Bikes that don’t fit properly can make riding a bike a whole lot less comfortable and ultimately less fun. More seriously, improper fit can lead to myriad physical issues such as knee injuries, muscle strain, neck, back, foot, hand and wrist pain. Not to mention issues relating to folks’ lower extremities including saddle sores and even impotence in men.

Fit is important, and there are a handful of things you can do at home (given that you have an alan wrench set) to try to get the best fit out of your bike. However, if you’re still experiencing pain after trying to adjust for everything on your own (as I was recently with my left knee), it can be well worth a trip to see the professionals.

UPMC’s Cycling Performance

Luckily for us here in Pittsburgh, UPMC Sports Medicine has a Cycling Performance center, where experts in bicycle fitting and performance can help you fine tune things. For $75 ($65 for Bike Pittsburgh members), the professional athletic trainers on staff (Matt Tinkey and Phil Hensler) will do the following:

1. Musculoskeletal screening
2. Cycling-related injury assessment
3. And Evealuation of appropriate joint angles and pedaling forces including:

• varus and valgus (natural foot alignment)
• cleat position in order to minimize knee strain and foot pain, and maximize power
• saddle tilt
• saddle position (fore and aft)
• saddle height
• riding form (posture, pedal stroke, knee position)

For racers and people interested in maximizing their speed and endurance on a bike, they offer additional services at an added cost that tests for maximal oxygen uptake, peak power, lactate threshold, body composition, nutrition analysis and consultation, injury prevention and rehab services, and baseline testing for concussion assessment and management.

Assessments and Adjustments

Given that I’m mostly into riding my bike to work and the grocery store with only the occasional muscle-burner thrown in for fun, I opted for the basic fit assessment. They started out by taking a brief history and made sure they had an understanding of my knee pain.

They measured my legs to see if my legs were the same length (they were), and checked my standing posture to make sure I didn’t have any curvatures or looked off center in any way (fine there too). They also measured my varus and valgus. Fancy words meaning the angle at which my feet naturally hang when picked up off the floor (yup, fine there too). For folks with more extreme angles in their varus and valgus they will place a wedge in your shoe to keep your pressure even over the pedal.

From there they made sure my cleats were in the right position (they weren’t - not even close!). They used a laser level and some cool measuring techniques based on my toe joints to line pinpoint the proper place to locate the cleat (Photo below). This made a huge difference for me. I immediately felt like I was getting more power out of my pedal stroke. On top of that (and more importantly for me) I felt more comfortable.

After that adjustment, they got me on my bike which was hooked up to a trainer. From there they checked on my knee angle (see photo). I learned that 27-32 degrees at the 6 o-clock position is optimal. When I first got on the bike, my saddle was just a bit too high (they found that I was “ankling” and thus putting more stress on my calf muscles than is optimal), so they lowered my seat post. They also checked the fore/aft positioning of my saddle. It turned out it was a full inch too far back. Adjusting my saddle forward by that amount was critical. Immediately, pedaling became much more comfortable. They also checked the “float” which is how much your foot is able to move while clipped into the pedal.

To finish up, Matt and Phil lined up my knee position while pedaling with my toes to check if anything was out of whack with my pedal stroke. Again, they used a laser level. Everything checked out! (see photo below)

Keep in mind, I knew, roughly, the various tricks of proper bike fit prior to going to this appointment, but was still fairly far off in the fore/aft positioning of my saddle and where my cleats were situated. Prior to this appointment I calculated my miles over the past decade at more than 30,000 (haven’t had a computer for much of the time) with only slight discomfort, which has started recently. Hopefully, thanks to what I learned at this fitting, I’ll be able to pedal many more miles without any problems.

If you’re experiencing any discomfort riding and are interested in getting a comprehensive bike fit, give Matt a call at the Cycling Performance Center. If you’re not already a member of Bike Pittsburgh, consider joining and use your membership card to save $10 off of a $75 fitting.

Contact:
Matthew Tinkey, ATC
Certified Athletic Trainer
UPMC Sports Medicine
3200 S. Water St
Pittsburgh PA 15203
412.432.3770
tinkeyml@upmc.edu

ShareThis

Reducing urban sprawl could play an important role in addressing climate change.

