Osiris
Zen MBB Master
When I went bike shopping back in 2011, I overheard a customer at the bike shop asking the salesperson where the best place would be to mount a gun holster. Welcome to Florida.
Test riding a true racing recumbent
- Thread starter Osiris
- Start date
When I went bike shopping back in 2011, I overheard a customer at the bike shop asking the salesperson where the best place would be to mount a gun holster. Welcome to Florida.
Osiris
Zen MBB Master
Hopefully this will be the last refinement to my handlebar design for the M1. Several bent racers recommended I put the brake handles on the bottom, which offers certain advantages. It turns out that the brake levers on the Cane Creek brakes I'll be using are an inch shorter than the others, so there should be enough clearance for my thumb to reach the shifter buttons on the right side grip even with this arrangement.
LarryOz
Cruzeum Curator & Sigma Wrangler
When I went bike shopping back in 2011, I overheard a customer at the bike shop asking the salesperson where the best place would be to mount a gun holster. Welcome to Florida.
You do know that language is more than sufficient to get you banned on some sites.
What make and model bar ends are those?
Osiris
Zen MBB Master
You do know that language is more than sufficient to get you banned on some sites.
Is it? I've lost count of the number of sites I've been banned from.
They're labeled "FMF". I found them on e-bay, along with many others like them. $4.99 for the set compared to ~$25 at a local bike shop.
bladderhead
Zen MBB Master
Man in the middle of cycle race wants a drink. Man grabs wrong cylindrical object from wrong cage. Man blows his brains out.Osiris said:
You could mount it on the boom of a Cruzbike and look over the top of it like the Red Baron. The wireless gear trigger can have a fire button.
jond
Zen MBB Master
My younger brother lives in America. His best mate was shot dead in a road rage incident. We Aussies had a nutter run round port Arthur Tasmania with a semi automatic rifle. Result firearms specific type ban and gun buy back and armistice No one complained and many weapons were handed in. So it’s what the prime minister at the time is remembered for. A good thing. Sure guns are still legal in Australia and selectively justified With strict laws and controls. No automatics gun storage etc. So our death rate from gunshot is on par with the rest of the world. I believe gun ownership in Canada is higher than America. Yet America has the standout death rate and regular mass shooting tragedies. When will America make the leap and resolve this issue through gun controls and attitudinal changes to her culture. It’s an expectation here that no civilian person is carrying a hand gun or has a firearm on the parcel shelf. Heck do the bobbies in UK still run around unarmed. ?
No offence but the average joe American in suburbia does not need a gun. Period.
The right to bear arms is an historical bygone from the distant past.
It’s simple access to a firearm can lead to its use or misuse by the moron in the team. There is always one for the other ten responsible people. I’ve seen pics of guns on trikes. Why.
Apologies but it’s time to grow without the gun thanks to everyone’s lunatics.
No offence but the average joe American in suburbia does not need a gun. Period.
The right to bear arms is an historical bygone from the distant past.
It’s simple access to a firearm can lead to its use or misuse by the moron in the team. There is always one for the other ten responsible people. I’ve seen pics of guns on trikes. Why.
Apologies but it’s time to grow without the gun thanks to everyone’s lunatics.
bladderhead
Zen MBB Master
I agree with jond. I should stop shooting my mouth off. British police are unarmed. There are specialist firearms teams with their guns in a strong-box in the car.
3bs
whereabouts unknown
complex problem. technically, in the states, it will take is an amendment to the u.s. constitution. but that will only change the law, not the problem. it is a cultural problem, but it is by no means a problem unique to the states. only the choice of tool.
far easier to fix a bent.
far easier to fix a bent.
super slim
Zen MBB Master
Its one of the few times I agree with Jond!
I think the solution to fix USA's gun death problem will require a VERY wise man, and a strong President,
!!!!!!
Balor
Zen MBB Master
If you read follow up replies, I guess you might see why.
Yes.
