A mind at 28mph

Sunday morning was our club's annual Eagle Point Criterium.  The forecast's call for thunderstorms earlier in the week had softened to showers beginning at 2pm, so things were looking up for my Masters race at 10:30. 

Driving into town, the fog was lifting and the air still felt warm from the day before.  My task before the racing started was to mark the cracks, holes and large oak trees on the course.  At 7:20 the gates were open and David and Bruce were already wrestling with the finish line banner. 

There are trees growing in the road at Eagle Point park.  No one has ever run into one yet during an event, but just to be sure, I wrap each oak with orange tape at eye level and string it off to the side of the road.  The other obstacles are familiar now, the grate with slots that could grab a wheel (hasn't happened), the curb that offers some air to a rider riding too far to the right or left, the garbage can holder (a steel pipe) sans garbage can, offering to skewer an unsuspecting rider.  On some there is residual orange paint from last year.  One can does the mile-long course and, as I finish, the whine of the leaf blowers dies away as well and the course is ready.

The Masters 40+ is a small group, just twelve riders.  This is deceptive as the other eleven riders are top riders, some category one or two, some with many miles spent in southern climes training this winter.  At other races, the field is often packed with 'fodder', guys just starting out, guys curious about what a Masters race is like.  There is no fat in this field, and this is typical for most Iowa races; just the lean field of good riders.

So, our group is like the eschappe that escapes from the larger field at Super Week.  We start hard, pushing a bit towards the first corner.  No one really wants to be on the front, but no one wants to be relegated to the rear either and we're all thinking the same question: who is the Guy?  Soon, the accelerations happen and we quickly learn who the favorites are.  Each time, Tracey with his bright green bar tape accelerates off the front and then looks around to see what he did.  Chris E. covers and I follow, dragging the whole group because I'm not accelerating fast enough to get a gap.  This happens over and over for the first five laps.

Time slows down under effort.  I realize that if my life was spent doing this, I could live forever.  But it's only been five laps, eleven more to go.  The acceleration comes again and I decide that I will not drag the group along again, someone else should. 

But no one does and that is the winning move.  Six of us are left to argue over fifth place.

Quick Pic

Getting for first club ride of the season and got this picture in the mail from the folks that take photos for the Birkie. 

Snow really isn't so bad.

Blown Clean

Coming home from work, it was time to pay for the northwest tailwind of the morning.  With interest, as the wind was pushing 17mph with gusts up to 25, still from the northwest.

The sun was shining, though, and the legs felt fresh, finding a rhythm.  I watched my shadow dancing on the side of the road as I stood on a climb on Prier Rd. 

Halfway to Petersburg, my mind blown clean of the day’s anxiety, the stress streaming out in cold rivulets on my back, image snippets float in memory.  The Harley rider putting chapstick on in front of the Detour Tap in Petersburg.  He smiles and signals to the passenger seat on his ‘bike’.  I smile and point down the road.

Into the wind.

An Amish afternoon

The day is warmer than expected and for the first time this season I actually feel fast on my bicycle.  Perhaps it’s the shedding of the layers of clothes (I am the Michelin Man sans tires); perhaps all of the training I’m doing is having an effect; or, maybe, warm air is less dense than the frigid 33 degrees and rain I’ve been dealing during this purgatory of a month.  March is purgatory.  I’ve survived the cold brutality of life in an Iowa winter, only to be forced to pay for my sins with cold and rain during an Iowa spring.

Today is a respite.  The sun is up, the wind is under twenty miles an hour, and there are tinges of green in the silver and brown landscape.

My plan is simple; do a hilly loop to Littleport and come back through Garber and Colesburg.  Hills and a bit of distance.  From my house, Highway 3 dips into a canyon for a couple of miles.  This is an old road, built over a creek.  On each side the road does little to scrub the climb’s pitch.  Climbing out is a great warmup, but the descent with cold legs just makes everything a bit colder.  I’m sure I creak and grown like an old floorboard as my speed drops into the low thirties and I pick up the pedalling again on the flat past the park and stand as the pitch arrives.  Walls of limestone on the right, the curving brown of Elk Creek on the left and in a mile the rollers heading west to Edgewood.

Wind is out of the southwest, a bit stiff at 14 or so, but the sun makes up for it.  After Edgewood, it’s a left on Littleport Rd., named after the town cleverly built between the bluffs on the Turkey River.  In 1998 the town was under 23 feet of water.  A friend and I canoed it a few days after the crest.  One clear memory of a dead cow in a tree high above the river. 

