Cycling. Is the recumbent seat back there to drive me insane?

I've had mostly cycling that felt wonderful for this last month or so as I frequently reported, each day better than the next. And beginning with the climb out of Boulder I knew nothing about cycling. I could make no sense of it. It's been Brute Force ever since. Not complaining, but frustrating and a bit discouraging.

2 days ago was a monster climb up through Rocky Mountain National Park. Magnificent. Taking nutrition before leaving at 5:40 in the morning, was totally forgotten. 3200 calorie day. Over 12,000 FT elevation at the top, oxygen deprivation.

About 3/4 of the way up, when every recalled technique was just not flowing, a new thought occurred. James, all you want is for this to have the intuitive Simplicity of a conventional bicycle, correct? Correct. Does the conventional bicycle have a seat back? No, it doesn't. Would you have wanted it to have one? No, I wouldn't. Then why do you want to use it on this recumbent bike? Because it's there? Maybe that's not a good answer james. And for the rest of the day where there was still a lot of peddling left, and yesterday in an hour's ride, it had the intuitive simple elegant nature of a conventional bike.

My recollection of the years I spent on a conventional bike, is now that the exertion is not between the back of a seat on the bicycle that doesn't exist, it is between the very lower part of the spine and the toes and everything in between.

All this brings to mind Jodie Foster in the movie contact where finally she does what doesn't make sense, she releases the safety belt of the seat into which she has been strapped. And all of a sudden things make sense.

Attempting to use the seat back for some sort of leverage in this recumbent sets up a thousand variations that change from instant to instant which means different body mechanics are required instant to instant. All occurring while the body is desperately trying to contribute energy to our travel, exhausted. It comes close to driving me insane everyday. By instead focusing james, your starting and ending point is the very base of your spine, the lowest part of your pelvis in the rear, the simplicity just was what it should be and the body could focus on what it needed to do, and the output has never been better, the cardiovascular workout has never been better.

Two or three hours of cycling is far from any proof. But James is not without some optimism.