Playing in the garden

His eyes were wide, round circles and his mouth was frozen open, some grass still hanging between his teeth.  A frozen instant we were a few feet from each other, face to face and my eyes were likely as wide as his with the thought of running into a twelve point buck at 40 miles an hour. 

I live a few miles from this moment, and it astounds me every time it happens.

Five times around the Garden of the Gods.  Each loop the same glorious backdrop of high desert and red rocks, Pike’s Peak denting the horizon, each loop the foreground changing from a mule deer in velvet to something else. 

A fellow with cerebral palsy, his body twisted like a clenched fist, rolls along the bike lane, a red umbrella shading his chair and his wife/girlfriend/sister smiling a good morning in unison with him as I roll by the first time, a second time a third time.  They cover the two and half mile loop and we intersect along the way, me feeling a bit guilty as I roll past the Kissing Camel overlook. 

Later, three people on Segways, in the bike lane on the long climb.  What is the point of this?  They dramatically wave me out of the bike lane; we’re all going about 8 miles an hour.  I dramatically ask the leader if he qualifies as a bike or pedestrian. This question seems to surprise him. 

Third time up the climb and I pass some runners.  The woman starts to veer off the path onto the grass to give me room.  ‘No problem, we’re all going really slow.’  This strikes her as really funny. 

Last time up and I move in between a dotted line of older fellows on road bikes.  One is skinny and wearing a Front Rangers jersey from Denver.  He’s about a quarter mile up the climb and is my rabbit.  I catch him before we crest and we chat.  He must be a tad winded as he says ‘So long, have a good ride.’ before I indicate that I’m moving on. 

Each time up the descent, I question my need to do it again.  After the run down to the turn, I forget this, and the all of the other unpleasantness and think, ‘Hey, let’s do that again.’  The fifth time this doesn’t occur to me and I turn up Ridge road, not the last climb before home. 

It seems easier now.

Testing, 1, 2, 3

I have a recurring nightmare.  I’m twenty years old, taking an undergraduate linguistics class at the University of Wisconsin.  In my then-major, German literature, it was an elective.  The prof was basically reading from the book each class and I slowly stopped going.  First it was one day, then I missed two classes in a row.  Then I didn’t attend for a week and a half.  When I finally showed up, she was handing out the mid-term exam and there was a big smile when she saw me darken the doorway to her room.  My dream always ends there, anxiety, panic, an intense desire to run away; it never goes to the next part, where we get our tests back and I have an A-.

Last Saturday was the Colorado State time trial championships in the beautiful countryside north east of the Denver International Airport.  In Britain, a time trial is known as a test, and it is.  Basically, you go as fast as you can for the specified distance.  On Saturday, it was 38 kilometers.  My first season racing in Colorado has also been a test.  In many ways I feel like I’m starting at the bottom again. 

The land around the airport is a bleak prairie landscape.  I can remember the four or five trees I passed fairly clearly today, dark shapes two miles away.  An old parking lot was the hub of the race activity, burned out shells of an RV and many cars lined the western side and tall, steel garbage bins lined the periphery.  We were an oddly nomadic clan of lycra-clad people, walking between a smattering of brightly colored pop-top tents with very expensive, strange looking bicycles. 

People were friendly in that excited way right before something big happens.  Chatty and focused at the same time.  I parked on the edge of the lot, within site of the RV, next to a fellow from the Colobikelaw.com team I recognized from Arkansas.  Couldn’t remember his name, but I was too embarrassed to ask directly, hoping he would offer when he asked my name.  Didn’t. So he will be known as Friendly 55+ guy with the mustache. 

I warmed up on the rollers and then made my way through the rocks at the entrance and rolled back and forth on the dead-end paved road going towards the airport.  Twenty others had the same idea.  Fifteen minutes until my start at 11:24.  Then ten minutes.

Five minutes.  Time for another roll around. 

