Translation: thirty, forty-five minutes of mad pedaling per week isn't going to improve your cycling much. What will improve your cycling, and surprisingly rapidly, is a regimen of, at least twice a week, three to four hours of steady, easy spinning with total awareness of what you're doing and how you're doing it.

Treat your body gently and give it a steady diet of conscious exercise and your ability level will shoot up like corn under a hot July sun. Try to beat it into shape and all you'll get is a beat-up body and a spirit that rebels at the thought of going for a bike ride.

If just "getting in shape" is your goal, it probably doesn't make much difference whether you ride a stationary bike in a gym or ride a real bike on the road, other than that the former is about as much fun as clipping toenails. Which is exactly the great attraction of cycling; it's just plain fun as hell. Yet for unknown reasons, an awful lot of cyclists seem to forget the fun factor and instead get stuck in the pain. Then they wonder why they never seem to improve. Why is simple. Their minds may be thinking about rainbows at the other end of their tunnels of torture but all the bodies know is the torture.

For sure hurting at times is the reality but there's a world of difference between the pains of muscles used and gently challenged and the pain of muscles thoroughly abused. For example, say you feel ready to attack a good climb, maybe a 700 vertical meter jaunt to a pass in the mountains. If you're part of the damn-the-muscles, full-speed-ahead school, you'll drive to the base of the climb, jump on the bike, and start jamming up the mountain with one eye on the watch to see how long it takes. The opposite approach, the ride gently school of thought, will park the car maybe an hour's pedal away from the base of the climb, then comfortably spin up the valley, increasing speed only as the muscles are ready. By the time the base of the climb appears muscles will be nicely toasted with a fine rhythm established and the climb is taken smoothly and surely.

The objective is to ride just inside the limits of your strength with occasional surges beyond those limits when you feel like extending yourself. How do you know where those limits are and how long you can exceed them? By listening to your legs; they'll tell you clearly and forcefully what you can do and when it's time to back off. The trick is recognizing when that voice is truly your legs' and not your mind's ego sounding off or the moaning of the latent couch potato whining about being too tired today.

The hardest part in undertaking a regimen to gain strength and durability is the getting going. This is where you can find yourself having to be firm when what you're really feeling is the desire to wait for a better day. It's a bit like getting the old British sports car going when the engine is cold and cranky, the transmission stiff and unyielding, and the wheels seemingly stuck to the asphalt. You just have to stay with it, adjust the choke gently, give the oil lots of time to warm up, then drive off slowly while studiously ignoring all the creaks and groans of protest emanating from suspension members and body parts. After a bit, everything settles down into their respective roles and soon the car and you are humming down the road in perfect concert.

On a bike, it's your body parts doing the creaking and groaning and your muscles who are balky and stiff. Whether you're truly on for a ride or not won't be discovered for at least half an hour. The older you are, the longer it seems to take to find that sweet rhythm that can sweep you over the countryside in remarkably easy fashion so don't worry if the first hour's going is a bit rough. Just stay in low gears that let you spin easily and while you're waiting, enjoy the views.

Remember the days when in any group of cyclists there would be at least one rider with his or her rear derailleur irritatingly clicking away and someone would snap at them to trim it up? Hardly happens anymore. Indexed shifting pretty much relegated the sounds of a badly shifted transmission to the junk box. Move the shift lever and the derailleur clunks over into perfect alignment with the next cog.

Riders don't even need to let go with one hand and bend over to shift gears anymore. They just flick one of the levers incorporated with the brake levers on the handlebar and, clunk, gears are changed. Couldn't be easier. For the rider. It can definitely be easier for the derailleur.

The problem is lack of understanding on the part of the rider. Today's derailleurs and shifting mechanisms have become so efficient that one can shift gears in just about any condition at any time. Caught napping, were you, and now you're struggling up the hill in way too high a gear? No problem, just flick the lever and salvation arrives. But quite unseen by the rider is the tremendous stress such shifts place on chain and derailleurs. The shift is made and nothing snaps but, with a modicum of attention and care, you can save your system an awful lot of needless wear and tear.

Once again the magic word is anticipation. Pay attention to what's happening and, in the case of down-shifting (shifting into a lower gear, or climbing gear), move the lever a moment before you really need to. But just before you do, accelerate a fraction then simultaneously with the lever move, lighten up your pedaling energy. The objective is to reduce the stress pedaling places on the chain so that it can hop across to the next cog smoothly and effortlessly.

