After a period of despair over the state of Swift's wheels, I realized that anyone who owns three or more 700c bikes has an easy fix on hand for wheel problems: all you have to do is steal the wheels from one bike and put them on another bike.
Obviously, stealing the Aksium Race wheels off Hg wasn't really an option, so yesterday I stole Quicksilver's wheels and popped them on Swift. Then I shot a whole bunch of grease into Swift's sticky head tube, adjusted his brakes, popped on a rack and rear basket, and -- voila! -- instant grocery bike. We then rolled on down to the grocery store, where groceries were fetched forthwith. Turns out a lot of Swift's weight came in the form of his ancient steel wheelset; he's actually a much lighter, nimbler bike now.
After Burning Man, I decided that Turtle isn't going to be an ideal grocery ride unless I make some major improvements -- and Swift is first on the list for major (though not enormous) improvements. Turtle is a bit on the heavy and sluggish side. When riding in traffic, I want the option (or at least the illusion) of speed, should I need it. Now that I've resolved his major problems, Swift is a better choice in that regard.
QS's rear wheel isn't in great shape, so I will probably snag Swift a new rear wheel. I also plan to (if possible) transfer QS's crankset and derailleurs to Swift, as well as (possibly) adding an inexpensive replacement fork and a set of North Road-stylie bars (yes, I'm still on about them, ever since that gravel ride). The last bit I'm doing partly to make a more comfortable ride for DD. You know, he'll already be sort of in that sit-up-and-beg/pray position, so it will be easier for him to whip out the Hail Marys when I make him climb big hills ;)
Oh, and of course, if I do get the North Road bars, I will also add a big, obnoxious front basket, because it will look awesome and be at least somewhat useful.
Meanwhile, Turtle and DD's Desert Bike (which I hereby arbitrarily dub Priscilla, since DD doesn't name his bikes) are due a good, thorough cleaning to get all the playa dust out of their various bits before they get hung up in the garage, to be used hereafter as guest bikes and playa bikes. Between still being surprisingly sleepy (mono is a drag), having a bunch of classwork to catch up on, and needing to prep for a weekend camping trip, I didn't get to do them last week.
Life is slowly returning to normal here at the Dawson-Taylor (Bicycle) Ranch. I am still not at my best, and I'm debating whether to try to race this fall at all or just concentrate on being well enough to race in the spring. At very least, I won't be racing 'til next month.
I still simply have less 'go' than I'm used to having. The house is now about halfway clean, however -- tolerable, by my standards -- and improving slowly but surely. I'm looking into acquiring a little bike trailer for grocery-gettage. I have not lost any more weight, but I haven't gained any, either, so that's good, too.
Life is generally good. I will probably be posting less throughout the semester, but I will be riding more as I build my endurance and so forth back up.
Hope to see y'all out there :)
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Things I Have Learned (Recently) By Watching TV
First, I have learned that I am a total sucker, and that I am seriously in lust with that stupid ProForm TDF trainer bike (in part because it looks like it's half trainer bike, half 'bucking pony' machine -- like the ones you see in supermarkets).
Also that whenever I am at a restaurant with televisions (which are inevitably tuned into sports channels, since sports are mostly at least a bit comprehensible with the sound off and less likely to incite fistfights than, say, political coverage, except on the night of any given Big Game), they like to torture me by showing the ad for said trainer bike over and over and over and over.
I get suckered in by the bicycles every time: my bikey-sense tingles, I glance up and say, "Oh, look, bicycles!" and then they switch to footage of some tool (and by 'tool' I mean 'anyone who looks better than I do in lycra, which is almost everybody ;D) riding a $15,000 bucking pony machine in some glass-walled mountain retreat (leaving the perplexed TV viewer to wonder why he doesn't just "ride up grades," as the saying goes).
Second, though I have somehow failed to figure this out during a lifetime of various athletic activities (alas, I am not that great at thinking outside the groove), counting down instead of up when doing reps of various strength or flexibility exercises makes an awesome psychological tool. At least, it does if you're anything like me.
I have been trying to slot some calisthenics into my routine, and also have been watching an A&E series called 'Heavy.' I'm not into the competitive 'reality' shows, especially when it comes to thinks like Biggest Loser wherein I think everyone should get a chance to do the whole program and reap its greatest health-changing benefit) but am a total sucker for the ones where they follow the story of a person or a couple of people who are struggling with addiction or hoarding or weight issues or recalcitrant dogs or whatever -- I watch them while I fold laundry. The folks on 'Heavy' go to Hilton Head Health to get in shape, and I noticed that at least one of the trainers there counts down instead of up.
Immediately, a little light went on inside my head (immediately illuminating a frightening accumulation of cobwebs and dust -- thank goodness it's almost school time again! :D). I thought, "Hey, that would work really well for me!"
Then, of course, I promptly forgot to try it for a couple of days.
Today, I gave it a whirl, and found that it works brilliantly: I don't know if I could hold the plank position, for example, for thirty seconds at this point if I started counting from 1. But counting down from thirty, boy -- that's another story. It's hard to give up when you're down to ten ... nine ... eight... I haven't tried the plank position since my Muay Thai days (our beloved, sadistic, psychopathic trainers had us doing two one-minute sets of the plank back-to-back ... brutal). Same with push-ups: I might have trouble motivating myself to do twenty of those right now if I counted up from one, in part because I used to be able to bang out one hundred, military-style, in one minute, and struggling to do twenty now is really depressing -- but counting down from ten, twice?
No sweat.
What an awesome way to trick yourself into doing stuff you aren't sure you can do! I've tried this now with the plank, push-ups, this ball-rolling exercise for the lower abdominals whose name I can't remember, and crunches on the fitness ball (which are both harder and more interesting than crunches on the floor).
Now, if I could just convince the cat not to interpret my fitness efforts as playtime, I'd really be on a roll. It is very irritating to be bitten by a crazed furball in the midst of one's calisthenics.
Then again, I can't really blame him, since I tend to wrestle with him on the floor (Merkah thinks he's a dog), and how is he supposed to know the difference? Part of me thinks it's pretty cool that he gets playful and excited when I get down on the floor.
One more bit. In recent days, I've addressed my fear of trying new athletic things without a coach around to yell at me about doin' it wrong, and I've I learned that while one of those giant fitness/therapy balls to make your workout harder or easier, it is almost certainly going to be more fun if you use one, period.
I find it very difficult to motivate myself to do calisthenics when I'm alone. Perversely, I love them in groups, because I am warped like that: too much gymnastics as a kid has bred in me a nigh-Japanese unwillingness to let the group down by dint of my own weakness, so in a group I will push myself literally until I puke (yes, I've actually done this: twice, in fact) and then clean up and push myself a bit more. Alone, however, I seem to struggle to even quit folding laundry for a while and get on the floor.
