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• #2
just have a break.
do things you've been meaning to do for ages but haven't (play the guitar, go shopping, read a book, listen to music, go see a film, go to a gallery)
you'll soon start hankering to get out on the bike again, and you'll be faster from having had a rest
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• #3
Mooks it could be that you are not well, and rest is good advice.
But after I rode fixed gear for a solid six months, i jumped on my old Condor road bike for a fourty mile spin, and it felt like driving a bus and i hated it so much.. so i didn't ride it for a long time.. then one day several months later, I met up with two other riders that i didn't know expect we are all fireflies and i led a 84mile hilly ride around the cotwolds.. and i fell back in love with cycling again..
perhaps a break would be good, then wait for a group ride, medium pace somewhere different.. i am arranging another ride in two weeks time.. Start in Banbury, Oxon - all day circular route for two mates who are novices, hope they feel great after 80 miles..
best Al
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• #4
I think its what they call a character builder... think about it, without the terrible days how would you appreciate the good ones !
... good luck on your next ride
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• #5
try selecting the right gears and taking a break (kitkat) every now and then. i also find not doing the same routes too often helps.
ive been doing 50miles a day scince i got my geared bike 6 weeks ago, mainly in rolling kent countryside, but the last week ive been feeling really burned out so have been taking it easy and only going out for 10mile spins in the evening. holy crap do i feel better! going for shorter rides has improved my riding technique, i was spending too much time sitting and riding the small gears before.
there are days when i hate cycling, but these tend to be days when somthing isnt working properly on the bike, or i keep getting punctures. i had massive egg last week, my front derailluer didnt want to shift and i got 4 punctures, then it stormed and i didnt have any appropriate clothing. then i tried to take a shortcut to get home quicker, but kept finding myself being led onto a motorway. all during this time my waterbottle kept jumping out of the cage and my map kept getting lost in my pocket. it wasnt a good day and i swore alot at the bike gods. but that is just one day of my life.
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• #6
Mooks (though I suspect that is not your real name): I've read your post a couple of times now and frankly it sickens me. I know people will think I'm 'hating' or being cruel to a 'newbie' but...
Firstly you say you went out on a geared bike. Ofcourse people do ride geared bikes but normally they have the decency to keep it to themselves. This is a *fixed gear and single speed *forum. Now it wouldn't be so bad had you posted a lot of pictures and written in excrutiating detail in the Current Projects thread about this 'build' and given other people the chance to share their 'expertise' and half baked prejudices with you: that thread is all some people have in their lives yet you apparently don't care. You just buy a biker and ride it and then have the gall to write about it later.
I've had a look at your profile page and I see that a good proportion of your posts are entirely unrelated to cycling. Many of them are nothing but 'humour'. Which leads me to ask: what sort of a twisted freak are you and do you feel proud of yourself? Daring to flaunt your interest in a world beyond chain-lines may mark you out as some kind of 'interesting person' in the mire that you inhabit but not here sonny Jim. Do you, quite rightly many would think, feel deeply ashamed and is it infact this justified self-loathing that you project on to cycling?
Furthermore you say you rode just 20 miles. Entirely plausible but do you think that sort of candour is fitting on this forum? Couldn't you at least have claimed to have averaged a speed just one notch above what might be expected of a professional rider? You're inability to guild the lilly is all too revealing of your mental squalor and depravity.
So, 'Mooks', I would suggest that you take a good hard look at yourself. Are you really sure you belong here? You seem lacking in self-regard and borderline-autistic obsession with detail and, most revoltingly, you would appear to have no desire to tell the world that you have changed your bar tape or moved your saddle back a centimetre. All you do is fucking ride your bike like that was the really important thing. People have been banned for less and, well, I'll say no more. -
• #7
^lol
:)
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• #8
*actual, shaking-shouldered *bits**
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• #9
Just cycle through it....
When I was a teen I was always on some spiritual quest to be some sort of "Zen" state and I was looking to get myself in the "Zone" .... what a load of bollox I was thinking ... I would race fucking everyone (especially if they were had better kit) because I felt I needed to prove something.
Now I come to accept that some days I ride well and other days I ride bad and that I got nothing to prove to anyone.
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• #10
I would race fucking everyone (especially if they were had better kit) because I felt I needed to prove something.
I do that too, but not to prove anything, just cos its fun and a rush to leave someone in the dust. Just what you need on the way to work.
And yeah, there's nothing quite so satisfying as burning past the fully equipped, lycra'd up roadie on my bro's old bomb-proof GT (FCN 14).
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• #11
Mooks: Select a nice gear, not too spinny, but not toe knee bending either, and stick with it. Any bike can be a single speed.
Or: Buy a car. -
• #12
Get a train somewhere you've not riden and do 20 out there, if you hate it just as much, you need a break, if it's great fun, you just need a break from that route.
Do something different... out of interest have you tried doing that 20 miles fixed? :-)
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• #13
of interest have you tried doing that 20 miles fixed? :-)
With a GI of 72 I'd be a little nervous, but hey, it could be worth a try. The likelihood is that I'd be pushing up the hills and bouncing down the descents, but it sounds interesting.
I think I had one of those days where I needed a really spinny flat route, and instead I decided to do a hilly one - and it killed me. Having a few* beers the night before I was probably a little too dehydrated as well.
