Got Your Mojo WORKIN'! group - CLOSED (Page 113)

Oh no, George!!! Sounds like Murphy's Law hit you many times over. Yikes!

Sounds delicious, and what I'm trying to transform my diet into. And also sounds very non-restrictive, so I may have to check the book out from the library to see what it's all about. Wow, and it is definitely NOT vegetarian. Geez, the whole website has legs of lamb and ribs and all sorts of deliciousness. I may be convinced!

Kasia

George,

That gearing website is over my head as well but I once took a gear class/talk/thingamabob and they greatly simplified the whole thing for newbies like me. Essentially the guy taught us how to rank our gears from lowest to highest, across all three chainrings/cranks/cassettes/whatever they're called (the name escapes me now). Out of the 30 gears I have on my bike (3 in front x 10 in back) I was able to rank them in order and can now shift more smoothly in that I don't skip gears when shifting going uphill and get less tired overall.

Here's how...it involves a lot of counting the cogs on each ring, so beware. Unless you're a good Googler, that is.

1. Figure out how many cogs are on each of your rings, both front and back. Usually for the front that's given in the specs for the bike (mine's 50/39/30) and for the back they give you a range (mine's 12-27, 10 speed). You can either Google that particular cassette by getting the name and range off the specs website for your bike or get on your hands and knees and count them all. I recommend the latter, but I know it's not always possible. Oftentimes you can also guesstimate the spacing between the gears in the back. Steve is much better at that than I am.
2. For each gear, divide the number of cogs from the front gear by the number of cogs on the back gear, and multiply the whole thing by wheel size. For the purposes of ranking your gears relative to each other, you don't have to multiply by the wheel size, since the order of gears comes out the same regardless. I still multiplied since it gave larger numbers and was easier to compare and rank them later. For example, for my fastest overall gear (largest front gear, smallest back gear) and what I thought were 26" wheels at the time, I did the following: 26*50/12 = 108 and do that for all your other gears as well. You don't have to convert your wheel size to metric. Or you can multiply by some random number to take care of the decimals. The important part is divide the front gear by the rear gear.
3. Remove two gears with smallest front/smallest back and smallest front/2nd smallest back, and two gears with largest front/largest back and largest front/2nd largest back from your chart, for a total of four gears removed. You should never be riding in those gears since in those combinations, the chain is diagonal across the cassette and crank which is not good for either and grates on the components. So avoid at all costs.
   
4. Rank your resulting numbers from highest to lowest, with the lower numbers being lowest/slowest gears (granny gears) and higher numbers being highest/fastest gears (downhills). So the granny gears (smallest front, largest back) would have low numbers and the gears for downhills (largest front, smallest back) would have super high numbers.
5. Write it all out on a piece of paper and tape it to your handlebars. It really helps on the uphills especially with knowing into which gear you should downshift so as not to skip gears. Makes the climb smoother and more effective, in my opinion.

Below is my gear chart. The multicolored chart and numbers are the result of the formula I mentioned in #2 above: wheel size*front gear cogs/rear gear cogs. And the bottom chart is the ranking of the gears from slowest to fastest (granny gears to downhill gears). As you can see, I've crossed out the four gears I mentioned in #3 that you should never use and didn't include them in my rankings.

The numbers for the front and rear gears correspond to the number of cogs on each ring.

I've taped a little index card with the bottom chart info on my handlebars and try to shift in order. It's especially useful on uphills when I feel like I'm shifting too quickly or the one I'm in is just a tad too hard so I downshift and all is well. It's taken a little getting used to in figuring out what gear I'm actually in to be able to see where to go next, and I still find myself looking back at my rear derailleur quite often.

So during normal flats or rolling hills I don't really stick with the gear chart too much and just do it by feel, and don't really care if I'm a little bit off. As you can see in the middle gears of the middle chainring, the numbers aren't that different (first chart) and thus changing gears from say a gear combo of 39/17 to 50/21 (ranking 13 to 14) is about the same as from 39/17 to 39/16 (ranking 13 to 15). Here is where having an accurate wheel size comes in handy because you can see that 13 to 14 is 60 to 62 (not sure about the units...inches, maybe?) and 13 to 15 is 60 to 63, so only a difference of 1 inch between the two results, but you're going from 13 to 15 in just one gear change as compared to 3 for 13 to 14. So in those middle gears sometimes it's not important to go in order since the differences are slight and you can skip a ranking without feeling too much of a difference in order to shift less frequently.

Once you get to the granny gears or downhill gears, the differences are much more noticeable. Going from ranking 3 to 2 (30/21 to 30/24) is 37 inches to 33 inches, while ranking 3 to 1 (30/21 to 30/27) is 37 inches to 29 inches, a much bigger jump and thus a gear you probably don't want to skip.

Also, on the uphills it's easier to know which gear I'm in since the terrain is not changing as often and thus I'm in the same gear for a longer amount of time, but also because the differences between the gear combos are so great that I can generally feel where I am on the cassette. Overall, this has been really helpful in getting myself to ride in the proper gear and thus making my riding more efficient and smoother. I would highly recommend making a chart of your own.

Let me know if you have any questions. I hope I explained it well enough and pardon the length.

Kasia

I entirely agree with the sweat-soaked cotton shirt feel. It shows me how hard I've worked, although sometimes it's pretty gross. As for sweat in the eyes, I can't really help as I don't have that problem, luckily. For some reason, my head and face don't sweat as much as the rest of me does. Or maybe my helmet and hat absorb it on rides and runs. Maybe a sweat band would be the way to go? Not sure.