The giant blue ball, however, makes everything fun. I think I might even be able to enjoy office work if I could sit on the giant blue ball (actually, a red ball would be even better, but the one we have in the house right now just happens to be blue) and bounce around while doing it. In fact, DD is seriously considering getting one of those fitness-ball chairs so I can use it in the office when I do the books.
Anyway, speaking of folding the laundry, I'd better get back to work. We're in the midst of a mad rush of preparations for our ten-daysiege of Black Rock Desert trip to Burning Man. It's so close now, I can taste it.
Mmmm. Bar-be-queue... :D
Also that whenever I am at a restaurant with televisions (which are inevitably tuned into sports channels, since sports are mostly at least a bit comprehensible with the sound off and less likely to incite fistfights than, say, political coverage, except on the night of any given Big Game), they like to torture me by showing the ad for said trainer bike over and over and over and over.
I get suckered in by the bicycles every time: my bikey-sense tingles, I glance up and say, "Oh, look, bicycles!" and then they switch to footage of some tool (and by 'tool' I mean 'anyone who looks better than I do in lycra, which is almost everybody ;D) riding a $15,000 bucking pony machine in some glass-walled mountain retreat (leaving the perplexed TV viewer to wonder why he doesn't just "ride up grades," as the saying goes).
Second, though I have somehow failed to figure this out during a lifetime of various athletic activities (alas, I am not that great at thinking outside the groove), counting down instead of up when doing reps of various strength or flexibility exercises makes an awesome psychological tool. At least, it does if you're anything like me.
I have been trying to slot some calisthenics into my routine, and also have been watching an A&E series called 'Heavy.' I'm not into the competitive 'reality' shows, especially when it comes to thinks like Biggest Loser wherein I think everyone should get a chance to do the whole program and reap its greatest health-changing benefit) but am a total sucker for the ones where they follow the story of a person or a couple of people who are struggling with addiction or hoarding or weight issues or recalcitrant dogs or whatever -- I watch them while I fold laundry. The folks on 'Heavy' go to Hilton Head Health to get in shape, and I noticed that at least one of the trainers there counts down instead of up.
Immediately, a little light went on inside my head (immediately illuminating a frightening accumulation of cobwebs and dust -- thank goodness it's almost school time again! :D). I thought, "Hey, that would work really well for me!"
Then, of course, I promptly forgot to try it for a couple of days.
Today, I gave it a whirl, and found that it works brilliantly: I don't know if I could hold the plank position, for example, for thirty seconds at this point if I started counting from 1. But counting down from thirty, boy -- that's another story. It's hard to give up when you're down to ten ... nine ... eight... I haven't tried the plank position since my Muay Thai days (our beloved, sadistic, psychopathic trainers had us doing two one-minute sets of the plank back-to-back ... brutal). Same with push-ups: I might have trouble motivating myself to do twenty of those right now if I counted up from one, in part because I used to be able to bang out one hundred, military-style, in one minute, and struggling to do twenty now is really depressing -- but counting down from ten, twice?
No sweat.
What an awesome way to trick yourself into doing stuff you aren't sure you can do! I've tried this now with the plank, push-ups, this ball-rolling exercise for the lower abdominals whose name I can't remember, and crunches on the fitness ball (which are both harder and more interesting than crunches on the floor).
Now, if I could just convince the cat not to interpret my fitness efforts as playtime, I'd really be on a roll. It is very irritating to be bitten by a crazed furball in the midst of one's calisthenics.
Then again, I can't really blame him, since I tend to wrestle with him on the floor (Merkah thinks he's a dog), and how is he supposed to know the difference? Part of me thinks it's pretty cool that he gets playful and excited when I get down on the floor.
One more bit. In recent days, I've addressed my fear of trying new athletic things without a coach around to yell at me about doin' it wrong, and I've I learned that while one of those giant fitness/therapy balls to make your workout harder or easier, it is almost certainly going to be more fun if you use one, period.
I find it very difficult to motivate myself to do calisthenics when I'm alone. Perversely, I love them in groups, because I am warped like that: too much gymnastics as a kid has bred in me a nigh-Japanese unwillingness to let the group down by dint of my own weakness, so in a group I will push myself literally until I puke (yes, I've actually done this: twice, in fact) and then clean up and push myself a bit more. Alone, however, I seem to struggle to even quit folding laundry for a while and get on the floor.
The giant blue ball, however, makes everything fun. I think I might even be able to enjoy office work if I could sit on the giant blue ball (actually, a red ball would be even better, but the one we have in the house right now just happens to be blue) and bounce around while doing it. In fact, DD is seriously considering getting one of those fitness-ball chairs so I can use it in the office when I do the books.
Anyway, speaking of folding the laundry, I'd better get back to work. We're in the midst of a mad rush of preparations for our ten-day
Mmmm. Bar-be-queue... :D
Monday, August 22, 2011
Bicycle Explosion
Last week, we bough two DesertBikes, bringing the total number of bikes in our garage up to 6.5 (I figure the tandem counts as 1.5 bikes).
Last night, I returned the beautiful silver Cannondale to its rightful owners, JL and KL. At the same time, Swift returned home from their place -- with the opening of the new restaurant, KL's been working a bazillion hours a week and hasn't felt up to riding. I can't say I blame her -- if I was working the hours she's working, on my feet all day, I probably wouldn't ride much, either. I would simply be too tired.
I'm actually delighted to have Swift home. As much as I like Turtle the SodaBike, Lord of the Desert, etc., I think Swift is a better grocery-getter, and it'll be nice to have a more comfortable machine around for DD -- one he can take on rides with me and Hg. Likewise, Swift may wind up going out to BurningMan, since his components and wheelset will eventually going to need replacing anyway. I'm not too worried about the alkaline dust messing up his frame, since I'm planning on stripping and repainting it at some point in the not-too-distant future, anyway.
At any rate, it now looks more or less like a bike factory blew up in our garage ... or maybe a bike museum, considering the diversity of makes and models in there.
I'm really struggling with the debate over purchasing a 'cross bike. I now definitely have more than enough money to cover the purchase, but with our still-unplanned wedding looming ever-nearer, I'm having serious pangs of doubt about spending my money on what essentially amounts to yet another essentially unnecessary, purpose-specific bike (especially since, with the return of Swift, I've lost my 'but Denis will be able to ride it' justification -- Denis likes Swift just fine).
For that matter, I'm having serious pangs of doubt about dropping $60 on a racing license and another however much on entry fees.
