Hitting the Spot

When I don't have a goal, I'm convinced that my entire life is going to swing out of my control. If I live even 5 minutes without some sense of what the big picture will look like, then my mind reels. Give me something to focus on, now! Now! NOW! Why get out of bed? Why eat? Why not eat cookies all day? Why be nice to the people around me? Why get on my bike or go for a run or swim? Why save money? Why spend money? What's the point when you don't know exactly how it's all going to fit together into making me... whatever it is that's going to make me a happy, complete person? Okay, so maybe you're a bit more laid back than I am. At least I hope you are. But this should give you an idea about the kind of agony I've been going through this past week as I tried to sort out my life. Not knowing what my next race will be is one thing, but not knowing what sport? Oh the horror!

On Friday I took my bike out for the first time all week. The whole point of the workout was to punish myself. (This, by the way, is not a good reason for a workout.) I just wanted to ride around the same 10.5-mile loop for the remaining 12 hours that I felt I owed myself after dropping out of the 24-hour race. I rode about 56 miles with aching hamstrings, drinking only about a bottle and a half of water, and not swallowing a single morsel of food. Finally I had to admit to myself that my legs and stomach just weren't recovered enough for this ride. I went home even more frustrated than before, swearing that this time I really was going to rest.

That day my phone kept blowing up. "My friend broke his leg and can't do the 2-day ride to Maine and back this weekend! Please take his spot!" Grease Monkey's pervy roommate begged me.
"Come out and do the Climb to the Clouds century with us," my favorite bike shop guy suggested. "It's just me and the boys, but I know you can keep up. C'mon, it'll be fun!"
"Can we do a trail run on Sunday morning," Michelle asked. "I've been wanting to run in the woods, but I need my little wood sprite to come with me!"
Finally I ditched Michelle (who had asked me first) to do the Climb to the Clouds with my favorite bike shop guy. If my legs were so tight that I could barely touch my toes, and I didn't know how I would handle the 135 miles of hilly terrain (it made no sense to drive to the start when it was only 15 miles away), but I just needed to be around people and feel like I could ride again. I needed to PASS some folks. I needed to ride my bike FAST.

After a short night's sleep, I crept out of bed, pulled my bike and all my supplies out of the back seat of my car (where they'd been since Friday's failure), and headed to Starbucks to fill one of my bottles with coffee. I found Teen Heartthrob (one of the other bike mechanics) working the support tent, stood in the 20-minute porta-pottie line (4 stalls for 400 riders!), and finally tracked down my companion at his truck. I have no idea what nickname to give him, so I'll just call him Slick (because that's what he thinks he is when he gives you a hug just so he can grab your butt).

"I thought you were riding over here!" I said to him when I found him at his truck.
"Oh, sweetie, if you knew the night I had last night..." he moaned.
"Why? What happened?"
"Well my wife took my son up to the lake this weekend, and then I get this call mid-afternoon saying that there's a squirrel in the house. It had torn through the screen door and was running around the kitchen. I had to leave work early to chase this damned squirrel out the door and..."
"A squirrel?" I said. "That's why you couldn't ride here this morning?"
"Yeah... it was in the kitchen and..."
"A squirrel? That's what you're going with?"
"It was a squirrel in my house! And anyway, I got a call from a friend of mine last night who does Ironmans. They thought he had a heart attack on Friday and ran all the tests, but they all came back negative. So they put him on a treadmill and did a stress test. He passed with flying colors, and hit 197, which is pretty good for a 40-year-old. Then as soon as he stepped off the treadmill he went into defib. They still don't know what's wrong with him... And all this on the 6-month anniversary of my heart attack."

