All Things Green

What I learned this week:

When you do your civic duty -- like attending a town Conservation Committee meeting -- you might find out about some secret access points to the Connecticut River (the center line through the Pioneer Valley).

Using all your skills to maneuver your dirt-road bike along old tractor roads, you might see some beautiful scenery between the access point and the river.

You might find a beach you never knew existed, which you'll plan on returning to in the hot months.

 

On your reconn mission, you might end up poking around a neighboring town, and see a road block with graffitti which says, "Bridge too purty for yr car." (True, by the way.)
 

On your way home, you might even see a convoy of local tractors hurrying to take their places in the town Memorial Day parade.

Help your town save the local greenery, and then go out and ride your bike to see it all.

It might be worth it.

Down To the Bone

New info on loss of bone density in cyclists -- this time, including young male cyclists.

Get out there and walk, run or jump rope, guys! We're vulnerable to osteoporosis, too!


(Gals, too, but you get a lot more messages about bone density than we do.)

Props to Ready to Ride for pointing this article out in his Twitter feed.

Bah.

Bah.

First accumulated snow of the season.

I know, I know, lots of you weirdos love snow. You probably don't live in Massachusetts. Clearing out my car this a.m., each shovelful weighed about ten pounds. You can't snowshoe in two inches of muck, you can't cross-country ski, and even if you could downhill ski in it, who could afford it?

But, by the same token, you can't ride, either. Who am I if I'm not on the road?!?

Scrooge. That's who.

Competition and Joy

… being free of the need to win results in greater personal power and performance. Let the possibility of winning keep you alert and sharp. If you win, terrific; if not, feel the joy and satisfaction of having participated. Focus on how well you are mastering specific skills. Notice how the event provided you with an opportunity to display your skills against challenging competition. Win or lose, you have to dig down inside and discover other aspects of your essence.

Chungliang Al Huang and Jerry Lynch, Thinking Body, Dancing Mind

Is this something you can do? Can you compete just for the joy of it?

More and more these days, I’m convinced that it takes true self-esteem to do this. Personally, I don’t know if I’m capable of it. My worst self sometimes comes out in competition. I tend to become very “all or nothing,” and to take losing -- and winning -- much too personally.

Which is why I’ve stayed away from racing so far. If I trained for racing, I would likely take the whole thing ridiculously seriously, all out of proportion to my low level of experience and talent. And all because I can’t stand to perform one iota less than my ultimate. And – to give the full confession -- because I hate losing more than I love winning. Sri Bobke says this is the secret to being a great racer. The problem is, if you start from there, you can never enjoy yourself – you’re always trying to pedal faster than the inner hounds snapping at your metaphorical heels. And those suckers have no ceiling on their VO2 max.

Still, I can’t stay away from the thought of racing. I tease myself with it over and over. And, if I do it, being the good therapist I am (or try to be), I would have to take the challenge that Huang and Lynch throw down in that quote. So, there’s a chance it could be a healing and empowering experience on an important level.


Last night, I was browsing around the ‘net trying to find out if anyone else out there is bent enough to think about the kinds of things I do when I’m riding my bike. I found the following at epicriding.com, a blog by a fellow who calls himself Grizzly Adam:

I see myself focusing more on speed in the coming year. More on racing, on competition, on winning. The last several months have seen me explore the intangible, even spiritual side of mountain biking… If the idealism I am envisioning is possible in reality, then 2009 will see a merging of both sentiments, both aspects of riding. That is, the speed and the serenity will combine into what I hope will be something like the observations of Abbey and the competitive cruelty of Eddie Merckx.

(Go here for the whole piece – and check the rest of the blog out while you’re there. It’s good writing.)

So, we might be few, but clearly I’m not alone out here, trying to pedal holistic circles long enough to alchemically merge some of these polar opposites inside me. Wish me luck, and lots of glucose.

A Thanksgiving Cyclist's Prayer

Well, it’s the fourth Thursday in November, and while I can’t say I’m exactly grateful for what happened this morning on my ride, I am grateful for some of the insights it’s provided me. Somehow, I’ve managed to either injure or re-injure my left knee. Velophoriacs will know that I spent a good part of the last 12 months trying to shake a very nagging knee injury – actually, both knees, which have chondromalacia.

