Saturday, October 15, 2005

Blur case...

Sh*t man.. like did absolutely nothing today.. wasted my day! Didn't even practice when I supposed to, dunno why I slept after lunch when I should be practicing... curse my lazy body! Argh!

Got my bike shoes. Got my clipless pedals yesterday. Don't understand? Never mind, don't try...cyclists know this. Now I'm really relatively broke. Anyone wanna donate some money? Ahahhaa.. I fixed up those pedals on my bike, and tried on those shoes. Quite a scare to try to use them the first time, learning how to clip on the shoes with the pedals and trying to release them.

Don't undertsand? In the old days, bikers use pedals with "toe-clips", where it consist of a rubber "clip" and a strap to strap your shoes in. This is to hold your feet and shoes while cycling, so that there's more pedal power. A couple of years back, bicycle technical-research people came up with clipless pedals and shoes to match them. Clipless pedals dispose the use of straps, and it comes in two parts. The pedal itself and a "cleat". A cleat is an attachment to the bicycle shoe, and it is attached to the pedal by stepping the cleat against the pedal when you mount the bike. The pedal is designed where the front part of the cleat is inserted to the front of the pedal, and the back part of the cleat is locked-in with the lock at the back of the pedal. To remove the shoe from the pedal, the rider just has to twist the shoe to either left or right to get the cleat unlocked from the pedal. What's the implication of this to the rider? It basically keeps your feet locked in to the pedal, and it transfers more power to the pedal. It also provides "pulling" power as well as "pushing" power to the pedal. It probably also means better use of energy during the ride, to make it simple to understand.

Gonna use it tomorrow night, when I go for a Saturday night long bike ride with a bunch of fellas, including Azwar and Ajeep. We're going riding at Putrajaya. We might go for 90k. I'm not sure if I can go that long. If I can't I'll just stop at 60k. My last 60k ride with them, took a bit out of me, when it came to the hill. But then again, I learnt a couple of new things from that ride, such as training up high pedalling cadence (ie. leg turnover on the pedal, measured in rpm).

Generally, the higher the cadence (around 85 - 90rpm) the more efficient the use of energy, and less strain on the legs. So to maintain that cadence at different terrains, a bike rider must learn how to use the appropriate gear combo. Eg. you don't go and drive 5th gear in a car to climb up a hill do you? So when it comes to hills, go to the smaller gear combos.

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I lost my parking ticket at Mid Valley. It's one of the days where I'm blur to the max. I don't know where I put that ticket... biatch! I had to pay rm20 for the lost ticket (as if I'm not relatively broke already, shiteee).

Hopefully I just misplaced it somewhere in the car. If I did, I can go and claim it back within 7 working days.

Why am I so blur.. sleep some more lah, fatsoooo...

Sigh. Have a good weekend....

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