Road camber and achy side

[riggsbie]

Hi all,

Does anyone suffer from aching left hand side (lower back) when riding a recumbent trike on cambered roads ?

I seem to get some problems and have to do a lot of stretching to relieve the aches & pains & it takes 2-3 days to go away, does anyone have any suggestions how to avoid this ??

Thanks

Paul

 

[byegad]

Hi Paul.

Not at all. Steeply cambered roads might demand a constant steering input but nothing that would make this ache prone old guy to notice. Maybe you have the boom out a bit far and this is added to by camber?? Not sure. Hopefully someone with medical knowledge can help.

 

[markg0vbr]

i have a terribly bad back and found reclining the seat as far back as possible, resting on the neck rest helped a lot. initially some people seam to try and sit up right on the trike when riding a camber rather than laying back it will feel odd to start with but soon you will stop noticing the lean.

 

[Fiona N]

I'd second Mark's tips.

The other thing is not to cycle at the side of the road - assume your rightful position closer to the centre of the lane where the camber is likely to be much less.

 

[Tigerbiten]

I do ~7k miles a year on my trike and no back aches here.

Remember a trike will counter stear, lean right and the trike goes left, lean left and the trike goes right.
so if your leaning right due to the camber, then you will need a constant pressure on the left bar to keep it straight.
This may be twisting you a little and causing the ache.
So relax down into the seat so you don't have to lean quite so much.

Luck ............

 

[riggsbie]

Thanks for your comments....

Mark & Fiona, you should come to Australia, the roads are really coarse chip tarmac and very rough, the roads are quite subsided so using my GT5 headrest whilst riding is hard as you get bumped & bashed around a real lot......

As for other road users, hmmmm......

We have a lot of Ute drivers (pick-up trucks) and they are mostly driven by tradies (tradesmen - wood spoilers, plumbers, electricians, air con fitters) who take great pleasure in trying to run you off the road, block you, cut you up, throw things at you....Riding on the roads here in Victoria can be hard and then when it is dusk or dawn we have these 5 foot bouncing rabbits jumping over fences and hedgerows into the road.....

Driving on the flatter parts of the road i.e. middle or close to the crown of the road is not really possible.

Keeps you on your toes.

I did fail to mention that in February I had back surgery on L4/5

I will try a more laid back approach and try not to lean into the camber so much and see how I go.

Thanks

Paul

 

[markg0vbr]

"We have a lot of Ute drivers (pick-up trucks) and they are mostly driven by tradies (tradesmen - wood spoilers, plumbers, electricians, air con fitters) who take great pleasure in trying to run you off the road, block you, cut you up, throw things at you....Riding on the roads here in Victoria can be hard "

i get that, had things thrown, abuse and was hit over the head with a rolled up news paper from a moving vehicle it felt like a base ball bat!


i don't use the neck rest now unless i stop or am going very slowly up a long hill with all the camping gear on, i did to start with on some of the steeper cambers just to get in to the habit of relaxing back, just going floppy in the seat helped me.

i had to mess about with the tension on the seat to get it spot on for me, i am not 100% on what your seat is like but i think it has one long bungee cord ruining through it, you could look at using three sorter piece's so you could have different tension at different parts of the seat, some people put pipe lagging on the down tubes to fine tune there seat.
look at this. http://catrike.yuku.com/topic/3141


have had to make a ventasit cover for the handbike with lumbar support and slightly raised side bits as the seat was not the right shape for me.


i find riding in the edge encourages bad over taking a good 1.5m out about where the inside set of car/ bogan limo tyres would be, this also should be the cleanest bit of the road, any thing on the back that flaps about making you look bigger.

i use all 12v car lights on my trike the led strip that comes out of brake lights on the back and led fog/spot lights on the front, very bright and will run for 5hrs on a 1.2ahr battery.


the big bouncy things, mmm other than whistling the theme to Skippy i cant help you there, but apparently if you have a mechanical problem one will rush of and get help. always have a look in there pockets as most of them have stolen diamonds gold ect in them.

 

[machew]

Need to watch out for them drop bears aswell

 

[byegad]

The huge rabbits are also really good at passing on complicated bits of plot too.

'What's that Skippy? The old man is trapped at the bottom of the mine and the water's rising so we need to take a SCUBA set with us as well as the long rope!'

