Author Archives: Andrew

Skunked!

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I rode to work in a stiff 20km/h headwind this morning.  I blame Adam for this.  After poking my head outside, I sent Adam a text – “20km/h headwind,  did you ride?”  “Hell yes! Cold though” came the quick response.  I sighed and pulled on my stretchy pants, muttering under my breath.  I was going to ride either way I suspect – had Adam not ridden, I would have ridden in and rightfully gloated all day.  In the garage I gazed from the elk-skin leather motorcycle gauntlets to the rubber-palmed mechanic’s gloves weighing the merits of each.  I opted to try the mechanics gloves but with a twist – I put them on the wrong hands so the rubber-coated side faced out with the idea that at least they’d be wind-proof.  They may have been, however their ability to transfer heat from my hands to the wind passing over them was in no way diminished.  It was absolutely freezing and I’m not sure my thumbs have yet forgiven me.  I’m going to need to find a set of gloves for the morning.  And knee warmers.  All this cloudy, windy weather is doing nothing for my calf-tanning either.

In direct view from the hallways outside my office are three flags from the neighbour’s site.  Most days I try to avoid looking at them as I don’t want to see them whipping away to the south, indicating the painful ride that awaits me.  Today I couldn’t help as they were buffeted angrily about in a myriad of directions.  It wasn’t until early afternoon that it seemed to settle in exactly as it had been in the morning – which meant a gusting 25-30km/h tailwind for the ride home.  Finally – payback for the constant headwinds.

This combined with the omnipresent desire to go faster, especially if someone is front of me created the conditions for a fantastic ride home.  I sprinted away from the first stop light and continued to mash and hammer away for the better part of the ride.  Breaks in traffic appeared when I needed them and the path was all but deserted.  Not a single rabbit to be had but plenty of inspiration in the suffering.  I made it to the train crossing in what felt like record time, spinning through the gates and across the little bridge.  It’s maybe 50 meters due east until you start heading north again but the east component of the southeast wind was kicking up something fierce and I ran into a wall, suddenly grinding away in the middle of my middle ring.  I finally wheeled back north and began the mental prep for the grind up to the pedestrian bridge.  Get some speed going, keep it up until it’s almost time to shift down, then shift up a gear or two , stand up and pedal.

Once again, eyes on my front tire, mentally climbing a ladder and trying to stay on my side of the path.  The Quitter thundering through my head – “hey, you’ve ridden your heart out up to here, why not relax?  Man, there’s nobody fool enough to be out here anyway”.  We battled back and forth and for a Quitter he’s persistent.  I took a quick glance and was almost to the end – “come on, look how hard you’ve worked and you’re this far, just pack it in and sit down”.  Then, salvation in a shadow.

He didn’t announce himself but suddenly there was a shadow and then a wheel and then he was riding by me.  A mixture of feelings and a jumble of thoughts crashed through.  “Hey – another soul!  Wait, he’s passing me!  He’s working hard for it…but he’s still seated.  He’s got to be 20 years older than me…yeesh.  That bike is sure familiar.”  And then it dawned on me.  Dark metallic grey, matching fenders, but there were no panniers and no purple jacket.  My purple rabbit was in disguise!

I was ever so briefly in his draft before he pedaled away, working for every meter.  I pushed my way to the top and vowed to catch him.  A quick sprint to get some speed up, sit down and drop a gear to get the cadence up and mash away until it’s time to grab another gear, then top gear.  Despite this my rabbit hadn’t just dropped me.  Hadn’t just gapped me – he’d all but vanished.  As I finally hit 32nd and started heading west, he was crossing the golf course entrance and riding along the last stretch before disappearing down to the substation.

I continued my furious mashing, jumping the curb and hitting the last section of path as he disappeared down the hill.  I debated the route – follow him around the substation in the knowledge that short of his heart-attack I wasn’t going to catch him or, cheat and cut along the guard rail bordering 32nd catching him at the crosswalk detour still in effect.  “What hollow victory that would be” I thought and I chased him down the hill almost bailing into brush in the process.  I saw him slowing at the detour and thought I might be able to catch up with him if he’s held up by traffic but alas, not today.  My purple rabbit had passed me, dropped me and gapped me.  Skunked by a rabbit.