The alternative is to re-home Swift, thus creating a necessity for a 'DD bike/backup bike/guest bike.' I may yet do that. In fact, I might even know someone who would like to have a bike like Swift, so he can keep up with mewhen I force him to play bicycle death march when he visits on longer rides when he visits and so he can do more long-distance riding at home in Lexington. Or, for that matter, someone who would like a bike like Swift so he can ride at all (I actually have a non-bike riding friend who is interested in 'cross!!!). Before doing that, though, I would want to swap out some of Swift's components, and maybe his wheelset, to make sure I'm handing off a bike that's going to be really reliable and ride-able for someone who isn't an experienced wrench and rider.
Of course, at this point, I really have until the middle of October to make up my mind about 'cross season anyway, since AppleCross and the OVCX opener are both out.
I am feeling a billion times better, but still wary of potentially exploding my spleen, which limits my ability to both train and race right now. I'm back to riding on the road (a bit, anyway -- I think I knocked out a whopping 30 miles last week, if that, and I still get tired faster than is normal for me), but I do want to clear the 4 - 6 weeks from time of diagnosis before I seriously think about riding fast in a big, tight pack on the grass; hefting bikes over obstacles; and otherwise putting myself in situations where I'm more likely to fall and burst some important organ or another. I still have a bit of tenderness in the spleenal area, so I don't really want to take unnecessary risks (especially since I don't have health insurance).
I really do want to do Bloomingcross and Storm the Greens, and I'd love to do King's Cross again, even though it is now, insanely, in December. I figure racing on a a monstrous beast of a course like King's in December probably captures the spirit of the mad, bad ol' days of cyclocross...
...as well as anything in this modern day and age possibly could.
PS: Notice that the guys in the leftmost picture are wearing what more or less appear to be ladies' bathing suits. Back then, it was probably a rule: I am sure that they did this simply to make 'cross even more psychologically demanding, and to ensure that only the toughest racers -- those most secure in their own masculinity -- would dare to approach the course.
Last night, I returned the beautiful silver Cannondale to its rightful owners, JL and KL. At the same time, Swift returned home from their place -- with the opening of the new restaurant, KL's been working a bazillion hours a week and hasn't felt up to riding. I can't say I blame her -- if I was working the hours she's working, on my feet all day, I probably wouldn't ride much, either. I would simply be too tired.
I'm actually delighted to have Swift home. As much as I like Turtle the SodaBike, Lord of the Desert, etc., I think Swift is a better grocery-getter, and it'll be nice to have a more comfortable machine around for DD -- one he can take on rides with me and Hg. Likewise, Swift may wind up going out to BurningMan, since his components and wheelset will eventually going to need replacing anyway. I'm not too worried about the alkaline dust messing up his frame, since I'm planning on stripping and repainting it at some point in the not-too-distant future, anyway.
At any rate, it now looks more or less like a bike factory blew up in our garage ... or maybe a bike museum, considering the diversity of makes and models in there.
I'm really struggling with the debate over purchasing a 'cross bike. I now definitely have more than enough money to cover the purchase, but with our still-unplanned wedding looming ever-nearer, I'm having serious pangs of doubt about spending my money on what essentially amounts to yet another essentially unnecessary, purpose-specific bike (especially since, with the return of Swift, I've lost my 'but Denis will be able to ride it' justification -- Denis likes Swift just fine).
For that matter, I'm having serious pangs of doubt about dropping $60 on a racing license and another however much on entry fees.
The alternative is to re-home Swift, thus creating a necessity for a 'DD bike/backup bike/guest bike.' I may yet do that. In fact, I might even know someone who would like to have a bike like Swift, so he can keep up with me
Of course, at this point, I really have until the middle of October to make up my mind about 'cross season anyway, since AppleCross and the OVCX opener are both out.
I am feeling a billion times better, but still wary of potentially exploding my spleen, which limits my ability to both train and race right now. I'm back to riding on the road (a bit, anyway -- I think I knocked out a whopping 30 miles last week, if that, and I still get tired faster than is normal for me), but I do want to clear the 4 - 6 weeks from time of diagnosis before I seriously think about riding fast in a big, tight pack on the grass; hefting bikes over obstacles; and otherwise putting myself in situations where I'm more likely to fall and burst some important organ or another. I still have a bit of tenderness in the spleenal area, so I don't really want to take unnecessary risks (especially since I don't have health insurance).
I really do want to do Bloomingcross and Storm the Greens, and I'd love to do King's Cross again, even though it is now, insanely, in December. I figure racing on a a monstrous beast of a course like King's in December probably captures the spirit of the mad, bad ol' days of cyclocross...
...as well as anything in this modern day and age possibly could.
PS: Notice that the guys in the leftmost picture are wearing what more or less appear to be ladies' bathing suits. Back then, it was probably a rule: I am sure that they did this simply to make 'cross even more psychologically demanding, and to ensure that only the toughest racers -- those most secure in their own masculinity -- would dare to approach the course.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
A Most Unusual Bicycle Race
Yesterday evening I participated in a bicycle race.
The course started at the intersection of Eastern Parkway and Willow Ave, from whence we bold racer types ventured forth at varying rates of speed (some of us faster, others more leisurely), looped through Cherokee Park, and then ... returned to the starting point after but one lap.
Perhaps the most shocking revelation is that nobody wore a helmet! Not at all! And I never saw a single paceline.
Oh, and did I mention that we weren't on bicycles, either?
In fact, based on the clothing and shoe styles of my fellow racers, I suspect that the race in question may not actually have been a bicycle race at all. It may have, in fact, been (GASP!) a foot race. You know, one of those running things, that runners do, without bicycles at all! (At least a couple of people who rode to the start, though.)
...
Okay, okay. All joking aside, last night I joined my friend Brian from Charter and Republic and Muay Thai along with some of his friends from MT/MMA as well (either from Eric Haycraft's gym or Core Combat Sports) and took part in the Fleet Feet Fiesta 3K.
I wasn't actually entirely sure I remembered how to run, but I try not to let potentially being laughably bad at something stop me (after all, I had spent like all of 3 hours in my life on the 'cross course prior to King's Cross last year, and this year entered that short track race even though I almost never ride singletrack and so forth; I also insist on wading into games of Monopoly and the like even though I am a terrible, terrible strategist). I was very concerned that I might have trouble figuring out the shifting mechanisms of my running shoes. Once I realized that my running shoes are single-speed (apparently, the speed in question is "middling"), I felt much better.
When I arrived to register, I was intimidated by many of my fellow races, who appeared in actual running apparel, while I sported my favorite IU shirt and some grey gym shorts over my non-cycling compression shorts. However, the three other guys in my group also arrived in comfortingly non-technical apparel, and I felt better:
(Image totally ganked from Angie Staley's facebook!
The ladies, as you can see, put more effort into looking 'runner-esque.'
