“Off Season” Changes

As my race season came to an end in September after the Paralympics, that brings me into my “off season”. Upon getting home from Paris, I took 11 days off of my bike while also trying to rest and recover from Covid. I typically don’t go this long without riding as it’s such a huge part of my life, the days feel long when I don’t ride at all. I prefer to drastically reduce the intensity and time while continuing to ride a few days a week at a super easy pace.

As we ramp back up into base training this time of year is when I like to experiment with any bike changes that I’ve been thinking about. On a normal bicycle, you can move your whole body around to adjust for an improper fit. On our handcycle’s we stay strapped into the same position every time we ride, so any little change made to position, or parts such as fork height or crank length can often result in a temporary decrease in power while our body adapts to the new position or motion. That makes it difficult to experiment mid race season with such little time in between important events.

The recent changes I’ve been experimenting with are shorter crank arms and by shorter, I mean a 5mm difference from what I’ve been using the past 3 years. That 5mm difference gave me the clearance needed to also drop my fork height. These minor changes have reduced the range of motion around the entire pedal stroke and changed the angle of my push/pull motion. So far I’m really liking this new feel with no issues and am excited to see what it does for me long term as we build and increase intensity.