I have a bunch of theories about how I got it, how I usually am able to fix it, and why it cropped up again today, but I’ll bypass those right now.

I got in a perfectly horrible mood as the pain set in. It started right about when I got all the way “out” for my out-and-back route, and was about to turn “back”. The further I rode, the more it hurt, the slower I went, and the more I started bona fide, vile, base cursing at the top of my lungs. I was thinking about how many months total out of the last year I’ve actually been able to ride the way I wanted. Between knee injuries, overtraining, finishing grad school, moving, and so on, it wasn’t a good number. I was losing it.

Now, I’m back at the house. I’ve showered, had a bite, and some time to relax a bit and think. My usual thing is to take an injury or piece of bad luck and expand it into a disaster – very black and white. As a therapist, I know just how harmful this is to one’s mental health. Doesn’t stop me. I drag myself down into the pit of despair.

Yet today, for right now, I’m just chilling. I’m feeling more… factual about this injury. It’s not because “I’ve done this so many times, I can’t do it to myself again.” It’s not because I know that, every time I do this, it almost never turns out as bad as I think it will – even though I know it’s as possible I’ll feel better tomorrow as it is that I’ll be off the bike for a week or even much more.It’s a different reason this time.

It’s Thanksgiving, and I’m grateful. I came very close to having a bad car accident earlier this week, but God saw fit to make the whole thing pass in the blink of an eye, and I drove on – fully amazed. Not a scratch. It made me think; my life is so much better than I know it is. I was grateful that night, you better believe.

Probably the most important lesson I have to learn to make my life better is this: I have what I have. It’s as simple as that.

In my first year on the bike, which just ended a couple months ago, I pushed, pushed, PUSHED myself to be a faster, stronger rider. I wanted to be a great rider so badly, I could taste it. I thought about it day and night. Nearly drove my saintly wife crazy. Partly as a result of that, I spent much of the year injured or so exhausted I could barely function.

Slowly -- very, very slowly -- those “negative” results are teaching me that I often become obsessed with an idea that is not based in reality. Then I make myself miserable trying to realize it, no matter what it takes.

Like life itself, training can be very confusing: Sometimes we need to push harder, and sometimes we need to pull back – or walk away. When I get fixated on one idea, one goal, it becomes just about impossible for me to pull back. I tend to either want it all, or say “It’s not worth the frustration; I’m ditching the whole thing.”

Today, for Thanksgiving 2008, in addition to all the other wonderful things in my life – my loving and kind wife, my job and career, which I like, my relative good health, my nuclear family all alive and relatively okay, and so much more – I want to say a prayer of thanks for the GOOD rides I had this year. The ones where I really enjoyed myself, whether because of gorgeous scenery, incredible fitness that let me fly past previous limits, great company, or any of the other delightful things that can happen to me on two wheels. And a prayer of EQUAL thanks for the pure flame of desire that keeps me banging up against my shortcomings as a human, so I can learn to balance them out and be happier with what I already have.

Maybe, because of the built-in limits of my body and my life, maybe I’m not destined to be the rider I thought I could be. Or, maybe it won’t happen for a few years, while I work out the kinks as a beginning serious cyclist. Either way, I will live on. And that life is a gift much, much larger than any one goal, no matter how alluring.

Joys of Cold-weather Riding

During each of my rides through September and October, I felt a combination of joy and sadness rising up within me. The joy came from the comfortable riding temps and the panoply of changing leaves – New England at its best. The sadness arose because summer was dying. Soon, no more plentiful sunlight and warmth for riding upon arriving home from work. Cold. Dark. Rollers. Wearing out my favorite podcasts and music playlists, while I pedal nowhere for hours.

But… I forgot how much fun cold weather riding can be. Oh, yeah – right! You can still ride outdoors for much of late fall and winter! In its own strange way, it’s as pleasing as summer riding. (Until the snows come, that is.)

Last week, I went for a long ride in a heavy fog, temps in the low 50s. As I shot down the road, moody light emanated from all directions at once. I freight-trained along through huge fingers of mist, the mountains to one side of me all draped in soft foggy lace.