Let me officially introduce you to Slick. Slick has been a pro mountain bike racer. He's still fast enough at 48 to have a sponsorship from Trek, another from Micheline, another from Mavick, another from SRAM... and those are just the components that I know about. Then, last winter he had some chest pain. After a day and a half with the pain (and an hour and a half trainer ride in the attic of the shop), he finally went to the hospital where they diagnosed a heart attack. "It was just bad genes," he told me. "I came back better than normal on every test at my physicals. The doctors said that there was no way they could have seen it coming. He showed me the prevention list, and I was already doing everything on it. They say I'll be even faster now, though. I've been going all this time on only 3 cylinders. Now I can be firing on all four." But once the season started, and enough time had passed for Slick to take for granted again that he was still alive, he started getting disappointed. His aerobic fitness is the same as it always was, with a lactate threshold of about 180 watts (that seems low to me, but that's what he said), but his medications simply won't let his heart beat fast enough to ride hard and go anaerobic.
"I'm nervous that you guys are going to dump me on the hills," I said. "I'm not a very strong climber."
"Don't worry, honey. I'm not going to be going up any hills very fast," he promised. "And where is everybody anyway?" We couldn't find them, so we left on our own, just the two of us.

Almost right out the gate we caught up with a co-ed pack of MIT riders. "Now here's what we're going to do," Slick whispered. "We're going to let these guys do all the work, because they're wicked strong, and we're just going to sit in and be done with this before you know it." I was excited. I always saw these guys training on my commute to work, and always wanted to see how I stacked up. But they were always going in the other direction, and I was always on my phyxie. This was my chance.

The MIT riders set a stiff pace and I sat at the back just trying to blend in. I didn't care about passing anyone, just as long as no one picked me out as having bad bike handling skills. I still had my aero bars on my bike, which was pretty much the same as a big neon sign over my head saying "Steer clear! I don't know how to handle my bike!" Two of the MIT riders were on a tandem, and they kept splitting up the pack into two groups: those in front of the tandem, and those behind. I kept passing them on the hills (not an easy bike to get around!) and catching up to the front group, just as the road would head back downhill and the tandem's superior weight would propel them back into the gap just closing up in front of me. Stuck behind the tandem again, we came to a tight right turn with some lollygaggers right in front of us. It just so happened that I was just to the outside of the only MIT rider with aero bars at the time, and we hit the corner just as we caught a lollygagger in pink, so all three of us had to take the turn at the same time with me on the outside, Aero Bars in the middle, and Lollygagger on the inside. Suddenly, right in the apex of the turn, Aero Bars swerved. I gasped. Lollygagger looked none the wiser. We pulled through the turn and I dropped back a foot so that I could watch what Aero Bars was doing. She picked a line and swung unexpectedly to the outside, almost knocking me over. That was it. I sprinted to the front of the pack to take a pull. "Hey, snookems!" I said to Slick when I got there.
"Hey, baby doll. What are you doing riding so fast?"
"I don't let anyone cut me off more than two times in a minute without getting the hell out of their personal space," I said before putting in another acceleration to get to the front of the pack where I could pull out of the middle of the road. When I got there though, I had picked up so much momentum that I shot right off the front and rode alone for a few minutes before anyone caught up. I had done it! I had DROPPED a group of competitive riders. I could never hold them off, but I'd had enough in me to get away.
"What the hell was that?" Slick asked once the pack had swallowed me again. "Who cut you off?"
"Fucking aero bars!" I pouted, seeing open road in front of me and hunkering down into my own aero bars to give my wrists a rest for a second.
"Fucking triathletes," he said facetiously.

Then the first hill came along. It was a real pack smasher, about half a mile at a 10-15% grade. I expected to fall far off the back like I always do. I picked a gear just one harder than I would have liked to have taken normally and pounded my pedals. For a second the pack pulled away, and then I started catching them. Then I started passing them. My legs loaded up and I went to an easier gear. I passed more people. Now I was in the front part of the pack. I could see the crest of the hill and clicked back up to the harder gear and pushed over the top as the grade mellowed out. I had stayed with the pack, on a hill! I even got some extra elbow room and rest on the way back down since I had more momentum than most of the other riders carrying me over the other side.

Over the next couple of miles the MIT guys in the front stepped on the gas, the group split, and we lost the group behind the tandem. Now we were really riding with the big boys, and I had the thrill of riding faster than I could ever ride alone. Unfortunately, Slick hit a bump and knocked his saddle nose-up, so we had to stop after about 20 minutes so that he could adjust it and one MIT group, then the other got away from us. Just then Teen Heartthrob pulled up in the support truck and I yelled "OH MY GOD! ARE YOU ONE OF THE JONAS BROTHERS?!?!?!" He was laughing so hard that he forgot to check and make sure that Slick had everything that he needed, and drove off. Luckily, Slick had everything that he needed.