Julian D. Marshall
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Published in Environmental Science & Technology

Improving city layouts and transportation networks could reduce carbon emissions more than replacing all gasoline with corn ethanol (1). Although much attention on mitigating climate change has focused on alternative fuels, vehicles, and electricity generation, better urban design represents an important yet undervalued opportunity. Fortunately, such decisions are well within the reach of local governments and leaders and can reduce long-term carbon emissions.

The impact of cities—and urban design—on the global climate is becoming increasingly important. In 2008, urbanites will outnumber rural dwellers globally for the first time in human history (2). China’s population doubled between 1952 and 2003, but its urban population increased 7-fold; today, 170 Chinese cities have at least 1 million residents (3). The U.S. has 39 such cities (4). In coming decades, urban populations are expected to double while rural populations level off or decline.

Vehicle use is rising rapidly. From 1970 to 2005, U.S. total vehicle-kilometers increased 3× faster than the population (annual increases: 3.0% vs 1.0%) (5). Similar trends occurred in China (8.3% vs 1.7%, a 5-fold difference) and the world (4.3% vs 1.8%) during 1970–1990 (6). If current trends in total vehicle-kilometers continue, vehicle CO2 emissions may increase even if emissions per mile decline (7).

In an influential paper in Science, Socolow and Pacala (8) argue that climate stabilization during the next half century means reducing CO2 emissions by 175 GtC (33%) relative to a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario. They propose seven strategies, with each “stabilization wedge” representing emission reductions of 25 GtC during 2005–2054 (each wedge grows from no reduction in 2005 to 1 GtC per year [yr] reduction in 2054).

The race is now on to figure out ways to design and implement these wedges. Often neglected in the debate is the role of urban form (e.g., land-use patterns and the layout of transportation infrastructure) in meeting climate objectives. My estimates suggest that reducing urban sprawl in the U.S. alone could represent half or more of a stabilization wedge.

Impacts of urban form on transportation CO2

Compact urban form can cut on-road gasoline emissions, the largest segment (62%) of transportation CO2 in the U.S. The transportation sector is the largest emitter (33%) of CO2, outpacing the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors. (Electricity generation, when totaled for all sectors, accounts for 41% of CO2 emissions.) Records of automobile usage (Figure 1) show an inverse relationship between population density and per capita daily vehicle-kilometers traveled (VKT) (4, 9). Evidence suggests that VKT is causally related to population density and other urban form attributes, and therefore, sprawl reduction policies may curtail VKT (10–14). In denser urban areas, trip origins and destinations (e.g., home, work, shopping) are closer; driving disincentives (e.g., congestion, parking costs) are greater; and alternative modes of travel (e.g., walking, bicycling, mass transit) are more common (15).

Read more »

Note from BikePGH: this is the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area, not just the city. If only the city were taken into account we would doubtless see our VKT decline

ShareThis

This morning, on Scott’s ride to work, he came across a cycling crash on Friendship Ave where a cyclist was lying on the ground. It turned out his front wheel came off of his fork causing him to endo and fly over his bars. Those little levers on the end of your forks seem simple enough, but do you know how to use them properly?

As a frequent staffer at Free Ride, I see a lot of the problems that cyclists, especially those with a limited amount of mechanical knowledge, have with their rides. One thing I see on many bikes of new cyclists is improper quick release use. This is an unfortunate common problem as I don’t think that their functioning is as intuitive as one might believe.

So, inspired by today’s events, we decided to re-publish this article, originally from Bicycling Life, and help cyclists educate themselves about proper quick release use. It can be hard enough out there staying safe from cars, so let’s not hurt ourselves.

How to use a Quick Release

Bicycle wheels on better bikes come with a device called a quick release which holds the wheel on. These are used because you then do not have to carry tools to remove the wheel. It seem people are often removing bike wheels, to fix a flat, or fit the bike into a car, or to keep someone from stealing it.

Quick releases are simple to operate, and you wouldn’t think a web page dealing with them was warranted. Wrong! Bike shop owners will tell you it is one the most commonly miss-adjusted part on a bicycles owned by people new to cycling.

That wouldn’t be so bad, if it wasn’t so dangerous to misuse quick releases. If not properly used, the front wheel can fall off, and you crash. Hard. Usually head first.

