| Re: My 'Bent Is Starting to Annoy Me
"Tom Kunich" <cyclintom@yahoo. com> wrote in message
news:ye1mh.6024$yx6.3344@newsread2.news.pas.earthl ink.net...
> "Edward Dolan" <edolan@iw.net> wrote in message
> news:k9KdndLv2tVIPAzYnZ2dnUVZ_qqrnZ2d@prairiewave. com...
>>
>> Big Jim has a good point here, but he does not realize how much we
>> recumbent cyclists insist on comfort, something that you can never get on
>> an upright.
>>
>> When I ride an upright and it starts to cause me pain I get so freaking
>> mad I could kill myself for being so stupid as to think an upright could
>> ever be comfortable for more than half an hour. Screw all uprights all
>> the way to hell and back! The g.d. things are nothing but torture racks.
>> One thing is for sure, they were never designed for the human anatomy.
>
> Ed, when I started riding again I had a whole lot of pains in just about
> every part of my body from that damned bicycle.
>
> But over time I learned to properly fit and to adjust myself to the bike.
>
> I put in 7600+ miles this year and the worst pain I've had from the bike
> was an occasional sore butt and that's usually near the start of a ride.
> It goes away as I ride out longer.
>
> I can certainly understand why you'd be angry at the pain from a bicycle
> but when I started running way back when I had every possible pain a
> person could have except when running they got progressively worse.
> Eventually I had to stop running because my legs would be numb from the
> knees down for days at a time.
>
> I've ridden some recumbents and to be frank, I didn't find them that
> comfortable and neither did I see any advantage to using them. Though I
> did discover that I like short wheelbase recumbents with underseat
> steering.
To compare the kind of comfort you can get on an upright (by working at it)
and the kind comfort you can get on a recumbent right out of the box is the
difference between night and day. I rode uprights for over 10 years and
there is nothing you can tell me about them that I do not already know in
spades.
You DO sometimes have to fiddle a bit with the seat and various other
factors to get perfect comfort on a recumbent, but it can easily be
accomplished. Once you have your recumbent dialed in, you are through with
it for life. You can never say that about an upright as it will come back to
bite you if you get the least bit out of shape.
The chief advantage of a recumbent is the comfort factor. Most young
cyclists will never get into recumbents because they either do not ride a
bike all that much or they do not want to give up any speed. They will put
up with the discomfort that you get on an upright for the speed advantage.
Once I got into recumbents I never looked back and I now regard uprights as
nothing but torture machines. The fact is that you have to stay very fit and
strong to ride an upright. You can be a wimp like me and still enjoy a bike
as long as it is a recumbent.
Regards,
Ed Dolan the Great - Minnesota
aka
Saint Edward the Great - Order of the Perpetual Sorrows - Minnesota
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