The road climbs coyly in a series of false flats, making it’s way to the ridges before the river.  The wind is out of the southwest and I feel a slight push on the slower uphills.  Fields of corn stubble stretch out and roll to the horizons all around me and in some moments I feel my pinpoint of perspective losing itself in the landscape.  A long downhill to the river and town, with a step in between where pedalling is needed again.  I remember the joints on either side of the bridge, the jolting sense memory of my first ride here seven or eight years ago (did I really live here for five years without riding this road?).  And then the river is past, the stinking wrecks of houses underwater ten years ago but still lingering, past, the old church moved high up the bluff, past (but much more slowly; I’m in my lowest gear, standing now) and in too short a time I’m at the turn to Garber.

There isn’t much to recommend the road to Garber here, outside of the slight tailwind.  It’s flat and new, cheaply built homes litter the sides of the road.  Vinyl over plywood, yards filled with recreational toys made of cheap vinyl and plastic.  One place takes the cake.  Behind a modern two story home that would look swell in a suburb of Milwaukee, sits a man in a canoe in a farm pond.  Docked to his left, about 20 feet away, is a pontoon boat.  Ah, the dream.

Elkport also sits in a valley squashed between the bluffs of the Turkey.  It’s twin, Garber, lies to the east a bit and the river runs down the middle.  A road closed sign tells me that I might soon have to add a couple of serious climbs to my ride plan.  Sure enough, the bridge over the Turkey, my path to Colesburg, is completely gone.  In it’s place a pile of wood and concrete and two imposing cranes.  Something is sure going to happen here, but not today, and I turn towards a beautiful hilly climb through Amish country.

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Happy St Patrick's Day

Gaelic Gallop to Petersburg, Saturday, March 14th, 2009

Wild rivers, giant strawberries and other wonders of northern Iowa

Thirty five miles an hour on a downhill descent, past the quarry before Osterdock, the cold knocks against my ears like bags of marbles.  I almost look forward to climbing past the Turkey river and warming up again.  Sun glints off lingering ice and chunks of the concrete Osterdock bridge are missing.

Fatigue, stress, the worries of several weeks of life's turmoil since the Birkie, I seek to lose these in the rhythm of climbing.  North to Garber road, west to Elkader, south to Strawberry Point and east home.  Six thousand five hundred and forty five feet of climbing (so says my Garmin) and four hours of measured pain and freedom inducing endorphins.  The wind is out of the south, southwest and I stick my nose into it above the climb.  No speed records today, just a lot of time in zones 2 and 3, well below my lactate threshold.  Ploughman's Barn appears on my left, closed for the season, the collection of classic pioneer and early century buildings  sit together in a kind of historical ghetto.  Then the descent into Garber.

'Where Rivers Run Wild!'  declares the sign for Garber.  I can almost see the water stains on the sign from the last flood in '98 that nearly washed the town away.  Should they brag they have problems with flooding?  Another long climb and I notice the wisdom of the century old house perched above the new construction in the flood plain below.

The wind picks up on the ridge and my speed slows.  No matter, what's important are the watts, power, I'm producing

.  With a tailwind I'd be sailing along at 25 right now, instead I'm satisfied with 13.  Right turn for Elkader and a beautiful descent into the wind.  The land stretches out in waving series of hills and valleys.  The Volga meets the Turkey here and, like the interlocking waves of several stones dropped into the pond, the hills from the Mississippi intersect with the rippling ridges of the other two rivers. 

Full headwind going southwest towards Strawberry Point on Highway 13.  Twelve miles.  The speed drops to 12, but a curious thing happens; I'm passed by a

Caterpillar backhoe, a moving wall of steel 12 feet high.  Perfect, I slot in behind and cozy up in the warmth

of the engine.  The wall maintains a nice 17.5 up the climbs and screams along at 27 on the downhills.  Heaven until six miles later and he turns off.  Is he upset with me for following, interested or indifferent?  One more climb into the wind that reminds me of the small col north of Perpignan, radio tower and all.

Strawberry Point is a collection of antique homes, a drugstore that still has a real, working soda fountain and the world's largest strawberry.

The road flattens and I head east through Edgewood, tailwind in hand, maintaining a nice 22.  Home is reached with 66 miles on the odometer and I'm feeling the body hum.

Our Birkie Week

Tuesday: Bags are packed with ski clothes, skis, boots, poles are located and loaded, the skis only after another look at weather.com and pondering of the weather forecast. 9 degrees and cloudy at 9am Saturday. Both cars are packed and I wonder if we'll need a trailer next year.

Wednesday: After my last class with the French students, I glance again at the weather (0 degrees and cloudy) and head to Portage to pick up mom, our designated helper and kid-sitter during our races.

