Bigorexia. Biggerxia. Body Dysmorphia. However you decide to spell it, it all means the same thing. If an anorexic can’t be too thin, a biggerexic can’t be too huge. Steroid huge. Obsessive size.  Not quite big enough.

I’ve always been a yoyo – rail-skinny, pretty fat, skinny-fat, fat-fat, skinny, fat…wheeee. Always self-concious, always aware of being too skinny (weak) or fat (and still weak).  Bring on the self-esteem issues!

15 years ago I plowed into weight training at full speed and in short order I was measuring my food, buying all kinds of strange potions and powders and generally being obsessive about it all. It worked, sorta.  In day-to-day trim I weighed 180 flabbyish pounds (I’m 6 feet tall) but had bounded up to 195 and still didn’t have arms to fit my shirt as tightly as my belly. A beach ball with stick arms. As I started training and learning about food, I dropped down to 170 and then slowly back up to 197. This time instead of the 24% bodyfat reading I’d received when I started, I was down to 15%. More muscle than I’d ever possessed and in the best shape I’d ever been. I wanted more. I fought my way up to 205 pounds at 11%. Not enough. I pondered pharmaceutical assistance in my Lorax-like quest of biggering and biggering, but could never find enough money. I managed to avoid steroid trip not so much by wise choice as by accident.

I floated in and out of the gym as I got married and moved to the other side of the world, came back, moved to Europe and came back yet again. I never did find that combination of size, strength and confidence, always dragging along that travel-trunk of insecurity.

One of my aspirations while training was to take my scrawny flabby self from 180 pounds to 220. “6 foot, 220″ always had a nice ring to it.  I’ve achieved that. And more. Three months ago (12 months now) I peaked at a solid 230 pounds. And by solid I mean undeniable, not rock-hard. 230 pounds of fat-ass. Egads – this is not the type of 220 I wanted to be!!

Enter today – July 2012.  Riding has made a huge difference – my mood, my cardio, my overall health and of course my weight.  Certainly cured me of wanting to be bigger – hauling one’s self up a climb becomes increasingly arduous as your weight goes up – 20 pounds is a big deal.  People don’t give 20 pounds the respect it deserves – go to grocery store and throw 20 pounds of ground beef in your cart.  That’s a lot of meat!

As I get closer to 40, I am more comfortable in my own skin.  I am who and what I am – I gain weight easy but I’ve got a skinny structure underneath it all.  I’ll never be a healthy 220 pounds – it would either be a fat 220 (again) or a drug-assisted version.  I’m okay with that, meaning, I’m happier being a lean, healthy 185 than a muscular yet unhealthy 220.  I’m certain that there is no combination of size and strength to address insecurity.  That’s a beast one must slay on their own.

After watching bits and pieces of the TdF this year, I am amused by the “cycling physique”.  Enormous, powerful quads and hamstrings (thighs), muscular calves, skinny torso and the arms of a starving supermodel.  The reason there’s so much carnage with  cyclists when there’s a pile-up – apart from having just .5mm of stretchy-pants between them and the pavement – is their lack of mass exposing their skeletons and making them fragile.  Dainty.  5’11″ and 140 pounds.  This year’s TdF champion is 6 foot 2 and half inches tall and weights less than 170 pounds.  Most of it is their thighs I’m sure.

Man, if you ever wanted a dirty sport for doping – there you go.  Now in fairness, the testing is driving the users out of the sport slowly but surely.  As the testing science starts to catch the doping science, the peloton gets cleaner and cleaner and 2012 looks to be the beginning of a new era.  Two of the three podium winners for this year – Brad Wiggins and Chris Froome, both riding for Team Sky out of Britain – are outspoken anti-doping advocates.  Wiggins took the lead early and never let it go showing that, after 15 years of the dirtiest cycling around, clean riders aren’t only competitive, they’re champions.

Oh, but how do we know they’re not cheating?  In fairness, we don’t.  It’s easy to prove someone did – hey lookie here, a failed drug test from athlete L.  Much harder to prove that someone didn’t.  We have no failed tests, but we believe he cheated.  Mathematics to the rescue!

