Well, Focus, you caught my attention - 94 miles on a mtb is serious work. Nicely done.
Thanks, but I'm not so sure. I found some ways to cheat.
Also, I weighed my bike, and apparently it's only 6 lbs, though the tires
are very fat (and were almost flat for quite a while - the first 20'ish miles - before I noticed the horrendous noise they were making and pulled into a Turbo). Which explains why I was able to throw it over 6 foot chain fences with enough force to smash parts of it off when it landed.
Still refuse to explain, haha. Just sayin', that's gotta make a difference. Afaik, a non-crap mountain bike weighs what, 12+ lbs?
Anyway, the ways I "cheated" were:
1) Since the seat was up so high, I managed to raise the handle bar so I was high enough up (and with my back straight relative to my hips) to be driving through the front of my foot exclusively (with my heels up). This improved power output by about a third (
!!!!) at the same level of exertion, and with no discernible short-term (feet still feel fine) consequence.
Well, my left arm's a bit tweaked, but I think that's just because my left shoulder is slightly higher than my right, which manifests as me leaning to the right slightly, putting more tension on it.
Story time: I almost woke up in the river at one point yesterday, because if I don't concentrate on moving in a straight line, within a second or two I get this lateral drift going (due to the leaning) and inevitably make my way off the path/road/etc within the next 3. Nearly passed out after doing something really dumb going up one of several huge hills on the way down to Fish Creek: I
had to pass this hardcore-looking dude on a decked-out road bike
somehow (I was playing "Speed Racer" so as not to get bored
- which is where I go out of my way to pass everyone, like I'm racing against the whole city, but the rest of the time I just sit at an easy 50-55% MHR), so I just tailed him as best I could at the highest speed I could put out (you kids call it maxing out the bike, yeah? Highest gear, rpm high enough so pedaling faster would not provide additional velocity), waited 'til we got to one of the huge hills, the one before Carburn Park iirc, and instead of trying to motor up it in 18th gear (of 21, and usually failing, requiring a shift down to 12th) as usual, I just hit it hard after I lost momentum, hopped off, clamped the bike to my side, and sprinted up that ****. The
look on his face was excellent. But afterwards, on the long decline, I couldn't catch my breath, and had black spots in my vision. And that's when I almost plummeted into the river. Which would've done some damage, I suspect, given the 60'ish foot fall. Straight down. After tumbling the 40 or so feet through the uneven terrain between the path and edge of the hill. I'm really pretty retarded sometimes, I won't lie. Anyway I hope you've all enjoyed theses irrelevant ramblings.
2) I wore a long-sleeved shirt, a mouthguard, a hat and protective eyewear. This made sort of a huge difference, too, as not getting smoked in the eye, mouth, arms, and hair by bugs and such (which I find very distracting) made it a lot easier to maintain my flow.
At one point I had to stretch out my right hand and shove a Robin out of my way because the little retards would keep flying out INTO my trajectory when they weren't in harm's way in the first place, and clearly didn't have enough accelerative capability to be attempting such a thing. There was about a 3 mile stretch of them. It was only afterwards as I was swearing and grumbling about the little ****ers slowing me down that I realized this was because I had lost the path and was riding through the bird conservatory.
3) I took a hit (200 mg) of caffeine about halfway through, when I had fallen over onto the grass (somewhere near the Finch and Bull if anyone knows it, haha) and had for the last ~15 minutes been debating just giving up and dying or whatever people do in such situations. And then another at three quarters. Normally long stuff is completely stim free, but I didn't have any way of getting back other than biking or walking, could not get my bearings at all, seriously felt like I was gonna die, and discovered that I still had, (without having realized it) a couple caps in the key/card pocket inside my shirt, so, yeah, I like to think Jesus wanted me to.
