Author Archives: Andrew

Stuffed Sausage

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I’ve not been very smart with my eating this winter.  I succumbed to the “well I could eat that when I was training/riding/etc.” line of rationalization time and again over the winter.  The obvious result?  I feel like a stuffed sausage.  I havn’t gained back all the weight I’d lost last season but enough that I no longer feel comfortable.

I could blame the numerous temptations between my last ride in November and this spring – the multi-day gorgefest that is Christmas, then New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day and finally Easter.  I could point the finger of blame at my Awesome Wife who has developed a wicked skill set in the kitchen that includes the ability to whip up a dozen chocolate-chip cookies in a matter of minutes or piles of pancakes, sausages and bacon on a Sunday morning.  I could pass the buck to my evil co-workers who insist on bringing in three dozen doughnuts every Thursday.

I could, but I won’t.  Nobody held me down and poured gravy down my throat.  Nobody held a weapon-shaped pastry to my head and forced me to eat it.  Nobody made me eat seconds.  And thirds.  It’s nobody’s fault.  I’m going to find nobody and kick their ass just as soon as I can un-wedge myself from this chair.  When did they start making chairs so narrow anyway?

The other day I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in years.  Eric and I appeared ever so momentarily in the Calgary-shot television show Viper (that lasted only slightly longer than our appearance) in the mid-90s.  We’d been hired to be background tough-guys in a bar fight scene and for generally prowling around on our motorcycles.  Eric was a power-lifter of considerable size, an imposing presence behind the counter at the motorcycle shop.  We affectionately nick-named him No-Neck which we only ever said out loud when out of his reach.  I on the other hand was trying hard to create that same presence with my long hair and long moustache and the large chip on my shoulder.  I can say with certainty that all it got me was attention from the wrong people.

At any rate, Eric was almost unrecognizable when I saw him again having lost upwards of 60 pounds from the last time I’d seen him.  I genuinely would not have recognized him if we hadn’t been standing in our old place of work.  The change was remarkable and inspiring.

Speaking of inspiration, there’s a wager about.  It is, as last year’s was, a gentlemen’s wager meaning only bragging rights and pride are on the line and ethical behaviour is assumed.  No giving your GPS to someone else to put miles on.  No driving it around in your car.  No hacking the data files.  Well, no hacking your own data files at any rate :-D

The wager is simple: first rider to 1000km.  I suppose there are three wagers – 1000km, 1500km and 2000km.  Considering I managed just shy of 2000km all of last season (while still winning the last rider riding wager), this is a tall order.  It’s also serious motivation.  For Adam.

I noted earlier that Adam would ride to work with one foot missing (it’s just a flesh wound) if there was competition on the line, real or imagined.  What I should have done was bet that we could get Adam to ride in the snow, sleet and rain as I would have one that in the first 7 days.  I was convinced that with the snow on my car the other morning, even Adam wouldn’t have ridden.  Wrong.  Not only had he ridden while I was brushing heavy, wet snow from my car, he had the audacity to rub it in.  Beating Adam to 1000km is going to be a significant challenge.

The Cheater has all but stopped riding to work.  In fact I don’t think I’ve seen his bike there once this week (as opposed to my much more dedicated twice).  This is not to say he’s not riding however.  Alberto has been taking advantage of his wife-less, kid-less domestic situation and putting on 40 kilometers after work.  This will not do.  This will not do at all.  While Adam and I are busy filling our familial obligations, The Cheater is riding.  While this is clearly cheating, the Council of Gentlemen’s Wagers has determined that it is within the confines of our agreement and thus must be permitted.

There is hope for me yet however.  Chris H. you may remember has been blessed with a compact wind profile, thus enabling him to handily embarrass the rest of us with his jackrabbit speed.  He’s managed to log a massive three thousand meters this season.  I just might be able to fend him off if I can maintain my progress.

This leads me to the present conundrum.  Well, it is for me – it clearly wouldn’t be for Adam.  Depending on which electronic gadget one consults for weather information, tomorrow ranges anywhere from slightly wet but warm to down-right miserable with the threat of a double head-wind gusting to 33km/h.  It is with resignation that I set my cycling clothes in the bathroom and dig out my plastic pants.  I will ride tomorrow, in the rain, in a double-headwind, in my plastic pants.  Can you feel my enthusiasm?

Damn you Gentlemen’s Wager.

There it is.