I love this stuff – as an engine fanatic (I loooove automotive engines) I learned everything I could about them, digging deeper and deeper and unearthing all sorts of mathematical models.  Imagine how pleased I was to find that similar mathematical models exist for people!  An engine can pump X amount of air in a given time frame.  Using known data, we can determine the reasonable expected performance of any given engine without having to actually measure it.  When it performs well outside our expectations then either our data presumptions are wrong or they’re cheating.  With people it’s even easier – there’s far fewer criteria.  With a small handful of exceptions, none of which are racing in the Tour de France, we’re all 2-lungs, 1 heart, air-breathing, calorie burning machines.  We vary in how much air we can breathe or how efficiently we pedal a bike (or run) or how much of our food is turned into energy at the pedal but we all function within a range, elite cyclists in a pretty narrow and specific range.  That translates to a specific output (watts) per kilogram of body mass.  That power output can be used to predict performance, particularly when climbing.  So working the math on a rider’s weight and hill-climbing performance, we can determine their power output per kilogram with pretty good accuracy.  Compare their actual output performance with the statistical norms and tah-dah!  We have a winner, or a cheater.

So – how do we know that Brad Wiggins and the rest of the Tour leaders aren’t cheaters?  Again, we don’t – but we can say that their performance ranks where it should.  In fact, in  the climbing stages of the 2012 race, the best times wouldn’t have got them into the top 40 just a couple of years ago.  They’re riding like elite human not superhumans and they’re winning.  Now that’s big.

They look innocent...

Most days I shuffle these evil things off my desk and out of my office but today I was invincible – no need to move anything.  I subsequently paid the price for my arrogance.

It started with a Tim Bit – a doughnut hole marketing scheme and as it turns out, an even thinner wedge end.  It is food from the devil.  Evil.  The bite-sized bit lures you into thinking you can have just one but it is truly the gateway drug.  By the time the dust had settled, there was spittle and drool splattered about the place, my desk littered in doughnut-remnants, evidence of the carnage that had just ensued.  The look on my co-workers faces was a mixture of horror and disgust with a trace of admiration.  I won’t add to you, my dear reader’s discomfort by putting an exact number on the victims, it is enough to know it was sufficient to feed a house of aspiring runway models for a week.

Having not ridden for a week I was already enjoying an overwhelming sense of self-loathing before my hubris had been thoroughly vanquished by the devil’s food.  Full of easily-accessible sugary fuel and disdain for my activity level, I took advantage of today’s Chinook – the wind, not my bike – to get out for a ride before the sun went down.  I headed north along the canal path, a section I don’t often get to ride.  It’s been under construction most of the summer and eventually fell off my ride list which is funny because I don’t have a ride list.  From 32^nd I headed for Nose Creek Park and its short, steep hills to try to erase some of the day’s earlier carnage that was settling into my waist.

I made it to McKnight before the universe reminded me I know naught about riding in general and less about riding in faux winter.  As I came out from under McKnight, in a gentle right-hand corner, I realized the shadow across the path was in fact a thin layer of wet mud.  Immediately after that realization I learned that it was in fact a thin layer of very slick mud.  The front end washed out and two things went through my head in quick succession:  WWTS and; oh man – these stretchy pants are almost new!  Luckily for me, the slick mud gave way to a skiff of gravel providing a relatively low-friction surface on which to smash my hip without the added insult of melting the lycra to my thigh.

Enter here but beware the trolls

Fall down here (the trolls did it)

Remarkably there was no damage to the stretchy pants and no damage to the bike save for more character on the previously-characterized bar end.  My pride was bruised but otherwise I seemed to have escaped unscathed.  My right hand hurt a bit as one might expect when it’s called into duty to save the elbow.  I straightened my bars and brushed some of the dirt off before I hopped back on to continue my ride.  Get-off or not I was going on a ride.

As I rode out to Nose Creek Park, I couldn’t help noticing that my wrist was in fact much more tender than having just suffered a slap-fest with the pavement.  Putting any weight on it was excruciating but I could pull, break and shift without any drama.  I pushed on determined to get a few kilometres in before the sun disappeared and made things more treacherous than I’d just discovered they were.  I didn’t get far before my wrist, the rapidly setting sun and an unexpected head-rush that affected my hearing <?!> made the decision to turn around a prudent one.

I cycled home nursing an increasingly tender wrist, wary of anything that looked like it might be shadow, mud, water, gravel…I’d lost some confidence in the stiction of my front tire.  As a made my back along the path I’d just travelled, my hearing returned to normal but my wrist did not.  I stopped to take a picture of the offending mud before I made the climb back up to Centre.  I passed another cyclist headed for the mud and tried to warn him as he went by “it’s slippery under McKnight!” though it probably sounded more like nonsensical gibberish.  I imagine him skipping across the same gravel thinking to himself “oh…that’s what that guy was yelling about”.