‘Chris Sauer?’  a loud voice shouts as I roll up towards the start line.  ‘Twenty seconds.’  No time to panic, have second thoughts, worry about what it was I was forgetting.  Clip in and go.

And I’m off and it’s beautiful.  A  wind is blowing right up my butt as I pump out the ten seconds of creatine in a smooth sprint to get up to speed.  I glance down to see the speed… ‘BAM’ That’s the sound of a carbon wheel hitting a pothole.  Holy crap, my right extension is now a few inches lower than my left one. 

I turn left on 120th and head directly west.  The wind is moderate out of the southeast, so this is my tailwind.  I hold my speed at 28, effort is near threshold, but I want to hold back a bit.  The road trends down and I imagine the reverse when I do a u-turn in five miles.  There is paint on the road.  Red is easy, two red lines mean ‘if you hit me, you will be walking’.  But then there are green lines as well.  Green is good?  or bad?  I hit another hole in the road and learn they’re good, the hard way.  Aim for green avoid red.  But then there are yellow lines.  Do I avoid them?  Ride over them?  Or do these mean ‘good luck, you’re on your own?’  I learn later from the fellow from Aspen that we learned about the lines when we were being held up at the start.  I guess twenty seconds wasn’t enough.

I’m passed by someone after the turn-around, and this is disappointing.  I was hoping to hold out longer than 5 miles before being passed.  Soon I’m passed again and again.  Usually as I struggle to maintain speed on a climb.  I feel so fat.  If I lose twenty pounds…  if I lose ten… 

In French, contra le montre, against time.  Against the psyche as well.  There’s so much to think about.  Am I pushing enough?  I glance down and see my heart rate has dropped five beats below my threshold; I push harder.  The rate moves up to 160 and I feel better.

I finish last.  Not in the race, but in my group.  This is disappointing on its face.  My time is twenty seconds over an hour, a respectable time for a big guy I suppose, but I expect more.  There is no hiding in the tt, no way to mask the weakness as it’s exposed.  This is good, but not pleasant.  In me, it creates a resolve to do better.  Unlike the A- on the exam twenty five years ago, there isn’t an amazing outcome.  Everything seems ordinary.

When sixth isn't bad

"Number 104, come over here.  No, you're not in trouble."
I'd only been number 104 for a short time, so it took a second to react.  I was taking a spin around the Angelos de Pueblo criterium course before the men's 35+/45+ race started.  My cat 3 race was still an hour away.

"Your race has been cancelled.  Only three riders signed up."
"Shit."
"You can ride in the 45+ race or get a refund.  How old are you?"  As if age is why I signed up for the cat three's.
"There's only fifteen minutes to warm up."  Pause.  "I might as well race since I drove all the way down here."
On the loudspeaker, "Colorado Bike Law says he might as well race..."

I'm off for my fifteen minutes to warmup.  I need up to an hour for a hard effort.  In fifteen minutes I wouldn't work up a sweat.  My routine is to ride for twenty minutes and then begin three 30 second efforts at high cadence.  It loosens things up and gives my body an idea of what's going to happen to it shortly.  I squeeze in the thirty second efforts for form's sake; part of the warmup is the comforting routine, better stick to that.

There are fourteen riders at the line, one 35+ fellow, three of us cat 3's and ten 45+ riders.  One rider, is the current national record holder for the hour, Norm.  My plan is to hide until I feel warmed up.  Then my plan is stay in the group and hide some more.  This is my first real crit of the year.

The ref sends us off with a relaxed 'go' and I clip in and move to my favorite spot at fifth wheel.  Not in the wind, not too far back so that I have to brake in corners and a spot where I can manage the wheels in front of me.  If I get to the third wheel, there's no way to avoid taking a pull without disrupting the flow. At number five, I can pull into the draft of the fellow moving off the front and keep out of the wind.  The wind is blowing down the back straight, directly in our faces.  This keeps things together until Norm decides to make a break about ten minutes into the race.  I feel bad because I probably could go to, but my legs aren't ready yet and I stay in place.  Norm is joined by another rider from Great Divide and they stay 15-20 seconds in front of us for the rest of the race.