Arriving home I fumbled out the iPhone and stopped Strava’s ride timer.  It still felt fast but I shoved it back into my pocket while it churned away plotting and saving and uploading and doing whatever else it does while I let myself into the yard and put my bike away.  I’ve not had a chance to look at the results yet so let’s shall we?

  • Average Speed- 27.3 km/h
  • Peak Speed:- 59.6km/h
  • Door-to-door- 28:36

Yes!  Has me wondering though – if I’m prepared to put that much charge into chasing down a guy clearly my senior, what am I going to do when I get chicked?

I’m Warm! Or Numb?

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True to their predictions this morning’s departure temp was a balmy 5 degrees.  That’s not warm, unless the day before was sub-zero.  3 kilometres into my ride I was pondering the following: My legs were cold when I left the house and now they don’t feel cold.  Is that because they’re warm from the work or numb from the cold?  I touched my thigh but got no feedback as my hand was also frozen.  I still don’t know if I was numb or just had frozen hands but I’m leaning towards yes.

Thomas dropped by for a short visit this morning and commented on trying to find me on our morning commute.  His being on schedule (and faster by an order of magnitude) a coincident of our individual space/time continua would be…would be a coincidence.  Riding with Thomas a couple of times a week would be nice training though as my ego wouldn’t permit me to do anything less than fry myself trying to keep up.

My first morning commute took just shy of 42 minutes at an average speed of 20km/h. Today a typical fair-weather commute is 30 minutes-ish and I was over-joyed the first time I broke that 30-minute barrier.  Not having a new goal however has allowed for some degree of slacking.  As I’ve grown into a 30 minute commute, my efforts have slackened, my speed flattened out and my progress slowed to a virtual halt.  My 30 minute commute is starting to look more like a 31.

You know what I need?  I need daily rabbits, as evidenced by today’s superb commute home.  Still cold as all get out for a guy in shorts but my head was in the game. What to my wandering eye did appear?  Three riders together, 600 meters out.  I put my head down and started pushing, shifting up another gear and bringing my cadence up.  One Two One Two One Two no wait circlescirclescirclescirclescirclescircles oh this is stupid.  You can’t pace yourself into spinning circles.  I wasn’t making much progress though – they were slowly getting closer but my plans of catching them before the train crossing were slipping away.  The train crossing came and my rabbits still had 150 meters on me, and they’d just passed someone else.  Wait…what’s that?  It’s my purple rabbit!

He was so tantalizingly close!  I’m starting the climb from the crossing to the pedestrian overpass, my daily grinder.  I stand up, grab one more gear and stare at my front wheel, a long staircase in my mind.  I pump away, “up up up up up up” each time imagining another step.  I dare not look more than a couple of meters ahead of me for staring at the bridge is akin to looking Medusa in the face – all of your resolve and your will suddenly vanish as you realize you’re only half-way there on the little false flat.  ”Up up up up”, it seems to go on forever.  Maybe they’ll all head across the bridge and my chase will be over.

No.  Not today.  The four of them continued north and I continued to chase.  Mildly delirious I sat down and dropped a gear to give the legs a break but being slightly detached I spun madly away at a cadence that gave me the appearance of one suffering an epileptic seizure.  ”Gear stupid, grab another gear”, I shifted back up, went back to studying my knees and mashed on.

In my imagination I am a work of physical prowess, muscles all firing in a symphony of power and ability, bike and rider one with the universe as we blaze across the path.  A harmonious creature doing as it is designed to do.  The reality I’m told, is slightly different.  Weaving and wobbling all over the path, the mere concept of keeping my line, much less an ability to discern and then organize the required muscular responses to follow it are simply not happening.  I am foaming at the mouth, spittle splashed across my cheek and drool on my chin. Sweat is dripping down the inside of my glasses which you would think might inhibit my vision but I’m no longer processing at 30 frames per second and my world has become much narrower.  I am vaguely aware of my lower jaw coming unhinged and dropping away to open up the path to my lungs as I greedily inhale the air around me.    I let out a deep, gutteral growl akin to an angry squirrel.  Mice everywhere point and laugh.

