Yesterday I went back to cycling after breaking my arm and letting it recover. My lower body is fine despite not cycling for a long time but the left arm still feels vulnerable. I could feel it when changing gears and when going over bumps.
As silly as it sounds to wait for weeks before getting back on the bike I see that it was justified. When I tried to shift gears I could feel that the muscles for shifting gears have not entirely recovered. The bone has fused, but all of the muscles that were seldom used during my injury still need to grow back and strengthen.
Changing gear is so simple when you are feeling normal. You do it without noticing. Now there were instances when I felt that I was lacking the strength to push the lever.
I could also feel that my upper body was getting tired. I had to take a break or two during this ride. The longest break was when I was waiting for a person walking two horses to get off of the rural road I was on. I didn’t want to get kicked. I also had no reason to rush.
I took an unsurfaced road for part of the ride to avoid traffic. During this section of the ride I was slower than usual. I checked for potholes and had no intention of putting more strain than needed on the arm. I actually thought about turning back after this section.
On the straight road that goes down from the farm, past the observatory and down to the roundabout I didn’t pedal as hard as I could. I cruised instead.
We will see how I feel the next time I ride the bike. I expect it will feel better. I need to get my arm used to these strains, and to strengthen the muscles accordingly. At the end of this winter I should be back to normal. Imagine if i tried snowboarding with this weak arm.
Cycling in Switzerland requires the ability to go up and down hills. Some of the climbs are long and steep, others are short and steep, and yet more are shallow but long climbs. That’s where bike gears come into their own. The more gears you have the more precisely you can control the amount of effort you’re making. With a mountain bike the gears are designed to help with climbing. With road bikes they can be set to make hill climbs easier or harder.
Six Gears with a Brompton
A Brompton bike may have just three to six gears. I went for a ride on one yesterday, on some undulating swiss hills in Vaud, at the foot of the Jura. The first thing I noticed is that the steering is really nervous compared to a normal bike. That’s because the wheels are tiny, so the torque needed to turn the wheel is minimal. You need to focus a lot of thought on ensuring that you don’t oversteer. I think that Brompton bike wheels are a third the size of normal wheels, or maybe half as big. With a normal bike wheel steering is more sluggish, therefore it feels natural.
Bigger Gaps Between Gears
The second thing you notice with the Brompton is that the difference between gears is greater. The hard gear is really hard, so it doesn’t get used much on hilly terrain. You need to shift down to the second and third gears, to make cycling possible. The easiest gear was too easy on hills, but the middle gear made it more challenging. The result isn’t that I slowed down. I think it sped me up. A Brompton, on mountaineous roads, requires you to find the least worst gear, and find a speed that is sustainable. In my case that speed saw me cycling faster than I would, on a normal bike, not by choice, but by necessity. To go slower would make the gear harder, so once I had inertia I tried to maintain it.
No Drinking
Usually I have no problem drinking and cycling but with the Brpompton I was fully focused on trying to find the right gears, but also being careful not to oversteer. I kept both hands on the bars at all times. I didn’t feel comfortable reaching to have a drink. The Brompton is a different beast to most bikes. The fitter you are, as a cyclist, the more you can adapt to the challenge of riding it, but it would take a few more rides before I felt comfortable riding it, and taking a sip of water.
Average speed
I got up to 37.2 kp/h on the Brompton but my average speed was 17 km/h. Usually I am at 20+ kilometres per hour and my peak is closer to 50+ km/h. My total ascent was 223 meters, according to the Garmin Etrex SE. I don’t know how the effort compared to riding the usual bikes because I didn’t measure my heart rate with a garmin watch this time.
And Finally
Bromptons are not cheap, so it makes more sense to get a normal bike for the same price, or cheaper. I tried this experiment because I felt too lazy to load the bike into the car, if I didn’t then ride the bike due to weather or a change of plans. I can keep up with people on electric bikes, despite the difference in riding comfort and style. My proof of concept test was a success, but rationally cheaper normal bikes make more sense.
The High Tech world is not making us weak and weird. I believe that the opposite is true. According to Patrick Mustain in his article “Welcome to the Devolution: The High-Tech World Is Making Us Weak and Weird” for The Daily Beast he worries that modern technology and conveniences have taken the physical aspects out of our daily routine. We don’t need to clean clothes by beating them against a rock and we no longer need to clean dishes manually. We take the car from point A to point B and we take a lift to go up a floor or two.
“We find ourselves interacting with chairs and doors and walkways, and as a result, we get used to bending only forwards. Almost never backwards, never to the side, we don’t really rotate our hips very much.
This premise is false. This article ignores that there are a growing amount of climbing and bouldering gyms. This article ignores that there are an increasing number of via ferratas being built and that crossfit gyms are common. “But our evolutionary drive for acquiring cheap energy also makes us loath to unnecessarily spend it.” is a fallacy. Look at Strava, Sports Tracker, Movescount, Runkeeper, fitbit, Withings and other products. Each one of these not only tracks the effort that people are making on a weekly basis but congregates that data so that people can compare their workout to that of others. This implies that technology is encouraging people to move, to compete with friends, family or other sports enthusiasts.