The racing is fairly easy.  Fast but easy.  Riding with experienced guys is nice; there's no braking in the corners and everyone manages their lines pretty well.  The course is layed out in an 'L' shape with a few extra turns before coming out onto the finishing straight with 200m to go.  The finish is just over a small rise and it feels good to spin the lower corner gear right over the top.  In the last corner, the road is split by a small island with traffic light.  In the turn is a crease in the road just past the manhole cover, the only real defect in the course.

Well, that and the old guy with single speed bike drifting across our vision with about ten laps to go.  He's going slow.  I'm sure the marshal sees him.  He's in the middle of the road.  Holy crap he's coming straight across, ignoring the pack of riders bearing down on him.  We swear, we slide, we swear again as we turn the now heavy cranks up the hill.  Norm and co. are now safely away.

Four laps to go and a fellow in green shoots by as the group slows into the wind.  A good tactic, he already has 100m before anyone can react.  He gets third.  Our group settles in for the bell lap.  Mark has been taking all of the pack primes and everyone is satisfied to ride his wheel.  We wind up through the L and I'm holding onto the bars and leaning each arc, inches from the fellow in front of me from the Velonews team.  He's big enough to give me a draft.  The last two turns come and we come past the island, sprinting.  I pass fading riders over the small rise and come up to Mark's back wheel as we cross the line.  Sixth. 

I'm happy.

Cherry Creek Wednesdays

A nice counterbalance to my last two weeks has been a trip north with Karl to do the Wednesday night Cherry Creek Time Trial series, ten miles of fun at Cherry Creek State Park.  About 500 other riders join us as we shove off at 20 second intervals.  Karl heads out at 5:05 and I follow at 5:15:20.  The spacing allows me to keep an eye, albeit one blurred with sweat and whizzing by at 30mph, on him.  He keeps close track of where I cross and pass him on the course each week.

The first week, we crossed paths just before the first turn-around at the west end of the park (week 2-about 200 yds earlier), then I passed him in the final turn-around before the gutbuster climb to the finish (week 2-just at the start of the climb) and then we meet past the finish line when he finishes a couple of minutes after me (week 2, about a minute later).

The first week, our trip was slowed by an overturned tanker blocking I25.  With the detour around, we arrived a few minutes before Karl’s start, grabbed and pinned his number and went to search for the start tent.  It was cold and there was no warm-up for either of us.  My ride was essentially pedaling squares, bouncing around in the saddle and

trying to be smooth.  Karl took a wrong turn and went off course and then turned around and came back. 

He finished with a huge smile on his face.

We both finished last in our groups.  The second week, Karl shaved two minutes off his time to finish fourth and I took off a minute to not finish last. 

New bars for last week’s race made the position a bit more comfortable, up about 10cm and a wider placement of the elbows.

Adding regular, early tt’s to the training is taking the place of a workout with longer cruise intervals and seems to be helping me develop my power at threshold.  Racing with my son on a regular basis has become something much more valuable.

In a Haystack

Thick drool hung from my chin to the aero bar of my bike.  Sand and dirt clotted my teeth and I could just see the outline of Sean’s tire a few inches in front of my own.  I couldn’t see much else; the third turn, and a short run to the finish line were coming up, but I really had no idea of where and how far. 

Gap! 

We had crested a small hill, Sean pushing the pace, alternating with Doug up the rise.  I couldn’t see how fast we were going, rivulets of water and dirt coated the computer and my visor, but it hurt.  A small cramp was emerging from deep inside my right thigh, and I felt Doug’s hand pushing on my butt.  I closed to Sean’s wheel again and we descended, speed picking up and blessed rest settled into both legs as I coasted past Sean to the front.  I had about sixty pounds on both of these guys and the brief respite on the downhills evened things out a bit.  They needed a brief break too.