Steve,
"under the kneecap" may not be the best description.   it is more to the bottom of the kneecap and outside of the knee.  Actually going upstairs does not cause any pain, it is walking and going downstairs that is pain provoking.  I hope I have something that is manageable.  I don't want to cancel my season (especially since most of my races are next month!) but don't want to do anything that will cause more damage and make later in the season or next season, etc.. at risk of not being able to do any races.  I will let you all know what the doctor says tomorrow.

Alex

Kasia - Wow, that was a great write up on the gears, thanks.

Well the nurse called and left a voice mail for me.  She said the Dr looked at my MRI and it was negative, there was no stress fractures or any other damage to my hip.  She said that I can start to train again and if I wanted I could call them to schdl physical therapy.  Well I will have to pass on the PT since my insurance is not paying for the MRI and they will not pay for the PT.  Also I been to a PT back in July when I fell through a ceiling at my previous job and hurt my back.  The PT that I had to go to was a joke and waste of my time.  What I mean was I went in 3 times a week and did the same stuff over and over, heck just give me a list of things I need to do and I will do them at home.  I still have back issues every once in a while, like this morning I woke up to ride and do a brick run and my lower back was stiff and sore that I could not do anything.  I decided to just ease back into the running and work through the pain. The pain is about a 6 on a scale to 1-10 so not that bad, I just was afraid that I would cause major damage if I kept running and since it lasted about 5 weeks I thought I would get it checked out.  Last night I was looking on the internet for groin stretches and I think I might have found the problem.  There is on stretch I was doing wrong.  It's where Im sitting on the floor with the bottom of my feet touching each other and I use my arms to push down on my knees to stretch the groin area.  Well it said not to bounce the legs and dont push hard, well I was doing both.  Maybe by doing that I pulled that muscle.

Well sorry for the long post.  Have a great day

Well the jury is still out on my knee problem... the Dr things it is a torn meniscus but won't know unless I have an MRI.  He recommended that I take anti-inflammatory meds for 10 days and then come back in to see him.  If it doesn't improve by then, we can do an MRI.  He said even if I did have to have my knee scoped it wouldn't totally kill my season.  He thinks I probably did it on my fall and have been aggravating it by training since then.  On an up note he did say I can continue to swim and bike (just no running).  I just got the DVD for water running so I have a good thing to try.  I also need to work on my core strength and actually strength overall so I will take the non-running time and work on that.  I just hope that I haven't blown up June since most of my races are then. But as long as I can race in July and August that would be ok.  Even if  I have to walk the runs in June I may go ahead and race them... just for the OWS experience... (any thoughts on doing this?)

Thanks
Alex 

Perfect Steve!  Thanks!

The swim is always my worse leg of the race. 

The Ironman swim is a different animal.  Full contact for most of it, people swim over you, and people punch and kick you in the crowded areas (around the turn buoys).  You advice for avoiding contact is spot on!

Regarding big waves and swells:  a coach told me to go with the waves, not to fight them.  I found that tip helped me some in bigger waves and swells. 

Alex,

Depending on what they do with your meniscus (remove part of it or sew it back together...depends on the location of the tear as well as the severity), you can be back to full activity in as little as 3 weeks. I tore my meniscus in two places a few years ago in a rugby game and eventually had it scoped. By the time I had surgery, one tear had healed on its own and for the second one they took a chunk of my meniscus out. After some strengthening and PT, I was able to play again in under a month. Well, the knee was able to play again, but the other injuries were still healing so I was out for a bit longer than that. But not due to the meniscus injury.

In short, a meniscus tear has a fairly short recovery time after surgery, and you should still be able to have a season, albeit with a short break in the middle of it.

I'm sending healing vibes your way!

Kasia

Craig - When I did my tri last month I put myself under the clyesdale group and I wish I was under the age groups.  Reason for this is on my race the clyesdale group of course was seperated from all the age groups so It was really hard to find how I ranked with the folks my age and also other age groups.  My results posted were age groups, all racers except for the clyesdale, fat tires and relay.  This is the only reason why I wanted to be in the age group.

Alex - I hope the meds help and you are back on your feet running again. 

Steve,

Haha! Yes, things were very slow yesterday and it was awesome!!! It was my first full day of nothing to do or worry about since last August. Actually, almost a full day since I managed to make work for myself in the form of having a minor car collision last night in the parking lot after a kickball game. "Minor" in the sense that no one got hurt and the car doesn't look all that bad and is still drivable, but not "minor" money wise.

So instead of lying in my hammock all day today as planned as part of my month of non-productivity, I got a great education in auto body repair and car safety mechanisms. Did you know your bumper is actually made up of at least three layers of absorptive and cosmetic materials? That the rear quarter panel is the single most expensive piece of auto body to replace? And if your trunk can't form a complete seal when closed, then you're at risk of inadvertently suffocating yourself with exhaust fumes while driving? Kind of like to attaching a hose to your exhaust pipe and sticking it in the window with the car running in a closed garage. Only while driving. Fun. I didn't know any of that before this morning.

So now I'm off on a ride to clear my head and stop moping because it's not the end of the world. After-all, no one got hurt and it's just a car. That, and the planned run for today is really not something I want to do right now, but I need my exercise. So biking it is.

Kasia

Kasia,

Enjoy the ride.