March 3rd. Solar RV cycling log. Oh, this is first and foremost a bicycle. never have looked at it that way before.

March 3rd. Solar RV cycling log. Oh, this is first and foremost a bicycle. never have looked at it that way before.

How is that possible? Yes the lead thought is that I'm an idiot. I wonder however if a recumbent bicycle, a primary liability is that there are many many ways not to think about this as a bicycle?

Thinking about it as a bicycle from the beginning of today's Journey, now 400 calories into the journey, has been huge. Tremendously organizing. Tremendously sane and logical. Tremendously encouraging and seemingly sustainable. Quite powerful, more powerful it seems so far than any time in weeks or months.

Upon reflection there are times that the body has treated it somewhat like a bicycle without realizing it was doing so. How promising to be able to bring to mind that it is a bicycle so that there are not such long week or month or multi-month long gaps between high performance.

A bicycle, what does that mean? Well, in a traditional bicycle I'm not sure my body ever made the mistake of not understanding that maximum power was maximum downward thrust completed at the bottom of the thigh, the full extension of the knee. But anyone that has agonized looking at summer all of my logs knows that many months have gone by without me grasping what I just wrote in the prior sentence.

Yes, except such optimism seems to be an every two-day event for me. Will be interesting to see if this is a new Milestone. That would not surprise me.

And in the event that it is difficult to master a recumbent because where gravity leaves no doubt as to where the thigh  should end each thrust, straight down, it may be that not only I find that a recumbent does not make this singularly important fact obvious. Rather it disguises it under so many tempting alternatives. Whatever.

The metrics here where the horses should be, first third of the journey, the metrics are better than any time in many months quite possibly 136 human watts, average of 128 watts per hour human, and average RPM of 57.

The next two thirds of the journey, the next two hours, the next 240 calories, confirmed the positive outlook of the first third. With some additional lessons.

A Holy Grail, the Holy Grail Maybe, is constantly discovering and moving for the bottom of the pedal stroke, which is not determined by the pedal itself, it is influenced by that, but it is the effective full extension to the Bottom by the knee which must roll through that bottom but quickly smoothly and sharply. Years now it has been observed that by some miracle in the last 20% of any arduous Journey the power and smoothness and Effectiveness and efficiency and sustainability of the stroke is often Optimum. Several other things are true in the last 20%, obviously the body has expended a lot of energy by then, it is supposed to pleated but maybe finding a final second wind. Something else that is often if not usually true and always true in these months of travel uphill, the last 10% is the steepest. And tonight it was discovered that this Holy Grail just mentioned is what is accidentally, and tonight purposefully, found. The body quits crapping around and sharply and smoothly targets the optimal downward point of the knee crank Time After Time After Time wasting no energy time secondary muscles it goes right to the point. Can this be done at the beginning and throughout a journey? Tune in next log.

The metrics tonight were quite favorable. 1350 calories. As the new digital gear, to be explained later, a wonderful addition, was implemented the instrumentation was somewhat interrupted but it appears that the Cadence was a more reasonable 62 RPM or so vs more recently 40 or so, and the human watts per hour were probably closer to 130 then what they have been, about 118. This is very positive movement.