After a 5 year hiatus from riding PC's I am back on them again, and this time for good!  During the past 5 years I have had the opportunity to ride them every once in a while during trade shows but no serious riding, just short 30-60 second demonstrations.  Todays ride was short 10.5-11 mile and this is what I noticed:

1. My brain remebers how to pull up and pedal in circles.
2. Regular cranks still feel weird.
3. My high cadences are for now a thing of the past.
4. Getting out of the saddle is as easy as it was in the past!
5. The extra 45 lbs make riding a little more difficult (208lbs current / 163lbs racing weight).

What I cannot do is to duplicate my seated and out of the saddle efforts as demonstrated in this video from 2001.  I know that my lack of activity in recent years will result in some serious pain during the next few sessions.


However,  I do have a plan in order to get back to those performance levels:

1. Get up to 40 mile rides by the end of September.
2. Once I get to 40  miles I will work on  riding at higher cadences in my Tues, Thurs, and Sat work-outs.
3. Mon, Wed and Fri workouts will focus on building a bigger base with lower rpm rides.
4. Once I reach 90rpms for 40 miles, I will add ankle weights (more about this later).

I will keep all of you posted about the progress for the next several months.  My daughter Chiara will join me in  these initial rides until school starts after which she will continue to accompany  me on week-end training rides.  If you notice closely at the video, the bike rack that was on the bike in the video was the base of her child carrier way back when she was 35-40 lbs and I used to ride my PC bike in the hills with her in tow.



One interesting finding is that Chiara (9 yrs old) was able to get out of the saddle 2 times even if for only 1 revolution.  How nice not to have any bad pedaling habits.  If you notice closely, we have modified her bike with an older set of PC's to 150mm in length.

Till next time, keep on riding!