Had a good swim and bike today. Did a few drills in the pool, and then got dressed for some biking tips and then a short bike ride (around 10 miles). Since my poor bike is a really old piece of wrought iron, I had some difficulty keeping up with the leader. But the bike pedals really help. Anyhoo, here were the tips:
- Keep your knees on top of your feet, don't let them come out while pedaling
- Anticipate the gear shifts, i.e. if you are going towards a hill, shift to a lower gear ratio before you hit the incline
- When you shift, don't just think about changing one gear at a time, think of the gear ratio. This might mean shifting both the front and the back gears at once. They showed us a chart that looked like the one below
- Let your legs tell you when you shift, if they feel heavy shift to a lower gear ratio, if you are bouncing up and down shift to a higher gear ratio
- Keep your legs turning as much as possible, even when you are coasting. Not turning them can lead to building up waste material in your legs
- The optimal cadence, i.e. pedals per minute is around 85 - 95. This also happens to be the same as the optimal cadence for running, i.e you should take 85 - 95 steps per minute. The goal is to be within 80 - 100 pedals per minute and over time build a sense of always being in the optimal range
So that's that. Looking forward to not doing anything tomorrow, Monday, the rest day.
Graph taken from: http://phys.csuchico.edu/~eayars/gearing.shtml
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