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Before heading out to the Sacramento River Trail, I wanted to get a feel for the steering – can’t try this in my neighborhood because we live on a hill with a good amount of traffic that passes by our house. So I found a vacant parking lot.
Did about 1-2 minutes of Fred Flintstoning to get a feel for the steering – easy enough.
Then gave my self a push off, then raising both feet, finding the peddles. Trying to keep myself relaxed, mentally and physically. Going through the typical arms fighting legs motion – palms out. The first 10 seconds of that was like whoa Nelly.
I’m so used to clipless that I found it very difficult to keep from pulling my feet off the pedal on the back stroke.
So I thought it was time to change into my Keen clipless sandals.
This really helped. I rode around the parking lot in figure eights for about 15 minutes. To my joy I felt the arm and leg fighting diminish, not totally, but progress.
I tried a couple of stopped starts, not that’s a new challenge. Got it one time. This will need much more practice.
Anyway, after 15 minutes I felt ready to head over to the River trail. It’s pretty much flat and a little snaky. Because it was 74 and sunny, there were quite a few people out walking and biking.
So I rode 14 miles. 7 miles to the Shasta Dam, and 7 miles back to the car.
The first 7 miles I felt pretty confident running at about 13-15 mph’s, just taking it easy and getting a feel for the peddle steer. I concentrated on getting a nice smooth cadence. I noticed for me the higher cadence, the peddle steer would almost disappear. I felt fairly relaxed. At this point I started concentrating relaxing my arms and shoulders.
The 7 miles back. I picked up my speed and started running 17-21 mph’s. I felt completely in control in my surroundings and thought this is not going to be all that hard to learn.
Overall, a very very good first ride.
I’m going to need to practice starting from a dead stop, no doubt.
I also need to work on getting myself comfortable in the cockpit. This is not new to this bike, I have to do this with every recumbent I setup for myself.
Gonna take ‘er out again today.
