Cadence is the key

A summary quoted from the original article at Spin Cycle - Bicycle Victoria

Maintaining a high cadence is part of good cycling technique. A few of the basics to remember are:

• Try to maintain a constant cadence. A cadence of 90–100 is best for riding on the flat
• Learn to use your gears. Small or low gears refer to gears that are easier to ride in (small ring at the front and large ring at the back). Big or high gears are the reverse (big at the front and small at the rear) and are harder to push
• Be aware of when you are starting to slow down or speed up and change gears accordingly
• Smooth gear changes decrease the chance of your losing speed
• Avoid 'grinding' away in high gears as this generates muscular fatigue in your legs and can cause you to lose efficiency
• Change down a gear coming into corners or at the start of hills and try to keep your cadence up.

Fuel Consumption of my new car

I bought my version of SLK (Small Little Kancil) few weeks back. It's 850cc and manual transmission. After a few much-needed fix, I start clocking the FC just for the record. Roughly I gained about 15km per liter for town driving (15% of the time with aircon).

Last weekend, I took the whole family to wife's kampung (180km away from KL). With full load of human, aircon all the way, maintaining 3000rpm (merely over 80km/h on PLUS highway!).

Result (as oppose to our mini MPV)
Pros
1. Better FC (18km/liter as oppose to 11km/liter)

Cons
1. Travelling time (30 minutes more)
2. Wife suffers backpain (seat has no lumbar support)
3. Kids wrestle for the right of their butt space
4. Being treated like a 3rd class citizen by those luxury cars & evo/impreza wannabe zooming left (on emergency lane) and right

God gave you lemon, you make lemonade?

My initial intention buying that Spesh frame from Mac was to setup a bike out of my parts surplus. It wasn't much of a surplus but I believe that it can turn up to be quadruple S, SSSS, or Specialized S-Works Single Speed. Soon after the frame resides on his new home, parts hunting begun. When begging doesn't work, I intimidated, harassed and threaten friends into selling me their parts surplus rather than sitting there collecting dust under their bed.

Spesh undergoing transplant to become SS

Once the SSSS project completed. I taken the Spesh for a ride and both of us survived. Soon enough, I harassed my wife into cycling, and succeeded. As the human greed will never stop, I starts dumping money to improve the Spesh, changing parts with Scott until the Spesh ready for its first trail outing.

Spesh at Lubuk Tedung/Kem Sleh junction, Kemensah

What I thought as "I need 17" frame that match my size" turned out to be that it takes more than that. I learned that apart the size, frame geometry is another important element that separate different regime of mountain biking.

Spesh, fitted with suspended fork given it a taller ride on front wheel thus lessen the degree of the headtube and seatpost angle. These introduced some difficulties for me on my overall reach as a result putting me on very awkward position taking decent where in most cases, taking the butt behind the saddle.

Scott vs Spesh. Take note on the headtube & seatpost angle

Finally, decided that Spesh has to stay on road with rigid fork on which turning the "flaw" into advantage. And Scott who benefited with new Shimano LX shifter, Avid Speed Dial 7 brake lever, and Avid Ball Bearing 7 mechanical disc brake enjoys his time outdoor in the wild.

I guess when God gave us lemon, we may spoilt some lemon before we can make that tasty lemonade.

The final specs as of 14th of July 2008