Sixteen minutes earlier we were a five man team, astraddle five wet, but shiny bikes at the start line of the Haystack team time trial.  Only 12.1 miles to the finish line on a slightly downhill course due to the road closure on the final leg.  It was cool, about fifty and the rain was picking up a bit and we were off.  I slotted in behind Doug, our smallest most aerodynamic rider, and made an immediate note to skip a pull and get behind Colin or Sean at the first opportunity.  The road rose a bit and then a nice descent and I was on the front feeling smooth and fast.  The speed was just at forty as Colin struggled to come around, I eased and moved to the right, into the side wind and drifted to the rear.  We hit a small climb and Colin came back, too fast, and now we were four. 

I found comfort behind Brian, with his more upright position on the bike and the miles began to tick past, a mixture of road spray, dirt and wind.  I’d come through with a pull for thirty seconds or so, see the groups in front of us, coming back to us after their forty and eighty second head starts, and pull a tad harder.  A few miles in, we hit a sharp climb with Sean pulling on the front and the legs burned.  I pulled through quickly and moved over for Doug and then realized Brian was gone.  I yelled gap, but we were now down to the minimum of three; our team time would be determined by the third rider to finish.  This was good; now when I yelled gap, they had to wait.

Of course, the terrible thing was that Doug and Sean offered not much in the way of draft and I could feel each pull on the front sap a bit more of the strength.  We were pushing hard to close on the riders in front of us.  The second turn came and I could no longer think clearly.  The wind was straight on, but my wheel weaved back and forth as I fought the bike and the bile coming up from my stomach.  I skipped a pull, then two, trying to recover.  I would, if I could get just a bit of rest.

Gap!  We crested the hill, Doug was pushing my ass with his hand.  This helped not in pushing me up the road, something akin to lifting yourself off the ground, but it made me angry and I found a pinch of energy to match Sean’s speed for the last 500 meters and cross the line.  Spent.  We averaged exactly 30mph for the race.

We were second, thirty seconds behind the winning team, yet ten seconds ahead of our ‘A’ team.  Brian rolled through the finish, battling cramps, and Colin came through a tad later, wondering why he tried to pull through on my first downhill pull.  These are the things we learn from doing a team time trial. 

From Doug’s report:

We were rolling like a freight train on fire, and 2 of our boys took shrapnel in their legs.  We're drilling with all we have, and Chris explodes.  Seriously explodes.  But somehow, someway, he manages to dig deeper than any man I have ever seen into one of those places inside that can overcome the absolute terror of the moment, and he comes back.  Not only does he come back from the brink, the edge, the pit; but he comes back and allows the "B" team to put around 10 seconds into the "A" team.  Beers all around courtesy of the "A" team I believe? 

So there were 4 teams, and we took 2nd and 3rd, racking up major BAT points.  It was truly an honor to race with these men, I am seriously humbled.

Bicycle Ped'lar won, but they have some massive guys, I think they got 30 seconds on us.

After the race was over, we rode the long road home, washed off the mud from the bikes and hung out over beer and pretzels and allowed the blood to come back into our skulls.  It was a good day.  It was a good day to fight the good fight.

What I know is this: those guys made me a better rider than I was before.

the Koppenberg

I knew something was very wrong when the portapotty, neighboring the one I occupied, blew over.  The floor began to rock backwards and I scrambled towards the door to get it back on the ground.  Outside, my family was huddled in the car.  The sun was out, but the wind whipped the parking area, the registration table began losing forms and riders clutched their bikes, flags were tilting up.  Sand and very small rocks were airborne.  There wasn’t a thought of not racing today; we’d driven 70 miles up to this god-forsaken suburb of Boulder, pre-registered online and committed mentally to the idea of suffering for an hour and a half.

