| Re: Unhappy bentriders ?
Ryan Cousineau wrote:
>
> I would think that speed and comfort are the only reasons for
> bent-riding. Well, speed, comfort, and weirdness.
>
> Given that, if bents aren't notably faster than uprights, and you don't
> have a comfort issue, why would you?
For the weirdness.
I'm going to cut-and-paste in a message from another list to which I
subscribe, written by a recumbent dealer in response to a question from a
guy who had tried a recumbent. I think the views expressed are quite
reasonable. For various reasons, I'm going to omit the names.
> > I'm sure not every recumbent rider is an aching ex-upright rider. I'm
> > sure many recumbent riders were just naturally drawn to them for their
> > own merit. My own experience with recumbent is that instead of
> > fixing some aches, new ones were caused. My knees ached like
> > never before and my groin was sore. Some of that could be chalked
> > to the newness of the activity, and some might have been mitigated
> > by minor adjustments, but I've never had such immediate
> > pain from riding an upright.
>
> Sounds like the recumbent wasn't set up well for you (it is easy to be
way
> off on the setup on an unfamiliar bike of a completely different design
than
> what you normally ride). It has been my experience in fitting riders to
> recumbents over the past six years that those who have the most miles on
> road bikes tend to have the most difficult transitions to recumbents in
> terms of learning to balance differently, suppressing old kinetic
habits, and
> acclimating their legs to the different effects of gravity in the
recumbent
> position. The riders who make the smoothest transitions are generally
people
> who are less in shape and haven't been riding for years, I guess because
> they have less to "relearn." It has been said that a high level rider
needs
> approximately 5000 miles of recumbent riding before they can equal the
> power output and pedalling efficiency of their road bike. Many people
don't
> have enough interest or a long enough attention span to invest that much
> time into trying something new when their existing mount is serving them
> fairly well. Not fixing what isn't broken makes sense for many riders,
> especially if their existing road bikes are serving them as well as they
> want.
>
> The riders I find who are willing to stick with a recumbent tend to be
those
> whose back, neck, hand or genital problems prevent them from doing any
> significant distance on their conventional bikes after already trying
new
> saddles and stems. Another subsection of recumbent riders are people
like
> [name deleted] who aren't having a significant discomfort problem with
their road
> bikes but are very open minded, curious and or have an interest in new
> technologies and want to try owning a recumbent just for the fun of it.
Many
> times this sort of rider is the stereotypical bearded engineer who
normally
> lives a conservative life but has a secret desire to generate a lot of
> anonymous attention in a public place and figures if anyone asks they
can
> tell them all sorts of technical reasons why they ride a recumbent.
> It is true that most of the best selling recumbents on the US market
such as
> [name deleted] have higher aerodynamic drag than a conventional rider in
the
> drops. I don't know how the all recumbents are faster on level ground
myth
> got started but I always educate my customers about the actual
performance
> of recumbents and if they have any interest in performance riding I
steer
> them away from the average recumbent designs and towards the higher
> performance models.
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