Doing The Unthinkable

While walking 9 – 10 miles up to the to Two Top pass in Idaho last week, two things occurred to me. The landscape was beautiful. I mean off the charts beautiful, and the experience was exactly what I’d hoped for when I signed up. Wilderness, mountains, snow! Feet of it. Also, here I was again walking miles up a mountain. In Death Valley in May I walked seven miles climbing just over 5,000’, pushing my bike. This is what I sign up for, as it were, riding a single speed, which I’ve done for 18 years.

Yesterday, I did the unthinkable – I put a derailleur on my bike.

I’m not certain, but I may run gears at Arrowhead (which is little over a week away). This will be the 10th time I take to that trail. Nine times I rode single speed and loved it. This time… well I may run gears, and see what its like.

For years I chose not to do Fat Pursuit because the course - mountains and lots on snow -was not single speed friendly, at all. But a week ago, there I was loving the landscape and realizing a derailleur would make the experience more fun. That simple.

The human body only produces a limited amount of power, and your ideal pedaling cadence for both efficiency and power production hovers around 90 rpm or a little higher.

The idea of having multiple gears is that you can maintain that ideal pedaling cadence under all sorts of terrain situations. Going uphill? Shift to a lower gear. Going downhill? shift “up” to a higher gear.

I'm going to see if clicking that lever feels good.