Overdoing it

I’m con­cerned about the set­up of my new bike, but I don’t know enough about frame geom­e­try to real­ly know what to do about it.

I’m notic­ing that my fore­arms are real­ly get­ting tired when I ride. Much more so than when I ride either on flat bars or on drops aimed a lit­tle far­ther down. I have to reach a bit more to get at my brakes, and that may have some­thing to do with it. On the oth­er hand, my lat­est the­o­ry of body­build­ing is that all I need are shoul­ders and fore­arms and every­thing else can just go to hell. So if I’m over­tir­ing my fore­arms, that’s a good thing, right?

What’s a lit­tle more dis­turb­ing is that I’ve been notic­ing strain start­ing in my low­er back and all the way down into my groin. This could be in part due to rid­ing with a shoul­derbag with the weight most­ly on my back, but I’ve nev­er had this kind of strain before, and it does­n’t feel like tired mus­cle, it feels dif­fer­ent, like a mus­cle that’s been overstretched.

I kin­da wish I knew more about my anato­my and about the physics that go into frame geometry.

That said, I did kin­da go after some steep­er hills last night on the way home than I have in a while. The gear­ing of the bike has a lot more low-end than my rac­ing bike does, so I fig­ured that I could han­dle it. I climbed up to the top of Nob Hill from my office in Fish­er­man’s Wharf just for kicks. The tough part was Sacra­men­to between Stock­ton and Mason, then I went around Grace Cathe­dral to take Jones up to Jones and Sacra­men­to, hav­ing giv­en myself a lit­tle rest on Cal­i­for­nia and on Taylor.

But this is per­plex­ing: how did I strain my groin bicycling?