Old man back.

Must be that age. That milestone. When bouncing back from a hit doesn’t have that spring it once had. 2 months now I’ve been dealing with a sore back, mostly early morning, mostly happens when I’m laying down. Funny thing is as soon as I get some movement into it, the better it gets.
Sticking to a regime of floor exercises & free weights first up in the mornings & just before I hit the sack goes a long way nowadays, but it’s still there, in the background, just when I need that extra 10% on a climb or snapping out of the saddle for that lunge. It’s getting the point where some riding isn’t as fun as it once was.
I got a few bikes & this problem is at it’s worst on my roadie-commuter. Loaded with over 5kgs of work wear & necessities, stuck with the one ratio while running my drop ‘bars pretty low on the steerer all comes together at the end of the commute with the old man back. I’ve tried running the ‘bars higher, dropping the seat, offloading the backpack, but it doesn’t seem to make a big a dent into the problem as I have been hoping.
There is something else.
Getting the Langster as a commuter was more me ‘jumping on the bandwagon’ of the latest craze – Single-speed &/or fixed geared bikes than anything else. It was fun, the one ratio isn’t the handicap you would think it is & it’s so metro-cool bike-chic, just one step away from a track bike. But fixed was one step too far. So there I was, last week standing in the garage looking at my bikes, thinking about my back & the Langster, & all the other bikes. Maybe I just had the wrong kind of single-speed.
Before the Langster I was commuting on my old slick-shod ’89 Apollo Everest MTB, converted to 48/18 with a chain tensioner. It worked, but only just. Each time the chain got thrown – so did I. So banished to the back on my parents garage it was. But maybe the new breed of production single-speed-frame specific MTBs is what I need? Most aren’t that expencive, & I’ve never ultimately lost money on commuters, because – hey, at least it’s not going to petrol or train tickets. So I tested the waters & posted the Langy for sale on some on-line forumsat a cost similar to how it entered my life. And Lo, it was snapped up in a few days.
Looks like it’s time to go shopping…..