There is some humour in the article. “I think any change in the direction of just moving more is better. You don’t have to take off your shirt and go climb a tree to get value.” It is not simply about moving more but about moving more energetically, more enthusiastically. If you’re walking down the street increase your stride length just a little and you will increase your heart rate and energy expenditure. When I walk up to the base of the Val De Tière via ferrata and when I walk up to the base of the Tour D’Aï via ferrata I am usually the first one, leading the way. I love endurance training so I forget about the group and I enjoy the hike. Once I am at the base I relax, I look at the landscape and I take photographs.
As a camera operator/photographer I need to be at least as fit as everyone else and if possible I need to have more energy. By having more energy I can go ahead of the group and document their effort as they make their way up or down a mountain.
Since I owned the Nokia N95 8GB model I have tracked more than a thousand sports activities. I have tracked skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, hiking, cycling, climbing, via ferrata, indoor training, sailing and swimming. It is thanks to the high tech world that I can track my progress and assess how well I am doing. It allows me to set goals and exceed them and it allows me to evaluate when to take breaks and when to continue pushing forwards.
I love technology but I still walked up five floors to get to my office. I almost never sit in public transport and I usually take the stairs or walk up escalators rather than stand around. Movement is an integral part of my daily routine so I do not accept the premise that high tech world makes us weak and weird.
So far this year I have been cycling for 680 km in 33hrs with a height gain of 6800 meters. In this time I have used my narrative clip 2 device to document the ride with a picture every 10-30 seconds as I want to focus on riding rather than other things. I like to have as high a moving time as possible so I usually stop once I get back to my starting point.
By cycling I see the landscape at a slower, more interesting speed. I see the roads, I smell the vegetation, I feel the heat and I feel the cold. I also discover small paths that I would not take in a car or on a scooter. In practicing this sport I get to know the landscape. I also get to see seasonal changes.
This year I have cycled in the rain, in the snow, in the wind and on days like today. Today it was sunny and there was no wind to fight against. It made the ride more pleasant.
The technology I took on today’s ride was my narrative clip 2 to take pictures of the bike ride, my Crosscall Odyssey+ phone, the Cateye Evo+ and finally the Suunto Ambit 3. I also took the Ricoh Theta S but never stopped to take pictures. For future rides I should fix it to the handle bars. I could bring you with me on my next bike ride. Of course I would keep just the interesting bits of the ride. I can throw away the rest.
I stopped playing Ingress a few years ago because of how much time it requires. I have started going on Ingress walks again – a 12km path to level 13 in yesterday’s case, because I’m combining the daily walk that I would do anyway, with listening to podcasts and audiobooks, anyway.
By walking and listening to audiobooks and podcasts I am constantly learning about new things. Recently I’ve been listening to current affairs podcasts, I listened to 13 minutes to the moon, I listened to podcasts about the Swiss Watch Industry and more. Every walk is a journey in learning. I also learn about the fifty objects that made the world and more.
I also listen to books when I walk. These aren’t the most inspiring of books but four of them were free, as part of the books I get by being an audible member via Audible originals. Every walk I go on is an opportunity to learn, without feeling that I am not as productive as I could be.
According to my blog stats, I should have lead with writing about the game Ingress, which I took a break from for years, because of how much time it takes to level up, especially when you live in the countryside.
Luckily as time has progressed so has the ability to suggest and have new portals approved. A 12-kilometre walk had three or four portals. Now it has twenty or thirty. This means that during a walk in the countryside it is worth playing Ingress. Going to a polluted city is no longer required. Even country bumpkins like me can play and progress.
By having portals in the countryside it also opens up the prospect of Ingress bike rides. Last week I cycled from Nyon to Rolle, and from Rolle I went up into the vineyards and I destroyed and captured portals. My health benefited because it was a 40km bike ride with four hundred meters of climbing in between vineyards and some of these climbs are steep.
That’s where you see that cycling in Spain has its advantages. I cycled up steep inclines without suffering or worrying I wouldn’t make it. I also cycled up those steep inclines clipped in. I don’t feel comfortable with cycling up steep hills when clipped in because I’m afraid that if I lose power in my legs I will lose forward momentum, not be able to unclip and fall.
Having said this the swiss hills are nothing compared to the Cumbre Del Sol climb. As you cycle up from Mercadona there is one bit of road that is so steep that you can’t start up again. I know because I made the mistake of stopping there and had to walk a hundred meters or so before I found a portion flat enough to start up again.
In Switzerland, you almost never find such gradients on roads, for the simple reason that it snows and water freezes. Snowploughs and other machines need to go up and down Swiss roads.
To get to level 13 I participated in an Ingress Saturday for the first time in years and I participated in two fielding events, to get one of the medals I was lacking the first time, and for the Didact Field Challenge medal currently taking place.