I love feeling toasty-warm under my winter gear, protected from the harsh elements I am rocketing through. I love hoping that the people passing me in cars are thinking, “That guy must be nuts!” when, in fact, I feel great. I love the snap my legs get when its cold outside (once I’ve warmed up, which takes extra time).


This weekend, I laid out a big chunk of change for serious winter riding tights. I rode through all of last winter in a double layer of polypropylene beneath a pair of running tights that bagged and wrinkled too much. Once home, I put on my sleek new black tights and topped them with a silver-and-black jersey, and I felt like a rocket waiting for blast-off. There was a ferocious wind that day, and the windfront fabric worked like a charm – warm and dry in front, breathable in back. I felt cozy and I looked fast – what could be better?

For my Tuesday a.m. ride tomorrow, it’s supposed to be in the low 20s. We’ll see just how well this recovered affection for cold-weather riding holds up then.

Draining the Dregs of the Summer Cup

When the cool of the pond makes you drop down on it
When the smell of the lawn makes you flop down on it
When the teenage car gets the cop down on it
That time is here for one more year

And that summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life

- Jonathan Richman

Riding in my new surroundings of Western Massachusetts has been extremely rewarding. Even with starting my new job and being out of town five of the thirteeen days we’ve been based out here, I’ve managed to squeeze in just over 145 miles of riding, and I have to say, nearly every one has been more beautiful than the last. It seems we’ve got the best of New England right outside our new door. Well, all right!

I’m also becoming a little more proficient on the hills, which is a relief. I’ve found some long, steady climbs on which to build my strength and technique. I no longer hate the idea of serious hills quite so much. I still have a long way to go before I can scurry up them with confidence and pleasure.

All this pleasurably strenuous riding is bittersweet, though: Tomorrow is September 1. Just as last year, I feel like I’m hitting my stride just as autumn and the rigors of the work world kick in. I find myself worrying whether my new job will allow me to ride as much as I have in the year since I got back on the bike. So far, when I’m high in the hills on a beautiful day (like today – high 70s and clear blue skies), I’ve managed to force the question to the back of my mind and focus on the satisfying work at hand. But there’s no denying the larger point. I once wrote a song about this time of year, and one of the lines is, “Summer’s not gone, but it’s gone too far.”

I hate that feeling. I’m not one of those “eternal sunshine creates a desert” people. I like the desert; I lived there and loved it. There’s no such thing as too much sun and sweet, warm weather, green trees, lake-swimming and campfires.

Yet “bittersweet” means there’s also a nice side to it, right? On the long, flat section of my ride today, from about 50% to about 80% of the way through my route, I was inspired to really look around me and use my senses to squeeze the drops of beauty out of one of the last classic summer days this year.

I noticed the way the snakey sound of the bearings in my hubs bounced off the walls of the long barns I rode by, classic brick-red paint faded by years of sun, set against a perfect backdrop of shimmering river or fields stretching out for miles.

I noticed the lift in my spirits as the small mountain range near my house hovered into view, like great whales drifting on an ocean of tree tops.

I savored the sweetness of the cool, earthy breeze emanating from the forests along the road on a warm day, how the trees almost seemed to want to help me along by offering a little refreshment.

Friends, don’t miss the dregs of that lovely summer cup; it’s playing right now, on a long stretch of road near you. Get out there and notice and savor; roll it around on your tongue. We’re not kids anymore, and summer doesn’t last forever like it used to.

Finding the Body-bike-road Continuum

In the last couple of days, while riding my regular workouts – distance, climbing repeats, etc. – I’ve discovered a kind of consciousness arising in me that I am very, very interested in. When it happens, the word animal arises in my mind spontaneously. I watch the athletes on the Olympic broadcasts and see something similar sometimes – a blend of power and looseness, a total absorption in their activity at that moment.

On Sunday, I was just starting the final third of my long ride for the week. It had been a good morning; I’d gotten out early, picked a good route, ridden within myself and was feeling up. I’d made the decision before I left to hold a little back until the final third, and then, if I felt strong, to unwind the engine a bit and treat the last stretch more like a time trial – just to see how it worked. A few miles into that, I was flying down a pretty, winding country road, and something just came over me. I hate to sound corny, but it really was like the bike, the road and my body became one thing.

