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"There are three ways to pedal a bike. With the legs, with the lungs, or with the heart."

-- Mandible Jones, Carpet Particles

There is weirdness in transitions. I remember this from music school. So much of playing a brass instrument is muscle memory, knowing exactly how to set your lips and lungs to account for intonation, volume, timbre, and emphasis. And when you get stronger, everything veers off kilter for a few days while your muscles acustom themselves to their new strength.

This is true for cycling, too. Turning the cranks is done largely by muscle memory. You learn how to get the most speed out of your body, how leg strength, heart rate and pedal cadence balance each other to propel the bike forward. You learn how to listen to your body to know just how hard you can push.

The weight work I'm doing has started paying off, and my legs are noticably stronger. It's changing the leg/lung/heart balance, and I'm having to learn how to use that new strength.

Cycling's bottom line is that if you want to go faster, you have to shift up a gear. With stronger legs, the time has come to reach for taller gears.

So after climbing Johnson Fire Rd. on Sunday, I decided to push my legs a little bit. I picked gears just too hard for my legs. When I was comfortable, I shifted up a gear. I found that a slower cadence feels strange, but I can push at that cadence far longer than I expected.

And I was faster.

(I wish I'd done that same experiment on Johnson. Oh well. Next time.)

Today I took about 30 seconds off an 8-min. climb. My average speed jumped from 5.9 to 6.4 mph. And I did it by intentionally picking gears that felt too tall.

So, just like back in music school, it's time to reset my muscle memory.

Triunfo Singletrack