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Plague Diary, In Which I Neep in Bicycle
Sep. 11th, 2020 07:19 pmSo, I stayed off my bike for a whole four days. Couldn't stand it, today, went for short ride. This may or may not have been a bad idea. I was planning on waiting until a thigh brace came, and it is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, but, well. Patience may be a virtue, but it sure ain't my virtue, is what I'm saying, here. I have acquired a number of tech and non-tech toys for my bike, and I'm gonna just neep randomly about them. If this stuff bores you, really, there's no reason to read farther, I promise.
Safety vest: I got a very cheap, bright yellow with reflective stripes, mesh safety vest which I wear if I bike after dark. It does make me vastly more visible, which is a good thing. It also has four pockets, and I am keeping my headlamp in one of them. The headlamp also functions, when not attached to the bike, as a pretty nice flashlight, which has been invaluable for locking and unlocking my bike in the dark.
Speaking of which, headlamp and taillight: I bought cheap ones off Amazon. The headlamp has an option of two levels of intensity, the 400 and I think 200 lumens. 200 lumens is really quite sufficient. One can also set it to blinky, but I don't. Even with the bicycle basket in the way, it does provide enough light to miss small potholes and such. It has a rechargeable battery via USB. It is entirely adequate, and also came with a red taillight that takes CR 2032 batteries, and does a steady red, a slow or a fast blinky. I usually put it on slow blinky. These, plus the safety vest, plus the red blinky on the back of my bike helmet, make me feel highly visible after dark. So far, no one has run into me. Yay.
Urban Biker App: David found an app for Android phones called Urban Biker which will keep track of your route, and give you speed and duration and a lot of other data. The speed is an average based on GPS data. It allows you to set up a number of different profiles, and also has profiles for walking, driving, scooters, and so on. It also doesn't share your data unless you ask it to. I've been using it pretty consistently, and it claims that I have now ridden Jasmine 291 miles. Which is kind of amazing. It also has the option of synching with a variety of sensors, and the FAQ lists the sensors it likes best. If one had a Fitbit, for instance, it would report your heart rate if you asked it to. As I am really not biking for health benefits, I don't care about that. But I am interested in speed. I also became interested in cadence.
Which takes me to the Mangene speed and cadence sensors: these are sensors that the FAQ says that Urban Biker likes. They were relatively cheap on Amazon, and although it said they came without batteries, in point of fact, they shipped with batteries. CR2032, of course. The sensors are identical, and you can switch them from speed to cadence by taking out and putting back in the batteries. The cadence sensor goes on the pedal crank, and the speed goes on the front hub. They were easy to install (David helped) and easy to synch to the app. I did a fair amount of reading about desired cadence, a great deal of which was very confusing, and a large it of it geared toward peak performance for racing or endurance, and of course, I care about neither of these. It sounds like the ideal cadence is between 70 and 90 per minute, which is most efficient for the muscles, or something. But the other thing I saw, that really got my attention, was that lower cadences were associated with more knee strain. I believe this to be because lower cadences are associated with higher gears, and therefore harder work for the knees. What I do notice is that when I target cadence instead of speed, I am more willing to downshift, and less enthusiastic about up-shifting, and that my knees do hurt less. My average cadence, at the moment, is about 67. On hills, it drops into the low 50s. But it has increased since I've been paying attention. My average speed is about 9.7 mph, which isn't too bad, especially when you consider that when I started out, my average speed was about 6 mph. (Yes, children, I am very old. And very, very out of shape.) I also got the speed sensor because it is supposed to be more accurate, but I will say that the speed it reports seem very similar to the speeds that the GPS average system was reporting. (And for those of you who have been paying attention, yes, I am interested in the whole performance thing, a little, but only as a way of thinking about what I can and can't do, and what's fun, what my range is, and not as a way of achieving some other health goal. I mean, I'm sure I'm getting some health benefits, and that's great, but it is not my focus. On the other hand, being aware of what my range and stamina is helps me plan rides.)
Padded biking shorts: I bought an incredibly cheap pair on eBay, and wore them for the first time, today. They help...I think? I mean, my butt is still sore, but maybe it was better? It wasn't transformative, but it did seem to be an improvement. I am unsure if this means that a better quality would be dramatically better, or if this is all there is, and there's no point in the much more expensive shorts. But, well, I expect that these won't be very durable, so at some point if I decide I like them, I will have to decide whether to replace them with more expensive shorts or not.
