One less tooth makes a difference....

Oy oy.

I've been baaaaaaaaad lately. I either haven't had much to say or haven't had time to say it. I'd like to change that a bit. A lot has happened lately and I'd like to get back to blogging about it.

One of the changes for me lately is getting back in the swing of commuting by bicycle. I was seriously sick earlier this year (reason #204 why I haven't been posting much) and a few weeks ago got the thumbs up from the doc to really get back to riding as much as I want.

I'd been riding a few days per week, but not alot of intensity or distance. I was just putting miles in.

Two weeks ago I started riding to work again when my schedule allowed. That had me riding Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The big difference is that I've been riding the fixed gear bike lately. I was a little worried about getting the right gearing and I thought I had it about spot on.

Running a 44x17 gear I was a little uncomfortable on both the downhills and uphills. I'd have to be ready to hit the brake if I got spinning too fast and needed to back off on the downhills. The flats and gradual inclines/declines felt pretty good. The steep climbs were pretty tough. Some were a pretty normal stomp, but two climbs on the way in and three climbs on the way home were slow, tough cranking to get to the top. That kinda made me feel like I had the right gear.

This weekend I got a 16t cog and thought I'd give that a try. What a huge change 1 tooth makes. The hills that were slightly uncomfortable became much faster and much easier to keep up with the spin. The downhill near home that has one of those radar-activated speed signs recorded me at 19mph with the 44x17 when I was pretty close to spinning out. I hit it this morning and was going 24mph and didn't feel bad at all about the spin. It was really nice.

The climbs were another story. The two slow cranks on the way to the work required even more cranking, though I don't think I really moved any slower up them with the 44x16 gear.

Overall my normal commute time to work was cut by almost 11 minutes. Everything rolled faster.

It will be interesting to see what happens on the way home. Riding home is mostly uphill, though there are realy only 3 hills of the slow cranking variety. In theory I should be able to stomp up the others with only a little more effort than with 44x17.... I'll be moving a little faster though. I should also get more recovery on the short downhills that I have leading up to the bigger climbs. That should make the climbs a little easeir. 44x17 didn't give me much recovery time because I was having to work so hard to keep spinning so fast.

One last comment... I'm spinning 180mm cranks. Chris Jabberhockey is thinking of ditching his White Industries cranks. He doesn't like the way the chainrings are set up. He's doinked at least one by hammering it on a log. If he feels like selling them, I might drop down to 175s. It would make my spin a lot better. I'll see how this works for a while first.

As usual, I've babbled on about shit hat no-one but me cares about. :D

Talk to you soon.

Pete