Upon arriving home nurse Tracey tended to my wrist with a combination of homeopathic  treatments.  I’m starting to think it may be in worse shape than first thought as it’s rather swollen and stiff.  We’ll see how bad it feels in the morning and if it’s worse I’ll get it looked at after the Remembrance Day service.  In the meantime I’m extremely pleased with the performance of my MEC Roubaix stretchy pants – no holes, no damage of any kind.

One skid, no flesh damage, no holes - perfect.

I also have a new appreciation for roadies who turn and flee at the slightest indication of imperfect road conditions.  It’s time to – at the very least – put on the knobbies.  Studded tires – you’re in my future.

*What Will Thomas Say?

It's just a flesh wound...isn't it?

Easy examples: PC and MAC.  Within that group of people – consumers and self-identified nerds, within the nerds – hardware geeks and software geeks, within the software nerds – Linux, Unix and Windows and on and on it goes.  I used to believe this was an automotive thing – something within the genes of people who identify with a particular brand of fuel-burning people conveyors.  Ford vs. Chevrolet which led to more than one confrontation as I was growing up.  In Australia they break out into soccer fan-style brawls I’m told.

As I entered the world of cycling, cautiously dipping my toe in, my first foray into an actual bicycle shop was born of necessity.  In my enthusiasm to service the Rescue Bike, I’d taken apart the freewheel and spilled out dozens of tiny ball bearings which promptly bounced into the darkest recesses of my dimly-lit garage.  I’d disassembled things as far as I could, but wasn’t in a position to finish before I could put them back together again.  A forced visit to a bike shop with a concurrent admission that I had no idea what I was doing – I can’t express my enthusiasm.

I headed to Bow Cycle, wheel in the trunk and prepared for the inevitable looking-down-our-noses-at-you-because-you’re-not-one-of-us experience.  Such was not the case however – the two young mechanics working in the back were not only polite and friendly, they were genuinely helpful.  They finished the disassembly (at no charge), advised me on a wiser course of action (replace, not rebuild) and retrieved a new cassette (a whopping $11).  No condemnation, no subtle ridicule or snotty “that’s not from here” attitude.  It was singularly one of the best service visits I’ve ever had.

I went back to Bow Cycle to browse their bikes and each time was met by friendly and polite staff who were more than happy to help.  This experience was repeated on my visit to Road and to Calgary Cycle – friendly staff who were more than happy to entertain my foolish questions despite my obvious newbness.  These retail experiences shaped my perspective of the cycling world in a grossly erroneous fashion.

In much the same manner that sportbike riders and Harley riders look down their noses at each other, so too do cyclists.  Roadies, cyclocross, downhill, cross-country, commuter, urban and then subsets of each.  Dedicated roadies who count their grains of rice at each meal sneer at the paunch-carrying new rider who is in possession of a full carbon bicycle and team kit whizzier than most pro racers.  Downhill lunatics curse the cross-country masochists for having the temerity to ride up their hill while the cross-country folks don’t understand why the downhillers don’t give those climbing up the right-of-way (I tend to side with the climbers here – much easier to start going downhill again than to start climbing in the middle).  Cyclocross riders are serious about not taking themselves seriously and are disdainful of anyone who does.  Everyone snorts at the commuters, especially if you’re one of those guys who dares to commute in the winter thereby undermining all of the times they passed you like you were standing still during the summer.   Everyone is doing it wrong except you.

I no longer ponder why someone doesn’t acknowledge my passing nod or the occasional attempt at speech (generally rendered as nuhgumeh!).  I get it now – I’m doing it all wrong.

I clicked over to Amazon and started checking out the latest books on neuroplasticity – a favourite topic – yet somehow managed to find myself checking out a pair of Pearl iZumi mountain bike shoes.  I’ve been waiting to change up to clipless, eager to experience the benefits of having the “pull” portion of the pedal cycle available.  Like the Garmin gear however, I’ve been too cheap to pony up enough dough to get me started.  Call me cheap, I don’t mind.

The shoes I found – PI’s new All Road shoes with recessed cleats were on sale for a paltry $64.  They have great reviews and PI stuff seems to get good reviews for fit all over the place so I set about placing an order.  Not being overly familiar with Euro style shoes sizes, I looked up the conversion on Wikipedia (foreshadowing).   3/2 * (foot length in CM + 1.5) for those interested…though it comes out on the small side.  Measured once.  Measured twice.  Measured a third time.  Ordered a 44 thinking a little on the large side is better than too small.  Paid for the 6-10 day shipping option and found them waiting for me when I got home today.  How cool is that?

