Seventh Gear

I hated biking.   It was awful.   I mean I liked getting out on a bicycle, only it was murder on my thighs anytime there was the slightest uphill pedaling.   My bicycling experience had a huge gap in it from childhood until recently, when I got a bike and a bike seat for a child and a child to go in that bike seat.  

My husband likes to bike.   He can’t easily run due to a knee injury, but he seems to enjoy biking quite a lot.   It sounded fun to me, so I thought I’d try it.   It turned out I did a lot of grumbling and complaining.   You see, going downhill is free.   You don’t have to do anything other than just hold on.   But the price for that free ride is the pedaling you must do to get up the hill in the first place.    My legs weren’t used to that type of work.  

Sure, sure, I could run a marathon on hilly terrain without turning into a whining person, bemoaning every single hill because the course was just too terribly hilly.   But put me on a bike and have me go on that same course and you’d see an entirely different person emerge.

Mostly it was because—I think—my inexperience at bicycling.   I would see a hill and worry immediately that I wasn’t going to be able to make it up.   I would down shift (or is it up shift?) and before I’d even lost all my speed, I’d be pedaling in first gear like a toddler on a tricycle going down a steep driveway.    Because I’d killed my speed early and dropped into the lowest gear, I had a lot longer climb to get to the top of the gradual, short, measly little hill.   My husband would kindly wait for me at the top and then we’d continue.

But I got better.   I learned how to stay in a higher gear for longer and maintain a faster speed.   The next thing you know, I was two-thirds up that little hill and I was still in seventh gear.    And getting to the top from there took less effort and time.  

I don’t know how gears are normally referred to, but here’s how I think of them:  I have three gears on the left (1, 2, and 3) and seven gears on the right (1, 2, up to 7.)   If I’m in gear 2 on the left and gear 5 on the right I call that, “Gear 25” which probably is completely incorrect nomenclature, but makes sense to me as I normally read numbers from left to right.

A lower number on either the left or the right side corresponds to a single pedal rotation transversing less distance.  So for instance, first gear on each side (gear 11 as I would call it) is the “easiest” gear.   A single pedal rotation pushes the bike very little distance.   This is the gear I’d always get stuck in going up those hills.   I would pedal and pedal and pedal and get not very far, because I had no speed left.

A higher gear, say gear 17, would push the bicycle much farther in a single rotation of the pedals.  Gear 27—which turns out to be my favorite gear—will traverse quite a lot of distance in a single rotation of the gears.  

So with all this numerical stuff being said, what does it really mean?  What it meant to me initially was my husband was in great shape and could stay in higher numbered gears for a long time and more often and as a result, he was far faster and much more efficient at riding a bicycle.  I was envious.

I started noticing something as I began biking more, and that was I was spending a whole lot of time in gear seven (27 or 37 usually) and not needing to drop to lower gears at locations I had been struggling before.    So I made it into a game.   How long could I stay in gear 27 or 37?   I was very surprised to find out big, steep, long hills that had been my nemesis only months before, were something I could push through while staying in a high gear.  

It got to be not only a game, but a challenge I put on myself.   Today I went out for a bike ride.  I wasn’t sure how long I was going to go, but I ended up having enough time and energy and did my longest ride ever, at twenty-seven miles.    In that in entire time, I only used two gears: 27 and 37.   It was fun too.   I don’t hate biking any more.

The Big Boy Update:  My son got a lesson in sewing when he was staying with Nana and Papa last week.   When we came to see them he wanted to show me the stitches he had learned.   Nana got him set up on her sewing machine, let him pick the stitch and then I watched him go through all the steps you needed to do to run a pattern on the cloth.   He was very happy with knowing how to sew.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter has never had her bangs cut, but it looks like she has some.  Her hair is fine and wispy and it breaks easily.   It’s finally gotten long enough to pull up in a single pony tail high on her head that pulls back all the loose pieces so she doesn’t have hair in her face.   She also looks great with her hair up.

Fitness Update:  Marathon on a bike.  I wanted to ride 26.2 miles today on my bicycle.   I made twenty-seven miles and had a great time in the sunny, hot weather.