Spain's Alberto Contador of team Astana
Today, after the thunderstorm, I went out on my bike. It was a nice time to go out, the temperature was about 30-35C. I couldn’t really tell, I was too busy pedaling. This time, I really gave it my all and the bike path was extremely busy. That just motivated me more to pass all of those leisure bikers.
When I started riding my bike, I noticed that the rear derailleur was shifting by itself. I didn’t really know the cause and this had happened before my accident of last Sunday, but I was too into it to stop. So I rode my bike, while periodically it shifted by itself. It’s really annoying, but I knew that the bike shop was closed until Tuesday.
Towards the last bit of the ride, I had to cross the HuaZhong bridge. At the top of the bridge, my chain broke again. I regretted not having an emergency tool kit, but there was really nothing I could do. The chain was bent and it had popped off. I was 4 km from my home. I pushed and hobbled my way onto the highway and caught a cab home.
This is why the chain broke. The rear derailleur was shifting by itself when it was in the high gears. I was pedaling hard and couldn’t know when a shift occurred. So I was pedaling too hard for the chain and it broke again. Last time, I just got the chain repaired. This time, I’ll check out what kinds of heavy duty chains they have.
I completed 30km in 44 minutes. That turns out to a blistering 40 kph pace. I’m not surprised. I was really motivated when I saw the highlights of the first stage of the Tour de France. It was a 15.5 km time trial and the fastest time was 19:34 by Swiss Fabian Cancellara. Armstrong finished 10th. He’s 4th in his team. The Astana team is really strong and they should be backing Alberto Contador, one of the favorites to win this year. Their average speed was about 47 kph. If that’s not amazing, this is: the first stage included a mountain and a descent. The speed of the descent was about 65 kph.
Since the bike shop is closed on Mondays, I will drop my bike off Tuesday afternoon so that they run a complete check-up. I’ll just leave it there and make sure that they repair it properly, because this thing was just serviced last Tuesday. It’s not normal that it still has problems.
I'm 
Range, your recounting of experiences while you are exercising really sprang to mind as I was reading Murakami’s new book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running there past two weeks. His painstaking attention to autobiographical detail concerning his training and marathons has a similar ring to it. I would recommend the book to you, by the way!
I’ll check it out. Thanks for the suggestion. BTW, I recommend House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds and Anathem by Neal Stephenson, if you’re interested in science-fiction. Anathem is more spec fic than sci-fi.
The main reason why I blog about my training is self-motivation. Going through the numbers, putting down my experiences motivates me. Since I train alone and no one ever comes with me, neither on bike rides nor running, it helps to put it down on the screen.
My wife told me that if I took pictures, the posts would be more interesting, but I’ll never really stop to take pictures. I’m just pedaling away or running away. The added weight of a cell phone or a camera is too much. Plus, I’m not exploring nor leisure cruising, I’m pedaling as fast as I can. It was very apparent in today’s ride. I go at least twice the speed of the cruising traffic. It’s annoying, yet strangely motivating, since you pass so many people. Also, it forces you to slow down and accelerate again, making it an even better workout. For now, I’m training on the flats, but this week, I plan on training climbs as well, going up and down some hill repeatedly. I’m actually going to take a bit of money since it’s useful. It could have been handy today when my chain broke.
Once I get a Garmin Edge 705 and a Garmin Forerunner 405 XC, I’ll be able to post my detailed routes instead of using Google Maps, which can be a bit vague when it comes to mileage.
Did you ever figure out why your bike is doing that? I am experiencing the same symptom with my bike and well I wanted a quick fix cause it is time to ride.
The chain breaking? It’s because I was powering up while shifting. You need to slack the pace slightly when you shift, otherwise you’ll end up putting too much power on the chain and it can break.