All-Roads

Excited to have new clipless shoes in-hand, I opened the box and knew immediately there was going to be a problem.  They looked too small.  You know, if you’re looking at a pair of shoes and your noggin says “nope, too small”, they’re clearly too small.  I put them on anyway in a vain attempt to defy the mathematics of geometry only to learn that math does not bend rules no matter how much you’d like to keep your new shoes.  Not just small but barely get your feet in too small.  No way could I find a way to ride in them short of trimming off some excess toe length but that’s a body modification I’m not into.

So I boxed them back up and set about exchanging them with Amazon.  No dice – no exchange program available for these shoes apparently – refund only.  They politely offered to pay for the return shipping, ostensibly because they didn’t have an exchange program.  Not ideal but not too bad.

After dealing with the return process, I set about ordering the proper size and the first thing I noted was the $12 increase in price.  Seems Amazon didn’t have my size, but one of their retailers did for a fee.  I looked at the original size and Amazon themselves had upped the price overnight from $64 to $72.

So now I’m on the fence.  Not sure whether to spend the additional $12 and another round of freight ($10).  True – it’s cheaper than the $125 price listed for a local Calgary reseller but I just can’t see paying $40 over Pearl’s list price just to support local.  I’d prefer to buy local but not at an almost 50% premium.

So now we’re back to looking at more books.  Or maybe some pedals…

When I started writing, it was ostensibly because I wanted to pass on my newbie experiences to the next budding Fredcyclist. The idea being I could answer some of those new-rider questions not with any authority, just the results of my own trial and error methods. It’s veered away from that and into a blather of this is what happened on my little commute today and that’s boring. Part of that detour off course is a result of this: I’m at a post-newb plateau.  I’ve learned the easiest stuff…maybe?

I’m not smart or learned by any means. My authority on matters cycling comprises the following nuggets: don’t pedal while leaning hard unless you enjoy pavement-surfing with your flesh; make sure you have air in your tires; ride as often as possible. On the other hand, here’s what I’ve learned:

• Yes, you do want stretchy pants with a chamois if you ride any distance unless you like friction burns on your most sensitive areas.
• “Slicks” or street tires on your mountain bike are definitely smoother and quieter but they were not the limiting factor in my quest for speed. The factor turned out to be me.
• Lube your chain or the squeaking and squawking will make you even more insane.
• Tires don’t hold air indefinitely – my 80psi slicks drop to 40 over a couple of weeks but make for a handy lie excuse reason you can tell yourself when you get Chicked.
• There may not be any car traffic on the bike paths, but a rear light will keep the rest of us from running you over in the dark because we are riding with
• The 3-LED headlight from MEC – makes an excellent targeting device for on-coming cars and may keep other riders from clipping you in the dark. Also serves as an excellent defense against establishing effective night-vision while simultaneously completely failing to illuminate anything far enough away to still avoid. Note to the city of Calgary – if you really loved cyclists, you’d fluoresce the yellow stripe in the middle of the path.
• If you insist on using a 1 million candle power strobe-light on your helmet while riding on the darkened bicycle path, I reserve the right to push you into the canal while claiming disorientation and blindness thanks to your head-mounted smugness device. Save it for the road where it’ll flash in everyone’s mirror after they’ve passed you and are no longer in a position to nudge you with a bumper.
• The colder it gets, the slower I go. I blame the increased air density and layers of clothing. It has nothing to do with laziness.

It was most definitely this increase in clothing layers and air density that turned me from rabbit to rabbit-chaser this morning. As is typical of my rides these days most of the path traffic is on-coming, which is good because my MEC night-vision-disruption light which as the name implies handily keeps my eyes from adjusting on the darkest sections of the path, combined with riding sans prescription glasses means I’m essentially navigating to work by muscle memory and feel. When I was kid with a big-block drum-brake hotrod, I learned all about over-driving your brakes – travelling faster than your brakes could stop you. I’m now over-driving my eyesight as, even at my reduced winter speed, there is little chance I will be able to avoid an unexpected obstacle.

