ChrisCowan.us

Now that I'm officially off the bike for a while I decided to start swimming to help maintain my fitness. Holy Crap! Swimming is a really hard workout. I'm not sure I was really swimming, I think it was more like me flailing away in water moving from one end of the pool to the other. I think I swam for about 30-40 minutes, I didn't officially track the time or count the number of laps I did. My goal was just to try to swim some and focus on my form. It took me a while to get into the rhythm of swimming. It's quite a bit different then what I remember as a kid. I had to re-learn how to breath, my first lap I held my breath while my face was under water and then tried to exhale and take a breath, I about died. Then I remembered I need to exhale while my face was under water. It also took me a while to get the timing just right. I had to slow my strokes down and get the rhythm down to where I took three strokes and then a breath then three strokes then a breath. Once I got that figured out I tried to do a flip turn and ended up ramming right into the bottom. It's pretty hard to do a flip turn in 3 feet of water when your 6'3". So I used a slightly different technique I saw on YouTube where you touch the wall then do a quick turn and push off the wall to get the same effect. The important part of the push off is to stay under water and do a few dolphin kicks so you can get a chance to rest. Once I put that all together I could actually do about 3 laps consecutively before I had to stop to catch my breath. Near the end I was spent but it was that good spent the type that energizes you. The type of spent where you are ready to refuel. I released some of my pent up frustration and stress that I usually release during my morning rides. I got the endorphin rush I was craving, it felt good!

I just got back from the doctor and he said it was NOT one of the following:

• Meniscus
• Cruciate
• Collaterals
• Patella Tendinitis
• Bursae
• Pes Anserinus
• IT Band

and the diagnosis please... (drumroll) ... Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome come on down! He did some prodding and poking and does it hurt here when I do this or how about this. All of which I answered no. Then he drew some cool diagrams to show me how everything works and how he came to his conclusion. He wrote me a script for some Physical Therapy and a set of X-Rays. I forgot to ask if I should avoid riding or how long I should wait to ride. You never seem to ask all the questions you had in mind because your so excited that the doctor figured out what's wrong. He is suppose to call back tonight with the results of my X-Rays so I will hit him up with my outstanding questions. We did talk about how I should probably schedule a bike fitting because Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome has a lot to do with biomechanics. I also scheduled my first PT session for next Friday. As a side note... my doctor is awesome! Update: My doctor called back and said the X-Rays confirmed his diagnosis. He also said I'm going to be off the bike till after I start PT. Which I'm guessing the physical therapist can probably give me a better idea as to when it would be good to start riding again. Update Too: My doctor is Veko Vahamaki at Camino Medical Group.

In about 15 minutes I'm going to my first doctor's visit about my knee injury. I figured I've done enough self-diagnosis and should probably get some professional help. I still think it's patella tendonitis and from the reading I've done on the subject I suspect I'm going to be off the bike for a month or so to give it time to heal. Wish me luck...

One of the things I have the hardest time with is recovering from an injury. It's hard for me to take a break from my bike because I feel like I've worked so hard to get to the level I'm at. Injuries suck balls! After my last ride on Monday I realized that my knee pain has been worse since I switched to the flat pedals. I would have thought that having the freedom to move my foot around and change my position would have improved things. So I've decided to call off my experiment and go back to the "click" pedals (evidently clipless is really really confusing to everyone who's never seen pedals with clips). I really wanted the flat pedals to work for me. I was looking forward to having the freedom to use any shoe I wanted. It was nice to be able to just hop on my bike and ride to work without having to swap shoes. I felt a bit like a rebal unraveling the threads of the cycling pedal culture (well not really but that I though that would sound poetic). My theory for the increased amount of pain was that my muscles are built up around pedaling on my "click" pedals. I noticed that when I got my feet in the exact position where my "click" pedals are the pain would be reduced. I also notice that if I moved my feet closer to the frame it helped too, the "Q-Factor" on my new cranks is wider so I switched them from 113 mm back to 108 mm. Although my commute is relatively short I could tell the difference, my knees felt good and everything felt comfortable again. Another break-through in tackling my knee problems is that I slept on my back all night and I woke up without any knee pain. I'm a stomach sleeper and I think what's been happening is that when I sleep I've been putting pressure on my patella (fancy word for knee cap). This has been preventing it from healing properly in my sleep. So my new plan is to take a break for the rest of the week to give my knees more time to rest. I'm hoping that everything will be feeling fine by the weekend so I can get in a nice easy ride in. If that goes well then I will start ramping up the millage again... slowly... so i can do some fun touring this fall. Here is the Surly ready for some fall riding.