The first MIT crew was gone, but before long we caught up to the post-tandem group and picked up a rider in a Harvard kit (who knows what she was doing with the MIT crew?) riding a creaky, squeaky old Orbea that looked like it needed a tune-up about 10 years ago. "Did you see what she's riding?" Slick asked.
"You mean that rusty old hunk of junk with the saggy chain? What about it?"
"Yeah, but she's riding with only a 23 on the back!" In other words, she was riding without two of her easiest gears! On a double! Not surprisingly we lost her once we started hitting the serious hills, much to Slick's disappointment. "What did you do to my girlfriend, bitch?" he asked.
"Don't call me that! Aren't I good enough for you?"
"Grease Monkey would kill me. And anyway, I don't want to deal with her being bitchy when you dump her for me."
"Oh whatever, you grab her ass too. I should kill you for that. Come on, let's go." I was secretly satisfied that no woman had really dropped me yet. The only reason any female had gotten away from me was because we'd had to stop. There was even one androgenous-looking, über-aero tri-lady who had thought she'd dropped me, only to have me catch her up and pass her to ask where the next water stop was.

Time was going so quickly! We hit the foot of Mt. Wachusett and One Mile Road so quickly! Much to my relief, they were re-paving the auto road, so we would only have to climb the mile up One Mile Road to the Ranger's Station, and then come down off the mountain without climbing the last 3 miles to the top. I pulled to the left to ride around the solid stream of slower riders and pushed hard up the steady 7% grade, losing Slick behind me. As I climbed, I not only had a gear left, I still had enough air to have a short conversation with the guy hanging next to me, despite my heartrate monitor screaming that I shouldn't be riding above 180 bpm.
I waited for Slick at the top, chomping on the first morsel I'd eaten since leaving the house (a Lära bar) and then we were rewarded with a long, fast 40-mph descent all to ourselves without anyone around to look out for. When we pulled in to the first rest stop, Teen Heartthrob was there helping the clueless masses ("Lady, you have no front brake pads. Where did they go? Yes. I do think that's unsafe. Yes, I do think that means that you shouldn't keep riding!"). "Is it true that you turned down a date with Hannah Montana?!" I asked in a loud voice so that all the clueless masses could hear me. He laughed and the clueless masses looked confused, and a little impressed. I ate 2 fig newtons before I was cornered by Curley, eating a can of cold Spaghetti Oh's. He seemed disappointed that I wasn't a pro cyclist yet, and I couldn't wait for Slick to save me. "No wonder he's gained 10 lb. since last year," Slick said once we were back out on the road. "He was eating a can of Chef Boyardee... and did I hear him say that he'd only just picked up the rout 10 miles ago?" Awwww, and all this time I'd thought that Slick hadn't been listening. My knight in shining armor!

We picked up another small pack of riders, but I kept losing Slick, and the time that it would take him to catch me was getting longer and longer. "You're killing me, bitch!" he said, burping in the middle of the sentence, when he finally caught me on the wheel of a strong climber. Don't call me that!"I should have eaten my own food. I don't feel good at all." I hadn't eaten much of anything all day either, and I must have been pushing 100 miles at that point. Then I dropped the pack by running a red light. Everyone else spotted the undercover cop and stopped to wait for the light to change. When some of them caught up, I slowed down, expecting to find Slick at any moment. He never showed. I topped off my bottles at the next stop, ate a Kind bar out of my pocket, and waited and waited for Slick. When we finally left again, we were alone again.

Somewhere around here my garmin stopped. I laid off the gas. Slick seemed to be having a pretty bad day, and leaving him to ride alone just so I could ride alone slightly faster didn't seem like much fun for either of us. Around the 90-mile mark (about 105 for me), I finally started to notice the effects of not eating much all day. All I'd had were 2 fig newtons, a Lära bar, and a Kind Bar. All I'd had to drink had been a bottle of coffee, one Powerade, and about 3 bottles of water. About 700 calories and 2.5 qt of liquid (coffee doesn't count, since it's a diuretic) in about 5 hours on an 85-degree sunny day. I started dipping into my bento box and trying to stomach the sugary candies that I was so sick of. That's when Slick seemed to put on the gas. Either that or I was just running low on gas. Either way, I was pushing the pedals HARD and we caught up to the group that I'd been riding before I stopped to wait 5 minutes for Slick at the last rest stop. On hundred miles deep, and I was still racing, working hard to hang on to Slick's wheel. It felt great! This is why I fell in love with biking!

