When its too cold for an open road ride on the road bike, and the trails are just a bit too soft and wet, and you don't have a trianer ride to do, the next best thing is the urban ride. Bundle up, hop on the mountain bike and ride around town for a couple hours (lower speeds on the knobby tires, but you work hard to overcome the additional friction to go faster). Early weekend mornings are best, before much traffic is out, here were the highlights of this morning's urban ride:
empty parking lots with big curbs and parking lot dividers - perfect for practicing pedal wheelies and push wheelies (that's what I call them). I must have done over 50 of each. My pedal wheelies were kicking butt. IU stadium parking lot has this short steep (50ft long) grassy hill with a big curb at the top. The uphill is a 'get way over your handlebars so you don't lift your front wheel off the ground' climb. The downhill is a good pedal wheelie start, then (even though you don't have to, you can practice) getting your butt way back off the back of your saddle, stomach close to the saddle for the descent. The old state police post at 446/Fee has a short 10 ft burm with several small boulders out of the ground, good practice going down. The yet developed rails to trails section is a good 1-2 miles of big chunky gravel to practice on. And in town, always lots of small hills to practice a sprint up for a little extra heart rate elevation. Occasional stairs on campus to go down (not very easy to go up), and a few other places I probably shouldn't have ridden, so I won't mention those!
1 comment:
I think you forgot about the best option: Just don't ride. That would be my choice.
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