On a more interesting topic, I think I am going to buy either a MOXY ($800) or Humon ($250) NIRS monitor to measure muscle oxygenation and hemoglobin and it might be interesting to compare supine vs. upright. I could do lactate as well. Interesting that Coggan is doing research on beet juice. I am pretty sure my lower FTP on the recumbent is due to lower oxygen but why and can it be improved. It would also demonstrate, I think anyway, the much longer warmup period needed on a bent. What else would explain the lower and lower power levels on true racing recumbents that are more and more reclined. It could be delivery issue of the cardiovascular system; however, the NIRS units would show that. If it is delivery, it is likely a hard limit.
The ability to put out a hard effort (on a bent or upright) awaits the opening (vasodilation) at the capillaries and arterioles. I have done a lot of riding in cold weather in my life. What I have noticed, anecdotally N =1 of course, is that my power suffers a lot if my legs get a little cold on the bent, much more so than on an upright. Perplexing.
I am suspecting that the severely reclined M1 might require a very long (30+ minutes) and hard (some efforts at FTP) warmup to get the oxygen into the working muscle units. It would be interesting to hear what these top recument racer's experiences are along those lines. I'm just a randonneur but this has made me even quicker out of controls, like a ghost in the night.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3827567/
Osiris
Zen MBB Master
Here's my thought on that. The drop in power when going from a DF to a bent is almost universally acknowledged, but there are different interpretations of what this means. For instance, you say that your FTP is lower on a recumbent. That hasn't been my experience. FTP measures fairly modest levels of power over a long period, and in those cases I've seen no drops in power delivery when comparing my DF to any of my recumbents. What I've seen instead is enormous drops in power at the top end, like when comparing max power for 1-5 seconds. This is anaerobic power, so the variables that contribute to power delivery over very long intervals shouldn't play any role here, as far as I can see. I think it's a bio-mechanical issue primarily, though there is clearly some adaptation that occurs over time.
Osiris
Zen MBB Master
Here's another topic that might be worth discussing. I've been communicating with my M1's former owner, Phil Plath, about something that has been bothering me from the very beginning. The issue is that my legs feel cramped on the M1, as if I can't extend them fully. Curiously, this only happens when I'm riding it. When I have it on the trainer, and I'm just spinning the pedals against no resistance, I don't feel this sensation at all. The strange thing is that Phil and I are exactly the same height and have the same leg length, so if the M1 was made to fit someone of his proportions, it should fit me as well. I think I've finally gotten to the bottom of it after watching one of Phil's videos in slow motion:
The most important frames are between the zero and three second marks. If you slow the video down to 1/4 speed, you can clearly see that Phil's foot at the bottom of the power stroke is at 90 degrees to his shin, exactly as it would be if he were standing upright on a flat surface. My style of pedaling looks very different. Under power, my tendency is to push the balls of my feet forward slightly, so that the angle between my foot and shin might be more like 100 degrees. Extending the foot in this way obviously lengthens the leg a bit, which accounts for the cramped feeling. When I deliberately pedal "flat footed" like Phil does, the problem never materializes.
Yesterday I spoke with a couple of bike fit specialists and asked them about this. I was particularly curious to know why they insist on having the balls of the feet extended a bit when determining seat height on a DF, which is almost certainly why I formed the habit of riding this way. Neither of them could give a good answer. All they could say is that this is how they'd been taught to do it. Neither of them knew of any reason why it would be a bad thing to keep your foot/shin angle at 90 degrees. In fact, one of them mentioned that his preferred method is to observe how a particular rider naturally positions his feet and use that as the starting point. I asked him if he saw someone holding his feet at 90 degrees, would he try to correct it? He said that he'd observe the rider pedal for a while, and if it wasn't causing him any problems, there would be no need to change his foot/shin angle.
Unfortunately the BB on my M1 is fixed in place. To move it forward, I would have to bring it to someone used to working with carbon fiber and have him lengthen the slot the bottom bracket fits into, as shown in the photo below:
But before I do anything that drastic, I'm going to try to get used to holding my feet the way Phil does.