Prior to the start, I was a bit concerned about the possibility of simply having to collapse by the side of the road somewhere, what with the whole recovering from mono thing. That fear did not come to pass. During the race, I also became concerned -- due to a pain in my side -- that my spleen might be trying to explode. However, I decided that it might just be one of those things they call a 'stitch,' and that if it didn't get worse, I probably wouldn't die: it didn't; I didn't.
While I did sleep like the King of All Babies last night, and am feeling a hair on the loafy side today (though, bizarrely, some part of me wants to go running again) I did not find myself to be inordinately tired during the race, except during the first 1/3 of the second of the two major climbs, which was up Dog Hill in Cherokee Park. Knowing that I could climb that hill no sweat on my bike, however, made it psychologically much easier than it could have been, as did knowing the landmarks of the climb intimately (oh, look, it's that one tree! It gets flatter from here out!).
Moreover, I managed to avoid totally flubbing up the whole running part, though I did trip over my own feet a couple of times. Most importantly, I did not fall while cornering or crash out the group. I'm not sure if that happens much in running events, but it seemed like a reasonable possibility in this one, since we were running in the dark and there were monster power-climber dudes with strollers, one of whom passed everyone in the that group I started with, much to our collective humiliation and awe.
During the race, I learned a few things:
That said, I draw the line at any kind of formalized swimming. I love swimming, but the minute one adds 'swimming' to one's menu of cycling and running, one veers dangerously in the direction of the triathlon.
PS: My finishing time was about 41 minutes, 42 seconds or thereabouts. Apparently, not too shabby for someone who doesn't run like, at all, ever. I was probably faster back in the day when I used to actually run, but I never ran an actual race back then, so this counts as both my fastest and my slowest 5K time ever!
The course started at the intersection of Eastern Parkway and Willow Ave, from whence we bold racer types ventured forth at varying rates of speed (some of us faster, others more leisurely), looped through Cherokee Park, and then ... returned to the starting point after but one lap.
Perhaps the most shocking revelation is that nobody wore a helmet! Not at all! And I never saw a single paceline.
Oh, and did I mention that we weren't on bicycles, either?
In fact, based on the clothing and shoe styles of my fellow racers, I suspect that the race in question may not actually have been a bicycle race at all. It may have, in fact, been (GASP!) a foot race. You know, one of those running things, that runners do, without bicycles at all! (At least a couple of people who rode to the start, though.)
...
Okay, okay. All joking aside, last night I joined my friend Brian from Charter and Republic and Muay Thai along with some of his friends from MT/MMA as well (either from Eric Haycraft's gym or Core Combat Sports) and took part in the Fleet Feet Fiesta 3K.
I wasn't actually entirely sure I remembered how to run, but I try not to let potentially being laughably bad at something stop me (after all, I had spent like all of 3 hours in my life on the 'cross course prior to King's Cross last year, and this year entered that short track race even though I almost never ride singletrack and so forth; I also insist on wading into games of Monopoly and the like even though I am a terrible, terrible strategist). I was very concerned that I might have trouble figuring out the shifting mechanisms of my running shoes. Once I realized that my running shoes are single-speed (apparently, the speed in question is "middling"), I felt much better.
When I arrived to register, I was intimidated by many of my fellow races, who appeared in actual running apparel, while I sported my favorite IU shirt and some grey gym shorts over my non-cycling compression shorts. However, the three other guys in my group also arrived in comfortingly non-technical apparel, and I felt better:
(Image totally ganked from Angie Staley's facebook!
...Also, Denis didn't run.
And the third guy in our group isn't in this shot because he wasn't there yet.)
And the third guy in our group isn't in this shot because he wasn't there yet.)
The ladies, as you can see, put more effort into looking 'runner-esque.'
Prior to the start, I was a bit concerned about the possibility of simply having to collapse by the side of the road somewhere, what with the whole recovering from mono thing. That fear did not come to pass. During the race, I also became concerned -- due to a pain in my side -- that my spleen might be trying to explode. However, I decided that it might just be one of those things they call a 'stitch,' and that if it didn't get worse, I probably wouldn't die: it didn't; I didn't.
While I did sleep like the King of All Babies last night, and am feeling a hair on the loafy side today (though, bizarrely, some part of me wants to go running again) I did not find myself to be inordinately tired during the race, except during the first 1/3 of the second of the two major climbs, which was up Dog Hill in Cherokee Park. Knowing that I could climb that hill no sweat on my bike, however, made it psychologically much easier than it could have been, as did knowing the landmarks of the climb intimately (oh, look, it's that one tree! It gets flatter from here out!).
Moreover, I managed to avoid totally flubbing up the whole running part, though I did trip over my own feet a couple of times. Most importantly, I did not fall while cornering or crash out the group. I'm not sure if that happens much in running events, but it seemed like a reasonable possibility in this one, since we were running in the dark and there were monster power-climber dudes with strollers, one of whom passed everyone in the that group I started with, much to our collective humiliation and awe.
During the race, I learned a few things:
- Brian Darlage is faster than I am.
- Cycling and running use completely difference muscle groups. Really. They're not just saying that on all those websites that talk about the importance of cross-training because they hate you and they want you to suffer. Okay, well, they do hate you, and want you to suffer -- but it's also true.
- I have not run any distance in a really long time, and as such my running muscles are ... um ... pathetic might actually be the technical term. Seriously. My butt hurts. What's that about? And don't even get me started on my hip flexors.
- Nonetheless, I am still quite capable of mostly-running a distance of 5 kilometers (that's roughly 3.5 miles) on a hilly course. When I'm struggling, I use a trick I learned from the join-the-Air-Force-workout (long story): I count strides. I run for 200 - 300 strides, then walk for 50 - 150 (the most I was willing to allow myself to walk last night was 150 strides).
This method yields a really neat psychological trick: say you're pushing up a hill, going for 200 strides, but your legs are screaming bloody murder at you. If you can get to 50, you know you can get to 60. Once you hit 60, you can easily get to 100 -- and it would be shameful and embarassing not to make it to 100, once you've hit 60. Once you hit 100, if you click on over to 110, you're pretty close to 150 ... and so forth. You can actually do this almost indefinitely. After a while, in fact, it becomes largely automatic, and there's usually a period in the middle of the run during which the pain goes away and you feel awesome for a while.
For the record, I do this on the bike, too, though rarely. When I'm feeling cooked but working to catch some bunny who is blissfully gliding along in his big ring and doesn't even know some fat idiot is trying to catch him, or when I'm riding hill repeats in Cherokee Park and absolutely refuse to slow down as I approach the top of a climb, I'll count my cadence.
Sometimes I even count out loud -- except I only count off every tenth stride, and I count by tens (because I can do that without losing my place). It must be very strange to be passed by some dude shuffling along and occasionally exclaiming, "Seventeen! .... Eighteen! ... Twenty!"