I've decided to take the last couple day off the bike to give my knees a chance to rest. My knee issues seem to be a result of pushing too high of gears on my climbs. This all started a few months back when I had the bright idea of try to break my personal record up Old La Honda. My strategy was to try and stand up out of the saddle on my climbs, recover and then repeat. I've also been encountering really steep off road climbs using my 1x9 setup. After my mixed terrain rides my knees were usually really sore for a few days. Top things off, I don't know how to do an  easy recovery ride so I would follow those rides up with some heavy climbing and record breaking attempts up Old La Honda. I had this arbitrary goal of trying to get faster this year but I've come to realize in the last couple of weeks that fun is more important then faster. For the next couple of weeks I'm going to be focusing on spinning higher RPM's and taking it easy to give my knees a chance to heal and recover. If you see me at a stop light or pass me on the flats don't expect me to give chase (since we all know every stop light is the starting line and getting passed is a challenge to race).

This morning I woke up early to go riding on my new setup. I figured instead of beating around the bush by riding a tame road ride and breaking in the flat pedals, I would hit one of my mixed terrain routes. I decided to do the Canyon Trail up to Page Mill.  I figured it presented several different scenarios for testing out the pedals: road climbs, steep off-road climbs, off-road descents, some minor off-road technical sections and a nice technical road descent. That way I could truly get a feel for how the pedals perform in different conditions.  On the road, I was able to maintain a normal pedal cadence without having my feet fly off the pedals on the backstroke (no big surprise really). I also noticed that once I started pedaling I would move my foot around till I found the sweet spot and then settled into a really nice cadence. My sweet spot was having the balls of my feet over the axel. I'm not sure if the lateral positions was exactly the same but when I got my foot there I knew it. Normally when I come to a stop sign I take my left foot off the pedals and leave my right foot at the dead bottom center. With clipless pedals I would just pull my right foot up when the light turned green and give a big pedal stroke to start rolling while I clicked the left foot in. With the platform pedals I had to change my stopping habit by leaving my right pedal at the top of the stroke when I got to the light. Not a big deal since it all I had to do with my left pedal was put my foot down. It was nice not to have to fumble with my pedals when starting off at a light, I just started pedaling. One problem I thought I would encounter was on short steep off-road climbs. Normally I would get out of the saddle at the last part of the climb and pull on the pedals to get over the top. I figured if anytime my feet would accidently fly off the pedals was during these short steep climbs. Evidently I really wasn't pulling as much as I though I was because I did the same climbs using the same technique and my feet stayed on the pedals. I have to admit my feet did lift off the pedals twice. Once when I tried to do a jump and the other time was when I was flying over a wash board bumpy section trying to do a really high cadence because I was in the wrong gears. They didn't fly off but I could feel them losing some traction on the pedals. The jump was because I really suck at jumping and bunny hoping.  So what do the numbers say? Well my last ride on the same route with clipless pedals I did a 13.1 mph average, on this ride I did a 13.5 mph average. So slightly faster but that's probably due to the fact that I had more energy and I was excited to be trying something new. This only really proves that I can maintain almost the same pace as I did with the clipless pedals. My average and max heart rate was 1 bpm higher too. I would say that there isn't a really significant difference in the data and that had I not mentioned it you wouldn't even know I had changed a thing.  Here is links to the rides for your comparison: Canyon Trail Cyclocross (w/flat pedals) vs Canyon Trail Cycloross Adventure I was going to take a bunch of photos today but I left the house without my camera battery so here are a few snaps off my iPhone. Here is a panoramic shot I did with the help of Photoshop (click to see the larger version). When I was coming down Page Mill it was really foggy which made for a really tricky descent. Ride Stats:

• Distance: 41.37 Miles
• Elevation Gain: +3703 ft / -3707 ft
• Calories Burned: 4159
• Total Time: 03:24'17
• Moving Time: 03:07'19
• View full stats

View Larger Map

Lately I've been doing a ton of reading on pedaling, pedal strokes, foot position, knee position, crank lengths and blah blah blah. I'm still having some issues with my left  knee (it was both knees but is now isolated to my left knee). I've check my seat height, fore/aft knee position relative to the pedal axel, I'm using pedals with a ton of float, more spinning less mashing but still a little pain. During my research I came across this article by Grant of Rivendale Bicycle Works about "the Shoe Ruse".  The article was more about the benefits of pedaling with flat pedals (or platform pedals) and really had nothing to do with knee pain. Never the less I found his article intriguing, his focus was mainly centered on how you can use just about any shoe you like (including Hush Puppies) with a $20 pedal to get the same amount of performance you would get using a clipless pedal system. He also went on to explain how all the benefits of clipless pedals are not true.   WHA! WHA! WHAT?!?!? But with clipless pedals you can get a 360º pedal stroke! And your feet won't spontaneously fly into the spokes! And you don't actually have to think about keeping your feet on the pedals! And when I'm connected to the bike I transfer all my power! What about "correct" feet placement?!?! You mean people actually ride their bikes and survive without clipless pedals and special cycling shoes?!?!?! That's gotta be Bullshit! To backup his outrageous claims he also mentions some studies where researchers measured the downward pressure that Professional cyclist put on clipless pedals and the upward pressure on the back stroke (or upstroke). They also used the same test to measure recreational riders. During these studies they concluded that even the pros don't really use the back stroke to increases their power but they do gain a modest amount of efficiency by unloading the opposite pedal to limit the resistance. They are not getting a 360º pedal stroke as promoted by clipless pedal makers. For untrained recreational riders, they only apply downward pressure. That can't be true, he must have made that crap up!  Since Grant didn't put any references in his article I hit PubMed to find the supporting research. You wouldn't believe the amount of studies that's been done around cycling and pedaling. I found about 1000 related papers, including the study that supports Grant's article. I sent about 17 links to my buddy at Stanford to download for me, I will post some more on that in the future. I have to admit this isn't the first time I've heard about this study but because I was happy with my setup I never paid it much attention. I've been riding clipless pedals since I was 16 years old, I've never really looked at anything else. My original motivation for going with them was a friend (who was a sponsored rider) gave me a pair to try. I was 16 and wanted to be cool like the pros so I put them on and went through the initiation process (lots of falling while attached to the bike when stopped). I've never question that decision or my beliefs about clipless pedals till now. When I look at all the benefits of clipless pedals (safety over bumps, perceived biomechanics efficacy, no feet in my spokes... etc) I think back to all those years before I used clipless pedals. Especially when I was a kid riding my BMX bike over and off everything I could find. I don't remember having issue of my feet spontaneously flying off the pedals or thinking there has to be a better way.  With all this in mind, I decided to do a little experiment to see if I can be happy with platform pedals and regular shoes.  Plus, I'm getting to the end of life with my current pair of shoes, the inside heal in my left shoe is worn out to the point that it's time to replace them. If you've ever shopped for decent cycling shoe you know they are not cheap, $80 - $220 a pair!  This weekend I stopped by Sports Basement and picked up a pair of $20 Odyssey platform pedals with some really good traction. I installed these pedals yesterday and tried them out with my Puma's, they feel amazingly solid. My plan is to give this an honest chance by riding for the next 4 weeks using the platform pedals. I'm going to ride all my normal routes including the mixed terrain rambles just to make sure I cover all my use cases. To be more scientific I will compare my ride reports from previous rides (w/clipless pedals) to my rides (w/platform pedals). On Oct 13, I will make a decision to either keep these pedals on my bike and officially switch over or install them on Amanda's bike since I sold her pedals with my Schwinn Road Bike (sorry baby, he didn't want clipless pedals... go figure!) I will either be liberated from the clipless-pedal-cycling-shoe-strangle-hold or I will put this clipless-pedals-are-not-better crap to rest once and for all.  If your lucky, You might even see me riding around with flip flops and thick wool socks in a full roadie kit. Just imagine the looks I will get from people as I pass them in that outfit!