There is a hill on a dirt road in Colorado.  A sign says ‘No Outlet’.  The road is three ridges at the bottom separated by two deep gullies, deeper than the axle of my front wheel.  By the middle of the climb there are two ridges separated by three gullies.  Rocks and sand fill each trench.  Our group of 35+ Masters riders, turns onto the climb and play Monty Hall, ‘I’ll take curtain number 2, Monty’ with the ridges.  I choose correctly but mid hill, my tire slides into a trough and I stall into a strange trackstand, kept upright by the gusting wind and my tire wedged into the side of the hill.   I am the only one that has this problem and the group crests the grade and turns right.  I unclip and scramble the rest of the way, jump on the seat and pedal east, the wind on my side.  The group stays just in front, a few hundred meters away, but I can’t make the tail.

The road turns to pavement with a thump where pavement and dirt come together in a elongated hole.  I’m abusing my bike now, focusing on the peloton instead of the pavement.  I make the gap smaller by diving the corner onto the highway and get the full tailwind now.  I’m doing 45, but the group begins to pull away a bit.  Another corner helps me close and then the straightaway to the finish.  Each straight the group gains ground.  When we hit the dirt, I know I can’t close before the hill.

The flyer said the hill is 17 percent.  On a dirt road with sand, this means the rear wheel will slip unless it’s weighted with my rear end.  Climbing a road that steep seated is a painful exercise.  I’m sure it’s good for me in some strange way.

‘That’s it, keep it up.’ ‘C’mon, get back in the game.  they’re just ahead.’  None of this helps, really.  It’s a physical problem, physics problem.  Mass (ie. my large self) + Force (where is my watt meter again?)= I can only go up this hill so fast without blowing up.  I have to do it four more times.  Can I do it four more times?  The wind greets me full in the face at the top, sand blows in under my glasses. 

This really sucks.  Each time up the hill is a slowly increasing fraction, one out of six, two out of six, three times (only half left!).  I ride by myself.  Twice, a fellow rides by on the section past the hill, gapping me for a few moments and then blowing completely up as I pass.  I assume they drop.  I parcel out the effort, thinking of finishing.  On lap 5, a fellow from the Swift team, who I passed two laps before, comes by, sucking the wheels of two pro riders out warming up on the course.  It’s not fair, so I grab his wheel until the pros are gone.  He’s friendly and we chat.  We take turns pulling and my legs feel much better. 

I have no idea who is behind me, but I’m determined I will not be last.  On our last time up the hill, I take a pull and then recover.  Onto the highway, I move to the front and stay there.  I glance back at the last turn and don’t see him.  I’m definitely not last.

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.

Potholes in the road

The water bottle flew past my head.  Its trajectory would give me a few inches to spare, but I ducked to the right just to make sure.  Where was I?  In a bike store confronting an angry clerk?  In a heated post-race argument over the correct line in the final corner? 

Nope, I was safely ensconced in a paceline heading south on our Saturday morning ride.  Partly due to the tax policy of Colorado Springs and partly due to the cold December, the road was a patchwork of holes, many deep enough to swallow a wheel.  I chose the safer, outside line; I like an ‘out’ if someone wiggles or has a brain fart.  A few riders in front, the fellow in the Discovery kit, a former member of their masters team in California, hits a hole.  The bottle flies over two riders, past my face, hits the pavement and slides harmlessly into the opposite lane.

There a bunch of us, some fit, some not so fit and we’re riding hard into a freezing fog.  My fingers hurt, thawing now that we’re going hard and I’m pleased with how I’m feeling, strong and smooth, as we crest the hills before the pace ramps up on Marksheffel Road. 

‘Shit!’  Discovery Guy has hit another pothole and this time his second bottle rolls underneath the wheel of the rider behind him, an older guy on a purple, steel bike with downtube shifters.  His front wheel crushes the bottle and the contents spray into the air covering me from sunglasses to shoes.  We’re going fast, I’m spun out in a 53x14, and Purple Bike Guy keeps himself upright despite a high speed wobble from two broken spokes in his front wheel.  He pulls to the left of the line and a truck promptly does a high speed pass of the group and nearly kills him. 

