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June 28, 2005
Bugs, sweat, spinning
Tried wearing my normal sunglasses while biking yesterday afternoon. Everything went well for the first couple of kilometers, no bugs in the eyes, no squinting, although I had a somewhat distorted view of the road, which made me nervous cornering over what Dana calls chip seal, where they tar a patch of road and dump fine gravel on it.
But then I started sweating more. It was like looking through a swimming pool by the time I got to the train station, only about 8 km from work.
So this morning I went back to squinting. And bugs. Since late spring we've had the gnats that go for the eyes. Actually I'm not sure they go for the eyes particularly, but they stick there very noticeably. Now we also have the kamikaze bugs that dive bomb into your helmet and leave you wondering what species they are. Perhaps a wasp? Maybe I need to tape some sort of netting in there.
And I'm glad to be in France, where there are hardly any bugs. It must be much worse back in the midwestern US.
Also experimented with spinning faster than my normal 105-110 rpm target range. I find that above the top end of that range my legs jerk the pedals. At a sprint my max. cadence is probably only around 130, which explains why I've not yet gone faster than a little over 70 kph. Matt said cross-country cyclists aim for a cadence of 120, useful for not losing power over abrupt changes in terrain. That seems very fast indeed.
Posted by Mark at June 28, 2005 01:45 PM