Windbreaker: I bought a used, very cheap windbreaker on eBay as well. Its a mens XXL, and a bit too large for me, but as I said, dead cheap. And it did help a lot in the weather, today. And when it rained a little bit, I did not get very wet. So, we'll call that a win, too.
And, enough of bicycle neeping. I do hope those of you bored by this didn't bother to read it.
Safety vest: I got a very cheap, bright yellow with reflective stripes, mesh safety vest which I wear if I bike after dark. It does make me vastly more visible, which is a good thing. It also has four pockets, and I am keeping my headlamp in one of them. The headlamp also functions, when not attached to the bike, as a pretty nice flashlight, which has been invaluable for locking and unlocking my bike in the dark.
Speaking of which, headlamp and taillight: I bought cheap ones off Amazon. The headlamp has an option of two levels of intensity, the 400 and I think 200 lumens. 200 lumens is really quite sufficient. One can also set it to blinky, but I don't. Even with the bicycle basket in the way, it does provide enough light to miss small potholes and such. It has a rechargeable battery via USB. It is entirely adequate, and also came with a red taillight that takes CR 2032 batteries, and does a steady red, a slow or a fast blinky. I usually put it on slow blinky. These, plus the safety vest, plus the red blinky on the back of my bike helmet, make me feel highly visible after dark. So far, no one has run into me. Yay.
Urban Biker App: David found an app for Android phones called Urban Biker which will keep track of your route, and give you speed and duration and a lot of other data. The speed is an average based on GPS data. It allows you to set up a number of different profiles, and also has profiles for walking, driving, scooters, and so on. It also doesn't share your data unless you ask it to. I've been using it pretty consistently, and it claims that I have now ridden Jasmine 291 miles. Which is kind of amazing. It also has the option of synching with a variety of sensors, and the FAQ lists the sensors it likes best. If one had a Fitbit, for instance, it would report your heart rate if you asked it to. As I am really not biking for health benefits, I don't care about that. But I am interested in speed. I also became interested in cadence.
Which takes me to the Mangene speed and cadence sensors: these are sensors that the FAQ says that Urban Biker likes. They were relatively cheap on Amazon, and although it said they came without batteries, in point of fact, they shipped with batteries. CR2032, of course. The sensors are identical, and you can switch them from speed to cadence by taking out and putting back in the batteries. The cadence sensor goes on the pedal crank, and the speed goes on the front hub. They were easy to install (David helped) and easy to synch to the app. I did a fair amount of reading about desired cadence, a great deal of which was very confusing, and a large it of it geared toward peak performance for racing or endurance, and of course, I care about neither of these. It sounds like the ideal cadence is between 70 and 90 per minute, which is most efficient for the muscles, or something. But the other thing I saw, that really got my attention, was that lower cadences were associated with more knee strain. I believe this to be because lower cadences are associated with higher gears, and therefore harder work for the knees. What I do notice is that when I target cadence instead of speed, I am more willing to downshift, and less enthusiastic about up-shifting, and that my knees do hurt less. My average cadence, at the moment, is about 67. On hills, it drops into the low 50s. But it has increased since I've been paying attention. My average speed is about 9.7 mph, which isn't too bad, especially when you consider that when I started out, my average speed was about 6 mph. (Yes, children, I am very old. And very, very out of shape.) I also got the speed sensor because it is supposed to be more accurate, but I will say that the speed it reports seem very similar to the speeds that the GPS average system was reporting. (And for those of you who have been paying attention, yes, I am interested in the whole performance thing, a little, but only as a way of thinking about what I can and can't do, and what's fun, what my range is, and not as a way of achieving some other health goal. I mean, I'm sure I'm getting some health benefits, and that's great, but it is not my focus. On the other hand, being aware of what my range and stamina is helps me plan rides.)
Padded biking shorts: I bought an incredibly cheap pair on eBay, and wore them for the first time, today. They help...I think? I mean, my butt is still sore, but maybe it was better? It wasn't transformative, but it did seem to be an improvement. I am unsure if this means that a better quality would be dramatically better, or if this is all there is, and there's no point in the much more expensive shorts. But, well, I expect that these won't be very durable, so at some point if I decide I like them, I will have to decide whether to replace them with more expensive shorts or not.
Windbreaker: I bought a used, very cheap windbreaker on eBay as well. Its a mens XXL, and a bit too large for me, but as I said, dead cheap. And it did help a lot in the weather, today. And when it rained a little bit, I did not get very wet. So, we'll call that a win, too.
And, enough of bicycle neeping. I do hope those of you bored by this didn't bother to read it.