I’ve had breakthroughs in cycling fitness, and leaps in my technique, too, but this is only the second time that I have experienced the entire feeling of being on the bike in a very different way. I felt like I was a gazelle or a leopard, leaping down the road in a feral, fluid blur. (Not that I was going super-fast – the feeling involved more than just speed.)

I guess it’s popular to call that the zone these days, and perhaps that’s what it is. All I know is, my day-to-day mind falls away unexpectedly; it stops thinking about the very long list of annoying details awaiting my attention, or interpersonal struggles, or questions about the future. It’s like I become entirely body all of a sudden – or maybe more like my mind deserts its habitual post (churning away just behind my forehead) and, like some fluid special effect in a wizard movie, just floods my muscles and bones and nerve endings. It didn’t last long; a few minutes, probably. Same thing yesterday on my climbing repeats.

I tell you, it’s really quite a feeling. I want more of it.

I’ve been meditating for 15 years. Some mornings I get into a good place, and body and mind also join together at those times, along with – if I’m lucky -- spirit. But this is different – it’s even different from the feeling I get from yoga, which I’ve been doing even longer. One stated goal of yoga is roughly the same: To synch up body, mind and spirit. But this feeling on the bike is different from both of those practices. It’s like I’m achieving that state, but in a highly active way, body working hard, moving fast. It usually comes when I find that place where only the muscles I need are doing the work; the rest of me is relaxed. (Very yoga, by the way.) This is something I’ve been focusing on lately in my cycling, because I’ve heard it’s a great way to improve performance and endurance. I never imagined it would leap me across a gap I didn’t even know was there. I sure hope I can continue to cultivate that state, because, simply put, it’s really addictive.

Improving TV Coverage of Cycling

So, what do you know? The Olympics are here, and NBC is actually broadcasting some of the cycling. Hip-hooray! It’s wonderful to finally see pro cyclists in some detail on the television screen, after following most of the international racing season on my Mac. On TV, there’s no jumpy “slide-show” video, no tinny audio, no tedious hours of poor commentating.

However.

Even the Olympic coverage is annoyingly scant. And though NBC did go to the considerable trouble of creating a complicated Web site that lists exactly when every half hour of cycling would be broadcast, so far the schedule has been completely unreliable. It’ll get you watching on the right day of the week, but that’s it.

My wife and I have been discussing what it would take to get better TV coverage of cycling in the United States. What’s available now really just outright stinks. In order to watch the Giro D’Italia, I had to subscribe to an Italian-language cable station for the month of June – and I don’t speak Italian. (See a fun report on that experience here). The Giro is the second most popular bike race on the planet.

If I’d wanted to watch the Tour de France on TV, I’d have had to pay for a month of a new level of cable subscription-- $48.00 extra. I just finished grad school and am about to start a job in what I refer to as a “personally rewarding field.” (Translation: I’m a mental health counselor.) I watched the wrap-ups on the Web, streamed some of the free but mind-numbing live broadcasting from Eurosport, and tuned in to the excellent Daily Tour podcasts from the FredCast. But it just wasn't the same.

Why is it that I can watch bowling or poker any week I might want to, but not the three most important cycling races in the world, which have tens of millions of viewers elsewhere? Races that dominate European TV for weeks, and that sponsors spend gajillions of dollars on?

A first response might be, “Broadcasters have to sense a much bigger market in the U.S. than they do now. Money talks, and cycling just doesn’t have the same audience as baseball or even poker.” But I question that answer. Are Europeans genetically more inclined to cycling than we are? Their mania had to start somewhere! Early journalists knew that stage races made a terrific story, and conveyed that story in such a way that it sank deep into the local psyche. Did poker have a huge audience in the U.S. before channels started broadcasting it right and left? It all starts somewhere.

I remember reading somewhere that Americans have more recreational bikes per capita than nearly any other nation (don’t count China; that’s mainly commuting). That means we love to get on our bikes, right? On a given Saturday, I wager I’ll see way more people on the local bike trail than I will if I trundle down to the all the nearby bowling alleys that evening and count up folks rolling frames. How hard would it be to cultivate in those people an appreciation of a few of the finer points of racing, so that they would get hooked after watching some tastefully condensed coverage of a major road race?

