Although I use clipless pedals on both my road and mountain bikes, most of the research I've seen recently suggests that clipless do not provide any efficiency gain. This video provides links to numerous peer reviewed articles on the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUEaN9FKGLE. Of course I'm sure there is research that would suggest otherwise, and I would be interested in seeing counter arguments.
There's seems to be questioning on powering the upstroke, but that has never been "the reason" for foot retention systems. Except for one specific type of cycling-- track cycling, where upstroke IS USED in high acceleration starts like in Match Sprint or short time trials. There are track versions of clipless systems which require a lot more force and twist to get out of.
The main reason for clipless, as I understand it, is for safety and maintaining one's foot on the pedal. When you're pedaling, if you are apply any down-force whatsoever on the upstroke, you're wasting power. So, a trained cyclist will always have their foot practically floating on the upstroke and their foot will drift position as they pedal unless something is keeping it in place.
Thanks, that's a great video and I'm going to look through the references. Lots of great points made in the video.
As he acknowledges in the end, a lot of cyclists prefer clip-in pedals just due to stability. In my experience, it's not so much about the upstroke (which to be fair I am surprised was not measured to provide a power benefit), but the knowledge that I will never lose my footing. Without that knowledge, I simply wouldn't apply as much power.
As a flat pedal rider (and also clips) and someone who has trained fairly extensively in pedaling form here is my 2c.
The form of the stroke is to increase the length of the downstroke.
So making power transfer happen as early as possible and to maintain it as much as possible at the base.
This translates into pushing forward and then down at the beginning and down and back at the end.
This efficiency simply means getting a longer ‘glide’
Its very, very telling when climbing and also trying to attack as when applying extra good form will eek out benefits.
I signed up for pluralsight thinking I would use if for a month and then cancel. I ended up coming back to it whenever I wanted to learn something new, from AWS services to Angular, the content is just more consistent than other services I have used. The introductory Angular course taught by Deborah Kurata was fantastic and her manner of teaching is unlike any I have seen in software, Yay!
I was asked to try it out at work as part of evaluating online learning platforms. I've maintained a personal subscription ever since. Must be going on 4 years now.
I had intense insomnia when I was younger. The points the author laid out helped me immensely - particularly limiting sleep. Specifically, I limited sleep to 7 hours a night, in bed at 10 and up at 5 no matter what. Additionally, as soon as got out of bed I exercised for 45 minutes. As the author mentioned the first couple weeks were brutal, exercising at 5 in the morning on 2 hours of sleep is not fun. After a couple months it stopped being so painful, and after 6 months I fall asleep in 1-2 minutes. I don't have children which I imagine would make this much more difficult. I also have a consistent work schedule which helps as well.
Those sound like two horrific months. I am not exactly insomniac but very much a night owl. The few times I have tried morning running have been simply awful. (Adrenaline gets me though my one race a year, though I would love to try the Las Vegas Marathon, which begins at midnight.)
I don't doubt that my body would adjust if I forced it that hard, but it sounds excruciating.
I have noticed in articles and blogs advocating for early retirement, a general sentiment that work is bad and actively reduces quality of life and is therefore something that should be avoided at all costs. While I do think working 60-70+ hours a week at a job you hate in order to spend money on convenience items isn't a great formula for a meaningful life, I am also not convinced that the only solution is to grind it out until one no longer has to work. Perhaps working toward a more meaningful career could be part of the equation as well, and wouldn't therefore require a scorched earth approach to finances
A scorched earth approach to working rather than finances, I'd say. Saving & investing only gives you more opportunities and a bigger safety net. You can always decide to keep working.
I'd say the issue with working towards a meaningful career is that sometimes what you want to do isn't (for good reason or definitely not) properly valued by the economy or supported by society.
If I want to be a indie game developer in an essentially dead genre, creating exactly what I want, that's extremely difficult to do. For example, I might have to do Kickstarter or Steam Early Access to raise money and be at the whim of the terrible internet. I'd have to engage in social media as is basically required these days (gross). And so on.
If I want to do this while working, it'll most likely take non-linearly longer and quality will go down because I just don't have that much brain juice or focus after work. And I'd have to sacrifice my health & relationships.
I'm sure there are other examples. Many that are more noble (volunteering, etc).
> Perhaps working toward a more meaningful career could be part of the equation as well
A lot of jobs aren't meaningful. Imagine writing ad software. Or filming commercials for loan sharks. Not everyone has the luxury of good, meaningful work.
Yeah, also regardless of how meaningful you find a job, you almost definitely don't get an option to not work Fridays, or take multi-month vacations, or to stop working for several years then come back. You must let it take over your life to the extent that they want it to.
And even if the start of your career feels meaningful or fun, you'll possibly (probably?) "grow" into a position where that's no longer true. I enjoyed writing software, but after 15-20 years, they expected me to spend most of my time managing others (which I was bad at) or working with customers (which I hated). That greatly reduced my happiness, and so I retired early (mid forties) to get out of it.
Maybe I could've told them, "Don't raise my salary and increase your expectations", but that never really seemed like an option.
You've noticed bad reporting. What you are seeing is somebody taking advantage of a trend to get their average reader to behave a certain way. They just take the news and stuff it into the simplest narrative that they think would resonate with their readers. "Work bad." It's a straw man, even if by over-simplification, that warps the conversation.
Vim with plugins. At this point I am the only one at my company who does not use VSCode, it would be nice to be able to share new tricks with someone...
