Enough, Already.

Five degrees below zero when I awoke this a.m. Icicles slicing up the view from every window. Two layers of sweats while eating breakfast and waiting for the house to warm.

Last winter was filled with days in the 30s and 40s, and I rode outside once or twice a week, sometimes more. This month, with the exception of this past Friday, we've had about three-plus weeks of single-digits through the twenties. I rode outside yesterday out of desperation, because I'm tired of the rollers. It wasn't terrible, but it sure wasn't fun -- 24° and falling at rollout, winds gusting up to 18 mph. Being barely on the mend after a 10-day chest cold, I did 50 minutes and called it a day. Came back home to nurse Velophoriana, who is hosting a truly bad cold right now; makes mine look like a walk in the park.

I believe fiercely in keeping a positive attitude. I'm a mental health counselor for children and youth, and it's very important to walk the talk. Besides, it just makes life better. But there are weeks, even months when it's hard.

January's been pretty nasty at work. All my colleagues and I agree that all our clients/students colluded to melt down this month. Which led to some pretty long days and nights. When people fall apart who have long-standing mental health challenges to begin with, it leads to stuff no one should have to witness, much less go through first-hand. I'm pretty sure I'd be stronger with it all if I were able to ride outside with some degree of comfort and regularity. I haven't slept well since December, when I still had regular weekly road rides, and insomnia doesn't help when dealing with the rest of the puzzle pieces.

I think that 2.5 hour jaunt in the 14° temps two weeks ago might have set me up for this cold (along with work crises and all the other stuff). Gotta watch that metabolism; I turn 45 in five weeks or so. The old car will still roll along pretty well once I warm it up and unwind it... but the OEM battery sure don't hold the charge like it used to.

Ah, winter! Insomnia. Mental illness. Indoor riding. Darkness. Frigid chill. Colds. Intimations of mortality.

How many weeks until April?

[Ed. note: With our next post, we banish Velomisery, and return you to our regularly scheduled upbeat content.]

Torture Room Less Torturous

This...

...leads to this.

Above, you see version 2.0 of MIMIC: The Meteorologically Immune Musculocardiorespiratory Improvement Center.

Okay, okay, it's our study. But the good news this year is that, having moved our butts all the way out to Western Mass, we're currently living in an apartment with no basement. The reason that's good news is that it means I don't have to ride the rollers in the basement. The missus gave me permission to ride upstairs, in the large, airy room that also holds our desks and a couple clothes closets.

I already spend way too much time in this room, because it's where I keep my stretching and physical therapy tools -- a big plastic bin filled with foam rollers (ouch!), yoga mat, tennis balls of all sizes (used for rolling, like the foam rollers -- again, ouch!), playground balls for doing wall slides, the shorter version of The Stick, and so on and so forth. Because of my IT band issues, I already stretch, foam-roll or otherwise torture myself in there at least twice a day. Now that Old Man Winter's arrived, I also spend some number of hours in there each week goin' round and round on the roller-thingies. No matter how miserable I get doing mile after mile (and -- as the saying goes -- not getting any closer to the wall), I try to remind myself how much better my current roller set-up is than last year.

• I have two big windows. (I had one tiny one, far away, last year.)
• I have a TV with a VCR built-in. (I only had my iPod last year.) (And I'm now interested in trading with anyone who has VHS tapes of cycling races, endurance sport movies, etc. Just post a comment.)
• I have a comfortable, relatively bright, attractive room. (The basement was dark and dank, nothing but old cement everywhere.)
• I don't have to clonk down two flights of stairs in my cleats and kit to start riding (and then realize I forgot something and clonk back up, and back down -- ad infinitum. On one of those trips, my cycling shoes were guaranteed to slip on the carpeted stairs and I'd go flying). I just walk in the room and hop on.
• And get this: The bathroom is right across the hall. Woohoo for the small luxuries!

Let us now praise indoor riding! (OK, let us at least be less grumpy about it.)

Rollers and Souplesse

My friend Luke posted some very interesting comments to my recent post about rollers. He writes:

I've heard one can get a better workout on a trainer by doing intervals w/varying degrees of resistance. But I like my rollers, if for nothing more then to say that I can ride them. And that must count for something.

Indeed. It’s amusing to hear riders from beginner to “beyond category” smoothly slip references to their rollers into their forum posts and conversations. I bought rollers instead of a trainer last fall for two simple reasons: 1) My fitter told me they would make my legs learn better form (when used with a modicum of consciousness); and 2) I couldn’t afford a good fluid trainer, and wasn’t interested in the magnetic or wind trainers. (Rollers cost less than trainers.)

Yet often, when I mention them, I get more credit for being old-school and authentically souplesse-oriented, than I ever expected. I thought they were the poor man’s trainer, but no, my friend. No. It seems that, in the road cycling ethos, one gets credit for building smoothness and economy into one’s form, especially if it involves 100-year-old technology. (Rollers haven’t changed much since the turn of the 20th century.) This is one of the reasons I love being a roadie: That whole old-world, European belief that beauty comes first, and from it flows all other important things. Things like speed, for instance.

I do think the rollers have made me a better rider than I would have been had I just hammered on a trainer last winter. “Better” in both tangible and esthetic ways: My pedal stroke is smoother, rounder, and more efficient. It uses more of the muscles in my core. But I am also more still on the bike. I have a long way to go in this department, but I love what little I have learned so far.

This stillness is the very first thing you notice about a dangerous rider. Even from a distance, you can tell if a cyclist has it. If so, I know there is power under the hood that you had best respect. It’s a deceptively lazy-looking grace. Everywhere above the waist, you’ll find a kind of lank ease that you can’t quite put your finger on. The lines are smooth. Arms curve slightly on the way to the bars. Spine curves upward and gently forward. The shoulders are relaxed and back. The face is calm. There is no rocking side to side, no strain showing anywhere. Below the waist, the legs turn simply and powerfully, neither flailing nor slowly grinding.

If you’re not looking closely, you’d never know there was effort involved. Don’t be fooled; nothing is wasted. If you dialed it up to pass him from behind, he would toast you in about 300 yards, and, curse him, he would still look like a ballet dancer relaxing on a divan.

More about rollers anon. I’ve got lots of time right now to think about them. If you go ahead and post some comments listing your favorite ways to keep roller riding interesting, I’ll try to incorporate it all. Let's all work together to make base period a little more communal and fun, eh?

Rollerized

Yeah, it's that time of year again:



I don't always look that dazed on the rollers; I think that picture was probably taken in deep February ('08), which would mean two months of mostly indoor riding, hearing the same voices talk about the same topics on the same podcasts over and over and...

I'm lucky this year; our new house has no basement to ride in, so my wonderful wife allows me to ride in our study, where I can look out the window. And I can ride outside down to about freezing (after that, my knees and IT band rebel, no matter what clothing solutions I try), so I've managed to be on the road for at least one ride every week so far this fall, and sometimes more.

Even so, it's only mid-December, and I'm already turned off to the rollers; that can't mean good things for my training hours during base period.

I'd love to hear from someone out there who truly loves riding indoors. That would be a different perspective, eh? How many other bike blogs out there have posts right now that are singing the same plaintive song as mine?

Most of 'em. Most of 'em.