- 90% of athletic success really is simply finding some way to ignore your body when it whines about stuff. The other 10% is learning when you should actually listen.
- Running is harder than cycling. At least, for me, right now, running is harder than riding the bike. Yes, I said it. I meant it. I won't say this race was as hard as King's Cross, but it was tough. I suppose I could have made it less tough by walking more. Walking -- which I can do literally all day -- is not harder than cycling. Unless you are carrying like 5 gallons of water or whatever on top of your head, in which case it is probably harder, after all.
- Beer tastes just as good after a foot race as it does after a bike race. Food, likewise, tastes just as good after a foot race as it does after a bike race: which is to say, I don't really bother with tasting it while I'm shoving it down my gullet :)
That said, I draw the line at any kind of formalized swimming. I love swimming, but the minute one adds 'swimming' to one's menu of cycling and running, one veers dangerously in the direction of the triathlon.
PS: My finishing time was about 41 minutes, 42 seconds or thereabouts. Apparently, not too shabby for someone who doesn't run like, at all, ever. I was probably faster back in the day when I used to actually run, but I never ran an actual race back then, so this counts as both my fastest and my slowest 5K time ever!
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Eat, Drink, and Be Merry, for TomorrowToday We Die Ride
Well, the day is officially upon us.
Today, I am going to get back on the bike, and I am going to ride with ridonkulous lacrity (if alacrity means speed, 'lacrity' must surely mean its opposite, since the prefix 'a' indicates the absence of something ... right? :D) to the eye doctor (also to the Market Street shop).
I intend to ride as slowly as
Surely, this momentous occasion calls for some kind of libation, but I'm broke right now, so I will have to settle for something with enough caffeine in it to keep me awake while I'm getting fitted for contact lenses.
Wish me luck.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Back in Action, Again. Sort Of.
Today I woke up feeling somewhat like a human being for the first time in quite a while.
Normally, I would address this very development by jumping on my bike and riding until my legs fall off. However, I have decided to try to treat my body a little more kindly than that. As such, my goals for today include getting the two desert bikes tuned up and taking a little spin. I just need to figure out what 'a little spin' actually means.
What I'd like it to mean is rolling a mile or two, grabbing a coffee at Sister Bean's, and rolling home, on pleasant, quiet streets.
Where my neighborhood is concerned, though, one of the things I'm not really keen on is the fact that to get to the pleasant riding, you first have to escape the neighborhood by traversing a number of narrow, busy roads with poor visibility on which people routinely exceed the speed limit by a significant margin . The nearest really pleasant rides are Iroquois Park (so not doing that today) and Southern Parkway. The nearest destinations where one can sit and have a snack (unless you count the hospital, which probably has a coffee shop of some sort) are only mile or so away -- but it's a stressful mile, rather than a relaxing mile.
Right now, I really miss living in the Highlands, where even if I wasn't feeling too hot, I could easily go out and spend and entire day doing short flights from shop to shop, enjoying used books, ice cream, and other such pleasures. I didn't like riding on Bardstown Road* -- and still don't -- but the Highlands offers plenty of parallel routes and is dotted with neat retail and service venues.
Here, we are not completely without neat little shops to visit, but this part of town was definitely designed around the automobile. This 'goes double' for my neighborhood. Even Iroquois Park, which is almost literally in my back yard, is not directly accessible from Arling Court, or from Arling Ave. Walkscore.com rates my current address a 25/100 -- car-dependent, in their eyes, though I do fine without a car most of the time. My old address rated an 82 -- really quite high, for any address in the United States. The city's average stands at 48/100, almost twice as 'walkable' as Arling Court.
I don't know how or even if we could really transform my neighborhood into a truly walkable one. The Highlands (and its sister neighborhood, the Frankfort Ave/Crescent Hill corridor) works so well for walkers and cyclists because it was built before the private auto was a primary means of transit, and is zoned accordingly. Neighborhoods like mine, on the other hand, were deliberately designed to create a sense of separation between residential and commercial districts -- so even when they're close together as the crow flies, one can only make a direct trip by trespassing in people's yards, hopping fences, and so forth.
Across Taylor Boulevard (or New Cut), a similar neighborhood has dealt with this situation by creating easements to allow shortcuts for pedestrians and cyclists. My guess is that the neighborhood in question had no choice; kids walking to school follow the path of least resistance, and it only makes sense to codify that path, rather than punishing the kids. As a result, the neighborhood in question feels much more pedestrian-friendly, and if you're feeling lazy on your bike, you can use the cut-through paths to get from Point A to Point B without wandering from -4 to 4 and back to -4on the corresponding Cartesian grid in the process.
However, my neighborhood is triangular and is laid out across three rather forbidding hills. Its design doesn't really allow for neat little commercial spaces -- to incorporate them, some of the residential-zoned area here would have to be converted to commercial, and even then, the kind of commercial venues I'd really love to see here -- quirky Mom-and-Pop businesses -- would find it difficult to survive, hidden as they would be in the hills. Likewise, significant changes to infrastructure would have to be made to make those businesses accessible to the folks within the neighborhood: for example, sidewalks would have to be added (they should be anyway, but that's another fight), and speed limits would absolutely have to be enforced (they should be anyway, but that's also another fight).
It's not that I really believe this stuff couldn't happen -- but I live in a low-rent kind of neighborhood. We don't add a great deal to the city's tax base. We don't attract tourists. We have no commercial presence to speak of outside of a couple of small places that front on Taylor or Bluegrass, and I doubt anyone associates those businesses with my neighborhood. Technically, we don't even have a school; Hazelwood Elementary and Iroquois High School are, respectively, across Bluegrass and Taylor, and thus not really in my neighborhood, since those roads act as neighborhood boundaries.
Essentially, what I'm saying, is that while I live in the kind of neighborhood that most needs small businesses and improved infrastructure, it is also, by its nature, among those least likely to attract businesses and least likely to receive infrastructure updates from the city.
As someone who believes deeply in starting where you are and also in the power of just up and doing it, I'm not sure how to approach the problem of my neighborhood. We have seriously discussed moving, but part of me thinks that's the wrong answer -- not to mention throwing the baby out with the bath water.
While we don't really know anyone on Arling Ave, Arling Court is a neighborly place. It's a village-within-a-village. I like and trust my neighbors, and we're all on friendly terms. It's the kind of neighborhood where you could throw a picnic in the middle of the court, and everyone would come (in fact, I should really think about doing just such a thing). Yes, there are little things we grumble about, but we also overlook most of those little things in the interest of neighborly peace. We don't have an official neighborhood watch because we don't need one -- everyone looks out for everyone else anyway, and that's how it should be. It is, in these ways, very much like the place where I grew up.
