A belated Cycling Sunday ChitChat!

Hey everyone, some activity in the #cycling community!

I'm referring to this post made by @nanixxx and this also proves she's on the perfect position to take over the lead from our founder @friendlymoose to hopefully get things a little bit more active again, and by the way I'm not saying moose didn't do a good job with this, activity in communities in general is hard to keep going, I'm seeing this in my Splinterlands guilds as well, let's say there is less activity from most players as I like there to be. 😆

Last days I've been not feeling so well, nothing crazy just a cold that got me but I was just surviving my work days and haven't had much PC time, this doesn't work so well with a tired mind, especially not when playing Splinterlands which is the main reason for me to turn on my PC, BUT today I logged in and checked the cycling community first to see a new post, good reason to start typing!

I had an not to honorable mention in there as well, without my name being mentioned...

"Or perhaps your crank might fall off"

😂 yeah.. that was me! Well I had never pedaled 8 kilometers one legged so it was a new experience, one that I never want to do again but at least now I know!
I was kinda lucky with my shoe clipped in on the pedal so I could make circles with one foot, walking 8km on cycling shoes would've been much worse!

so... on with the topic for today, the post that was mentioned above had so questions in it so let's go!

And yes, It's actually a little bit late for Sunday Chit Chat but I will just ignore that part. 😇

Do you prefer going out on the bike to enjoy the scenery or to train and improve your performance?

Isn't it a little bit of everything for most riders? I'm a Mountain Biker, but living in a country with the biggest elevation being bridges and dykes that means something else than in countries with actual mountains so on my MTB I am still cycling 95% of my distance on paved roads, and we have awesome roads, mostly separate from cars and really smooth asphalt.

To reach the closest MTB Track I still have to ride 10km one way, and I am NOT bringing my bike on a carrier and drive there with the car, even the tracks a little farther away I will just ride there, now I am becoming a little more experienced, cycling 100km weekly on average I have two types of rides I will explain in a second but the reasons to go out is really a combination of everything, staying fit, enjoying nature, exploring and adventure (I guess men never grow up so riding and doing small jumps off road is adventure and fun).

When you ride for scenery, what kind of landscapes inspire you the most?

Nature is lovely but pretty much the same in my country since it's either meadows or forests, but I do love to find old buildings when I cross small towns, I have some nice buildings to share of course!

It doesn't get more dutch than Wind Mills, and we have a lot of them!

When I was planning my route, Google showed there was a small castle there, so of course I needed to check that out! I am in my 40's and this is only 20km from where I live but I had never been there! 😅

Do you usually plan your routes in advance, or do you prefer to improvise and explore?

I always plan my routes, I want to ride a certain distance so I don't want to largely over do that, or come home and did a lot less. My normal rides lately are around 50km, depending on the wind or when it's really cold I sometimes make them a little smaller or when I have extra time and the weather is nice I sometimes make a bigger route.

A cycling computer is pretty expensive, I have the cheapest Garmin (Edge Explore 2, still over €200) but it's really worth it every cent, before I bought it, I used to write my route roughly on a piece of paper but I either ended up missing the roads and getting lost, just simply losing the paper (happened twice) and being so busy with navigating I couldn't fully enjoy my rides.

The Garmin Connect site is really good for creating my own routes so after my bibs, it's the best cycling equipment I have.

If you ride for training, what’s your favorite type of workout (intervals, long distance, climbing)?

So, I'm doing two types of rides; most of them are lower intensity heart rate zone 2 rides, where I keep my heart rate around 125, with a max of 130 to train my Aerobic energy system. The other ride is more fun, I don't bother looking at my heart rate and it's just for fun, cycling to one of the MTB tracks in my area and go crazy mode on them. On the roads my heart rate riding at speed is 145 - 150 because it's only a couple of muscle groups that are being used, primarily legs. MTB tracks are a different story since it's working with my entire body so my heart rate is mostly at 155 - 165, quite exhausting but a lot of fun.

It's why I am only doing these types of rides since the last months, I started cycling in May this year and first needed to get fit enough to be able to comfortably reach 50 - 60km rides.

I guess this is different for road bikers, when you really want to get better you have to do intervals and all but that just starting to look like work, and I'm on my bike for FUN.

How do you balance leisure rides with more demanding training sessions?

When you ride a lot, 80% of the rides 'have' to be in zone 2. I know that heart rate zones are not the best indicator but a power meter is expensive and wouldn't make much sense on a mountain bike really.

I'm driving A LOT for work, and I'm listening to a lot of cycling podcasts so when you want to be better and faster, look in to polarized training!

I am riding between four to six hours weekly in two rides, considered a low amount and for me it's just about staying fit and having fun (and not getting fat like many people when they get older). So I am not taking things too serious.

I think getting too serious can actually take the fun away, always looking on Strava who's faster... I'm only riding against myself, beating my own Personal Records every once in a while. But really it's so depending on the wind, we have a lot of wind in a flat country! Headwinds is definitely NOT setting new records that day on that part of the route.

Has your preference changed over time (from leisure to training, or vice versa)?

Well it's more about getting more knowledge about how it all works, when I started cycling I would just go full speed literally every ride, thinking the faster I would be, the better I would become but the opposite is true!

There is so much science behind it and it's quite interesting, how the body works (aerobic vs. anaerobic) and how carbs are stored in your muscles, but only for about 90 minutes! So I ended up 'empty' when my rides got longer, it's a horrible feeling! So I started to learn about eating and drinking, the need for sugars and salts and the difference between hypotonic, isotonic and hypertonic drinks and how much the body can take in per hour.

Now that I'm fit enough my preference has changed to more MTB tracks per month but this also depends on the weather, when it has rained a lot I will ruin the tracks.

Next year I will be discovering the largest MTB track in my area, I wanted to wait until the new year because a permit is required for this and I didn't want to buy one with only a couple of months left in the year, it would be cool to have a decent camera so I can take stills from the video's like friendlymoose is doing, but these camera's are not cheap, so maybe in the future... who knows!

one more picture as a goodbye for now, a little over exposed but still pretty!

Shout out to @nanixxx for making this post and giving me a reason to start typing! When I got up this morning, I was not planning to make a cycling post bu yet, here we are! 😄

Thanks for stopping by and when you're a Strava user (I think most sporters are, right?) feel free to follow me and I'll give you a follow back.