Speed Upgrade

I’ve gotten the headrest position dialed in on my recumbent, so I can ride it with it’s fast 700c wheels and the carbon seat in a pretty reclined position comfortably. For the first time this has made a notable performance difference. On Wednesday I road the Digital loop near home. My previous record was 94 seconds, and it is now down to 87. Then I went south to San Martin and did a 19k loop down there. My previous best time had been 45 min 17 secs and it is now 41:04. I rode an easy ride on Thursday, then in the afternoon I did a little tweak on the headrest adjustment and tested it on my trainer. On Friday I felt the need for some more speed and did two more of my time trials. One is the shorter “around the paradise block” loop and the other was the out and back on Coyote Creek trail from Anderson Visitor’s center to where the trail is blocked at the flood, just past the Bailey bridge. These felt like good efforts but did not beat my previous bests. My best time on the Coyote creek trail run was 44:48 about a year ago, on my older Giro recumbent. Yesterday I did 46:04, surprisingly a bit slower despite being more aero. I must have been having a good day when I had the 44:48 time because I’ve never come close to it. Doing the paradise block loop was not fun because I had to do a lot of in town riding to get to it. My recumbent with the reclined carbon seat and bigger wheels is not the best for riding in traffic because it is awkward to start back up after starting. So I think in the future I’ll stick to the Digital loop and the Coyote trail out and back because they are closer and have easy access.

Wednesday is posted on Strava here, Thursday here, here, and here, and Friday here and here. My Paradise loop does not show up as a segment attempt on Strava because it incorrectly decided I had deviated from the route, first time I’ve run into that bug. It is nice to have a fast recumbent on which on can be competitive (among my local 70-74 age group, and as long as the route is pretty flat!). This is interestingly equivalent to having an upright set up for time trialing (e.g. with aerobar extenders) but in my opinion is a lot more comfortable. I still think the bike is a bit more comfortable with the more upright seat and smaller wheels, so those will probably be on most of the time, but when I want to test myself, once a month or so, I can switch to the other set up for a few days. That only takes about 15 minutes.