What I never understood was why the damn huge wabbit didn't go the whole hog and rescue the poor blighter himself. After all, he was the cleverest member of the cast, by a country mile.

I'm showing my age!

 

[riggsbie]

Good valid comments from everyone..... Might have to start checking pouches for stolen diamonds !! And be more aware of the drop bears too !!

As you might have guessed I am a Brit and not a native so the wildlife always amuses me and I often just stop randomly and stare in disbelief as the rabbits bound across paddocks in mobs to the nearest dam for a drink or to a bunch of tasty looking plants.....

Mark,

You are correct, I have one long bungee cord, so will buy some more and divide it into 3 sections, brilliant suggestion !! I might also buy some memory foam or open cell foam to use as a seat cover....

Thanks all !

Paul

 

[markg0vbr]

Need to watch out for them drop bears aswell

i believe the drop bears have almost gone, out competed by the European carnivorous tree sheep.

 

[byegad]

Drop bears are alive and well in our part of the world despite the big black cat my wife has seen twice and I've seen once, after she pointed it out to me. Here in frozen County Durham, that well known marshland in the NE of England, the drop bears live on Wild Boar, well actually escaped tame, Wild Boar that are living up in the Pennine area of the County.

I understand that n-ick's part of the world suffers from Wallabies. Although a cure using Electric Shock Therapy and old film of Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo episodes. The idea being you stop seeing the Wallabies after you've suffered enough!

All we need now is some silly beggar to reintroduce Wolves* and Brown Bears and we could all cower in our hovels every night afraid to use the outside netty for fear of being eaten. It'd be a good cure for night time diarrhoea.

* I understand there's someone talking about reintroducing Wolves into Scotland. I hope they tell the animals where the border is!

 

[Fiona N]

Thanks for your comments....

Mark & Fiona, you should come to Australia, the roads are really coarse chip tarmac and very rough, the roads are quite subsided so using my GT5 headrest whilst riding is hard as you get bumped & bashed around a real lot......

Oh I'm pretty au fait with the roads of Australia - Perth - Melbourne, Brisbane - Mt Isa via Cape York, Darwin - Adelaide etc. during 7 years in Oz I remember those chippings especially on Perth-Melbourne (my first cycle tour).

More seriously, I think those who write off your problem are relying on experience of pretty level English roads - I'm aware other countries go in for a much greater camber due to the need to clear rain water without buried drainage systems and this does give problems for three wheelers. I had problems in the US on some back roads and main roads in the sticks - doing hundreds of kms leaning to one side gives me a crick in the back and my only defence was riding out into the middle of road when it was clear.

 

[riggsbie]

You get around a bit Fiona !!

I have barely made it out of Victoria, there's so much to see and do.... I just love the Victorian High Country and just over the border to NSW, along the Murray & then into the mountains, not tried it on a recumbent yet but awesome motorcycling roads......

I am relaxing more and fighting the camber less, had a good ride today and finished a little achy but nothing a hot bath and some stretches can't fix.

On the way home I bumped into the guy home developed the Cruzbikes and had a couple of laps on one of his FWD racer's.....All very intuitive, weighting the pedals to turn was interesting bit like the way you weight the footpegs on a motorcycle on high speed corners..... He has a bike called a Softrider which is basically a recumbent full suspension mountain bike, it looked very plush but it was a customer's bike so never tried that !

I love the diversity of recumbent bikes, so many slightly different angles on the recumbent theme !!

Paul

 

[riggsbie]

You get around a bit Fiona !!

I have barely made it out of Victoria, there's so much to see and do.... I just love the Victorian High Country and just over the border to NSW, along the Murray & then into the mountains, not tried it on a recumbent yet but awesome motorcycling roads......

I am relaxing more and fighting the camber less, had a good ride today and finished a little achy but nothing a hot bath and some stretches can't fix.

On the way home I bumped into the guy home developed the Cruzbikes and had a couple of laps on one of his FWD racer's.....All very intuitive, weighting the pedals to turn was interesting bit like the way you weight the footpegs on a motorcycle on high speed corners..... He has a bike called a Softrider which is basically a recumbent full suspension mountain bike, it looked very plush but it was a customer's bike so never tried that !

I love the diversity of recumbent bikes, so many slightly different angles on the recumbent theme !!

Paul