Perhaps a quick explanation is in order. A bicycle's transmission changes speeds by physically dragging the chain off of one cog (the toothed metal wheel attached to the rear wheel's hub) onto the adjoining cog. Up-shifts (shifting to a smaller cog for greater speed) are easy because the chain is being dragged from a larger cog to a smaller cog. It's the opposite direction, from small cog to larger cog, that creates stresses. Manufacturers have made enormous strides in tooth designs to facilitate dragging the chain off that smaller cog and up onto the bigger cog but this only works if your pedaling. Unlike automobile transmission where effectively the motor is disengaged from the drive line in order to change gears, bicycle derailleur systems demand that the motor (you) is fully engaged. If not, no gear change.

Which creates a major contradiction. The less stress there is on the chain, the easier moving it from one cog to another will be. The only way you can release the tension on the chain is by not pedaling. But if you don't pedal, the chain won't be moved from cog to cog. Except pedaling places an enormous stress load on the chain. Basically you're tightening the loop of chain around chain ring and cog. The harder you pedal, the greater this stress, with the maximum stress generated when you're standing up. Ever seen someone snap a chain when climbing a particularly steep hill? It's wild. We're talking major stress here. If pedaling can tension the chain to such an extent that it snaps, can you imagine how tightly it's being drawn around the cogs! To then ask the derailleur to drag the chain off this cog that it's wrapped so tightly around and up to a

larger cog is asking a lot.

That they succeed so nicely says reams about the state of derailleur designs. But, with a slight lessening of chain tension by decreasing your pedaling energy, you can ease the derailleur's task enormously and extend your drive train's longevity.

For example, returning to the earlier example of being caught napping and suddenly finding yourself in way too high a gear for the grade you're climbing, there are three ways to salvage your position. One, simply move the lever and leave the responsibility to pulling off the shift to your drive train. That's what most riders do, to the long term detriment of their equipment. Two, hang a U-turn and do it over again but properly. This option is rarely accepted by road riders because it totally breaks their rhythm but can be an attractive option for mountain bikers where conditions can make panic shifts difficult, even with today's super efficient derailleurs.

The third option is the easiest and will save your transmission considerable wear and tear over the long run. Instantly stand-up and accelerate as best you can. A moment's acceleration is all you need. Then, simultaneously, back off the pedaling pressure so that you're almost coasting but still pedaling and throw the lever through as many stops as you need. On the road, this will probably only mean jumping two, maybe three, cogs but in the dirt, where everything tends to be exaggerated, this can mean slamming the chain across five, six cogs. In a severe situation on a trail, assuming you're on the middle chain ring, you can simultaneously drop the chain to the granny ring.

Do all this fast enough and you'll smoothly chain gears with minimal stress and find yourself in the correct gear for conditions with almost no break in speed or rhythm. But the trick is in your acceleration. It has to be sufficient to allow sufficient time for the shift to completed before everything is fully re-engaged and under load.

Naturally even better is to always anticipate and thus avoid such conditions in the first place but that's easier said than done, especially when mountain biking where transitions can be brutally abrupt. Getting into the habit of lightening your pedal load during all shifts is a good idea anyway. Your drive train will thank you with years of reliable service.

One last piece of advice in the realm of shifting and anticipation: shift into a lower gear before you stop. The frequency with which riders stop for lunch or end their ride with the transmission in one of the highest gears is truly remarkable. You're flying down the road on the way to lunch, carrying lots of speed and looking forward to stopping, maybe even in the midst of an impromptu race with your riding partner(s), and there's the restaurant. You sit up, stop pedaling, and coast in to a stop. All well and good and perfectly understandable. Except that you're forgetting about when you're going to start off again and discover the bike's in its highest gear and so you have to struggle to get going while shifting to a lower gear. Do yourself and your bike a small favor and, before you hop off, ride in a small circle and shift to a low gear, then hop off and relax.

Granted, that's a kind of nit-picking detail of no great import. Then again, it's also indicative of what kind of cyclist you are and the extent to which you pay attention to your cycling. If you want to become a first-rate cyclist, the details are part of the package that gets you there. It's just a question of maintaining total awareness of your world of cycling.