The first twenty years

Humans are funny, really.  We take for granted the most important things in our lives, the love we share with others.  Every once in a while we use arbitrary tools like holidays and anniversaries to wake ourselves up for a moment and realize for that fleeting moment what we have.

Today we rode our bikes under sunny Colorado skies in a kind of déjà vu of our lives nearly twenty years ago.  The cold wind kept snapping my attention back to the woman spinning next to me and I don’t know if I’ve felt so close to her as now.  We struggle in our lives, a climb up a twelve percent grade sometimes, but in the deepest part of ourselves we know that there will more moments of free motion, gliding with the wind at our backs.

And I smile in anticipation.

 

Happy anniversary Janet!

 

The swiss chard is dead

Had to happen really, there was no way that we’d be able to eat swiss chard year round at 6500ft in Colorado, but I was secretly hoping.  After Saturday’s excellent ride, the temps dropped and the snow began to fall on Sunday.  It’s still falling.

We are assured by neighbors and friends that this is not normal.  Yesterday I drove Karl over to his buddy’s house a mile away and learned something very important: these ultra-conservative types that run the government south of Denver walk their talk. They sincerely believe that God will take care of snow removal.  Or perhaps they believe in that adage that “God helps those drive who shovel the roads themselves.”  Regardless, this place makes Iowa snow removal look awfully good.

Today is Tuesday and I was hoping to get out with a riding buddy on Wednesday or Thursday for a long ride.  Unless a miracle happens (see above, God, if you read my blog), I’m staring at a lot of hours on the rollers this week.  This is where rollers move from being an occasional novelty, “Hey look, honey, I can ride with no hands.” to which twelve hour Tour dvd am I going to watch again.  I’ll also need to think about which days are going to be my quality days with significant workout goals beyond time spinning in aerobic zones.  That’s easy when there are sprints, hill climbs and the surging egos of our Saturday chain gang, but on rollers these things must be simulated.  Here’s what the week looks like:

Sunday: easy one hour or so spin to recover from Sat’s 3 and a half hour training ride.

Monday: off, time to do some work on that online class!

Tuesday: Two hours on the rollers, with 2x20min reps in zone 3-4, okay, zone 4.  Time to develop power and push the LT a bit.  Maybe the 1998 Tour de France…

Wed: Easy one hour spin to loosen up the legs, time to reinflate that excercise ball and do some core work?

Thurs: See Tuesday.  Should be on Stage 5 or 6 now, or maybe already into the mountains if they do those short summaries of the stages.

Fri: An hour and a half on the rollers for Spin-Ups!  Such a happy sounding workout, just do ten reps of 30 sec maximum cadence spinning in a low gear.  No bouncing in the saddle!

Sat: Is the snow melted yet?  God are you reading?  If the roads aren’t clear by now, it’s 3 hours of steady endurance pace on the rollers. 

Sun:  Note to self: Shoot yourself before you do this again.

Despite the ice

Minnehaha Road twists down the side of Pilot Knob to Manitou Avenue at a twelve percent clip.  Normally there’s a pothole just past the hairpin and some loose sand strewn above the road and in the middle of it, the rain leaving part of the hillside in the road.  Today there is  a sheet of ice and snow.  It’s only .27 miles according to the computer, but I have a foot out and search for the gravel hiding under the snow at the edge of the road for a bit of purchase.

The thermometer reads 27 when I push off for the Saturday morning ride.  I’m bundled in my winter riding clothes, some of which haven’t been worn since March.  When was the last time I used the Lobster gloves?  Can’t remember.  Why am I headed out?  Well two hours on the rollers yesterday is a motivator.  The spectre of three more hours churning away on those instruments of torture were a great motivator.  With the cold and snow forecasted for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, I’ll be back on them soon enough.

I make it to the main avenue without sliding out and take over the center of the lane, the only clear spot where the concrete comes through the snow.  Yesterday warmed up in the afternoon, right before the sun slid behind the peaks at 3pm and just long enough to melt some snow, which then quickly turned to ice.  Today is supposed to warm again, all the way up to 40 and the process will be repeated.  The lanes are increasingly clear as I descend with Fountain Creek towards the city.  By the time I pass under the Welcome to Manitou Sign, I’m home free and thinking more of exposed face then sheets of ice.

I’m early to the coffee shop and get to wait ten minutes for the hardiest souls of the training group to show up.  And they do, about fifteen of them.  Bundled against the weather, sharing stories about the ice and snow and secretly feeling good about having the gumption to get out and ride today, this day being an oasis of warmth on the weather forecast, surrounded by temperatures in the teens and foreboding forecasts of snow and weather advisories.

