Wind, energy levels and recumbents

A high stress week at work with one thing and another. There was an evil headwind coming home Monday night. Plodding along Footscray Road and down Millers Road into the wind I must confess I felt like the novelty of the exercise of cycle commuting was wearing a little thin. Woke up Tuesday morning with the idea that I'd catch the train the first thing I thought of, so I did. Tuesday night our household seemed to be running a competition to make sure everyone got as little sleep as possible. Anne wanted to finish the book she was reading, so she was late, then couldn't get to sleep. An hour later my daughter had a nightmare and woke up screaming. To add the finishing touches to the night, about 3 am I got a terrible cramp in the calf muscle of my left leg. Next morning I was limping round, and not feeling that flash, and so caught the train again. Thursday morning rode in, but after a work related dinner, at 9 pm when it started to rain, I left the bike at work and caught the train home, and back in next morning, riding home again Friday night, again into a headwind. So all in all I rode the equivalent of two days. Maybe a tiring week at the end of a tiring year, maybe the change to daylight saving, but I'm feeling dead tired. Hopefully I can pick up next week, after a restful long Melbourne Cup weekend.

On Saturday, my brother Mike and I met Jane and Simon at Cogs Café in Mt Evelyn. They'd kindly offered to bring along their recumbent short wheel base bike – a Rans Rocket - for us to try out, something I've wanted to try for a long time. It was a good place for a first recumbent ride, on the Warburton bike path, with no traffic to worry about, and a nice long down hill to get the hang of the steering. It's strange to have to have to learn how to ride again. First impressions were of the comfort of the ride – incredibly comfy seat and the posture takes the load completely off hands, arms and neck – and the speed. We were fine going down hill. When it came time to turn around and take the bike back up the hill, things got a bit harder, and we both found trouble gaining sufficient momentum starting on an uphill slope. Ok once you got going though. By the end of an hour, each of having a turn of around ten minutes a time, we both felt we'd got the hang of it.

See - even ride it with one hand. Thanks Jane for the photo.

I never see a recumbent on my commute – I wonder why? I guess parts of the journey are not that recumbent friendly – the bits between paths, negotiating some of the road crossings, and indeed the Capital City trail itself I can imagine could be awkward and a bit hairy on a recumbent. But given the prevalence of wind and its impact on my commuting energy levels, I wonder if a recumbent might be worth a try for the commute.

Tally for the week
118 km
Rained on – no
Near misses – no
$ spent on bike stuff = 0