April 13, 2010

• Amusement

  Was back on the Spin bikes last night.  Trying hard to regain lost fitness since I stopped cycling since Oct last year.  I saw so many people pushing hard on the bike.  Some, I can understand (small sized girls) but geez, at least now I understand why I am "fast" on the bike - slow by my own considerations but relatively fast to a huge number of the population who consider a 40km time trialist going at 33kmh to be "fast" - one reason why I stopped taking part in OSIM is because I am trying to get past the "fastest" 36kmh people hogging the rightmost lanes (they assume no one else will overtake them, or at least take their time getting out of the way, and are actually the ones costing me the most time, whereas those going slower than 33kmh generally keep to the left) when I am zipping by between 40-44kmh trying to figure out how to overtake these guys and ending up jamming brake and re-accelerating all the time.

  The new Spin bikes have an obvious problem - the lack of grip - and thank goodness for the last many years, we've had good ones else I don't know how I would ever have trained for Genting.  At it's "hardest" which you can normally find after trying to make three turns of the knob and not getting any extra resistance, I can still ride during my base stage and yes, at my untrained stage, I was already using 90% of the resistance.  It's good because it limits the amount of power I am generating during my base training, forcing me to go low... but when I move to the next stage, these bikes are pretty useless.  I may have to make Orchard my permanent spin place where there's still a couple of old bikes (I hope).

  Thus when I see people huffing and puffing on these new bikes, it becomes even more obvious than usual, how much power they are really generating.

  Last night, I was dripping with sweat on the outside.  But I have learnt that generating power can only be seen in two ways
  1.  flywheel is hot
  2.  my socks are drenched
  Neither happened last night despite all the sweat I was generating on the outside.  I also know myself, being my first ride in weeks, I was basically not generating power - at least not much by my standards, but I guess it must have looked like I was.  If I continue at this rate, by the end of the week, I am going to be pounding on the handlebar trying to find more resistance from the bike.

  • 8:03 pm
  • 1 Comment