"This rout is so stupid!" Slick told me around mile 90. "The finish is about 4 miles up that road, but they make you do all these stupid loops around Concord just to hit the 105 miles." We rode and rode, and then we hit Concord center at about mile 101. When I saw arrows pointing away from the school and pointing me home, I groaned.
"I'm not going to ride 3 miles towards my house, then turn around, ride those 3 miles back just for a sandwich, and then turn around and ride the 3 miles again back home!" I complained. "Fuck the pretzels, I'm going home!" I headed home, despite having emptied my water bottles. As I rode over 5 miles of the world's worst pavement with another rider still following me, I must have lead him through every pothole and sand patch in the road. "Sorry," I said. "I'm having a bit of trouble seeing the road. My reaction time is a bit off." Finally he peeled off and went home and I continued on by myself, staring hard at the road, trying to concentrate on picking a line. I didn't remember riding on rough roads being this difficult. Then a tiny little person passed me and looked over its shoulder. What was wrong with that person? Why was it so tiny? I wondered. It took me a second to realize that it was a little boy of about 10 drafting behind his dad. Great, now I was being passed by a kid. By the time I got home and got some water and food into me, I was pretty wiped, but SATISFIED with my riding for the first time in a long time.

I'd ridden 125 miles, and I'd ridden them HARD, right up until it was time to go home. We'd hit the 100-mile mark in about 5 and a half hours, including stops. I'd averaged about 19.45 mph for a very rolling 100 miles (over 3,500' of climbing). I'd kept up with everyone I'd ridden with; even the guys, even on the hills. And I'd even dropped Slick (even though he was having a bad day, and even though his heart meds wouldn't let him ride hard). I had passed a guy in an Mdot jersey. Finally I had that high back from a perfect ride.

<a href="http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/ma/concord/860216623827"&a to the Clouds 2008, from the cue sheet</a& href="http://www.mapmyride.com/find-ride/united-states/ma/concord"&a more Bike Rides in Concord, Massachusetts&am

While I'd been riding, I was trying to think about why things were going so well. "I've been thinking..." Grease Monkey said when I got back and told her about my great ride. I think that the reason that I'd had such a great ride was because I had other people to chase. "Maybe you just need people around you," Grease Monkey suggested. I just get so lonely when I'm out there riding so much by myself. I like riding alone, but there's only so much you can motivate yourself to push hard. "When you go out and do your rides, you're always by yourself all day," Grease Monkey mused. "It's impossible to keep yourself motivated when you spend that much time by yourself." I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I very rarely have anyone who can keep up with me over long distances. So even when other people are doing the same ride as I am, either I spend the whole time waiting for them, or I ride alone. "At that race last week, you were really cooking. Most people just weren't riding as fast as you were," Grease Monkey went on. "I think that you just need to be around people a little bit more. That's when you ride best, and that's when you seem to enjoy riding the most."
"That's exactly what I was thinking." It's so nice to be with someone who understands me!

So I've made a decision. I need to have fun on my bike again. I don't want it to feel like work anymore. I'm not going to give myself any more cycling-specific goals this season. A little clarification on what I meant in my last post when I said, "I don't think that there's a future in triathlon for me." I'm not talking about turning pro or anything. I think that if I don't do Ironman Cozumel, then I'll never do another ironman again. I also think that if I do do Ironman Cozumel, then I'll never do another ironman again. I do want to do one more before I bow out of the sport altogether. So I've decided to do the Ironman, to not put too much pressure on the result (because, if I were to do too well, then I might qualify for Kona; and I don't want to have ANY MORE TRIATHLONS hanging over my head). Then I'm going to enjoy my offseason. Next season I'll hit the "Reset" button. I'm going to take everything that I've learned this year, and next time I'm going to do it right. But for now, I'm going to go back to what I understand and have some fun passing people.