This month I visited 735 unique portals, discovered one portal, collected 4.7 million XM, walked 117 kilometres (low because most of my walking is without playing ingress) and more. I could bore you with the stats but I’d bore myself too. I also spent three weeks in Geneva as part of a favour for a friend so during my daily walks I got back in the habit of playing Ingress.
I don’t make time to play Ingress. I take advantage that my walks and bike rides take me by Ingress portals and play. By combining Ingress with cycling I go down many more roads than I would otherwise go down. I explore villages that I have no reason to stop in. I treat cycling as a journey, rather than a challenge to get segment personal records. I slow down., to experience the locations. It results in me having a more relaxed bike ride.
Ingress walks are also interesting because local people, who know about features that could be portals suggest them, and as a result, we see a portal off to the side of where we’re going, and we investigate. We capture the portal but we also increase our mental map of the area where we are walking.
Ingress, for a while, was a game for people who lived in town and cities. If you lived in the countryside you had to make time to play. Today Ingress can be played in short bursts and yield better results. It has been from a “chronophage” (waste of time/time consuming)activity, as french speakers would call it, to being, for lack of a better word, integral to our daily activities.
The Return on Investment of time, and distance traveled, to play Ingress, even in the countryside has decreased to the point where it is feasible to level up, without devoting half a day. One hour yields the same result.
Yesterday I rode an e-bike over 5km and played with the eco, touring, sport and turbo modes. I experimented with the gears and I experimented with a variety of gradients and surfaces. Through this trial I got to understand how e-bikes work.
Gaining momentum
E-bikes are great for helping you get up to 25 kilometres an hour and after that, if you have the strength then you can ride the bike at over 25 kilometres per hour for as long as you last. When you start to get tired the engine will kick in again when you slip down to below 25 kilometres per hour and assist you for the rest of the journey.
Bosch engines are gentle, they assist you from a standing start, following your pedal force to gradually get you up to 25 kilometres per hour and above. Once you reach 25 kilometres per hour and above the engine cuts out and it’s a normal bike.
Weight and gearing
E-bikes can easily weigh 23kg or more so having the right gears is important. I tried riding an e-bike without changing gears for the first few minutes and I was able to move it along. When I started to shift gears I saw how light the e-bike felt. This is important for uphill segments if the battery dies.
Two types of engine
There are two types of engines. There are gentle engines such as Bosch, to give you a more pleasant cycling feel and then you have other engines, such as Yamaha and others that are meant to be more forceful. In a sports supermarket, I tried another e-bike and that engine was punchier in that you pedalled a quarter of a crank rotation and it threw you to 25km per hour. The latter option felt more like driving a scooter than riding a bike. It defeats the purpose.
Summary
E-bikes assist you in getting to 25 kilometres an hour and if you’re a strong rider the engine will sit in the background and kick in again when you get tired. Although the bike’s engine is limited to 25km per hour it is not like a car or scooter. The speed limit is for the engine, not your pedalling power. If you’re a strong cyclist you can easily reach a higher speed. This implies that on downhill segments you could reach your usual speeds of 50+km per hour.
As a next step I would like to do a full range test, from Nyon to Geneva and back along the roads I take on a bike. Those are undulating and there are moments that get exposed to strong headwinds. I would also ride the route du Lac. If it survives those routes I would be confident to replace my petrol driven scooter with an e-bike.
I could opt for a 45 kilometre per hour bike but I’ve found that I love my 2-5 hour bike rides so an e-bike that assists up to 25km/h is sufficient.
Although the ride from L’Isle to Romainmôtier feels easy because I’m cycling slower than my maximum it is still tiring, as is illustrated by two points. The first is that the trip burns 800 kilocalories according to the Apple Watch, which is significant, but also because by the end of the ride I feel tired.
Pace Setting
When I cycle by myself I ride to my maximum, and eventually by the end of the ride I hit the wall, and then I make an effort to make it home. When riding with people on electric bikes, the theoretical limit is 25 kilometres per hour but the practical speed, at the moment is 14 kilometres per hour, including the stop for coffee and more.
Gradual Progress
As people on electric bikes get fitter, so they can pedal with more force and reach a higher speed on their electric bikes, which results in someone on a normal bike having to make more effort. You go from a gentle ride with an effort to keep an eye on the people behind, and allowing them to keep up without straining too much. As they get fitter, the speed increases, and the effort on the normal bike increases.
Racing E-Bikes
Although I am not racing the e-bikes, I am pacing myself according to their capabilities, rather than my own. When I was riding up a hill yesterday I noticed that I was breathing quite heavily and that my heart rate got up to 130 to 150. That is not my maximum, but it is an effort. As those on e-bikes get faster, so the effort I will put out will increase. Eventually I might need an e-bike to keep up.
And Finally
Using Saturday as a rest day made sense. It allowed me to recover for a day, before making a large effort once again. With 400 meters of climbing this is not an easy route and should be treated with respect.
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