The Urge to Race Uphill

This one is dedicated to Bill McPherson. You may know Bill as that leathery old guy that beats us all up White Bird regularly. I know him as the guy who mows Helen’s lawn. Kind of puts it all in perspective doesn’t it?

Bill’s fast. Says he’s got other things to do with his day so he likes to ride shorter miles but hard. When I’m on the bike, he says, I’m going fast. Still he tells me he has 900 miles in May. Not too shabby. So I post this article on how to climb faster for Bill.

Vaughters begins by asking Why? and finishes with a list of tips on how which boil down to hurt. I still don’t get the urge to race uphill.–Corrie

Expert Advice From Jonathan Vaughters

By Jonathan Vaughters

30 Days to L’Étape. Today’s training: practice spinning up hills while pedaling at high cadences.

Guest blogging today on The Climb is an expert on the subject, the former rider Jonathan Vaughters, who counts among his accomplishments a record-setting ride up the side of the fearsome Mont Ventoux. Vaughters rode in the Tour de France for Lance Armstrong’s United States Postal Service team and for the French squad Crédit Agricole. He is now the sporting director of a new American team he founded, Slipstream/Chipotle, which will compete in this year’s Tour after a rousing, burrito-fueled send-off from midtown Manhattan this morning.

Last year, Juliet Macur wrote about Slipstream’s anti-doping mission. Vaughters, who was recently profiled on French television, also blogs regularly on Slipstream’s Web site.

Over to you, Jonathan…

Read Jonathan’s Advice

How To Tune your Bike Video

BicycleTutor.com is a set of videos on repair and maintenance of your bike. It is well worth a bookmark. Today I share two posts. This one deals with tune ups. He’s not covering everything in one video, of course, and we all do things a bit differently, but the beginning cyclist should understand how to do basic clean up. That chain and cassette need attention more than once or twice a year. In fact, I like to clean mine after every wet ride and every 100 miles or so.

The second post deals with what to do with all those confusing gears.

How To Tune Up Your Bike

General overview of a spring tune-up procedure.

• How To Check If Your Bearings Are Worn

Today we’ll learn how to tune up your bike, which I’d recommend doing at least once a year, or even every few months if you ride every day. Since I can’t demonstrate every step of the procedure while keeping this video short, I’ll give a general overview and cover each step further in separate tutorials. You’ll notice below that I’ve written out all of the steps and included links to related tutorials. I’ll be adding new links as future videos are uploaded.

Learning to Shift

All those gears confuse even experienced riders. I’m never sure whether the small cog in back is High gear or Low gear. But as I ride, the feel tells me where I need to be. Sometimes I have to visually check to be sure which gear I’m in and nothing is worse than being caught in too high a gear when the road takes a sudden climb. You not only shouldn’t shift under pressure. You can’t.

This video deals with a 7 speed cassette and a triple crank up front for 21 speeds but as he points out this is really only about 13 different gear combinations. Several are duplicates. This video makes several good suggestions without getting into gear inches or ratios or any of that stuff that make my eyes cross. The links below are to other videos you might find useful.

How To Shift Your Gears

General overview of multi-speed gear shifting.

• How To Adjust Your Front Derailer
• How To Adjust Your Rear Derailer
• How To Clean and Lubricate a Chain

Make it Fit

We see them all the time: Seat so low the knees meet the chin on each stroke, heandlebars so close the elbows are 90 degrees–riding a bike’s got to be fun not torture. All the carbon savings in the world won’t induce me to ride when it hurts so I recommend a good bike fitting. And here are some tips–Corrie

Possibly the most important thing about cycling that people may not pay necessary attention to is bike fit. There is a lot of opportunity to make cycling unpleasant by picking a bike that is not the right fit. Wrong fit can result in everything from a sore neck to tendon problems in the knees.

Read more at Bike Hacks

Bike Tire Basics

 I took a quick 20 miler on the Pilot and then wanted to clean both it and the 29er after its tour in dusty Death Valley. The mt. bike wasn’t too bad, but when I cleaned my rims on the Pilot, I found the rear tire had cracks running all along it with a couple of small patches of rubber missing.

Strangely it was this same back tire that never lost much air. The front one loses 10 lbs regularly but is fine. Guess B&L gets to sell me a set of new tires. I found an old one that looks like it has a few more miles in it.

It’s time to bring those bikes off the racks and out on the road. Might do to spend a few minutes checking ‘em over too.

If you’re looking forward to getting your bike out after a long hiatus, don’t forget to take a few minutes to inspect your tires. Here’s what to look for:

Read about checking your tires and more at David Fiedler’s excellent and simple blog. 

How To Check If Your Bearings Are Worn

Okay, I’m not likely to actually change my bearings myself, but it wouldn’t hurt to listen for worn bearings, would it? Check out the video how to on bicycletutor.com. –Corrie

How To Check If Your Bearings Are Worn

Listen to your bottom bracket, headset, and wheel bearings.

Here’s a handy tip that will help you access whether or not any of your bearings are worn out. You’ll need to have the wheels suspended in the air somehow, using either a repair stand, hanging it from the roof, or by getting a friend to hold it up for you.

Another Stunt Video

Those stunt riders treat fences and rails as playthings. See the video
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7N8hWRHL8Y[/youtube]

Riding the Line

I can’t ride the white line let alone a curb. Watch as this guy casually ‘walks’ his bike across town.

You Tube

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=8n-PU7jz8Cs[/youtube]

Indoor Cross Training for Improved Climbing

Just in case you can get out on a bike . . . Indoor Cross Training for Improved Climbing

Climbs like this can be made easier with preparation indoors.

By Edmund R. Burke, Ph.D.
For Active.com

While speaking at a recent training camp at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, an off-road cyclist wanted to know if working out on a stair climber would be a good cross-training tool to exercise on during the off-season.

I was quick to tell him that a key training concept for athletes to remember is specificity of training. In other words, if you want to be a swimmer, swim; if you want to be a runner, run; and if you want to be a good climber in cycling then climb on your bike.

Raleigh Decals by Steve

Steve finds something to do inspired by Bicycling Magazines article about rebuilding an old bike. He sent the image as a full size PDF. Actually, I really enjoy these clean graphics. Somewhere inside me is a graphic artist. Steve’s done a great job capturing these images.

Corrie,

you’re probably not overly interested, but I’ll still give you some info.

Recreating decals is a pain! I liked the idea of photographing the decals and creating new vinyl ones. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, so I started messing with the old Grand Prix ($10 in a yard sale 10 yeas ago). However, it’s obvious that the decals are bent onto the frame and the the light catches words differently and of course is usually shiny in the spot opposite the sun. Too much effort to hide from the sun dulls the colors badly.

Anyway, this looks so simple, but I spent most of the day on this. Its crazy I’d spend any time on the old Grand Prix since its fork is bent and the frame may also be, but I get bored in the winter even when I should be working on the house or preparing for Christmas!

I’m happy with these, but the Grand Prix is such a mess I don’t know how to fix it or get a photo I can start with. I really don’t care if it’s authentic- even if the bike were fixable.

–Steve