The most important frames are between the zero and three second marks. If you slow the video down to 1/4 speed, you can clearly see that Phil's foot at the bottom of the power stroke is at 90 degrees to his shin, exactly as it would be if he were standing upright on a flat surface. My style of pedaling looks very different. Under power, my tendency is to push the balls of my feet forward slightly, so that the angle between my foot and shin might be more like 100 degrees. Extending the foot in this way obviously lengthens the leg a bit, which accounts for the cramped feeling. When I deliberately pedal "flat footed" like Phil does, the problem never materializes.
Yesterday I spoke with a couple of bike fit specialists and asked them about this. I was particularly curious to know why they insist on having the balls of the feet extended a bit when determining seat height on a DF, which is almost certainly why I formed the habit of riding this way. Neither of them could give a good answer. All they could say is that this is how they'd been taught to do it. Neither of them knew of any reason why it would be a bad thing to keep your foot/shin angle at 90 degrees. In fact, one of them mentioned that his preferred method is to observe how a particular rider naturally positions his feet and use that as the starting point. I asked him if he saw someone holding his feet at 90 degrees, would he try to correct it? He said that he'd observe the rider pedal for a while, and if it wasn't causing him any problems, there would be no need to change his foot/shin angle.
Unfortunately the BB on my M1 is fixed in place. To move it forward, I would have to bring it to someone used to working with carbon fiber and have him lengthen the slot the bottom bracket fits into, as shown in the photo below:
But before I do anything that drastic, I'm going to try to get used to holding my feet the way Phil does.
You didn't read the research article that I posted, obviously.
The biomechanical differences (hip angle) have been well characterized. For me, I make about 25% more peak power (5 seconds) on an upright. Aerobic power limitation is completely different as the energy pathways are different.
You have never done a true FTP test, have you? Or 1 hour TT on both platforms? So, you have no relevant experience to compare
Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, and Hinault all had different pedaling and foot angles from toe dropped to heal dropper. The toe down position results from the 109% rule from Cyrille Guimard back in the 70/80's. Whether you make less or more power? Hard to say. The 109 rule never worked for me, gave me knee ligament pain.
The video shows quite a lot of ankle motion. I considered reverted back from midsole to ball over the pedal to get the force vectors more aligned, which is not so easy when the back is pinned. I decided to try a different approach. Rotor RS4X crank and hopefully a seat the does not constrain the pelvis from a more natural motion but Phil's pedal style would accomplish what I had in mind. Thanks for posting that!!
The video shows quite a lot of ankle motion. I considered reverted back from midsole to ball over the pedal to get the force vectors more aligned, which is not so easy when the back is pinned. I decided to try a different approach. Rotor RS4X crank and hopefully a seat the does not constrain the pelvis from a more natural motion but Phil's pedal style would accomplish what I had in mind. Thanks for posting that!!
Osiris
Zen MBB Master
No, but I was commenting on different ways that power can be measured. I have seen a drastic difference in one of them but not in the other. I find it curious that the difference in peak power are so pronounced, but that it diminishes to the point of zero as you go down the scale.
I've done the double 20 minute tests administered by cycling coaches, but not the full hour one. Are you suggesting that I'm supposed to see something drastically different in a full hour test?
Osiris
Zen MBB Master
He does rotate his ankle quite a bit, especially after reaching BDC. His former coach and several other bent racers have been using custom fabricated cleat mounts to position their cleats roughly under the arch of the foot. They claim this results in more efficient pedaling. I think Larry Oz has done it as well.
I am not sure if midsole is more efficient or not. I have been riding that way for about 5 years. I tried to measure and "thought" I saw 3-5 beats lower HR at the same power. It did not give me more power at threshold. I also tried to test measuring blood lactate. For long distance, midsole helps with fatigue of the calf and feet and says bye bye to hot foot. Inconclusive WRT to efficiency for me, similar to QXL rings....I think there is a small effect. I just could not prove it....maybe 2-3%. RS4X crank? Huge effect on my peak power that is easily measured.