If we could encourage that kind of neighborly atmosphere to spread throughout the Arling Ave area in general, and add some little businesses, we would have quite a thing going, here. That seems like a better plan than moving, especially since DD has lived here, in this house, for some twenty years. The thing is, I don't know if we can make that happen. I'm an optimist about many things, but not pulling the area surrounding my lovely little cul-de-sac up by its bootstraps.
Anyway, I've now spent way more time writing this than I intended to. Basically, what I've been trying to say is something like this: being unwell, and feeling puny and weak as a result, makes it much easier for me to remember why people are afraid to try riding their bikes and walking for transportation in neighborhoods like mine. Poor infrastructure coupled with an entrenched car-culture (which is, in part, responsible for the poor infrastructure) make for unfriendly streets, especially for people on foot (lack of sidewalks isn't a problem if you're on a bike, but is a huge problem for pedestrians and creates unfriendly-looking neighborhoods).
My goal, when I leave home, is to escape from my neighborhood to places where I can relax on the road (once I cross Taylor, or proceed up Taylor, I have achieved escape). Normally, I rely on a combination of stupid, youthful bravado and proven physical prowess to do so; right now, I don't feel like I have either of those.
I would love to find a way to transform this neighborhood so it is no longer somewhere people want to escape, but instead a pleasant escape from the outside world, complete with pleasant places to spend time away from home.
Notes
*This is partly a lie. There are times that I like riding B-town Road: specifically, those times when I am feeling really strong, and keeping up with traffic, and I have the legs and the lungs to sprint like a cheetah.
Right now, though, is definitely not one of those times, and the thought of riding on B-town Road is up there with, you know, hanging from a cliff by my fingernails with a churning horde of hungry sharks a hundred feet below.
Normally, I would address this very development by jumping on my bike and riding until my legs fall off. However, I have decided to try to treat my body a little more kindly than that. As such, my goals for today include getting the two desert bikes tuned up and taking a little spin. I just need to figure out what 'a little spin' actually means.
What I'd like it to mean is rolling a mile or two, grabbing a coffee at Sister Bean's, and rolling home, on pleasant, quiet streets.
Where my neighborhood is concerned, though, one of the things I'm not really keen on is the fact that to get to the pleasant riding, you first have to escape the neighborhood by traversing a number of narrow, busy roads with poor visibility on which people routinely exceed the speed limit by a significant margin . The nearest really pleasant rides are Iroquois Park (so not doing that today) and Southern Parkway. The nearest destinations where one can sit and have a snack (unless you count the hospital, which probably has a coffee shop of some sort) are only mile or so away -- but it's a stressful mile, rather than a relaxing mile.
Right now, I really miss living in the Highlands, where even if I wasn't feeling too hot, I could easily go out and spend and entire day doing short flights from shop to shop, enjoying used books, ice cream, and other such pleasures. I didn't like riding on Bardstown Road* -- and still don't -- but the Highlands offers plenty of parallel routes and is dotted with neat retail and service venues.
Here, we are not completely without neat little shops to visit, but this part of town was definitely designed around the automobile. This 'goes double' for my neighborhood. Even Iroquois Park, which is almost literally in my back yard, is not directly accessible from Arling Court, or from Arling Ave. Walkscore.com rates my current address a 25/100 -- car-dependent, in their eyes, though I do fine without a car most of the time. My old address rated an 82 -- really quite high, for any address in the United States. The city's average stands at 48/100, almost twice as 'walkable' as Arling Court.
I don't know how or even if we could really transform my neighborhood into a truly walkable one. The Highlands (and its sister neighborhood, the Frankfort Ave/Crescent Hill corridor) works so well for walkers and cyclists because it was built before the private auto was a primary means of transit, and is zoned accordingly. Neighborhoods like mine, on the other hand, were deliberately designed to create a sense of separation between residential and commercial districts -- so even when they're close together as the crow flies, one can only make a direct trip by trespassing in people's yards, hopping fences, and so forth.
Across Taylor Boulevard (or New Cut), a similar neighborhood has dealt with this situation by creating easements to allow shortcuts for pedestrians and cyclists. My guess is that the neighborhood in question had no choice; kids walking to school follow the path of least resistance, and it only makes sense to codify that path, rather than punishing the kids. As a result, the neighborhood in question feels much more pedestrian-friendly, and if you're feeling lazy on your bike, you can use the cut-through paths to get from Point A to Point B without wandering from -4 to 4 and back to -4on the corresponding Cartesian grid in the process.
However, my neighborhood is triangular and is laid out across three rather forbidding hills. Its design doesn't really allow for neat little commercial spaces -- to incorporate them, some of the residential-zoned area here would have to be converted to commercial, and even then, the kind of commercial venues I'd really love to see here -- quirky Mom-and-Pop businesses -- would find it difficult to survive, hidden as they would be in the hills. Likewise, significant changes to infrastructure would have to be made to make those businesses accessible to the folks within the neighborhood: for example, sidewalks would have to be added (they should be anyway, but that's another fight), and speed limits would absolutely have to be enforced (they should be anyway, but that's also another fight).
It's not that I really believe this stuff couldn't happen -- but I live in a low-rent kind of neighborhood. We don't add a great deal to the city's tax base. We don't attract tourists. We have no commercial presence to speak of outside of a couple of small places that front on Taylor or Bluegrass, and I doubt anyone associates those businesses with my neighborhood. Technically, we don't even have a school; Hazelwood Elementary and Iroquois High School are, respectively, across Bluegrass and Taylor, and thus not really in my neighborhood, since those roads act as neighborhood boundaries.
Essentially, what I'm saying, is that while I live in the kind of neighborhood that most needs small businesses and improved infrastructure, it is also, by its nature, among those least likely to attract businesses and least likely to receive infrastructure updates from the city.
As someone who believes deeply in starting where you are and also in the power of just up and doing it, I'm not sure how to approach the problem of my neighborhood. We have seriously discussed moving, but part of me thinks that's the wrong answer -- not to mention throwing the baby out with the bath water.
While we don't really know anyone on Arling Ave, Arling Court is a neighborly place. It's a village-within-a-village. I like and trust my neighbors, and we're all on friendly terms. It's the kind of neighborhood where you could throw a picnic in the middle of the court, and everyone would come (in fact, I should really think about doing just such a thing). Yes, there are little things we grumble about, but we also overlook most of those little things in the interest of neighborly peace. We don't have an official neighborhood watch because we don't need one -- everyone looks out for everyone else anyway, and that's how it should be. It is, in these ways, very much like the place where I grew up.
