Circles, not Squares!!

I've been bicycling for 8 years now, and today I had one of those "aha!" moments--or "d'oh!", depending. Ive read about pedaling squares. It's what Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen say about a rider who has reached his limit in a race and is just hanging on, all form gone. I've also read Greg LeMond describe a proper pedal stroke--that it should be like scraping mud off the bottom of your shoe, by which he meant powering through the entire cycle, and not just pushing down.

Until today, I never put those things together, or at least not properly. I took Greg's statement to mean that I should be "scraping" at the bottom of my pedal stroke--i.e., that my foot should be level at the six o'clock point of the rotation. Today, quite by accident, I found myself keeping my toes pointed at the bottom of the stroke and felt my power increase tremendously and my cadence became easier to maintain. That meant I didn't begin my pull until about the four o'clock point of the circle. And then it hit me: AHA!! All this time I've been pedaling squares! What a revealtion. It seems so obvious in retrospect (which is where the "d'oh!" comes in), but what a difference it makes.

So what was supposed to be a relatively easy ride became a hammer fest. I did three short Hwy. 80 loops. My average speed for that section was just under 18 mph. And I sure feel it now! And now I know why I never got leg cramps before: I was never completely using all the muscles. Standing in the shower, trying to bend one way or another, I could feel a "ping" here and a "pong" there, saying, "If you stand this way for long you're going to be in for one big CRAMP." Even sitting here on the couch my upper back muscles are "complaining."