Sometimes groups rides are like this.  A group dissonance runs through the pack and bad things happen.  Wheels lap, guys make bad decisions, people get hurt.  Thinking about it, it’s wondrous our high speed dance doesn’t result in more of this than it does.  Discovery Guy is next to me in the paceline.  He has no bottles left.  ‘Think it’s time for some new cages?’ 

‘Did that guy go down?’  He seems concerned.  ‘Nope, just broke some spokes.’  He’s satisfied with this and continues his ride.  I imagine that Purple Bike Guy is on the side of the road, ten minutes later and several miles back now, thinking about his solo ride back to town on a broken wheel. 

There is one more brainfart: a fellow on the Spike team, someone I’ve had words with before, comes by on the right side of the paceline and sends a shard of pottery skittering into the line.  It clinks off several bikes before sliding underneath me.  There was no reason for the fellow to push ahead on the inside, and doing so put us all in danger again.  Later the same fellow splits the group by leading folks past the customary stop for water in Fountain.

We regroup and ride tempo north, towards home.  This is our reconnecting time.  Some of us have been gone, some have come for the first time and we chat in two rows, moving along at 22mph on the rolling roads to Fort Carson.  The freezing fog is lifting and a cold sun is out.  The temperature nudges past freezing and the sun warms our black layers and I feel relief.  After our second sprint point, my lips and lower jaw were numb, the blood needed for more important things in the legs.  Now, in the sun’s warmth and the comfort of the draft, everything seemed just right in the world.

Flying with B52s

The cold comes in through the fingertips, slowly spreading until I have to take my hand off the bar and move it a few times to push the cold back out.  There is sun today and there is wind, twenty miles per hour of it out of the northwest.  Five of us push against it thinking about the tailwind we’ll enjoy on the flipside.

Sean can’t help himself.  Each hill represents a chance to burst forward from the confines of the group.  Having twenty percent of the group surge ahead breaks the tempo a bit, but no one says anything.  We’re cold, maybe that’s it.  Or maybe complaining about the pace would be an admission of weakness, something a middle-aged man is normally loathe to do.  I’m leading the ride, it being in my neck of the woods, so folks off the front have to ask directions from the plodding old man each time we reach a turn.

I’m at the end of a fourteen hour week, long for me, the last week of the first base period.  Next week the hours are cut in half to seven and I’ll do a power test to see where things are at.  And then the second base period will begin with a twelve hour week.  There’s a rhythm to the year that I find pleasant, an ebb and flow of fitness and fatigue, recovery and exertion that mimics the world’s rhythms.  It’s impossible to be in peak form year round and this period I’m in now is building the large base of aerobic fitness needed for the hard stuff coming in a few months’ time.

All of this might seem like narcissistic navel gazing to some, but riders understand it deep down.  I have to, otherwise Sean shooting away on the climbs would be discouraging.  During our roll up to the Academy, I ask him how his training is going, and he confides that he’s focusing more on mountain biking this year and hasn’t ridden a great deal.  Somehow this makes me feel better, but I know better than to trust a roadie telling me he hasn’t been riding much.

We round into the wind full on as we leave the south gate and enter the Air Force Academy proper.  The road here is probably the best in the area.  Undeveloped, smooth, little traffic and long climbs.  Four climbs to be exact if one takes Pine to the left and does the entire ten mile loop.  “What is the elevation?” one of the guys asks.  “We top out at 7400.  On the second climb.”  I tell everyone to feel fine about leaving me behind, my legs are a bit tired, and we roll into the wind.

The first climb comes and I fall off the back with our team leader, Doug, and the U23 (Under 23) rider, Taylor.  He’s actually U20 and spent a few weeks this summer riding in France and Belgium with Bruyneel’s camp.  He’s supple on the bike and has that narrow look of younger riders, more greyhound than Clydesdale.  I assume he’s being polite to stay with Doug and me as Sean and Steve have gone up the road in a fit of climbing exuberance.  The climb is long, more than a mile, and I know there’s more to come, so I’ve settled into a hardish pace that I can keep for a while.  Doug and Taylor move away and then come back and soon we’ve crested and begin the second climb to the high point.  The views fall away to our right and, through the tall pines, we can see the mess that is Colorado Springs and the tree line of Black Forest to the north.  On our left the foothills sometimes block the wind and sometimes funnel it directly at us.  Sean and Steve are waiting at the pull out on top of the climb.