If we could encourage that kind of neighborly atmosphere to spread throughout the Arling Ave area in general, and add some little businesses, we would have quite a thing going, here. That seems like a better plan than moving, especially since DD has lived here, in this house, for some twenty years. The thing is, I don't know if we can make that happen. I'm an optimist about many things, but not pulling the area surrounding my lovely little cul-de-sac up by its bootstraps.
Anyway, I've now spent way more time writing this than I intended to. Basically, what I've been trying to say is something like this: being unwell, and feeling puny and weak as a result, makes it much easier for me to remember why people are afraid to try riding their bikes and walking for transportation in neighborhoods like mine. Poor infrastructure coupled with an entrenched car-culture (which is, in part, responsible for the poor infrastructure) make for unfriendly streets, especially for people on foot (lack of sidewalks isn't a problem if you're on a bike, but is a huge problem for pedestrians and creates unfriendly-looking neighborhoods).
My goal, when I leave home, is to escape from my neighborhood to places where I can relax on the road (once I cross Taylor, or proceed up Taylor, I have achieved escape). Normally, I rely on a combination of stupid, youthful bravado and proven physical prowess to do so; right now, I don't feel like I have either of those.
I would love to find a way to transform this neighborhood so it is no longer somewhere people want to escape, but instead a pleasant escape from the outside world, complete with pleasant places to spend time away from home.
Notes
*This is partly a lie. There are times that I like riding B-town Road: specifically, those times when I am feeling really strong, and keeping up with traffic, and I have the legs and the lungs to sprint like a cheetah.
Right now, though, is definitely not one of those times, and the thought of riding on B-town Road is up there with, you know, hanging from a cliff by my fingernails with a churning horde of hungry sharks a hundred feet below.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Desert Bikes, Time to Reflect
This weekend made a delightful respite from the staggering heat and humidity that have characterized this summer. Temperatures were in the 80s -- comfortable, after several weeks of 100+ highs with heat indices one didn't even want to consider -- and a powerful storm on Saturday evening broke the humidity a bit (not to mention breaking a number of power lines and leaving 20,000 or so Louisvillians without electricity).
Of my seven tomato plants, one has produced a single tomato, which had finally ripened by Saturday morning (apparently, tomatoes don't like to ripen in extreme heat). I picked it but haven't yet eaten it. It's small, so I think I'm going to slice it into decorative rings and throw it on top of a salad. After ceremoniously presenting it to DD, I set it on the counter in the kitchen, and then we went out to hunt for cheap bikes.
Why cheap bikes? you may be wondering, Why not a nice 'cross bike, or a good mountain bike?
In a nutshell, the bikes in question are going to the desert at the end of the month -- specifically, the Black Rock Desert, which is a high plateau surfaced in bike-eating alkaline dust. We're going to Burning Man, where bikes are the primary mode of transit.
The bikes in question are coming with us. While I intend to strip them, clean them thoroughly, and replace any corroded parts when we return, we didn't want to put a whole lot of money into a couple of machines whose major purpose in life will be to roll around in the dust for a week once a year -- so the goal was to find a couple of inexpensive fat-tired bikes, preferably singlespeed cruisers, but anything with a reliable frame and two more-or-less round wheels would have worked.
In the end, we spent less than $100 for the two bikes and wound up with cheap, used 'mountain' bikes, but that's cool. DD found his bike -- a BigBoxMart Roadmaster with front shocks and a rather unusual frame -- prior to this weekend. On Saturday, I happened across a green-and-white Canada Dry bike with no shocks at all (shocks were a dealbreaker for me, the ones on cheap bikes are simply too heavy and annoying). It has crappy components, but it isn't ridiculously heavy (having mono has turned me into the ultimate weight weenie, for the moment), and the frame is actually surprisingly decent, with neat, solid welds and comfortable, upright geometry.
When we get back, I might strip it and pop some better components on -- alloy wheels, for example, would both be lighter and more resistant to the wrath of the desert in future years than its current all-steel, all-the-time wheelset will be in this year. I think it could be a pretty comfortable ride; slow but steady. In fact, the SodaBike might just become my grocery-getter. I am debating whether to call it SodaBike or Turtle (because slow and steady, like Aesop's Tortoise, which is not as much fun to say as 'Turtle"). Or both. "Turtle the SodaBike, Lord of the Desert, Bearer of Groceries" sounds like a suitably overwrought title for this, the humblest of my bikes. Plus, it gives me a theme for the stickers with which I intend to plaster the frame: turtles. I <3 turtles anyway.
I am, as you might have guessed, looking forward to playing with it. It will be nice to have a humble little getting-around bike with no aspirations to become much of anything else.
Speaking of aspirations, I am actually feeling grateful for this random bout of mono at what initially struck me as a really bad time. It has given me both impetus and, in a weird sense, permission to step back and re-evaluate what I'm doing with myself and why.
As I often do, I've been driving myself too hard in recent weeks. I have had trouble seeing that, because I'm not driving myself to the extent of human limitation. I know it is possible to push a human body further than I push mine, and so I neglect to account for the notion that I may have pushed mine as far as it's willing to go at this juncture.
I have been driving myself too hard because I've been frustrated with myself: frustrated that I managed to gain 17 pounds somewhere along the line and still haven't lost most of it; frustrated that I have missed so many of my cycling goals; frustrated that I don't seem to actually know how to set reasonable goals in the first place.
I have a rather unfortunate tendency to that question in black-and-white: how far can the human body be pushed, not how far can my body be pushed at this particular moment in time? or even, how far should I push my body right now?
Likewise, I'm not really great at knowing how to back down.
Well, I'm backing down, now.
This isn't to say I plan to quit racing, nor that I plan to skip 'cross season -- only that I think I'm going to re-evaluate my training goals and so forth for the next year. I am going to try not to feel like a failure if I miss a race or two this fall. I am going to try to keep remembering that I ride bikes for fun, and that fun doesn't have to mean driving yourself into the ground.
I've also realized that I sometimes use riding the bike as a way to escape the difficult emotional stuff. I have some really tough times behind me that I've been trying to sort out through therapy and also, in a less direct sense, through the relationships I have with the people in my life now. Sometimes, instead of taking my difficulties to the people in my life who love me and could help me work through them, I take them away on my bike and ride until whatever is torturing me from the inside shuts up. Then I can go back to acting like my usual happy-go-lucky self, as if there's nothing wrong, even though some people in my life -- especially DD -- know that I'm basically full of crap.
Sometimes I ride like the Devil is on my heels because, in a sense, the Devil is on my heels -- my own personal devil, the arbiter of my own personal hell. Endorphins do an awesome job when it comes to knocking pain, anger, and fear back into some dark corner somewhere -- but so do drugs, alcohol, and so forth. I don't suppose I can think well of myself for being someone who doesn't use drugs at all and who drinks only rarely if I am, instead, misusing my bike.