Yesterday I was reading an article about a cyclist who got hit by a truck and the driver fled the scene of the accident. Luckily the cyclist survived but not with out a few broken bones. I read through the comments and as usual there is always discussion about how cyclist are unsafe by riding two abreast, we run red lights, not stopping at stop signs, riding in the middle of the road, blah blah blah blah. It's your average responses to a cycling accident article. The cyclist MUST have been doing something unsafe to bring this upon himself. I even felt compelled to respond with this:

"@NotAPlumber People don't wave cyclist through stop signs because they are expecting them to run it anyways. They do it because they are polite drivers, your assumptions are wrong. I'm often stopped at signs waving back and forth with drivers and eventually give in and just go. They wave and smile and I return the same gesture. I'm always amused by people who are quick to judge all cyclist as stop-sign-running-elitist. If we used the same generalizations then all motorists are baby-killing-drunk-drivers. Cyclist haven't cornered the market on bad behavior with regards to being unsafe. It's these types of generalizations that have cause the animosity you see between drivers and cyclist today. Why do cyclist get hot headed when a car comes too close or does something dangerous around them? It's a natural reaction when your life is mortally threatened, it's hard not to take it personally. "-hello people-" is right on. The real crime is not what caused the accident but the fact the driver left the scene of the accident. Which in my book seems to place the fault squarely on the driver. Innocent people don't run. I'm pretty sure he/she is a scum bag."

(@NotAPlumber mentioned that people wave cyclist through stops sings because they expect them to run them anyways.) Now from my quote you might assume that I'm an upstanding member of the cycling community who doesn't run stop signs and red lights, nothing could be further from the truth. I run them all the time. As a matter of fact I run the same one every day. Why? If I didn't I would be sitting there forever because the light's sensors don't detect cyclists. There are also a few stop signs on my routes that I slow down and roll through when clear (or treat more like a yeild sign but I don't fully stop and put my foot down). Mainly because they are on quiet streets and their soul purpose is to limit motor traffic and slow cars down. I think what everyone fails to realize is the consequence of a motorist actions is a lot greater then that of a cyclist. I run a red light and hit a bus full of nuns and I might die, a car runs a red light and hits a bus full of nuns and everyone dies. Both break the law but they have dramatically different outcomes. If you find yourself saying, "Well cyclist do blah blah all the time..." you should swing a leg over a bike for a month and let me know when you find yourself doing the same things. Cycling and driving are not the same and there for shouldn't really be compared. We happen to occupy the same space but the rules (and consequence) are drastically different. One quote that always comes to mind when I read a motorist complaint about cyclist breaking the law is this... "Don't take the splinters out of my eyes when you have logs in your own."

Now some of you might think this would be another anti-car post about the dangers of cars and bike mixing it up. Other's might think I'm posting about Rock Racing's David Clinger. You're all wrong! I'm talking about squirrels! These deceptively cute little creatures are extremely dangerous and scare me more then most cars. In the last 3 mouths I've had more close encounters with squirrels then I've had with cars. Even though I almost got squished today by an inpatient BMW driver (who is the most dangerous of the car species). I know your thinking, "Why would a 220 lb 6'3" guy be scared of a furry cute little squirrel that only weighs 1.5 pounds?" Because squirrels are the suicide bombers of the rodent population. They throw their bodies into oncoming traffic and bicycle wheels without any hesitation whatsoever and most of their attempts end up with their own demise. But every once in a while they successfully get caught up in the spokes of bicycles wheels and cause a catastrophic endos (going head first into the pavement or end over ass). This also results in the death of the squirrel too, the cyclist usually survives. I haven't found any evidence that someone has died from a squirrel attack but I don't want to be the first. I assume that if a squirrel does a suicide attack during a 25 mph decent your probably going to be really fucked up and depending on where it happens, possibly die. When I see them sitting on the side of the road scheming I usually hiss or ring my bell to scare them off. But sometimes there is a really determined squirrel who likes to stare me down. It's like he's playing chicken with me, I know that's the one who is going to attempt to dart out at me.  I'm deathly afraid of the these brazen squirrels who have such little value for my life. The best case scenario is that he times it wrong and becomes a speed bump, worst case scenario he succeeds on his mission and I'm fighting for my life in the back of an ambulance. No so cute anymore? Additional Reading: 

