Breakthrough On Wheels

I think we had a little breakthrough on the bike tonight.

It is super-windy so Basta opted to ride the CompuTrainer. He hasn't done that in a while. He'd forgotten how to connect everything and lead the leads the best way to keep them out of the way of the turning back wheel and the pedals. He's really not good at that kind of thing. Sigh. So I did it for him and turned him loose.

When I came back in the room about 10 minutes later, he had the display on SpinScan but it was flat. No bars at all.

"Honey," I said "Why don't you have SpinScan going"

"Oh it's not working," he said. "I'm not paying attention to it, anyway."

"Dear," I pointed out, "SpinScan is why we bought that CompuTrainer. SpinScan will make all the difference in your pedal efficiency and thus your bike speed. SpinScan is THE most important thing to have working." (No doubt you power and heartrate people will disagree with me, but right now Basta's pedal technique sucks and he needs to work on that first. Power later. Heartrate maybe someday).

I looked closer at the readouts and saw that the sensor wasn't detecting RPMs any more. I had him stop pedalling and tweaked the sensor a hair forward. Tada, RPMs. Now we were getting some useful information.

Useful to me, anyway. Basta didn't understand at all what those bars were telling him. Despite all my trying to explain. It isn't exactly clear at a glance what those bars are telling anyone, so I've done some reading on it. It makes sense to me now. I thought I had passed that knowledge on to Basta. Not very well, obviously.

So we went through the explanation again. "Ok," he said, "but how do I get the bars more flat?"

"Pedal efficiency. Pressure through 360 degrees on the pedals. Remember that graph of how your foot position should be that I showed you from www.tri-ecoach.com yesterday? "


"No. I mean I remember it, but it didn't mean anything to me."

Sigh. He's not stupid. Really he's not. He's an effing lawyer, for Christ's sake. He passed the Bar on the first try, lo those many years ago. He's far from stupid. This just isn't his thing. He doesn't get this stuff by reading articles like I do. He needs to be shown.

That's why this is working for us. I like to read and study and show. He listens and adapts, usually.

So I had him pedal slowly and showed him what his foot position should be on the pedal as it rotated around the circle. I had to actually hold his heel and move it into the place it should be through a few rotations. Then, the breakthrough occurred. He got it.

He started to spin again with renewed vigor. The bars responded nicely and the previously deep valleys on the top and bottom became gentle little dips of lesser power. Bravo!

He said it was hard to do on both legs at the same time. Agreed. I suggested he focus on one leg for a while and then on the other. Soon enough it will become second nature. Like everything, it takes practice.

Before long he was commenting on how much he felt it in his ankles and calves. Yes. More strength there will make him run faster and be less prone to running injuries, too. This is all good.

Now to continue this when he's out on the real road. I think he will. He ought to see more of those coveted miles per hour, too.