What's comforting is that everyone else goes through much the same thing. I just hated the fact I was virtually writing the listings for all of my bikes on the way back - oh, and the guy who had cycled from Milton Keynes and was having a lovely ride.
Will - it's your kind of conceit, arrogance and downright nastiness that makes me wish I'd never joined this forum. Way to kick a man when he's down - ass-hat.
- not a few
- not a few
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• #14
Wiganwill made the post of the new millenium with that one
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• #15
With a GI of 72 I'd be a little nervous, but hey, it could be worth a try. The likelihood is that I'd be pushing up the hills and bouncing down the descents, but it sounds interesting.
If it sounds interesting, do it! Not sure what's wrong with 72, I'd say that's about right, but it also might be a bit fun to do it both on a proper spinny gear and a grinder gear...
What's comforting is that everyone else goes through much the same thing. I just hated the fact I was virtually writing the listings for all of my bikes on the way back - oh, and the guy who had cycled from Milton Keynes and was having a lovely ride.
It's like the cyclists equivilent of writers block, if you never get it either you aren't human or you aren't riding (writing) enough :-)
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• #16
Well, there is only one of the replies that comes from a qualified cycle coach (afaik), so I know which one I am inclined to believe is the best advice. [Although I do rather respect wiganwill's candor :-) ]
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• #17
Mmmm I definately do this too, sometimes I have really crap days and get really down about cycling and think bugger it all why dont i just learn to drive like everyone else, but then a couple of weeks later there is always a nice morning ride in the sun when it's quiet and it makes it all worth it.
Also swapping bikes can quite muck you up, after 2 weeks on my fixed gear the road bike is weird and knackering and vice versa and after a couple of rides its ok again, I think it's not that you loose fitness but you are just in different positions and cadence and using slightly different muscles.
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• #18
Will - it's your kind of conceit, arrogance and downright nastiness that makes me wish I'd never joined this forum. Way to kick a man when he's down - ass-hat.
Yeah Will +1,000,000 to what mooks said!
I too am a closet geared rider and in fact went out today and clocked up 30 miles, changing gears with gay abandon and with just one stop for a tea and chocolate brownie with not so much as a simple adjustment to the bike. Fuck me I never even checked the tyre pressures. So there, put that in your 'what bar tape should I go for' pipe and smoke it.
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• #19
Owned
Awesome wilkkkkkk. Htfu
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• #20
With a GI of 72 I'd be a little nervous, but hey, it could be worth a try. The likelihood is that I'd be pushing up the hills and bouncing down the descents, but it sounds interesting.
I think I had one of those days where I needed a really spinny flat route, and instead I decided to do a hilly one - and it killed me. Having a few* beers the night before I was probably a little too dehydrated as well.
What's comforting is that everyone else goes through much the same thing. I just hated the fact I was virtually writing the listings for all of my bikes on the way back - oh, and the guy who had cycled from Milton Keynes and was having a lovely ride.
Will - it's your kind of conceit, arrogance and downright nastiness that makes me wish I'd never joined this forum. Way to kick a man when he's down - ass-hat.
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Humourless prick, have a word with yourself, cunty...
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• #21
It's like the cyclists equivilent of writers block
Stay blocked please...
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• #22
Humourless prick, have a word with yourself, cnuty...
Platini = out and out closet roadie and A cheshire twat..
So, 'Mooks', I would suggest that you take a good hard look at yourself. Are you really sure you belong here?
Wiganwill = More bitter than an Orwellian Oik..
these fucking northerners, piss me off proper,
not funny, not clever, and never have anything interesting to say..word..
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• #23
Platini = out and out closet roadie and A cheshire twat..
Wiganwill = More bitter than an Orwellian Oik..
these fucking northerners, piss me off proper,
not funny, not clever, and never have anything interesting to say..word..
You're so right. Famously unfunny we are, us...
Remind me of your contribution to the gaiety of the nation... -
• #24
Platini = out and out closet roadie and A cheshire twat..
Wiganwill = More bitter than an Orwellian Oik..
these fucking northerners, piss me off proper,
not funny, not clever, and never have anything interesting to say..word..
My mum's not a nutter though. Don't know about Will's...
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• #25
Platini = out and out closet roadie and A cheshire twat..
Wiganwill = More bitter than an Orwellian Oik..
these fucking northerners, piss me off proper,
not funny, not clever, and never have anything interesting to say..word..
I don't know Platini, but I think that if you missed the humour and irony in Will's post then perhaps you ought to take his " Are you really sure you belong here?" sentence seriously.
@Will, apparently I must spread my reputation thinner.
Today I went out on the geared bike for an undulating 20 mile ride. It's normally a lovely route - flat to start with to warm up to a good tempo, a few false flats to get you ready for the climbs, before a few good, steep climbs with flats in between to allow you just enough time to recover before the next one. Then it's a fast, steady downhill where you can get in a tucked position, with a couple of short mellow climbs that you can aggressively snarl your way up, just to prove you're a badass.
Today it was just hell. I couldn't find a good spinny cadence on the flats, I dropped right down to 60-70rpm on the climbs, shifted into the 25t far too early and wanted to be sick (and not in a good way) after every climb. I couldn't push myself on the downhill, meaning I didn't have enough speed or a good cadence for the other climbs.
Back home, I feel like I never want to ride again. I literally hate cycling.
I know we all get this way sometimes, but what do you do to get over it? How do you stay motivated when it just feels 'wrong'?