i approach certain pedal strike or bottom bracket catchiness...

ponderous. is there something i'm missing?