• Squirrel Page on Chain Reaction's Site
• Squirrel Lover's Club
• Suicide squirrel in opera-hating kamikaze bike spoke mangle

Some days when I throw a leg over my bike its for the sole purpose of getting away and just riding the bike. I focus on grunting out mile after mile and liberating my mind of all the crap I don't want to deal with or think about. It's like zoning out in front of the TV but instead of watching re-runs of CSI on Spike TV, I'm in an aerobic stupor which is some how relaxing for me. These are the type of rides that I come back from refreshed and bubbling with enthusiasm about cycling. Inevitably my wife has to spend several hours rolling her eyes as I explain why I had such a good ride and why cycling is so much fun and blah blah blah... Sorry baby! Then there are rides where I reflect on the current events that make up my life. The ones where you don't notice your thighs are on fire because you too busy thinking about something else. Pretty useful when your climbing a big hill or trying to do a recovery ride that becomes more ride then recovery. Today's ride was one such ride and because my brain doesn't like to focus on one subject for too long it likes to jump around quite a bit. I tend to make a list of bullet points around ideas or thoughts. I also don't focus on actually coming up with solutions as much as I just surface my feelings about things. Here are a few bullet points of things I was focusing on today: Why don't I have any close friends here?

• There are not very many people like me in my demographic (30 something with two kids, 1 year old and 3 year old, who obsesses about riding bikes).
• My riding schedule is not compatible with people who I would enjoy hanging out with (see first bullet)
• I'm an asshole
• Everyone else is an asshole
• I live in a place where people are extremely introverted and are resistant to make new friends
• Most people my age here don't have kids... did the demographic point cover this?
• Most people I meet are parents of my kids' friends which usually means they meet me because of the circumstances and not because of a common interest

Am I really doing what I want to be doing?

• Kind of sort of
• I like some aspects of work
• I hate other aspects of work
• What's my ideal situation?

Is riding alone better then riding with a group?

• Group rides are either really social or a race
• I'm always slower then the fast group but faster then the slow group which means I'm riding alone anyways
• Small groups are fun to ride with if you really like the people
• When I ride alone I can go my own pace... stop and smell the roses... do whatever
• What are the chances of me finding someone who can ride at 6 am? and loves to ride mixed terrain? and is as slow (or as fast) as me?
• Sometimes its fun to chase people
• Sometimes its fun to be chased by people

Why is this hill so fucking hard?

• My gearing is wrong
• I didn't eat enough food and my legs ran out of power.
• Gravity?
• Too many Chocolate Croissants?
• Stop being a pussy and pedal damn it!

Why I really love my bike?

• It's a tank (in a good way)
• It's fun to ride on trails
• It's fun to ride on roads
• The shifting is smooth
• I like the color
• It fits me really well

What type of riding is this?

• Mountain Biking on a Cyclocross Bike
• Road Biking on a Cyclocross Bike
• Randoneering?
• Does it really matter?

What am I going to eat when I'm done?

• Chocolate Croissant!

The first topic sort reminds me of a kid I saw at the playground one day running around asking the other kids "Do you want to play with me?" After about 2 mintues of this, he sat down on the end of the slide and started crying "Nobody wants to play with me!" ... it was really pathetic.