The Tour of California is garnering more viewers and sponsors every year, and there’s even talk of it being respected as highly as some of the more prestigious European races. And then there are the countless classics themselves, in France, Belgium, beautiful places with storied terrain that make terrific videography.

Maybe this is all idealism, and it really couldn't happen that way. But I ask you, doesn't it seem entirely possible?

How Do You Keep it Fun?

My recent post about what it means to be a serious rider spurred some interesting comments from reader Dave (scroll down at the original post, linked above, for the comments) about how to keep riding fun. It got me thinking about the tricks I use. I’m going to post a couple, and then I’m going to ask you to use the comments link, at the bottom of this post, to add your ideas to the list. Do you ever hit the doldrums with your riding? What do you do for it? Without further ado, some ways that I keep it fun:

• Remove the cyclocomputer from my bike (sacrilege!) and go for a ride just to go for a ride – for ice cream, to see the top of a local hill, to explore a new neighborhood.

• If I can’t stand the idea of losing track of my miles, I’ll cut down a Post-it note to stick over my cyclocomputer display while I ride. Depending on my mood, I’ll use one of two kinds of Post-its: a) those tiny page-saving rectangles. If I cut off all but the sticky part, it fits right over the speedometer portion of my display, but I can still view other stats – which I restrict to either total time or total miles, basic info that I can’t use to push myself too much; b) Other times, I don’t want to see any info while I ride, but I still want to track my data. At those times, I cut out a larger Post-it to cover my whole display (leaving in the sticky part to hold the note on the display). Costs nearly nothing; works like a charm. A word of warning: Just knowing that my data is being tracked can push me to ride too hard. Sometimes it's just better to leave the computer at home.

• Take a couple days -- or more -- off the bike altogether. When I first started riding last year, this seemed impossible. I had to ride my standard six days a week. These days, I ride more like four or five. (Not everyone is lucky enough to have that much riding time; I just finished grad school and still haven't found a job, so my schedule has been flexible). These days, I try to take one week out of every four or five to chill out. During these breaks, I ride less mileage on fewer days. Or I'll plan a week off around a long weekend away with my wife -- that way, we get a chunk of quality time together. (I'm often far away on the bike during her days off, or in the basement adjusting on my derailleur, etc.) As these breaks approach, I often feel apprehensive, like I will lose something precious without my riding days. But frequently I have my best riding weeks ever after a break like this. The body and mind become so refreshed by a break from my daily obsession.
  

OK. I know this is a relatively new blog and doesn't have a ton of readers. But there are definitely a handful of you who come daily. It would be great fun to hear from you.

I know some people are a little leery of commenting on a public blog, but rest assured: You do not have to be a Blogger member, and you can simply click on the Anonymous button to submit your comments without any identifying info at all. (You might want to also click the button that will send you updates, because then you can keep track of the conversation.)

OK, so – how do you keep it fun?

A Sketch from Fitchburg Longsjo

My wife and I were out in Western Mass last weekend for much-needed R&R. On the way back yesterday, she kindly consented to visit the Fitchburg Longjso Classic, a road race going on all that weekend – as far as I know, the only stage race held in our fine state. It’s been graced by the likes of Lemond, Armstrong and the Heiden siblings. Go here for good information and a nice history of the racer after whom the event was named.

We were there for the final stage, a criterium. Here’s a little tone poem on what we saw:

• A lot of happy people hanging out downtown on a fine summer day, making noise every time the peloton buzzed by – sounding like a swarm of very fast, angry bees; looking like a river of neon colors and sweat and jostling and effort.
  
  
• Riders from around the world hanging out on shady side-streets, speaking various languages, donning their radio earsets, warming up on trainers next to team buses silk-screened with cool graphics for teams I’d only read about.
  
  
• So much drool-worthy bikeage that I could barely contain myself. I asked my wife if she thought the SRAM tent would notice if I strolled by and palmed a couple of high-performance wheels (there were scores of them lined up). Surprisingly, she discouraged that idea.
  
  
• A pretty good race announcer who, despite being young and bald-headed in a hip way, exclaimed, “Oh, my stars!” every time something exciting happened. We liked that.
  