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A combination of weather and motivation kept me off the bike until this morning.  In truth I missed only one decent day of riding, ostensibly blaming my tender sit bones for my lack of effort Wednesday.  Thursday and Friday the weather was not conducive to riding, though I saw at least one individual fighting his way up the pedestrian overpass in the heavy wet snow.  It did not look like he was having “fun”.  Unless you call losing a wrestling match to a bicycle fun.  It should be noted that The Cheater continued to ride despite the snow and the rain.  More evidence of his cheatinglyness I propose.

This morning’s ride was brought to you by an optimism heretofore unseen in 2012.  Sunday night, my BB Playbook predicted a decent morning with a gentle cross wind in the morning and likely a wee tail wind on the way home.  I finally serviced the Rescue bike, long overdue then packed my bag, laid out my clothes and hit the pillow with dreams of enthusiastic cycling.

So it was that I departed full of enthusiasm and clipless-borne trepidation.  The air was brisk frigid, considerably colder than the -2 various technologies were reporting and my eyes watered in protest.  While I love my Sidi Dominators, they are somewhat more drafty than my old runners.  My toes are glad to see the warm socks waiting at work.  Note to self – I need to make a sock heater for work.

Riding clipless…clipless – what a misleading term.  There may not be a clip, but there’s a cleat and that cleat is firmly locked to your pedal.  We even say that we’re “clipped in”.  My little clipless-driven tip-over has added an element of commitment to my ride.  Not in a positive, affirming fashion wherein I’m firmly dedicated to riding.  Rather a feeling of no choice when approaching steep climbs.  It’s great that I can stand on the pedals (and pedal) over almost any terrain now, but there’s a distinct lack of freedom lurking behind every long uphill slog.  I find it doubly strange that this concerns me when I wouldn’t ordinarily contemplate putting a foot down except in the most dire of climbs.

I’m still trying to find a comfortable position for my left cleat.  My quad starts to complain much earlier than the right and for the moment I’m blaming the cleat position.  Of course it’s equally probable that my left leg is doing more work but I’m finding that much harder to gauge.  As a tech nerd, I’d like to build a little force measuring tool into each crank lever but I can see where that would lead.  Soon I’d look like a cycling Borg with wires and gizmos everywhere, monitoring, measuring and checking everything instead of just riding (and enjoying) the darn thing.  Still…

That’s all secondary however.  My first two rides this year were…hard.  Mentally humiliating.  Hills that I faced with determination and motivation last season are winning.  The ‘fast’ sections of the path are no longer fast.   Aware of just how bad I am sucking against my own previous performance.  Though, as I write this I am reminded of my first ride alone on the (not very)SuperCycle.  I am not there now, so there’s that.

Cold, nervous about the pedals, unhappy with my previous performance.  All of this weighing as pedaled out of the driveway and into my world.  It didn’t take long before it started falling away.  Today was going to be different.

The cold soon disappeared into the background as I focused on my breathing.  Pe-dal cir-cles pe-dal cir-cles.  I found a rhythm that worked and stuck with it, shifting gears to keep the cadence up as the terrain ebbed and flowed underneath me.  There it is.  This is what I’ve been missing.  Pushing but not flailing.  Succeeding.  Climbing.  Grooving. Challenging and rewarding.  I smiled, in my head at least.  Outwardly it probably appeared that I was having a stroke.

I’m loving it again.  I know I’m slow and have some catching up to do.  I know I will have days of double headwinds and days with no gas in the tank but I just don’t care!  I’m an addict and I want more.

It looks like the snow is going to pay us a visit yet again tomorrow and possibly Wednesday though this being Calgary it’s equally probable that it will be +20 and sunny.  I’m hoping for the latter.  I want to ride!

 

 

 

Absolutely Nothing

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When the alarm went off at six this morning, that is exactly how much enthusiasm, desire and willingness I had to crawl out from under the warm covers for this morning’s ride.  It was not helped when I pulled my phone under the covers and pried my bleary eyes open enough to check the weather.  “Current conditions -2, feels like -6, wind from the SE at 15”.  Urgh.

Not only must I rouse myself from a too-short sleep in a perfectly warm bed in a silent house, I must do it in the knowledge that the house is cold, it’s cold outside and I get to fight a headwind all the way to work.  I’m unprepared mentally and want nothing more than to crawl back under the covers for another hour.  So I do.  Or rather, I try.  For the next 30 minutes my ego successfully forces me awake by reminding me that Adam will have ridden this morning despite the wind and chill.  I’m pretty sure Adam would have ridden with one foot chewed off by a cougar this morning, furiously pumping along with one cleated foot – and making good time of it too.  Such is the nature of my esteemed co-worker and co-rider.

