The Wonderful Bike From Hell
Cycling Files 001
The wind dances on my skin, causing a continuous stream of tingles that revitalize me from the outside in. I can feel the load on my mind lighten gram by gram. My lips inch into a grin as the kilometers tick by on this stunningly chilly early summer morning.
I pull over on a bridge across the canal. The sun has just woken the world, bathing the waterway below in soft sunrise tones that beg to be photographed.
I’m relieved: after months of trial and error, I tamed the aluminum beast underneath me. Finally, I’m ache-free, able to ride and feel the freedom riding a bike offers.
That’s one of the reasons I love cycling. In today’s first edition of the Cycling Files, I share how I, as a runner, got into cycling, detail more of the riding benefits I experience, and recap why I linked my new friend with evilness in today’s headline.
Transition Time
I am a runner. That’s what I wrote almost three years ago when I started sharing my athletic experiences and how I use training to stay fit and channel the chaos of life into productivity.
I haven’t run since October.
Life and the sport blocked me and turned a sport that used to relax me into a stressful affair.
Regardless of what I tried and how careful I was, I stumbled from niggle to niggle, caught a root with the tip of my right foot when I tried to enjoy a peaceful canal path, and encountered technical misfortunes like popped air pockets in my shoes.
I wanted a break.
I did what I had done occasionally before. I hopped on a bike to limit fitness loss.
And I enjoyed it, never really used to. I went more often, started doing workouts, and went farther than ever before, even combined cycling and photography.
Little did I know that I wasn’t helping the issue. But hold that thought for a bit.
The Joy of Cycling
I lead with my first cycling why: spending time on the bike to quieten and calm my nervous system.
Pedaling away allows me to experience freedom. I can blend out all the stress factors that life throws at me and explore the world around me.
Running is more restricted.
Unless I commute to a special location, the limited travel distance of most runs limits where I can go.
I can’t bring a dedicated camera and must embrace handing control over to chance.
I wrote about it in an essay that accompanies a collection of my running images called Running the World: running cut into my pleasure photography time.
Cycling is still a time and energy commitment — just like any athletic endeavor. Other things have to budge. I’m okay with that.
But cycling is unique: I can bring my cameras and stop for photography. It allows me to work on my fitness and my photography at the same time. And it provides a unique double dose of relaxation.
On the fitness end, cycling, as a sport, offers similar aerobic benefits to running. I knew that from the times I substituted running volume with cycling. I was hardly trying to cycle as an athletic endeavor at the time. But I responded well to the different stimulus, losing almost no running fitness.
At the same time, the strain on my body is much reduced. Cycling is not a weight-bearing activity after all. Though, it has its pitfalls, to which I’ll come in a moment.
What I also discovered about cycling since I decided to see it as a sport rather than leisurely rolling around: the rush of speed provides immense pleasure and is addictive.
Just as the pleasure levels increase when my running paces increase, riding faster feels good. I want to become fitter and faster because it is exciting.
That’s all within reason, of course. Safety comes first.
I know how painful it can be when you kiss the ground as a runner. Most of the summer of 2019, I spent healing wounds on my right knee and hand courtesy of tripping twice within a month.
I once flew over the handlebars years ago while on vacation. Silly me pulled the front instead of the back brake. I was only rolling in that instance, single digits kph, but I still remember the long, slow motion that brought me down.
And while every cyclist, especially those tackling it as a sport, needs to be aware that there are risks attached, common sense and respect for traffic are more important than whatever the amateur athlete might whisper in my ears.
I enjoy the rush of speed but with as much responsibility and respect for others as possible.
Jumping into cycling can also be a giant technical rabbit hole.
I didn’t plan it, but the first few months have already awoken the home mechanic in me, not to mention the fascinating depth of scientific topics that propel the sport.
I’ve learned that I want to know how a bike works, and I want to be self-sufficient in the most important maintenance tasks. There’s even a relaxing aspect to caring for my bike. Believe it or not.
Before I mention some of those maintenance issues and the side effects of cycling below, let’s be clear: riding gives me pure joy. It’s like active meditation that makes me fit along the way.
The Biomechanical Troubles of Cycling
As 2022 wound down, the fortunes of time pushed a road bike under my behind for the first time in my life. It’s a basic one, as far as road bikes are concerned — ideally suited to trying out the sport.
Great, I thought, now I can start to enjoy cycling…
I rode mountain bikes, city bikes, and touring bikes over the years. In The U.S., I even enjoyed a fixie for half a year. Apart from the occasional relaxed longer bike ride, the most regular riding I did in my childhood: commuting to school — a trip of about 2 km.
When the touring bike that was available to me in early 2022 experienced costly mechanical issues, I could switch to rarely used e-bikes in the family stable.
I’m not the biggest fan: heavy and sluggish. The gentle push from the motor doesn’t have to take away the effort (but makes it easier to get up to speed). Still, I quickly felt the athletic limitations.
