Bicycling
I love riding a bike. Bicycles are great – they are fast, faster than public transport. It is 20 minutes by bike to my University, rather than 40 minutes by bus and underground. Moreover, it is healthy to ride a bike, and I can keep fit and get to my destination. I can even take a bicycle to train or travel on a plane with the bike. Even though the bicycle emits carbon when being produced, it is still nature-friendly transport.
I make hundred-kilometer rides. I love traveling by bike. There are four variants of traveling – short trips, full-day trips, weekend trips, and long journeys. Long journeys last one, two weeks, or even a month – friends from Moscow state university bicyclist club have done it. They traveled by train to Karelia – a northern Russian region with picturesque forests, sixty thousand lakes, and beautiful Finnish architecture. They have been riding in Karelia for two weeks. Later, some participants of the journey went to St. Petersburg. They spend some days there, and then they have ridden to Moscow. The way from Moscow to St. Petersburg is at least 700km. In total, they made nearly 2000km.
I prefer rides from 80 to 150 km per day and 2-day rides. It is an excellent way to explore new places and not be exhausted. For example, we can go to Bratislava from Vienna or ride through Donau and observe hundreds of vineyards and apricot gardens, symbols of lower Austria. It is also great to go to Hallstatt, the most beautiful lake and an old town surrounded by old mountains. You may spend one day in the city, swimming on a lake with a SUP board and riding in the mountains the next day.
Plans
I invite you to my bicycle group in What’s App in case you live in Austria. You may also join if you live in Europe, because, maybe, we will make a trip to your country or you to ours.
The requirements are: you can make at least 80 km per day, and you need to be able to get a good bike. Also, it is important, that you are a responsible, friendly, helpful, and interesting person. And now, some information about cycling, routes and how the bikes work
Biking 101
There are two distinct routes: paved routes and trail routes. These routes require different bikes and ranges. For example, on paved asphalt roads, you may ride 25 kilometers per hour on average with a road bike and make 200km or even 250km in a one-day trip. But If you use a mountain bike, even 150km will be tough. This is due to the weight of mountain bikes, wide rough wheels, and less-powerful cranks.
Mountain bikes are universal, but road bikes are faster. Road bikes are fast. My highest speed on a road bike was 64 km per hour, and I scored it in Mallorca when I was going on a highway with a small slope. Usually, I gain 50 km per hour. Professionals have a maximum speed of 112 km per hour. Interestingly, most riders named this number as the maximum they did. Such high speeds are gained due to the lightness of the bike and rider. Expensive carbon road bikes weigh nearly 7.5 kilograms.
The tires are important. There are tires for roads, trails, downhill, cross country, winter variations, etc. All of them have different forms and widths and, therefore, frictions. That is why downhill tires will stop faster and will be easier to control, but you will not score even 40 km per hour on the road.
Cranks help you to use the optimal force. Cranks make your rear wheel move. The bigger the front crank and the lower the rear is, the more force you will apply to a wheel. Why is that? To move the wheel, you need to trigger the rear crank. All the cranks are attached – therefore, all the cranks are constantly spinning together. We need to spin one of these cranks, but which one will be easier to spin?
Let’s experiment: put your phone or notebook on a table and spin it around the center of a device. Try first to do it on a point further from a center and closer to a center which is easier – further from the center. But check the distance your finger made to make one 360 degrees spin. The closer to a center made a much smaller distance. What does it mean? The shorter length, the harder it is to spin, to apply a force. That Is why the smaller rear crank gives more force. We have an opposite situation on the front wheel – try to explain it yourself.
The bigger front crank or lower real crank does not mean, that you will be faster – you need to apply much more force (or Power, in Watts), and you can be fastly exhausted, and you may damage your cranks. Friction of tires and a road and the friction of chain and the cranks are also reasons for lower speed and damaging a bike. You have to control the forces to get a higher speed.
But there are limits. Road bikes give you the possibility to apply a lot of force, or power, Watts. That helps gain huge speed on a road. But, when you want to ascend a mountain, you need much smaller power, otherwise, you will be tired in seconds. Road bike does not have such a small front or such big rear cranks. That is why it is too hard to ascend with a road bike, even with lower weight, and thinner tires.