So lets take a quick look at a quick release and explain how it works. It’s really simple, and remarkably secure when used correctly.

By their very nature, it is almost impossible for a quick release to work itself open. Personally, I always disbelieve anyone who says “it just popped open”. They way they are designed, it takes more force for the quick release to open than it does for it to remain securely shut. All the bumps in the world will not jar them open. The only way they “just pop open” is if they are never properly closed.

The quick release operates like the wheel-chocks you will see careful truck drivers place around behind the wheels of a truck parked on a hill. The chock might be only 4 inches high, and the truck might weigh 10,000 pounds, but that little 4 inch bump becomes an insurmountable object precisely because the truck is heavy. It takes a great deal of energy to lift 10,000 pounds 4 inches.

The quick release has a little chock (called a cam) built into it. It has to climb over the top of its chock every time you open or close it. The cam is built into the silver end-cap where the lever attaches.

Wrong Way

Here is the common mistake that many people make when first encountering quick releases.

They un-screw the quick release. They use the lever like the handle of a wrench, and rotate in around and around till the quick release is tight or loose depending on whether they want it on or off. Wrong!

Right Way

First, note that the quick release handle is slightly curved. Almost all of them are built this way. Further, one side of the handle often has the word “open” and the other often says “closed”. When the curve is pointing away from the bike (and the word open is visible) the quick release is loose, and your bike is unsafe. The picture above shows the quick release in an Open state. Not safe to ride.

To close the quick release swing the lever (see drawing) so that the curved handle points to the bike or the wheel, and the word “closed” is visible. You swing the lever like a door, you don’t twist it or rotate it.

The lever swings about 180 degrees.

When swinging the lever from full open, to full closed, you should JUST start to feel some resistance when the lever is pointing straight out (sideways or perpendicular) from the wheel. This resistance should start getting harder at about the 2/3s way closed, and really hard up to the 3/4 point (still 1/4) open. Then it may get easier the rest of the way. Your lever has climbed “over the top” of its cam and is sort of rolling down the back side of its little wheel chock.
Note, that some brands just get progressivly tighter, and there is no perceptable feel of “going over the top”.

How Tight is Tight Enough?

When the lever leaves a mark in your hand after closing it, it’s probably tight enough. The mark should not be bloody - lets not get crazy here… An indentation that lasts more than 5 or 10 seconds usually means you have pressed hard enough.

Preliminary Tuning

What if you don’t feel any resistance, or you feel resistance even when it’s wide open? In either case your quick release needs to be adjusted.
Resistance when wide open
If your lever binds up or becomes hard to swing and it is still in the wide open position (the word Open is showing) then you have to unscrew (lefty-loosie, righty-tighty) the lever a bit. Now you may use the lever as if it were the handle of a wrench, (without fear of being laughed at) and unscrew it a half turn at a time, then try swinging the lever, then unscrew a bit more, till you get it so the resistance just starts to set in with the lever sticking straight out from the bike.

Resistance never felt, easy to swing from open to closed

In this case, you have to tighten the lever. First open it all the way. Then start rotating the lever like it was a wrench, and swinging the lever every half turn or so, until you just barely feel resistance when it is sticking straight out. If it is really loose, you may have to reach around to the other side of the bike wheel and hold onto the other end of the axle to keep the quick-release end-cap (or nut) from spinning. (Sometimes it’s easier to just spin the nut with your fingers while holding the lever straight out. When the nut gets hard to turn, you are near the proper adjustment.).

Final Positioning

After you get the resistance dialed in so it just starts getting tight with the lever at the 90 degree mark (sticking straight out from the wheel), grab the nut (other side of the wheel) with one hand, and the quick release with the other, (flip the lever to the full open position) and rotate the two together so that when you close the lever it will be pointing rearward, or parallel to the fork.

Warning: We are into religious territory now. There are people who feel quite strongly about the orientation of quick release levers.

On a bike used only on the road, as long as it is tight it can be pointing any which way. It really does not matter. On a bike you will ride off-road through brushy trails, point them rear-ward so a branch does not catch it and flip it open, as might happen if it were pointing forward. I said “might” happen. Never has happened to me, or anyone I know, but you hear stories….

