Jim,

Yup, you've got it bad. I saw that Ritchey is now making a steel bike with couplers on it. That's something I'd really be interested in as my job has me travel alot. It's between a bike with couplers, a cyclocross bike, and a new mountain bike that I'm going to buy this year.

I think the key to lowering your heart rate is keeping your heart rate in your target zone during aerobic exercize for an extended time. My problem is that I get out there on the bike and want to get "sporty" and get my heart rate too high. Although this is good exercize and I get a workout that way, your resting heart rate is a reflection of how efficient your heart is in pumping blood. To be efficient, it needs to have thinner walls and be very pliable. Your heart, being a muscle, will thicken in repsonse to hard exertion and anerobic exercise. Being thicker and stronger, you are capable of higher heart rates for short periods of time, but thicker hearts are less efficient hearts. In the extreme, people that suffer from an enlarged heart have such inefficient hearts that it barely can pump enough blood for normal activity. In this condition, the heart is so inefficient and exerts so much effort at rest that the heart muscle walls keep getting thicker and thicker. Eventually there is no more room for actual blood, just heart muscle.

JMHO, I'm not medically trained or anything. If there are inaccuricies in my theories, just chock it up to more BS opinions on the internet.

Sholin

__________________
What else, '73 MB 280 SEL (Lt Blue)
Daily driver: '84 190D 2.2 5 spd.