Just read somewhere that the air resistance at 40 degrees is 6 percent higher than at 90.  Seems like picking nits, but I hold onto this as an explanation of why I feel slow and sluggish this time of the year.  Thick air and thick clothes.  We’re all in the same boat as we head east on Platte.  It’s been exactly five months since my first ride with the group, a hot day in early July where the air was thin, very thin and I spent a great deal of the ride hiding the fact that I couldn’t breathe.  Today I pull the group most of the way for the warmup.  Riders line up behind me, probably more of an effect of my generous draft then my mind-boggling speed.  It’s OK; I’m warm now, the blood is flowing and I hit the sweet spot with my clothing: warm enough to keep out the draft, but still able to breathe enough to not leave me soaking wet in a plastic bag. 

We turn south and hit the hill.  I’m at the front and ride a smart tempo into the hill.  I’m undergeared for this part of the ride, a 53x14 is my tallest gear, and I’m spinning at about 110 rpm as a rider sprints past and gaps the front of our group.  Not sure why he’s doing this and that is the central idea in cycling, isn’t it?  Energy should only be spent for a reason.  It’s winter, we’re all bundled up, and there is no way in hell this guy is staying off the front by himself until the first sprint point in ten miles.  Besides what’s the point?  There’s no honor in winning a sprint in December.  Eric jumps out to join him.

I pull them back.  It takes about a mile and I see that I can spin my top gear and hold 32mph pretty comfortably.  The small gear keeps me honest and spinning, building base.  Later, I’m explaining to Eric, who’s been riding since July and is new to the sport, why I put the easy gears on.  It’s not complicated: it’s base-building time and the small gears will prevent me from succumbing to the temptation of mashing the big gears.  Time for that later on. 

As we reel the escapee back in, I see he’s a new guy, big like me, but young.  He’s angry with Eric for not working with him and even threatens to fight him.  I tell Eric maybe that he was speaking metaphorically, but the big guy is new to the culture of the ride.  He has no idea what he’ll feel like 45 miles from now as we hold a steady tempo back into the city.  The other guys do and they’re saving they’re matches so they can finish well. 

The sprint up Link Hill comes and goes.  The big guy aggressively takes it from Eric and the rest of us enjoy their draft and spin up the hill.  We’re into a slight wind right now, but any wind feels significant when it’s freezing outside.  Miles later, we realize the hill has erased half of our group.  I move to the back and it only five riders come by.  Where did they go?  The tiny, bossy woman frantically waving folks through to make a rotating paceline, the owner of a local bicycle business, the fellow wearing the USA team kit.  Gone and we miss them, or at least their draft.

I’m enjoying the ride and soon the flat sprint comes and I spin away in our group.  Eric and the big guy duke it out and I don’t see who wins.  That’s Ok, we’ve got thirty miles to go back home and I feel lucky and alive and good.

A brick in time

“A brick is a brick,, it is 20kms of training,, so 100kms you get 5 bricks,

Each brick is placed on the ground,(flat line) and when you have 10 bricks,

You start again on the bricks and build a wall.

So you have a wall with 5 layers of bricks on it,= 10000kms,

Target is 50 lines of bricks = 10,000

Easy peeezy”  Geoff Smith, alias Bicycle Rider France, alias Old Sog Smith, alias my very good friend and mentor on two wheels

The snow is falling, lightly but stubbornly, and the temperature went 25 degrees below freezing last night and climbed to only twelve degrees below freezing today.  No chance for a ride outside, not from our perch on top of Pilot Knob, until the sun burns off the slick roads.

Another day on the rollers.  I have my Ghent Wevelgem dvd set up on the computer; it’s the 2005 edition of the race won by, not to be a spoiler four and a half years later, by Nico Mattan, a spunky little Belgian who passess Flecha in the last 100 meters of a nearly 5 hour race to win.  Great stuff.  I bring the wheels up to a spin and hit the Start button on the Garmin.  We’re doing spinups today, a 15m warmup, then eight 30 sec low power, high cadence seated sprints with a five minute easy spin between each.

For the first two sprints, there is sludge in the legs.  The cadence gets to 120rpm before the smoothness goes away and I get bouncy and have to throttle back a tad.  The last six sprints are better, topping out at 135 before the bounciness appears.  The point is to develop leg speed and a smooth spin. 

After the third or fourth spinup, I notice how slowly the thirty seconds is passing.  I’m not dying or anything, but each breath comes and goes and the seconds slow to a slowly measured trickle.  I look up and see the break of six men slowly being brought back and then the five second beep, beep, beep, beep, beep and the monitor says Rest 5 min and everything in the world accelerates towards the next beep, beep, beep, beep, beep of the following interval.  Time surges and pulls back in direct opposition to my effort on the bike.  Criteriums are like this.  60 laps to go and then after the pulsing and contraction and expansion of efforts, four good efforts on each lap, it’s 3 laps to go and the the last laps take up most of the time as each motion, sound, click of a gear shift and touch of brake become a conscious mix in the mind, deserving notice, a thought, perhaps a reaction.  The bell lap and then time stops.  I age a year during the final four turns and then the shout, grimace, surge and dive down into the quiet of the effort and the line.

Spinups.  I travel through time and watch the snow fall as I wind down.  Nico wins the dramatic finish.  I look at my monitor, ahh, one more brick.