Some folks like to align the quick release lever so that (when closed) it will be parallel to a solid piece of the bike, like the fork or chain-stay. This allows them to grab the release lever and the fork and really squeeze the two together. It also makes it harder to get your wheel off when you want to, because you can’t get your hand behind the lever to pull it out. If you have small hands this technique may help, but if you have a weight-lifters grip, this is unnecessary, you putting more stress on the system than is necessary, unscrew a quarter turn and try again.

Nuts Vs Quick Releases

Quick releases are by far more reliable than nutted axles. Nuts will unscrew over time, but quick releases will not. The quick release is actually stretching the rod (skewers) that runs through the hollow axle to the nut on the other side. This stretching puts a great deal of pressure on the quick release nut on the other side, which has little teeth next to the bike frame. These little teeth dig in and make it impossible for the nut to come loose.

Regular nutted axes, on the other hand can work loose over time, unless they rust, which unfortunatly, they do.

But this safety benefit of quick releases only comes into play by virtue of the camming action, so if you have previously used that quick-release lever as a wrench, you now know why that was the wrong way to do it.

ShareThis

Monday, May 5
5:00 pm SHARP
Harris Theater (809 Liberty Avenue, Downtown) - map

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and landscape architect, Dina Cole Klavon, will present three design concepts for Market Square. Ask questions and offer comments during this informative session. Or, send your thoughts (e.g. “please consider keeping cars out of Market Square and making it a car-free zone.”) via e-mail to MarketSquare@DowntownPittsburgh.com. The design concepts can be viewed on the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership’s Website.

ShareThis

Author James Kunstler says the Automotive Age is almost history and deconstructs McMansion living

by Mara Der Hovanesian

The suburban landscape has been marred by foreclosures and half-built communities abandoned in the subprime aftermath. But James Howard Kunstler, author of a dozen books, including The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape, thinks there’s a bigger threat to those far-flung neighborhoods: the scarcity of oil. As Kunstler sees it, oil wells are running dry and the era of cheap fuel is over. Given the supply constraints, he says the U.S. will have to rethink suburban sprawl, bringing an end to strip malls, big-box stores, and other trappings of the automotive era. Kunstler, 59, predicts a return to towns and cities centered around a retail hub—not unlike his hometown of Saratoga Springs, N.Y. But the shift to this new paradigm, he says, will be painful. (Kunstler could be off the mark; he predicted technological Armageddon after Y2K.) BusinessWeek writer Mara Der Hovanesian spoke with Kunstler about suburbia, which he calls “the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known.”

Read more »

ShareThis

ShareThis

FRESH TALK: ERICA MINTZER, HUNTER SMITH AND THOMAS HARNED

April 30, 2008

Originally published in the Hartford Courant

The tragic death April 20 of Mila Rainof, a Yale medical student, who was struck while crossing an intersection at South Frontage Road and York Street in New Haven and later died from her injuries, brings home the great danger inherent in our transportation system and the need to set higher safety standards.

Each year, more than 42,000 people die in crashes on America’s roads. That’s some 117 of us every day. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for every age from 2 through 34. In Connecticut, 300 of us are killed a year. Who among us does not have a friend or relative who was seriously injured or killed in a car crash? And yet, while these numbers remain the same year to year, we and our politicians all remain remarkably silent about road safety.

This is because crashes seem to be a force of nature, a fact of life — they happen and we call them accidents. Unlike with a war or a crime, there so often doesn’t seem to be any human agency behind motor vehicle crashes. There is something unsatisfying about blaming a jaywalker or someone traveling a few miles above the limit. Who hasn’t been guilty of a similar offense themselves? We are all fallible, after all.

Yet such thinking evinces a general failure to look at the bigger picture. Blame may be assigned to users or it may not. But a transportation system should be built with the recognition that its users will be fallible and with the premise that mistakes should not be fatal.

In 1997, the Swedish Parliament adopted a plan called Vision Zero. Its goal is to reduce deaths and serious injuries from motor vehicle crashes to zero by 2020. Imagine that: zero!

