Today I went back out to try another 20 miler on my XC mountain bike after using the tips y’all gave me. I was around 2.3 km short of a 20 miler, so a little more than a mile, but that doesn’t matter too much.

Tips I tried:

  • Aired up my tires by 10-15 PSI (Now at 50 in the front, 55 in the back.
  • Fixed my handlebar sweep (I had installed them backwards before…what can I say, it was my first time building a bicycle 😅)
  • Focused more on cadence than easier peddling - I.E instead of going to a low gear up a large hill and tiring my legs out by spinning, I kept it in a higher gear, pushing my cadence down a bit, but both getting me up the hill faster, and keeping my HR down.
  • rode on the road more as opposed to the sidewalks to avoid potholes and obstacles.

Things to consider:

  • I paused my smartwatch on stop lights, water breaks, pedestrian stop lights, and while I ate a snack.
  • There were three rather large hills on this route I took and one pretty steady climb upwards. The last two of these hills would have been impossible for me to climb, as they were almost a kilometer long and just too steep, so I put my smart watch on pause for these hills as well.

Things I’m planning to do in the near future:

  • going to buy myself some semi-slick tires: specifically, the Kenda K908. They seem to be a decent budget option, but if y’all have any other suggestions, I’d be open to hearing them!

Anyway, now for my results.

I don’t know if these stats are more in line with what everyone else is getting, considering I paused on stop lights and 2 hills, but I would say I’m perfectly happy with a result like this.

Thank you so much to everyone who gave advice and help!

    • ddplf@szmer.info
      0·
      8 days ago

      But you always to have to yield to pedestrians, so my point stills stands

      Unless you can give me an example of a country where it is not the case

    • esa@discuss.tchncs.de
      0·
      8 days ago

      When you see that sign you must. When you see this sign you can:

      Often it is preferable anyway, but there’s a difference between informational signs (blue rectangle) and mandating signs (blue circle). Here in Norway we generally don’t have mandatory bike & ped paths, just the voluntary ones.

      These combinations are generally not a good fit for urban areas, there we should have bikeways with sidewalks:

      (Generally new infrastructure in urban areas is being constructed as bikeways with sidewalks, and old shared bike/ped-ways are being upgraded to bikeways with sidewalks.)

      • Damage@feddit.it
        0·
        8 days ago

        In my city they’re converting many sidewalks to bike&pedestrian paths, this way they can claim they created bike lanes when all they did is paint it a different color and put up a few signs