This isn't to say that going out and riding hard when you need some kind of emotional release or escape is always wrong. Sometimes it's okay. But when you do that all the time instead of doing the work to get free of your devils, of your own personal hell, then you are in the same boat as any drug addict, any alcoholic.
When I start really riding again, my challenge will be trying to keep a grip on that behavior. If nothing else, it is wrong to use something as beautiful and good as a bicycle, as beautiful and good as cycling, in that way.
Today, though, I'm just going to stay home, try to get the laundry done, maybe take a little walk, and rest a bit more. Tomorrow I have things to do that will take me out into the world, I and plan to ride some bike or another (on a bike, you can coast if you get tired). I'm not quite sure which bike I'll ride -- maybe even Turtle -- but I think I'm going to try not to ride Hg, because I always want to ride fast and hard on Hg (and also because, frankly, I don't know if I can handle standard road gearing yet).
It will be nice to ride slowly and easily and gently in this nice cool weather and imagine the coming of fall.
Of my seven tomato plants, one has produced a single tomato, which had finally ripened by Saturday morning (apparently, tomatoes don't like to ripen in extreme heat). I picked it but haven't yet eaten it. It's small, so I think I'm going to slice it into decorative rings and throw it on top of a salad. After ceremoniously presenting it to DD, I set it on the counter in the kitchen, and then we went out to hunt for cheap bikes.
Why cheap bikes? you may be wondering, Why not a nice 'cross bike, or a good mountain bike?
In a nutshell, the bikes in question are going to the desert at the end of the month -- specifically, the Black Rock Desert, which is a high plateau surfaced in bike-eating alkaline dust. We're going to Burning Man, where bikes are the primary mode of transit.
The bikes in question are coming with us. While I intend to strip them, clean them thoroughly, and replace any corroded parts when we return, we didn't want to put a whole lot of money into a couple of machines whose major purpose in life will be to roll around in the dust for a week once a year -- so the goal was to find a couple of inexpensive fat-tired bikes, preferably singlespeed cruisers, but anything with a reliable frame and two more-or-less round wheels would have worked.
In the end, we spent less than $100 for the two bikes and wound up with cheap, used 'mountain' bikes, but that's cool. DD found his bike -- a BigBoxMart Roadmaster with front shocks and a rather unusual frame -- prior to this weekend. On Saturday, I happened across a green-and-white Canada Dry bike with no shocks at all (shocks were a dealbreaker for me, the ones on cheap bikes are simply too heavy and annoying). It has crappy components, but it isn't ridiculously heavy (having mono has turned me into the ultimate weight weenie, for the moment), and the frame is actually surprisingly decent, with neat, solid welds and comfortable, upright geometry.
When we get back, I might strip it and pop some better components on -- alloy wheels, for example, would both be lighter and more resistant to the wrath of the desert in future years than its current all-steel, all-the-time wheelset will be in this year. I think it could be a pretty comfortable ride; slow but steady. In fact, the SodaBike might just become my grocery-getter. I am debating whether to call it SodaBike or Turtle (because slow and steady, like Aesop's Tortoise, which is not as much fun to say as 'Turtle"). Or both. "Turtle the SodaBike, Lord of the Desert, Bearer of Groceries" sounds like a suitably overwrought title for this, the humblest of my bikes. Plus, it gives me a theme for the stickers with which I intend to plaster the frame: turtles. I <3 turtles anyway.
I am, as you might have guessed, looking forward to playing with it. It will be nice to have a humble little getting-around bike with no aspirations to become much of anything else.
Speaking of aspirations, I am actually feeling grateful for this random bout of mono at what initially struck me as a really bad time. It has given me both impetus and, in a weird sense, permission to step back and re-evaluate what I'm doing with myself and why.
As I often do, I've been driving myself too hard in recent weeks. I have had trouble seeing that, because I'm not driving myself to the extent of human limitation. I know it is possible to push a human body further than I push mine, and so I neglect to account for the notion that I may have pushed mine as far as it's willing to go at this juncture.
I have been driving myself too hard because I've been frustrated with myself: frustrated that I managed to gain 17 pounds somewhere along the line and still haven't lost most of it; frustrated that I have missed so many of my cycling goals; frustrated that I don't seem to actually know how to set reasonable goals in the first place.
I have a rather unfortunate tendency to that question in black-and-white: how far can the human body be pushed, not how far can my body be pushed at this particular moment in time? or even, how far should I push my body right now?
Likewise, I'm not really great at knowing how to back down.
Well, I'm backing down, now.
This isn't to say I plan to quit racing, nor that I plan to skip 'cross season -- only that I think I'm going to re-evaluate my training goals and so forth for the next year. I am going to try not to feel like a failure if I miss a race or two this fall. I am going to try to keep remembering that I ride bikes for fun, and that fun doesn't have to mean driving yourself into the ground.
I've also realized that I sometimes use riding the bike as a way to escape the difficult emotional stuff. I have some really tough times behind me that I've been trying to sort out through therapy and also, in a less direct sense, through the relationships I have with the people in my life now. Sometimes, instead of taking my difficulties to the people in my life who love me and could help me work through them, I take them away on my bike and ride until whatever is torturing me from the inside shuts up. Then I can go back to acting like my usual happy-go-lucky self, as if there's nothing wrong, even though some people in my life -- especially DD -- know that I'm basically full of crap.
Sometimes I ride like the Devil is on my heels because, in a sense, the Devil is on my heels -- my own personal devil, the arbiter of my own personal hell. Endorphins do an awesome job when it comes to knocking pain, anger, and fear back into some dark corner somewhere -- but so do drugs, alcohol, and so forth. I don't suppose I can think well of myself for being someone who doesn't use drugs at all and who drinks only rarely if I am, instead, misusing my bike.
This isn't to say that going out and riding hard when you need some kind of emotional release or escape is always wrong. Sometimes it's okay. But when you do that all the time instead of doing the work to get free of your devils, of your own personal hell, then you are in the same boat as any drug addict, any alcoholic.
When I start really riding again, my challenge will be trying to keep a grip on that behavior. If nothing else, it is wrong to use something as beautiful and good as a bicycle, as beautiful and good as cycling, in that way.
Today, though, I'm just going to stay home, try to get the laundry done, maybe take a little walk, and rest a bit more. Tomorrow I have things to do that will take me out into the world, I and plan to ride some bike or another (on a bike, you can coast if you get tired). I'm not quite sure which bike I'll ride -- maybe even Turtle -- but I think I'm going to try not to ride Hg, because I always want to ride fast and hard on Hg (and also because, frankly, I don't know if I can handle standard road gearing yet).
It will be nice to ride slowly and easily and gently in this nice cool weather and imagine the coming of fall.
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