Spring, Winter, Spring…

After three 70 degree days of sun and gentle breezes, I’ve got tan lines on my arms and legs.  Yesterday’s 85 mile ride out to Hannover left me feeling like spring had finally arrived.  Today the snow is falling; it’s thirty and a winter storm warning has caused me to cancel my visit to the vomitron in Denver.  I feel bad about that.  I was scheduled to take a VO2-max test as part of the bone density study I’m participating in.  During my last visit in January, I found out what my fat percentage was (it’s not good).  I still hold out hope that with the machine snipping off my scalp and the bottoms of my feet (it was inexplicably made for people shorter than me), that somehow my fat percentage is lower.

I doubt the vomitron would have any wiggle room in determining my aerobic capacity.  I thought about this yesterday in the middle of my ride, contemplating the horizon line of sage brush and browned grass, would finding out ‘my number’ actually help me or hurt me?  Would it be better to labor under the illusion of superior aerobic capacity, than find out that I have all of the innate endurance talent of a chain-smoking couch potato? 

My tribe, your tribe

The road down the canyon on Manitou Ave is a gradual downhill, following Fountain Creek on its voyage from trout stream in Manitou Springs to drainage ditch in Colorado Springs.  The air is crisp and the sun is out and I’ve been promised via several weather sites that today will be warm and sunny.  Three miles down the road, I see two cyclists slowly coming back to me; the catch is just before highway 24’s on-ramp at the gas station’s green dinosaur.

‘Morning!’ to the first one, a man dressed in fluorescent yellow ‘please don’t hit me’ attire.  Does he look at me?  I’m not sure though I’m just inches away when I greet him.  No answer.  I move on.

‘Nice morning, eh?’  This time to what must be his significant other, identically attired in fluorescent yellow.  Her expression isn’t exactly vacant, but a slight grimace is poking through.  Again, no answer, not even eye contact.

I’m not sure why this bothers me, but by the time Old Colorado City’s shops show up, I’m thinking that it’s related to something I shared with my students the other night.  Humans, I said, have two distinct needs.  First they want to belong to a group.  Second, once they belong to a group, they want to exclude others from it.  I’m not sure these two fluorescent cyclists were proof of that second maxim, but I’ve noticed something over and over; folks dressed in cycling kit obviously connected with some team will greet and wave, almost without exception, and cyclists dressed in generic kit with no sponsor names or logos, often will not.  Being part of the former group, I know the work that has gone into being part of a team and racing in general.  One of my favorite quotes from the pack, heard years ago, was that in racing ‘you have to be really fit just to suck.’  So true.  When I see someone out training, we both are sharing a bond of training, pain, dedication, sacrifice that is  a large common ground for us.  Someone dressed in Performance gear out for the first time since the last warm day of fall, not so much.

After I get to the ride start, the group of assembled riders provide another example of this two-wheeled, instinctual tribalism.  The first thing to notice on this warm day even before the team jersey, does the rider have hairy legs?  On the first part of the ride, heading east on Boulder, a rider with hairy legs fails to clip in, swerves into the traffic lane and nearly gets hit by a car.  Everyone notices and for the rest of the ride he is a marked man, an interloper in the tribe.  In the paceline, everyone moves to be in front of him or at least three wheels back. 

Later, when we’re chasing to get back on after Link Hill (yes, I was dropped again this week—long story), I was working with five riders, including Mr. Hairy, and noticed that when he would pull left in the paceline, he would continue accelerating, gapping the rider behind and leaving him in the wind.  Very rude.  Of course, he didn’t know any better and I tried to explain to him what he was doing.  ‘Watch me, pull through and then downshift and let the rider behind get your draft.’  Such a simple idea, to think of the other rider in the wind.  Might even seem altruistic, except everyone needs to be strong to catch the group.  But knowing how to act in the group is also a sign of belonging to the tribe, knowing its rules.

I catch and get dropped a couple of times today.  There is still some funkiness left in the legs from the virus two weeks ago and they feel stiff and congested.  By mile 60, heading up the canyon on Manitou Avenue, I have to stop; I feel like I’m bonking.  What is it?  The food is the same.  Am I overdressed?  Did I work too hard taking pulls?  Did I do too much during the week?  Am I still sick?  I make the final climb up to our perch on Pilot Knob feeling completely knackered and lie flat on the floor for a few minutes. 

It was a beautiful day for a ride.

Dancing with bugs

I was riding the hairy edge of longer hours in the saddle and colder temps outside when a cold virus knocked me off my feet.  Only a few days of no riding, but it’s amazing how much a virus takes out of one’s ambition to write on their blog…

The snow fell and melted, fell and melted again and Saturday’s training ride came around with a sunny and 45 degree forecast; it was time to push it a bit again.  A large group turned out, the sun warmed the front of the Starbucks and folks chatted away, catching up, some after a winter-long absence from the ride.  It all made me feel less bad about cutting from fourteen hours down to five and then then ten in the two weeks before.  A group of five or six Garmin-kitted juniors were there, the largest single team, along with another junior from the Frontrangers, a local junior team that Karl wants to join next year. 

We rolled away, fifty strong and I settled into the paceline wondering how everything would fall into place today.  I wasn’t feeling bad, just a bit of phlegm (isn’t that a cool word to type?).  We turned on Boulder and the group split as about ten guys nearly ran the light.  We slowly brought them back before leaving Platte, but already the pace was spitting people out the back.  At one light, a red-faced fellow in matching jersey sputtered about how no one else seemed to breathing hard. 

‘We’re just hiding it.’ I laughed, but never saw him again.

South onto Marksheffel and the pace slows into the south wind.  ‘This is the slowest we’ve ever climbed this hill’ and Cody isn’t kidding.  Soon the pace increases and a double paceline forms.  I’m feeling Ok enough to move into it and I take a longer pull.  Not bad, but just as I pull off, a couple of juniors blast out from behind, attacking. 

‘What the fuck?’  Tired, I drift back twenty wheels and take it easy.  Five juniors tried to hit it hard and then died in the wind.  Not good form, attacking an old bloke like me.  Later, I think that maybe they downplayed the strength of the wind while coasting in my draft, but it was still bad form to attack.  Now, though, they are stuck on the front; not one of the older guys is moving to the front for them.  They’re too dumb to figure out why.

The pace goes up and down, led by the antics for the teenagers on the front.  When it’s time to climb Link Hill, I don’t have the gumption to make a big effort and slowly let the group pass.  It just doesn’t feel right and I listen to the body and back off.  For the next five miles or so, I beat a tempo and cruise about 20mph into the wind, catch another guy and chat until the group doubles back after the second sprint.  I’m pleased that I’m recovering, bummed at the loss of form to the virus, but eager to be on the upside with races starting in a month.