We eat bananas and powerbars and zip up for the descent.

“Turn left at the T-junction.  There’s still two more climbs.”  Doug says Oh, great, who picked this route?  and we laugh and slot in for the short descent.  The third hill is psychologically a challenge, it can be entirely seen from the descent, but it’s a power climb and I feel good and keep a nice tempo up it and stay with Doug and Taylor and watch the other two hit the top a few hundred meters ahead.  The last climb comes after another descent and Taylor blows up and falls back with Doug, who offers a helping hand.  It’s not long, but again one can see it coming and think about it too much before actually working on it.  I know what comes next, the long descent to the B52 and a right turn where we’ll feel the wind’s hand on our back, helping us home.

Forty six years

Yesterday was my birthday.  The day before, it occurred to me that I was getting older.  Not because of the hard ride my teammates on Colobikelaw put me through on a supposed ‘easy’ day on ‘flat’ roads southeast of Denver.  After three hours of four-man echelons into the wind and chasing down escapees on the hills, it suddenly popped into my brain that thirty years ago I built my first wheel.

I was suddenly old. 

Sixteen years old, riding my bike to a small bike shop on the north side of Milwaukee, in the ‘core’ of the projects on 23rd Street and Fond du Lac Avenue, I had no idea how the decision to apply for a job posted on the board at school would change me and the direction of my life.  A couple of years earlier I had ridden my first century on a Sears Free Spirit ten speed, an abomination of a bicycle.  Made with plumber’s pipe painted a dull mustard and fitted with the lowest tier of components available, it even sported ‘safety’ levers on the brakes.  Riding one hundred miles on it, lap after lap through Whitnall Park for a March of Dimes fundraiser in 1978 did three things.  First it destroyed the bike and launched my experience as a bicycle mechanic, then it showed me the delicious joy of riding for hours on a bicycle.  I was hooked and started racing the next year on a Trek, before Trek was cool.

And it led me to a bicycle shop far away from my semi-suburban home on Milwaukee’s southwest side.  About that same time I remember a story in the Journal about minority numbers in the different areas of the city.  Our area, with a population of 10,000 had exactly three minority residents.  I rode the city bus (or my bicycle) to my high school every day, a ten mile trip that took me past County Stadium and up through Pigsville.  Marquette High was on 35th and Wisconsin Avenue and I never noticed before that every white person on the bus got off there and a crowd of black people stood waiting to get on.  After two years, I rode the bus past Wisconsin for the first time and it hit me like a brick; I was the only white on the bus.  Years later, I would have the same experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in a small village on the edge of the Kalahari. 

I’ve been led to many places by my bikes.  As I reflect on my life so far, there are few regrets, few lost opportunities to keep me awake with thoughts of what could have been.  Perhaps it’s lingering fatigue from yesterday’s ride, but a sense of contentment is all that I find and a renewed excitement anticipating the time ahead. 

A new year

A painful blue sky backdrops the red stone formations of the Garden of the Gods.  White then gray then dark mist coalesce into clouds riding the north wind south.  It’s likely snowing just a few miles away on Woodmen Avenue.  Here the sun penetrates the freezing wind and my left side is warm climbing Mesa’s two mile rise.  My legs feel great; I’m sneaking a ride in before a predicted snow storm; every turn of the crank feels like a bonus, a reprieve from another session on the rollers.

It’s a new year, full of the possible, the improbable, the likely.  Cycling-wise, I’ve joined a new team and have had the opportunity to ride with some good guys, good at cycling and good in the Aristotelian sense as well. 

