Musings

This week has been pretty good for training. I got out Tuesday night and did a little power workout at Waterford Oaks. I did a hard cruise interval workout on the road Wednesday night, and last night I did a fairly easy endurance ride at Stony. I am now "super uphill logpile man"... OK, maybe not, but after riding the (pretty easy) one at Brighton, I decided I needed to ride the (bigger) one at Stony. I cleared it both laps, no problem. I think being able to do this is a result of working on my balance over the winter; a lot of it is also mental, of course.

I did some work on my mountain bike last night after the ride. I got the wheel trued up. I took the tire off to do it, and I was pretty happy with how quickly I was able to seal the tire back up. Definitely easier than the first time. I got my new rear derailleur about half on (I bought this derailleur in May '06, when I thought I had damaged mine... it turned out to be a bent hanger instead). I noticed that the spring felt stronger than on the broken derailleur, maybe this will help with my chain falling off?

A couple of musings on bike handling:

1. I'm thinking that having a rear wheel noticeably out of true is a "bad thing" for bike handling. Imagine cornering near the limit with the bike leaned over. Your tire is happily holding the line, then it reaches the spot where the wheel is out of true, and the tire (and therefore, contact patch) moves over. I think you would at least feel this, and if you were truly at the limit, it might be enough to push you over. It will be interesting to see if I notice a difference now that my wheel is true again.

2. I think my priorities for picking lines on the trail are screwed up. I put too much weight on avoiding little obstacles and not enough on the geometrically better line. This is one of the things that makes me slow.

3. Another thing I need to focus on is keeping my weight balanced over my pedals. It's a little hard to explain (but easy to feel), but when your weight is really being directed through the pedals, control (and grip!) is so much better.