It’s been a week since I had my Coker from Coker Tires, Inc.
I love it. But once I get momentum going it seems I want to go faster. Where I live is perfact bike routes, flat roads.
I ordered some 127mm cranks, hope this would be the answer.
I plan to ride 20miles to work each day during the summer.
Maybe I should order 100mm cranks also.
I plan to give myself about 2 hours to go 10miles each way.
How long does it take for you Coker riders to do 10miles?
An hour? Two? All day?
And how much calories would I expect to burn?
My wife thinks this is great way for me to lose some weight.
It depends on many things, your comfortable riding speed with whatever your setup is being one of them. With time, you will be able to ride at that speed effortlessly and faster with a little work. Staying in the saddle continuously will then be the limit.
I ride 5 miles each way when I commute. There are ten traffic signals and nine stop signs on the route. I start at about 300 feet, drop to about 100 feet, go back to about 150 feet, and back down to 50 feet for my elevation change, mostly downhill one way and mostly uphill the other. The route has two very steep but short hills in it and the rest is comprised of long climbs, long downhills, and flats.
It takes me 40 minutes to commute each way. Even though I go uphill 250 feet total on the way home and downhill 250 feet on the way in the time difference is negligible. I work to do it so when I’m riding I ride over my comfort speed of 9 mph. Needless to say, the obstructions increase the total commute time. Non-stop on the flat I could do it in under 30 minutes.
I have made it both ways without getting off several times and found that the 40 minutes under those conditions is just about my saddle limit time. I would usually want to stand on the pedals for 20 seconds to continue after that.
with 127mm cranks, you can get quite a nice speed going.
with 110mm cranks, you can get that same speed going with much less effort. the downside to those short of cranks is that you lose the majority of your low speed control.
And being a speed addict, if you are already going faster that you can safely crash, and you are only using 70% of your energy…(estimated, the 110’s can be ridden WAY faster than i want to try)
Once you get more practice at it, you will be able to ride your current setup way faster that you can now anyways
I commuted in London 8 miles each way and managed about 13mph average at best. That was on a coker with 150s and a 29er with 125s.
On a coker with 110s you can push it a bit faster, although if you’re in tight traffic you have to be a lot better at controlling it, which mainly takes leg strength more than anything else. Once you’ve got good leg strength and skill you can control it really easily, commuting is a great way to develop that skill.
Once you get better at riding it, 10 miles in an hour will be pretty easy, especially if you’re doing a big commute regularly.
You should burn lots of calories, although you’ll probably be hungrier than usual and eat enough to make up for it. I’m not sure how useful it’ll be as far as losing weight. What it does do though is make you replace fat with muscle. It also means that you can piss your friends off in restaurants by ordering the biggest pudding every time and not getting fat.
Joe
I think you’re being a bit pessimistic with your time estimates for a 10 mile road ride. When I unicycle to work I take about 70 minutes each way average for the 9-mile trip with about 900 feet height difference. I do that ride mostly off-road on my 26", and I don’t consider myself a very quick or skilled rider, so I would think it would be relatively easy to do a 10-mile road ride on a 36" in an hour. There are people on this forum who could probably manage 14-16mph.
Rob
Re: Coker speed addict!
I currently ride with 125s and my 11 mile Coker ride yesterday (5.5 out & 5.5 back) took me 1 hour 15 minutes, 1 mile of it was road and 10 miles was off road all of it fairly flat. I’m not yet that confident on the Coker so my speed is a little erratic and I’m still learning the stopping distances.
Towards the end of yesterdays ride I underestimated the stopping distance so I had to abandon the unicycle and learnt, the hard way, that a finger is only designed to bend one way! I’ve been out today and bought a brake. (I did plan buying one but not so soon)
10 miles you should be able to do easily in under an hour. a Coker can go over 10 mph, so if you know what ‘mph’ stands for, that should give you a good idea…
for a good long distance coker ride you could probably aim for around 20 miles. seems like a lot, but it’s really not that much at all…
Well I have only been riding my coker about three weeks, and I easily ride 15-16 mph. And if I need to hurry I can get over 18 mph without much trouble (this is with 125’s). But I should get more comfortable and be able to ride much faster in the next few months. I also ride over this one bridge thats pretty steep, and it doesn’t slow me down much.