A new year also means a new training cycle.  This week is my first week of Base 1 (Base 123, Build 123, etc) and I’ve had the chance to supplement a bit with xc skiing at 10000 feet in Breckenridge.  Nothing like a good lungbuster workout with a better skier to push a limit. 

Plans for 2010?  Cycling: use my new TT bike to get better at the TT events up in Denver, develop a rapport with my team and work on winning races together, drop a few pounds and continue progressing in my fitness: increase my total hours to 600 this year.  Build a bicycle frame.

Off the bike: Develop more friendships with adults, something that seemed to get harder as I got older.  Spend good time with the family, continue keeping time to ride and be with Janet alone, hike a few 14 teeners, find time to write more.

All good things.

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.

First ride with team

Cycling is a team sport.  Many folks think otherwise, riding a bike is a solitary practice for them, culminating in the ultimate example of solo self-absorption, the triathalon.  Americans have really bought into this perspective and even here, in Colorado Springs, home of the USOC and numerous coaching concerns, riders spend most of their time riding by their lonesome and the few teams that are here, seem to lack the cohesion to train together, let alone race together. 

So I’m excited about joining a team, Colobikelaw, and doubly excited that they have a group of twelve guys or so that race the Master’s 35+ category 3 together and get results.  And they have training rides to build cohesion. 

Left to Right: Philip Capraro (35/4), Chris Sauer, Marco Capraro, Brian Hart, Colin Catel, Marco Horton, Jason Cherry, Steve Ruskaup, Ryan Muncy, Tim Cody, Doug Gordon, Brad Rolf

We met at Cafe Europa in Denver for a post-Thanksgiving ride to burn a little fat and to chew it as well.  Several of the guys were new like me, some had upgraded from category 4 this year and this was our first chance to get to know each other and our riding styles.

Sounds so complicated, this riding the bike in a group, but so much of what happens in a race depends on what you know of your teammates, their personalities, desires, abilities.  I’m descending with a fellow six inches in front of my wheel at 50 miles an hour; I need to know what he does when there’s a pothole, or gravel in the road.  I need to know if he keeps pedaling when he gets out of the saddle on a climb or slides backwards for a moment.  In a race, is he the guy that chases down a break and can hold it, or does he have the big sprint for a finish?  These are things that you get to know on training rides.

Doug is our team leader and is immediately dropped as we head to the bike path and Invesco Field.  We don’t realize this for five miles.  First rule: do not drop your team leader.  It’s not his fault, the pace was way too hot for warming up and we were dodging in and out of side roads and turns on the trail.  We reconnected after a phone call and sending Marco back down the trail.

We ride to Golden and then the group decides against the climb up Lookout Mtn and instead adds a few more k’s of rolling terrain north of Denver.  It’s a bit cold, 40 degrees or so, but the sun stays bright.  The group surges and retracts, over and over again.  A rotating paceline is started and then stalls as young Marco needs a push to pull off.  Gaps form as riders pulling off don’t ease up and we talk about all of it, part of the process. 

One of the hardest things about group riding, especially in the states, is that strong riders always feel the need to pound their chests, ride their bikes as hard as they can, even to the detriment of the group’s cohesion.  I always come back to my Wed outings with Geoff in southern France, ‘Tranquil, tranquil, Chris.’ as we would head out on the long ride with some really good riders.  The object was always to be riding the same pace five hours later, together. 

Later, when we’re sitting a table outside the cafe, sipping lattes, one of the strong fellows says, ‘When I ride, I ride hard.’  We laugh later when the same guy declines the idea of riding a team time trial.  There’s much more to this riding game then just being strong.  As crusty old Geoff said a few years ago, riding now is 70 percent mental and 30 percent physical, while in our more youthful days it was the opposite.  I try to explain this to young Marco during the ride as he sprints out ahead of the group and then fades.  Save your strength, use it to be smooth and do things that help the group. 

Sounds like good advice to live by in general.

Thanksgiving day riding