Solar RV cycling log March 29th. The seeds of recent weeks keep blooming. Leg thrust, upleg timing.

Solar RV cycling log March 29th. The seeds of recent weeks keep blooming. Leg thrust, upleg timing.

Yes upright cycling dialed back 30 degrees.

Yes, digging. Done properly this orients the body toward high power and very little forward movement.

Seemingly big discovery. The up stroke is the timing stroke. In climbing essentially this is a fixed gear bicycle. The adjustment to severe and not severe grades is cadence. This has been a mystery, oddly, slowing down the cadence. The answer seems to be to essentially the up stroke, taking up time, slowing everything down, and also setting up a sharper dig.

This last point on top of all the other maturing developments of the last month are enabling something not seen in a long long time. Slowing and easing the paddling so that it is not frightening Lee tiring, fatiguing.

With few exceptions this 2000 foot 6.5 my climb has been every other day. This particular journey is on top of 1400 calories yesterday. So the body is far from rested. And yet all of this is coming together nicely and quite manageable.

Reminder, however, two other variables yesterday and today, mechanical, machine. Target human machine ratio is between 1  versus 4. Until yesterday the target was approximately 1 versus 3. This allows for slightly higher cadence. Secondly, the newer, more sophisticated controller is now the primary and on all but extreme grades the only. It is much more fluid in ways I don't understand but it is quite different. How these two variables are producing or not this very good performance climb is unknown.

Finally, words escape me to describe this. In this final third of the voyage with the up thrust deliberately acting as timing the down stroke is taking a slightly more pronounce forward ejection, eztrusion, it feels quite appropriate, normal, fluid, sustainable, efficient. It is detached from the notion, somewhat, of driving to the bottom of the stroke. Psychologically, that is. This raises concern about simple sustainability, conscious competence.

On this last point, this is not a heal thrust, it is not, but that is the closest imagery that I can come too. It is not a heel thrust. But it is a Thrust out again, probably approaching what would be happening on an upright cycle. It's a Curious Thing, my legs have a logic of going in opposition to one another, so if the up thrusting leg goes up the bottom leg wants to go down. But that was not the optimal tonight. The upper leg was going up in a way to provide time for the bottom leg to thrust down, out, at about 40 degrees as it would on an upright cycle.