Greg Olmstead
A few years ago I took up cycling to get back in shape. What started out as 5-10 mile rides became 50-75 mile rides. These days, I train for double centuries and brevets. Because I'm 6'9" and 225, I don't expect to finish ahead of riders who are younger stronger, and lighter, but I'm always trying to find ways to shave time of my rides.
When I'm not riding, I build software to help people who work with kids with autism. You can find my software at
www.mobilethinking.com. You can email
me if you want.
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Today was the first day I went out on a training ride on my new PowerCranks. I bought a used pair in August, but the older clutch didn't like me standing up on them when they were fully extended to about 200mm. So, I bought a new pair with the stronger clutch. For the last month, I was riding on my fixed cranks. When I went out, I was struck by a couple things:
1) At the end of the 4 or 5 months that I trained on PCs I was quite comfortable keeping my pedals 180 degrees apart. After a month on fixed cranks, and then back to PCs, that skill noticeably diminishes. I really had to concentrate to keep them synchronized this morning. This tells me that I probably wasn't as efficient as I could have been on my brevet. Fixed cranks can really mask inefficiency.
2) Muscles that used to not be sore after long rides on PCs were a little bit sore this morning after a month on fixed cranks. During the brevet that I rode I caught myself relying on my quads. It was easy enough to correct, but I think that the longer I would have ridden on fixed cranks the less able I would have been able to correct that kind of thing.