Meter by meter I reel them all in.  A block before my route departs from the path I catch them, all four bunched up on the path.  I follow them down from 32nd around the power substation on freshly paved trail but there is no point in passing now and to do so would require an extraordinary act of obnoxious obtuseness I opt not to engage.

In reviewing the ride data at home, it seems I’ve set a new personal record for that grinding climb.  4 rabbits and a new PR – that’s a fine ride indeed.

BRRR!

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Summer may not be officially over but it’s not nice out there.  Gone are the cool morning rides followed by blazing hot evening trips home.  This morning it was 8 degrees with a correspondingly cold wind from the SE, precisely the direction I was headed. Coming home it had warmed considerably to…12.  The wind kindly changed to blow from the north keeping the riding-into-the-wind theme going for the trip home.

My rather excellent route contains three kilometres of road with the rest on the bicycle path.  Due to the route reconstruction, the detour requires I cross the railroad tracks at the Trans Canada.  What are the chances that a train and I are going to be at the crossing at the same time?  100% today.  So with the wind gleefully in my face, I detoured off the path and climbed up to the 16th Ave overpass.  I didn’t shift soon enough and found myself out of cranking power a couple of meters from the top so hopped off to hike it up.  As I wheeled west along 16th, I couldn’t help but notice the last rail car disappear underneath me.

A lesser man might take this as a source of frustration if he were running late (notice a theme here?), into a freezing headwind and finding himself making an extraneous climb for no reason.  Know what though?  I was preoccupied with something else.  My little scramble up the hill carrying the bike was like floating.  It had been absolutely without effort, as though the slope wasn’t a slope and the bike carried itself.  Well that’s cool. I wondered if it had been a result of the headwind preload I’d been riding into.  The upside of climbing over the tracks is coming down the switchbacks on the other side – with the path to myself I rode down as fast as I dared, all my weight on the outside pedal as I leaned hard right then left then right again.  A wee reward for a wee climb.

Weather conditions for the ride home were equally miserable if marginally warmer (note to self – get some gloves).  I spotted a rabbit as I made the short climb up to Max Bell and not any old rabbit – a rabbit wearing a yellow jersey (Tour de France overall leader’s jersey colour).  How could I not chase?  As I was climbing out of Max Bell towards the overpass, he was disappearing on the west side.  This is perhaps my 2nd favourite section – a long gentle climb with a fast descent that, traffic permitting allows you to carry lots of speed as you cut the path and go up and over the dirt to the next path segment.  By the time I made the corner under the train bridge he was less than 10 meters ahead.  I reeled him in and passed him before the canal bridge.  I don’t care that his yellow jersey was in fact a yellow MEC jacket not unlike my purple one, nor that his fenders were rattling.  Or that he had loaded panniers.  I bid him a cheery nice day for a ride ‘eh  as I passed.  He looked absolutely miserable pedaling into the headwind.  I’d have smiled if I wasn’t already back in mouth-breather mode chasing down a runner.

This cold weather is playing with my resolve to ride as late and often as I can this winter.  The path is not one of those slated to be plowed during the winter which means I’d have to find a road route.  This does not fill my heart with anything but abject terror.  Calgary drivers are horrendous enough when you’re in another car.  On dry pavement.  On a sunny day.  Maybe I could ride the side roads to the path, shoulder the bike  and throw on a set of cross-country skis like some sort of bizarre biathalon/cyclocross mashup.  That sounds like something Thomas would do.  Whatever – I’m not quitting before Adam does.

Calling for 5 degrees tomorrow morning.  Might have to find some pants soon.