I wanted to ride Wild Turkey today (eep, it's now become yesterday ...). Unfortunately, riding Wild Turkey requires climbing from either the Heil side or the Picture Rock side - you can't just teleport to the loop. I've found myself dreading the climbing part that inevitably precedes all the fun stuff. It's not the climbing, per se - it's the way my heart rate shoots up and my breathing becomes ragged and I have to stop right after every climb segment, wondering if humans were ever meant to breathe this hard. Anyway, I chose Heil.
An interesting thing happened. I didn't feel so bad. I glanced at the heart rate on my watch. Now, there are a lot of potential reasons for a watch HR monitor to be off, but it was reading a lot lower than usual. And that's when I realized I didn't actually feel like death was nigh. And that I was looking for a place to stop out of habit, not out of need.
I think my riding, little as it was, in Breck must have put my circulatory system on notice. But also - I started using granny gear a *lot* more.
On my old bike, I avoided granny gear. One, my old bike's granny was extremely temperamental, no matter how many times you thought you'd fine tuned it. Two, going up a gear or two made the bike feel less twitchy.
Well, on my new bike, I can shift into the dinner plate without any muss or fuss or weird noises. And too many times, I've realized after an exhausting climb that I was actually in third or fourth gear when I'd meant to maybe be in second. I can't make that mistake if I'm in granny, because I can feel the end of the shifting range when I get there. And I was solo today, so I didn't feel any pressure to hurry. And I also realized that if I didn't have to stop as often, pedaling in granny might actually be faster overall. It also reduces stress on my knee (saving more for the downhill!), and as for stability - well, yeah, the bike does feel twitchier in granny gear, but I'm pretty good at maneuvering at low speeds. I mean, that's all I ever do. I realized, riding along today, that my riding style is pretty similar to the videos I've seen of 4x4 vehicles slowly crawling over rocks, picking the exact route inch by inch.
So I stuck to granny gear on everything that even vaguely resembled an uphill section, and I didn't stress about how fast I was going, and I'm sure I stopped a lot less than I usually do. I also rode some sections I hadn't cleared before - to be honest, didn't really try in the past.
I sessioned one particular uphill section that I'd never even tried. I would jump off my bike at the bottom and just walk. But this time, I thought, well, let's just *look*. So I put down my bike and looked. I found the line - the one that deviated as little as possible from straight, which in this case still required some precise maneuvering. You can't just ride straight up it.
I made eight attempts. I think it was the fourth one that was most successful - I got past all the rocks, but had no energy left for the last tiny lip of dirt. I hoped to session it until I made it, but at some point I realized I was just getting worse. A goal for another day.
Interestingly, I talked to a guy who thought that you absolutely had to lift your front wheel to get through it. "Um - well, no, there's a line where you don't have to lift the wheel. I know, because I got up it till that lip, and I never lifted my wheel." He looked doubtful.
The cool thing is that on the way back, I decided at a particular intersection that I would get back to the car by the 3 hour mark (I apparently spent 25 minutes chatting at the top - oops). That gave me just under 9 minutes. I forgot that the technical section was in the way. In the past, I've walked it downhill as often as I've ridden it - all those pointy rocks! This time, well, I'd committed to going as fast as I could go. And I figured if I could ride it uphill (well, mostly), there was really no excuse not to ride it downhill. I didn't quite reach my goal. When I stopped at my car, I was 9 seconds late. I had one close call where my rear tire lost traction on some pointy rocks and I was sure I would endo spectacularly, but I managed to get back in balance and keep going. Biking is a series of linked recoveries, right?
TL;DR - I still love my bike!