Ego won.  I dragged my sorry self out of bed, cursing everything and everyone and my ego for good measure.  I crawled into the shower and fought back against Ego telling myself I might be up, I might be in the shower, I may have all the stretchy-gear in the bathroom with me, but I haven’t said I’m going to ride.  I rode.  Ego won again.

I was just over a click (a kilometer for those not versed in Canadian slang) into my ride when I tried to adjust my Fredly mirror and realized it wasn’t there, nor was my helmet.  Safety said go back and get the helmet but Lazy ignored it and pushed on.   It was a poorly played move on Lazy’s part as I’m certain that upon arriving at the homestead, Prudence and Lazy would have teamed up, pointing out the late hour and the certainty of being late for work and I would have driven.  Lazily.  As it turned out, too lazy to turn around  meant riding into a headwind for the next 35-ish minutes, getting passed and watching others drift further and further from my reach.

Gone is the rabbit-hunting Cat-6 predator of last summer.  In its place sits a doughnut-fattened gelatinous blob masquerading as a rider.  With each rotation of the pedals I cursed the doughnuts, the chocolates, the cake, the jelly belly beans, the second and third helpings.  I cursed my slothfulness and my remarkable ability to find an excuse to avoid the fluid trainer all winter.  I cursed the cigars I’d so anxiously saved to smoke in my new heated garage.  I cursed  the wind, the cold, my frozen head.  Then I ran out of things to complain about. Not that I’d let that stop me.

The constant awareness that this moment, this unpleasantness (for we can’t really call it suffering in the broader scheme of things), the burning legs, the lungs that feel four sizes too small – that working through and around and over, this is what creates success.  It’s a metaphor for life.  Taking the car and driving to work gets me to the same destination in less time, but at what price?

I arrived at work a mixture of sweating and freezing, out of breath and out of steam.  I felt ill.  I had a headache.  I wanted a nap.  Actually I always want a nap, that’s not new.  I want a nap right now in fact.

Calgary’s wind has a rather nasty habit of switching directions late in the afternoon.  A headwind in the morning often spins into a headwind for the ride home – I find this unfair.  The wind it turns out, is entirely indifferent to my judgement of it’s fairness or lack thereof.  Occasionally however it works in your favour – a tailwind in the morning and another at night.  Or, like today, you have a headwind in the morning and tailwind at night.  And oh, what a tailwind it was!  30km/h push from the south.  That’s what I’m talking about!

It struck me on my flight home this afternoon that when we have a headwind and we’re working exceptionally hard to maintain a pace, it is a grinder wearing at the psyche, a bully pushing you around.  Turn it around and throw the same effort level into your cycling and suddenly you are FLYING!  You pedal furiously, you’re sweating like mad and your air speed is the same.  But the sensation is not the same at all.  This is rewarding.  This is exhilarating.  We are hard-wired for ground-speed ladies and gentlemen.

So it was in this glorious wind-assisted cycling daydream that I was rudely awakened by the arrival of what is now known as the Sherpa climb.  Playtime was over and it was time to pay.  Up, up, up we go getting slower by the meter.  My legs are burning, my lungs are burning and I’m a little dizzy at the end of the first rise.  I pedal on, now with a crosswind towards the next section.  I roll up to the stop sign, clip out with my left foot, fail to get my right foot unclipped and immediately begin falling to the right.

There is a flurry of activity in my brain as pain centers begin to register the incoming signals.  We’ve got early reports of gravel damage to the right hand but nothing in the region of the previous break.  Confirmed surface damage to the right knee, extent unknown.  Hold up!  Incoming from the right sit-bone vicinity…sounds like there’s going to be some swelling there.  Pride reports major damage!

I watched my little black bell, or rather pieces of the little black bell bounce out beside me before I finished the roll onto my back.  I laid there for a moment, an embarrassed smile on my face as if to tell the cars whizzing by on Centre Street that while my pride had gone into hiding, I was in fact fine.  In reality, I was laying there thinking Damn!  They got me.  That’s what I get for thinking I beat the clips without paying my dues.  Pride goeth before a fall.  Literally.

I must give props again to the rather amazing ability of my MEC stretchy pants to withstand the abuse I dish out.  In the fall fall that broke my wrist and bruised up my right side, the pants came out with nary a scrape.  I am pleased to report that while my flesh suffered a reasonable scrape and exposed some of the tender stuff lurking beneath the skin, my stretchy pants are no worse for wear after today’s spring fall.

I think I’m going to go have that nap.