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Sep. 23rd, 2009 06:30 amWhat was happening with me yesterday? Oh, right:
When H took his cycling class on Sunday, after only a couple of hours the instructors realized that the back brake was tweaked and was constantly pressed against the back wheel, so they disengaged it completely and he just used the front brake.
After he told me that I kind of remembered the nice bike tech at REI telling me something about the back brake when they tuned it up for me, but I decided at the time that it wasn't that important (I'd dropped enough money on the tune up to not want additional work on the brakes and I wanted my bike back and I could still ride it, it just took more work, but more work just means a harder workout, right? I think that was my reasoning) and I was mostly using it on the wind trainer anyway so a little extra resistance was easy to ignore.
I had forgotten all that by the time I took it out to ride on the street and only made a mile and a quarter round trip, very slowly, and wore myself all out. Thought I was just extremely out of shape, which was not exactly wrong, but not all that accurate. We decided to take the bike down to a little used parking lot over by the boat ramp yesterday afternoon so H could practice without worrying about traffic, etc., and I rode down and back, about a mile each way, and it was like no distance at all, and I went almost twice as fast without hardly trying. Neat! I may try riding to the grocery store today, it's only 2 miles each way. I was kind of waiting until I was finished adding time to my daily dog walking to work on biking, but I'm kind of excited to try it...
- 13:51 So much easier to ride the bike when the back brake is not constantly engaged! And I go faster. Amazing! #fb
When H took his cycling class on Sunday, after only a couple of hours the instructors realized that the back brake was tweaked and was constantly pressed against the back wheel, so they disengaged it completely and he just used the front brake.
After he told me that I kind of remembered the nice bike tech at REI telling me something about the back brake when they tuned it up for me, but I decided at the time that it wasn't that important (I'd dropped enough money on the tune up to not want additional work on the brakes and I wanted my bike back and I could still ride it, it just took more work, but more work just means a harder workout, right? I think that was my reasoning) and I was mostly using it on the wind trainer anyway so a little extra resistance was easy to ignore.
I had forgotten all that by the time I took it out to ride on the street and only made a mile and a quarter round trip, very slowly, and wore myself all out. Thought I was just extremely out of shape, which was not exactly wrong, but not all that accurate. We decided to take the bike down to a little used parking lot over by the boat ramp yesterday afternoon so H could practice without worrying about traffic, etc., and I rode down and back, about a mile each way, and it was like no distance at all, and I went almost twice as fast without hardly trying. Neat! I may try riding to the grocery store today, it's only 2 miles each way. I was kind of waiting until I was finished adding time to my daily dog walking to work on biking, but I'm kind of excited to try it...