  
• On the penultimate lap of the men’s Category Four race (essentially, amateur hour), the rider who crossed the line first threw his arms in the air in the classic winner’s pose and coasted – only to have the peloton swarm past him at full tilt. He’d thought it was the last lap. We got an awful feeling in the pit of our stomach for him; unless he’s got a superhuman psyche, it will be a long time before the memory of throwing away 60 minutes of successful, all-out effort stops torturing him. At the finish, I thought I saw him solidly ensconced in the middle of the pack.

We stuck around long enough to watch most of the women’s pro race, which was exciting – lots of spirited sprints, especially the one for the $100 premium thrown down by a good-hearted local. You should have seen the bikes rockin’ and rollin’ at the line for that one. We left after that; my wife had been more than generous in taking a chunk out of our last weekend day to indulge my obsession with anything velo. She is a great woman.

Are You Serious?

How serious a rider are you?

No, really: I mean this question quite genuinely. How serious are you?

I hear you ask, “Well, how should we judge that?”

Well, how about this: Do you count your miles in a ride log? Do you keep a cycling computer connected to your bicycle? Do you worry about whether your jersey matches the color scheme of your bike?

Are you a triathlete, duathlete, monathlete, or just a half-lete? Can you ride 100 miles? 50? 10? Are you one of those superhuman folks who can reel off two or three hundred in one go? Does that make you a more serious rider than the gal next door, who just finished her first 20-mile ride ever yesterday, and is telling everyone she knows? Is she serious enough?

It seems to me there are as many kinds of riders as there are actual riders. Dividing them up into serious and not is pretty absurd. Yet I – and most of my friends – do it every single day. It's rampant in road biking culture, in fact. In the guise of just sharing a good road story, guys will tell, with unimpeachable humility, of that time last week when they got caught in some jam and had to ride an extra 60 miles in withering heat, on top of their normal century, due to (fill in the blank). But, shucks -- t'weren't nothin'.

Speaking for myself:

I spend a lot of time shopping for that right jersey. I finally bought a nifty one at a good price yesterday, having shopped for weeks. I also shopped for weeks for water bottles that set off my bike’s color scheme – now that I have them, I think the overall effect is dangerously cool, actually. I occasionally catch myself admiring my new body in the mirror when I’m all done up in biking shorts and a sleek, colorful jersey. I love my new, highly-defined quads and my widening calves and shrinking body fat percentage.

I’ve done the base miles, the hill repeats, the intervals, the hundreds of hours on the rollers to improve my form, the heart rate zones, the calorie counting, the stretches, the recovery drinks. I have read every technical cycling book in two local public libraries, and I’m currently working on a third. And I’m teaching myself to fix my own bike.

Now: Am I a serious cyclist?

See, here’s the rub: The more serious I became about my cycling experience, the more impoverished it became.

Any and all of the pastimes above can be great fun; stress-reducing, joyful, healthy, creative. Or they can be one more way to feel like I am not quite enough. There are days when I compare myself to every rider I see on the road, or compare my stats to those of my veteran friends on the Internet cycling forums. Needless to say, on those days, I don’t come out well in the comparison. On the days when I’m really enjoying myself, I don’t compare – I’m just plain happy for every person I see out on a bike, whether beginner, pro or in-between.

So, in order to not self-destruct my cycling passion, I began to work on distinguishing between the kinds of priorities that help and those that hurt. Here’s what I came up with: If I am enjoying myself, it’s helpful. If I’m not, it’s hurtful.

Pretty fancy, huh?

Note that enjoying myself can take many forms. On many days, it’s long, grueling effort and pushing past personal records. Especially if I'm doing that for my own reasons. But even then, I have to mix in some riding just to ride – to enjoy the sunshine, to see the wind in the grass, to have an adventure someplace new, to get the feeling of flying that comes over me on long, flat stretches, when I hit that rolling groove, and time and mind slip away. When I was a kid on that shiny new red bike, I didn't ride to look better than my friend. I rode because riding rocks.

Above all, I have to avoid comparing myself to other riders. I find that ridiculously tricky, although the more months of riding I string together, the easier it gets. After all, if I’m still cycling now, it’s got to be because I found something I hold dear, something real.