The plan calls for changing behavior and practices among everyone from drivers and pedestrians to police, traffic engineers and licensing agencies. Along with traditional measures such as getting tough about seat belts and drunken driving, the plan involves replacing traffic lights with traffic circles (you can run a red light but not much can be done about a traffic circle) and installing medians along the main roads. Raised crosswalks are now being constructed in dense, pedestrian areas. Speed limits are being lowered while the driver’s education program is reconsidered.

The Swedes fashion Vision Zero as an “ethical approach to road traffic.” At first this sounds strange — what does traffic have to do with ethics? But our failure to link the two is precisely the problem: Long ago we decided that we would not tolerate industrial accidents or, more recently, deaths in commercial aviation.

We mobilized large campaigns to prevent these and we’ve been fantastically successful. Yet why should we continue to tolerate massive numbers of lives being cut short by our ground transportation system?

In fact, how could we fail to take “an ethical approach” to a system that kills and injures so many?

If Sweden, a country of roughly 9 million, can strive for zero traffic deaths, there is no reason that Connecticut, a state of 3.5 million, cannot as well. Sweden has recently realized that it may take beyond 2020 to achieve zero deaths, but it has not used this as an excuse to stop working relentlessly toward its ultimate goal.

The decision to adopt Vision Zero is first and foremost a political one: We and our representatives need to send a message that the only number of traffic deaths that is ethically acceptable is zero.

Such a message can and will lead to an ever-decreasing number of us being killed in traffic. It would require all agencies in government to look at what they can do to save lives. It may well even force us to re-examine our commitment to the automobile as the mainstay of our transportation network.

It would recognize that while some accidents may always happen, fatal ones need not. It’s time to demand a Vision Zero for Connecticut.

Erica Mintzer, 27 is a student in the Yale School of Medicine class of 2009. Hunter Smith, 25, is in the Yale Law School class of 2010. Thomas Harned, 26, is a transportation planner and a master’s candidate in research, statistics, and measurement at Southern Connecticut State University in the class of 2008.

ShareThis

Think of it like taking out the trash, feeding the cat, brushing your teeth: A little routine bike maintenance goes a long way.

Tuneups:

If your bike hasn’t been ridden since last summer, it needs a tuneup before it hits the trail or road. Tuneups are recommended every six months, more if you ride a lot. If you can’t do it yourself, take your bike to a reliable bike shop.

Before each ride, check:

• Tire pressure

• Tires for cracks, peeling, loose valve covers

• Shock pressure

• Fork pressure

• Brakes

• Loose parts — if something’s rattling, don’t ride

• Chain for frozen links

On-road safety:

Although Pittsburgh might be inching towards bike friendliness, it still has a long way to go. Bike Pittsburgh recommends that street cyclists — whether they’re 7 years old or 70 — keep in mind the following safety tips:

• File in behind traffic at red lights (not to the right)

• Use hand signals

• Make eye contact with motorists

• Be aware of people getting in and out of cars

• Don’t pass on the right

• Don’t zig-zag through standing traffic

• Don’t shoot through intersections

• And, of course, wear a helmet

Off-road rules:

• Check all gear before you ride

• Open trails only — ask before riding on private property

• Don’t leave the trails

• Leave no ruts or litter

• Maintain control, don’t ride too fast for conditions

• “Passing on the left!” — shout a warning before passing

• Yield to passing cyclists

• Leave gates as you found them

• Stop completely at road crossings

• And, of course, wear a helmet

After each ride:

• Check tires, again

• Clean sweat from frame and seat

• Clean sand, dirt, grime from chain, sprockets

• Re-lube the chain and remove excess lube

• Store in a safe place where the bike won’t fall and spokes won’t be damaged

For more safety tips, road rules, biking danger zones and a lot more of anything you need to know about biking in Pittsburgh, visit www.bike-pgh.org

ShareThis

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: location, location, location. There are good and safe places to bike, and then there’s Forbes Avenue, Fifth Avenue, Washington Boulevard … But those boisterous 9-year-olds will soon tire of their allotted mom-approved neighborhood blocks. Where to go?

Luckily, Pittsburgh has quite a few mostly flat, car-free spots suitable for tots on training wheels and fledgling daredevils. Venture Outdoors, a nonprofit outdoors enabler, offers bike rides throughout the summer — many kid-friendly.

Sunday, April 27, 2008
By Kate McCaffrey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Read the full article

ShareThis

ShareThis