Hey everyone, I hope your miles has been safe and puncture free for the last week (and weeks to come as well!) It's a Sunday morning at the time of making this post, which is a bit ahead of schedule since the new Cycling Chit Chat will probably launch later today or tomorrow, depending is there's electricity in Cuba at the moment and whether @nanixxx isn't busy delivery dresses and hairpins around the city and beyond. 😃

I wish the packets here were delivered by cyclists as well but they use vans, driving WAY too fast in residential area's... 😒

First, I want to ask the Hive Cycling Community a question about the way I will go forward with my cycling YouTube Channel since my roots are here and will always be, I'm up to 24 subscribers so it's growing steadily but even if no one would watch, I enjoy editing the video's so it's fine either way BUT I'm asking myself a question in the last two weeks, I posted this in my YouTube Community as well;

The issue I have with making English content is, because it's not my native language my speaking isn't as spontaneously because I'm translating in my head what I want to tell to you, typing and speaking are two very different things so my question is:

Would it be better to talk in my own language (Dutch) and use good subtitles?

The con for this will be obviously that some viewers don't like to read subtitles and swipe away, the pro is it's a lot more natural and the speaking will show more personality and doesn't look as scripted.

Cycling is addictive

Fair warning for everyone thinking about starting with cycling, it truly is addictive but maybe this goes for all sports because our body produces chemicals during exercise that make us feel good and when I can't sport, I get grumpy 😅 and I want MORE!

The grumpy part I found out when I was sick for a week, sitting on the couch all day preserving energy is not my thing, of course on the other hand because I have a wife and kids, I have to be careful not to overdo it as well. 🙂

Since last Thursday, Google Health (the Fitbit app no longer exists) is finally giving me better recovery scores again and as of today, it's all okay 😃
It's crazy to see how good a tech gadget is at this, because it was already signaling I was getting sick the day before I felt anything because my resting heart rate was going up.

Dropping another rider

It occasionally happens when I'm out on my mountainbike I'm closing in on someone on a road bike, which is cool because in most cases they're a lot faster than me, but in many cases when I get closer it's either a woman on the roadbike or a 65+ old man... 😅

On MyWhoosh however, the playing ground is even, we're all on fast bikes! Yesterday morning at 8:30am I was on the indoor trainer to ride my last stage for this months event to earn a really nice Giant Aero bike, it was only a 24km ride with about 200 meters of elevation in it, so it should't take more than 1 hour to complete.

This was planned to be just an in between endurance building ride and meant to be 100% in zone 2, but then another Dutch cyclist, Zino tagged along and we were just peacefully riding together, taking the lead in turns so the other could draft until about 7km before the finish the last climb started with parts between 10% and 14% and the funny thing was, we both had the same idea to drop the other in this climb 😁
OK.. s you want to play huh, game on! So I switched to zone 4 and after a couple of minutes of heavy breathing I was able to drop him after I got out of the saddle on a really steep part and the seconds between us started to grow.

It's kinda strange on MyWhoosh that even you're not in visual range of another rider you can see in the list on the right how many watts/kg they're doing, so when we were both in the descent I stayed in zone 4 for a while to mess with his head not to get any ideas of catching up 😁 and when we were on flat terrain again his power dropped from 3 watts per kilo to only 1.5 watts per kilo so I could get a breather as well and I finished with a 1 minute 15 seconds lead on him, that felt good!

But I was thinking about the women and old men on the road bikes, and the name Zino can be any gender too but the cool thing, cycling online is you can see the profiles of other riders!

It turned out to be a man 6 to 10 years younger than me, with a higher FTP but he's a kinda big dude with 185cm and 92kg compared to my 173cm and 69kg, on climbs that's a HUGE difference 😄 but I actually felt excited, winning my first ever 1 vs. 1 mini race even though it was a virtual one.

Four rides

Because of the MyWhoosh I event I missed when I was sick I now had to catch up with before the event ends this weekend, I'm already at three rides and today I'll be going to the trail with my daughter doing about 40km, getting this weeks total up to 160km

Although I've been sick, I'm still over 300km ahead of reaching my 4000km yearly goal.

Last week I replaced the chains for both mountainbikes, and switched to drip on wax now the summer has started so hopefully the new chain doesn't wear as fast as the old one did, it also helps this is a more expensive KMC chain, instead of the cheapest available Shimano that was recommended to match my Shimano Deore Groupset.

Sharing some pretty pictures

I shot this video while experimenting with the camera mounted to my handlebars but it gives crappy footage to use in a video so I scrapped the idea of using the footage to make a video and after getting some nice stills from it the video will just be deleted, not before sharing the pictures here in my posts because the stills DO look nice.

1000+ words again so I'll leave it at this and add the Cycling Chit Chat part later! 😊

It must be the heat in Cuba and the hours and hours in the gym 😇

So, we're back with some cool questions again, respect for always thinking of cool new questions every week!

When did you first notice real improvement after starting to ride your bike?

I think the most awesome thing about starting a new sport, especially untrained in general is the amazing progress you make in the first weeks, probably between three weeks and three months the progress is the most, it's great to see and it's easy to keep going, and this blends in great with the second question and I was thinking about exactly this while driving, what cycling brought me in my first year and what changed...

What made you fall so deeply in love with cycling that you even decided to wear bib shorts and a jersey?

Never say never, I think this saying is known all around the world in many different variations and languages, I remember when I bought my mountainbike, I told my wife I would not get too crazy in to cycling and I told myself, I bought a mountainbike so I would be different than all these crazy looking slightly too fat men in lycra on their road bikes, shouting, misbehaving and in general, thinking the entire road in theirs, I think this is how non-cyclists see cyclists in my country, it's not a good reputation at all and something that's been build over years and years unfortunately.

In the summer I always had a pair of running shorts over my bib shorts, or my long running pants but when winter came, and I wanted to continue cycling I needed something that wouldn't soak up all rain and I found out the most practical way was.... thermal bibs!
6 months later and there I was, cycling as a true MAMIL (I learned this abbreviation from our fearless leader Moose) and a year later, getting all in on cycling and even having longer term plans to own a road bike as well, I think it's fair to say I didn't held up to what I told myself OR what I told my wife... 😏

So, it's not the love of cycling that made me wear lycra, it's just the most practical way. What made me fall in love with cycling is probably a post on it's own 😆

• Getting in way better shape then I was even in my twenties
• Adventure and being outside
• Getting to places I've never been before, even really close to home
• Staying fit and healthy
• It's not as impact-full on the body as running, so I can hopefully keep doing this until I'm really old
• Getting all nerdy about training stats and the science behind it all

And really the only thing what I didn't like about cycling...

Well, it's time to wrap it up and time to eat dinner, and after that I'll be doing another hour of training in the virtual world of MyWhoosh, but for some people out there this is not counted as cycling... 😁