The five months since I welcomed the wonderful bike from hell have been rough, even though it forced a smile on my face almost on every ride.
Aches and pains in my right knee and leg are one reason for that roughness.
I had set saddle height roughly by feel on the parking lot when I picked up the bike. Mind you: I had never thought much about where and how I sit on a bicycle.
Issues arose after the first two longer rides, and I started paying attention. That attention guided me to a conclusion: I need to sit higher.
Why? I sat higher on all the bikes I had ridden in the last 2+ years; significantly higher. And with tips and formulas about saddle height from various articles and videos on bike fitting fresh in my mind, I started a bike-fit journey I wish I wouldn’t have needed.
The graph below is the result of videoing myself at least a dozen times, trying to discern if the angles that determine things like leg extension and position of the back and arms fall roughly into what is considered healthy.
As the graph shows, it was quite the ride. My amateur understanding of the complex topic paired with conflicting body feedback made my transition into road cycling awkward. I endured discomfort in my legs, knees, lower back, and neck.
But I persisted, and I’m fairly confident I’ve reached a decent enough position to ride continuously. As irony would have it, I’m pretty close to where I started, leaving me with the conclusion that the heavy use of an indoor trainer (with rather useless saddle adjustments) just before I picked up the bike was the main cause for the initial issues.
Well, my understanding of the window that seems to agree with my body may be an amateurish one, but it seems to work.
Bike fitting is a very complex issue. And I definitely want to have a professional bike fit eventually. If only for the simple reason that it takes the guesswork out of the equation. Hopefully, I can postpone it long enough to pick a bike fitter of my choice, regardless of location or cost. Ideally, I hope to commit to something like that in preparation for buying a really nice bike one day to ensure I’ll buy the size that works best for my body.
The second realization that sparks irony: while I definitely had running-related niggles, it’s fairly likely that jumping on the bike — with a grossly inappropriate saddle height — and turning up intensity and volume — caused more harm than the running itself. At least, that’s the most logical conclusion I can draw from listening to my body this past year.
The Mechanical Troubles of Cycling
The wonderful bike from hell is also an apt description because of the mechanical issues that plagued me from the start.
In the short first months of my days as a road cyclist, every major system kicked me while I was already down from the positional troubles.
The gears were rough. The brakes lacked bite and eventually stopped working. The barrel adjusters for the brake cables were stuck. The screw of the seat post clamp showed alarming signs of wear — partly due to the learning curve of applying just the right torque by hand, partly by a screw of low enough quality that just looking at it the wrong way seemed to damage it. The rear hub started squeaking. The left pedal fell off again and again. A replacement pedal had poorly set bearings, resulting in play.
I wanted to learn bike mechanics 101 anyway. But not before I could even begin to enjoy riding the bike. I still loved becoming my own mechanic and figuring out the aluminum mystery before me and decided against wheeling it to the shop.
I got the gears running fairly smoothly and found the problem with the brakes: the (stationary) right sides of the brakes were positioned much too far away from the disk rotors. I even got the barrel adjusters unstuck.
I had my first proper puncture. Giving me the golden opportunity to learn how to fix it. My thumbs thanked me for the next three days…
Despite the many hours teaching myself all those essential maintenance skills, I secretly enjoyed that process.
But the incident that broke me happened on one of the first rides when my body seemed to fully agree with my position on the bike. The second replacement pedal loosened on the tail end of a one-hour ride. I wasn’t worried at first, but a closer inspection revealed worn-out threads in the crank arm.
Ugh.
A lengthy process followed that included two trips across the state to seek a warranty repair.
It was a repair at first. But parts shortage turned that into the kind offer to replace the entire bike.
Yeah. I had to make a second trip and tweak the new bike to get it set up the way I had the original one set up. But I gladly welcomed that.
You know what: I suspect I encountered all the mechanicals because they simply forgot the initial setup of the bike that’s supposed to be done before they hand it over.
It wasn’t the second time around, and I’m now enjoying a smooth ride with the bonus of having already taught myself a lot of the essential skills for the future.
Transition Time 2
My fitness has tanked. But I’m working on clawing it back one step at a time. Cycling it is for now (paired with some strength training, especially for the legs, which I started emphasizing more when the cardio side started slipping). And I enjoy the time in the saddle so much that I doubt I’ll ever want to return to running exclusively.
But I want to return to running. More relaxed. And not before my legs fully adapted to cycling.
Who knows, maybe I’ll throw another sport into the mix one day and complete the swim, bike, and run trifecta that’s also referred to as triathlon. But that’s for the more distant future. For now, I’ll focus on pure cycling joy.
So much for this first dip into the world of cycling. I should have an update in a week or two. Before that, I’ll bring you back to Ghana and write more about the act of writing. Hopefully, I’ll also manage to share new photography soon.