Wednesday night I enjoy a late dinner of fries and a grilled chicken sandwich with mom at the Opera House Restaurant in New Lisbon. It's starting to snow as we head north on I94, not heavy, but I'm starting to think the trails are going to be a bit slow tomorrow.

It's 11:30 and pitch black at our rental cabin outside of Minong. Janet and the kids were supposed to be here already; our last phone call had her about 40 miles north when we were clearing Eau Claire. There's just time enough to worriedly try her cell phone, no answer, when the headllights illuminate the trees and the red Scion rolls up. 'Hi Dad!' Relief. We made it up in one piece for another year.

Thursday: The Barnebirkie is at 12:30! Unfortunately the wind has picked up and the wind chills are down in the negative range. At the church in Hayward, we learn that the 5k race has been shortened to three blocks. Groans from the kids. Karl and Johann go skiing off onto the lake, oblivious to the wind. Again the automatic reflex of fatherly pride as Johann laughs off our admonition to turn around and come back and Karl is already gliding off.

As each year passes it becomes more clear that the boys are becoming more independent. Normally, turning them loose on a ski trail would be very safe, no real chance to lose them. Throw in 1300 other kids, though, and the three adults were scrambling to figure out how to keep track.

Mom and I are sent to the finish line ahead of the first wave containing Karl and Johann. We run, dodge parents with cameras and make our way up Main St.

The kids are led by the Hayward ski team carrying flags from the nations in the Worldloppet circuit. And then the mad rush of youngsters. Karl has managed to line up near the front and finishes in the same spot three weeks later. 'Is that it?' Well, yes, but we'll go over to Fish Hatchery to ski for an hour. Johann comes up a few minutes later, skiing classic technique, a huge smile and taking in the milieu of the finishing area. Each gets a medal hung on his neck and we shepherd them over to the Backwoods coffee shop for hot chocolate and espresso.

I check the weather forecast: 0 deg and partly cloudy. Do I commit to the cold wax yet?

Thursday night is Karl's birthday.  Not exactly, but for seven of the last eight years we've celebrated with friends and family the birth of our youngest on the night of the Barnebirkie.  Normally our birthdays are about the cake and grandma didn't disappoint with a classic chocolate cake.  This year also had a big surprise: a new racing bike to replace the 24" Giant TCR Junior we purchased in France two years ago.  It is amazing how fast these guys grow.  We'll be stopping by Free Flight to size up a red Trek 2.1 WSD (still trying to figure out another acronym that will be 10yr old boy friendly).

Friday: Tomorrow's the big day and the butterflies are starting to appear. First, though, is the Junior Birkie, which will be a new experience for Karl. It's limited to 10 to 13 year olds and promises to be a real spring at just 3.5k. We leave early, just the two of us, and find the registration tent behind the Telemark Lodge.

Karl is having second thoughts, not sure that this will be too fun. I don't want to force him to race, but I encourage him to go through the motions and share some of my anxieties before races I've been in. He's surprised. Dad has anxieties?

We find ourselves sitting in the hallway next to a family of skiers getting ready for the Junior race. Dad is the wax tech and we share a laugh; I only had two kids and wife to wax for and he had seven. He noticed Karl was upset and came over to make him feel better. Later, 'Ok, dad, I'm going to race.'

The course winds on a 1.7k loop into the woods on a rolling course before returning and making a sharp climb to the finish line. Karl sets up in the holding pen and creeps into the second row for the start. The start and a mad rush and they're in the woods; my son off on his own with a hundred other boys.

Anxious parents wait on the other side of the loop, snapping pictures as the leaders from Spooner shoot over the crest. Five seconds. Fifteen seconds. Thirty seconds and then the rest of the group start coming through. After thirty or so come through, most not as good as Karl, he pops over, sees me and declares he's quitting. Something's happened in that mysterious part of the course outside of my parental sight.

'You have to quit at the finish area.' I hope he'll recover and reconsider, but I find him behind the start area, staring at the snow. Flashback to my childhood failures, the fear of condemnation by my father who had such high hopes for my basketball career, unspoken but present. I put my arm around him and say nothing.

Later I learn that he was forced into the woods on a turn by another skier and this through him way off. 'Next year, I need to start at the front.' Again that chronic fatherly pride.

Later in the lodge, after I pick up the bib packet, and departure for the cabin is approaching, one last stop at the Fast Wax booth for the latest recommendation. 15 deg and cloudy. 'We're still saying to wax cold, the snow is dry and the clouds will keep the moisture down. White over Teal. No Flouro.'