The trick answer to the trick question, “Am I a serious rider?” is no – because being serious is the wrong goal for me. It’s a trap. It hangs its hat on the wrong hook: What do/would others think of my mileage, my kit, my bike, my wins? If you think about it for 15 seconds, that becomes an utterly pointless question, spiralling back in on itself. However, precisely because it’s pointless, it suddenly becomes very dangerous when I invest it with importance, with priority. If being taken seriously is your goal, well, take it from me: You can never get enough. If, however, I can manage to truly take the enjoyment credo to heart, make it my engine of growth, I can look forward to many more years of true velophoria.

So, tell me: Are you serious?

Running Towards What We Don't Want

For one reason and another, I haven’t been able to go on a “spirited group ride” (as the journalists like to call them) in about nine months. Extreme busy-ness colluded with nagging injuries to keep me away. I spent much of this time very, very frustrated, obsessed with how I could get back to that experience. It was my main goal when I started getting back into cycling seriously last fall.

For one reason and another, I finally felt ready to go on that particular weekly ride this morning.

I was really nervous as I was getting ready this morning. Last season, I managed to join this group only five or so times. I was just back on the bike for the first time in many years, and only in decent shape. I got dropped, badly, time after time. I would ride home alone, nagging myself again and again about the question of my fitness and ability, as if picking at a scab. I bored my poor wife with these involutions for weeks.

I went on to spend much of the winter and spring sticking rigidly to a training schedule and trying to heal from that recurring injury. I fantasized about going back and showing them – uh, I mean, showing myself (yeah... right) – that I could pass the test. That, at 44, I still had a little of the spark of youth in me. Granted, a spirited group ride is not a race – but the front half of this one is pretty close to a race. And I wanted to be indisputably IN it – not off the back. I worried. I trained. I researched. I trained. I upgraded my bike. I trained. I lost weight. I trained. Through snow and sleet and hail. Literally.

Today was the day to put all that obsessing and research and training and healing and money and time to the test. Was I right to think I could do it?

As it turned out, I did well today. I exceeded the goals I’d set for my return ride with this group, goals dreamed up during countless dreary winter training sessions in my basement.

Now, here’s the interesting part: The experience didn’t mean all that much to me.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed it. It was exciting to ride hard and fast, to be in the chase, and, certainly, to be the one being chased. To feel the utter exhaustion and happiness at the end of the road, and the camaraderie with the other riders, the full kinship I couldn’t feel during the rides last year, because I wasn’t really one of them, couldn’t stick with them. I earned those things today, and they were nice.

But they didn’t thrill me like I thought they would. I mean, I poured myself into this goal, folks. I could not have done any more to make it real. Along the way, this nagging knee injury kept making me slow down, enjoy the scenery, ride like I rode when I was last really into cycling, as a teen. I rode in those days for the love of it, now didn't I? I seem to remember...

This year I kept moaning and groaning about how the injury was keeping me from what I really wanted. Turns out, what I wanted so badly? Not so much. It doesn’t do much for me to “rip someone’s legs off,” as the saying so tellingly goes in our sport. I thought it would really give me a frisson, make me walk taller. Nope. Fact is, I had at least as much fun last week exploring the Metrowest area on roads I’d never tried before, getting lost, intimately experiencing new places in my own backyard. Funny – Just like the stuff I loved when I was a punk teen. Huh.

I’ll probably go back to the group ride, and I’ll probably try to beat a few guys in a sprint here and there. It’s human nature to compete sometimes, and I like the buzz. But I’ve been healthily reminded that, if I ride for the love of riding, I will be happier both during and after. Whether that means meandering around new roads, or doing sprints that leave a long streak of melted rubber down my standard training route.

I have a stockpile of adages I’ve coined over the years to remind myself of the important stuff I’ve learned. One of them is: We run fastest from that which we really want. Today, I discovered a corollary: Sometimes, we run fastest towards that which we don't really want.

Let that be a lesson to me.

"Succeeding at Admitting I'd Failed"

It wasn’t that I faced shame like some brave and noble human, but rather that the racing, the failing at racing, and the succeeding at admitting I’d failed, shone a bright light on the shame that was in me. I mean, there it was: I couldn’t not see it [....] I believe all of us contend with our own personal demons... and that for each of us, our obsessions, whatever they are - bike racing for me, stamp collecting, gardening, or whatever - can teach us all we need to overcome or learn to live with those demons.

