I would say in 4 years I have had, maybe, 10 or 12 pair returned. One guy said he just couldn’t adapt. I had another call me at 7 weeks saying he couldn’t adapt and I told him to take some more time and I think in about 2 weeks more he was comfortable on them.
I ask customers I meet at expos and essentially all tell me that it took them only 1-2 weeks to get comfortable on them. Admittedly, that is a skewed sample of those who come up and say hello, maybe they are the ones who like them the most. “Comfortable” is a lot different than getting “good” on them. “Comfortable” to me is when one doesn’t have to look at the pedals or think about getting them 180 degrees - stuff like that. When riding them doesn’t feel “strange”. Not when going fast is easy.
Do two of them. One on regular cranks one on PC’s. try to maintain the same HR. One month is not very much time. I predict you will be improved on the regular cranks and worse on the PC’s. That is because you won’t have the endurance in your new muscles yet to sustain improvement while on regular cranks when you get tired you can revert back but your muscles would be fresher than they would be. I would guess it would take most 2-3 months to see greater improvement in the test on the PC’s than on regular cranks although there will be a lot of variation on this based upon the type of test you are doing.
“Comfortable” to me is when one doesn’t have to look at the pedals or think about getting them 180 degrees - stuff like that. When riding them doesn’t feel “strange”. Not when going fast is easy.
Yes, I installed them on my road bike so that I can sit up much straighter and have a more open hip angle while I’m adapting. I’m sitting pretty straight up, tourist-style. Actually, I ride my road bike like that all the time anyway. Grant Peterson got hold of me many years back and convinced me to sit up straight on my bike and enjoy the view.
what coincidence, julian. my PC bike IS a grant petersen rivendell i wonder what mr petersen would think, with one of his machines serving as a machined and gold anodized crank toting dedicated triathalon trainer ? i think it makes the perfect PC bike, for numerous reasons related to the rivendell-ness of the thing.
First, the TT was a self administered test, so while I was astride my bike, there was not too much of an advantage for the start. In addition, I got the avg speed in the tri by starting my computer after I had taken a couple pedal strokes & I stopped it about .25 miles from the end of the bike leg, so T2 could not affect my avg speed.
I know that the tri had a short swim before the bike, I am a strong swimmer and knew that taking the swim fairly easy would still put me among the top 5 swimmers, so I took the swim pretty easy & walked T1. I don’t honestly believe that the swim had any significant impact on my speed.
My main goal in the Tri was to see how much faster I would be on normal cranks, since I had been training on PCs since August the year before and assumed that I would be faster by eliminating the extra weight.
Perhaps if I was only 2 MPH slower I could have written it off to the things you concluded. I was 3.8 MPH slower which is a ton. I do not know exactly why. But my best guesses are that I was riding at a much faster cadence than I normally trained and that since I could not keep that faster cadence on PCs, it was probably less efficient than my slower cadence.
what coincidence, julian. my PC bike IS a grant petersen rivendell i wonder what mr petersen would think, with one of his machines serving as a machined and gold anodized crank toting dedicated triathalon trainer ? i think it makes the perfect PC bike, for numerous reasons related to the rivendell-ness of the thing.
My single most prized cycling possession is a Bridgestone cycling jacket that Grant gave me after a group ride where we talked bikes for 3 hours (he was the Bridgestone product manager at the time). I only wear it on special occasions. If I ever buy another road bike, it’ll be a Rivendell.
I have to say that after 10 rides on the cranks that they feel normal to me already. I haven’t worked up to any long distance rides yet but 30 miles on the road on sunday wasn’t bad at all. My speed was about what I would have expected with regular cranks for this time of the year. However, and this is a big issue, I would not and could not have ridden more than 10 miles on these things if I hadn’t changed by bike position. I experienced severe hip flexor fatigue in my old position. When I moved my seat back (big mistake) I instantly lost about 30 watts. I had to go steeper to open up the hip angle a bit. This allowed me to stay aero and still turn the cranks over. I suspect that some who are having problems adapting might need to reevealuate their bike position. Just a thought. (as I recall, TTN had the same issue).
i wonder what mr petersen would think, with one of his machines serving as a machined and gold anodized crank toting dedicated triathalon trainer ?