- Bill Strickland, interviewed at memorywritersnetwork.com

In my weekly bike-related browsing, I came across this interview with Strickland, executive editor at Bicycling Magazine, and, more importantly, author of Ten Points, a very good memoir that weaves together bike racing, growing up in an abusive family, and lots of other big themes. The book is worth reading in itself, but the interview put the icing on the cake for me. Strickland proves eloquent, honest and incisive.

If you like bikes, thinking, and great writing, don't miss the interview or the book.

What Did You See on Your Ride Today?

Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.
- Louis L'Amour

Sometimes, when I'm recovering from an injury and I need to ride lightly for a period of time, I use a trick I discovered this year. I find riding at a modest speed very difficult, especially when I'm on a road I know well and I'm alone. So, I set a rule: I have to spot two things on each block that I've never noticed. A tree that's budding, or the color of a house, or what animals live in that pasture, what that sign says. It doesn't matter if it's something pretty -- just has to be new.

This has an amazing effect on my mood, by the way, and, oddly, often can result in a much higher average speed than the day before, when I had my head down and was pushing more.

Three days ago, I was riding a route I've ridden 15 to 20 times in the last few months. I thought I was burned out on this route. I was going a bit slower than usual, recovering from re-activating a knee injury. I saw a sign that marked the entrance to a college campus I've heard of. I was stunned. This is where that school is? The main entrance to a whole college and I'd never seen it (granted, it's a small sign). I rode in and wheeled around the campus, checking it out. It was a reminder: It's good to ride hard. But try to put your head up now and then.

The Mojo of the Perfect Ride

So, the ride on Sunday, the day I posted that piece about anticipating a terrific spin on a gorgeous spring morning, ended up kind of crappy.

It happens, you know? You get all pscyhed, and maybe you psych yourself out a little. By the time I got out there, I was a little tired and cranky, and my knees hurt (I'm working through a recurring injury) and I worried would they ever fully heal, and blah-blah-blah-I-ruined-my-ride. That's all there is to it.

But yesterday. Oh, yesterday.

Yesterday (Monday) was one of those rides that remind me fully why I push through agonizing injury recoveries, why I rode on rollers in a dim basement all winter, why I struggle with the crazy demands of this sport-hobby. High 70s, mixed clouds and sun -- the kind where the clouds roll away every ten minutes, and you feel like you've been given a new gift of sunshine each time. I rode a new route -- always enlivening. It took me through areas I knew somewhat, but there was that nice challenge of trying to mentally map where I was as I rode. I got a little lost, but I always knew basically where I was -- another wonderful feeling.

Best of all, the scenery. Eastern Mass has some of the loveliest little back roads in all of New England -- you just have to go looking for them. You won't see them from the big routes people use to commute, no matter how wide the shoulder and comfortable the road surface. I found a long, gently rolling street with zero traffic, no stop signs, and the most beautiful land on either side. I found a small pasture with two goats grazing. (I took a cell-phone photo for my wife. She loves goats.)

I happened upon a road I knew well, and decided to change my course spontaneously -- another reliable source of fun. I took an unplanned detour and waded in the icy waters of beautiful Walden Pond, while I snacked on my wife's home-baked bread. When I got back on the bike, my legs were like new.

I rode further than I have for weeks -- the knees were strong and fluid. By some miracle, they seemed to have healed themselves overnight, and I woke up knowing I could go a little long today.

You can't anticipate or create a perfect ride. You can't plan velophoria. You can only listen when the knees whisper, "Go!"

Anticipation

There’s something about a morning when you know you’re going to go out for a special ride later on.

It’s early on this gorgeous first day of June, a Sunday. A cool, gentle breeze wafts in through the windows, sunshine bright and crisp against the leaves of the trees outside, pale blue sky full of promise for smooth roads and good encounters just a few hours from now.

I woke up with that extra bit of anticipation – “Oh! I’m going to ride somewhere nice today!” It fed me through my morning rituals, bubbling just beneath the surface: This gorgeous day will not slip away unappreciated. Just the opposite: Soon I will be wheeling down a back road, farm land or lawns stretching away in the broad sunshine, earthy perfume rising from the warming ground, muscles and lungs working hard, bearings in my freewheel offering that wonderful clicking song that goes on and on as the miles pass.

It’s a good day.