Anyway – back to the engrossing tales of What I did on my commute this morning. I was passed, unexpectedly and totally off-guard by a high-cadence-pedaling rider whom I’ve seen once or twice before. My first instinct was to ignore the obvious Cat 6 race we were now in and continue as I was but as Dwernie noted last week it is not possible to simply ignore this challenge. I gave chase and didn’t lose any further ground until we got to the pedestrian bridge. I managed to maintain some semblance of speed but failed to stand and hammer when he did (note to self – stand and hammer is appropriate when in Cat 6 mode). By the time I’d reached the end of the bridge, he’d almost disappeared and our diverging routes put an end to the match. I was however given a small reward as I wound under 17th Ave and tried to run over a flagging rider making the climb up to 26th. I allowed myself a small degree of pride as I pedaled past him and he got off to start pushing. “At least I’m not pushing” I thought as I wobbled up the slope.

In recognition of the Cyclist’s Imperative to Chase Rabbits, I wish to congratulate Dwernie on his first blood. A successful pass and defense of position – job well done!  Way to represent Canadian Cat 6 riders abroad.

Dwernie

But Thursday…what a ride!  When I walked out of the house I could hear – but not feel – the wind blowing all around.  You knew the wind was going to be a factor and it was going to be a serious one at that.  I shrugged my shoulders and resigned myself to further “training” as I strapped on my helmet and opened the gate.

I headed east towards Centre street in the morning darkness, senses on high alert as the possibility of getting run over was high on my mind.  It was dark, cold and windy – not the scenario you entertain riding in when you’re driving to work all bleary eyed with a coffee in one hand and doughnut in the other.  I was feeling pretty good after two days sitting at home tending a sick wife and 3 rowdy monsters and was happy to be out.  The wind, for all its noise at the house was forgotten for the moment.  I made good time down to the 32^nd Ave connector and headed for the path.  The last couple of times I’d opted to ride the skinny trail between 32^nd and the barrier, it had been littered with city-owned road construction signs laying across the path making for treacherous obstacle avoidance in the omnipresent threat of being squished by the heavy traffic on my left.

I picked my way through the dark path, my MEC headlight providing enough illumination to stave off complete darkness yet not allowing my eyes to adjust completely.  It was the first point I noticed the wind again as it was, for the first time in week working with me instead of against me and I sailed along seemingly effortlessly.  It was when I was riding south along Deerfoot that I turned my attention to the beauty that is a wind at your back.  Pedaling along at a nice clip and the air was dead still – no wind flapping my jacket, no air rushing past my ears, no tears from my eyes – it was like riding in a pocket of stillness.  Effortless, quiet, perfect.

Not being one for effortless, quiet and perfect, I shifted up two gears and put some heat on it.  It was a thing of speed (relative admittedly) and beauty, eminently satisfying and most rewarding.  It’s the biggest smile I’ve had riding in a few weeks.  I was punished for this crime of glee, of uninhibited joy.  On the ride home the wind was howling as strong as it had been in the morning, changing only from north north west to north north east.  Or just north.  “Training” I sighed and put my head down to fight my way home.

I’d let a lack of sleep, energy and the ever-present headwind slowly re-set my effort level from panting-and-sweating to I-put-some-effort-in.  Sure it was a real effort and you couldn’t say I wasn’t trying at all but it was far from my best efforts.  This all-out effort was one of the chief rewards I (re)discovered when I started riding this summer and I’d been letting it slip away.

Now I know, you can’t always perform at that level – there are days when nutrition, sleep, motivation and / or any number of other factors conspire to bring you down a notch or two.  I get that.  The difference – for me – is that while you need recovery days to, well, recover, you don’t grow by putting in a good effort – that’s not enough.  The mind and body and their remarkable adaptability will grow to perform almost any task you continue to throw at it.  The brain’s now-accepted plasticity means it will devote more physical brain real-estate to a task that has received focused effort and attention be it math, martial arts or cycling.  Anyone who’s ever done anything physical – shovelling dirt all summer, lifting weights in the gym, stone mason (okay that might be a long shot all things considered – lost art that one) – knows that your ability to perform the task after a few months of work is vastly improved.  Your mind and body have adapted.   Cool.

However, the downside to the adaptability is it’s conservation of energy.  It takes effort and energy to change – to grow new muscles, to fire more neurons and bridge more synaptic gaps – this is all energy intensive.  What does this mean?  It means you’re a bit like your co-worker who always does everything required, but never works overtime, never volunteers for extra work, never moves outside what you’ve asked of them.  Adaptation comes to a halt as soon as you give it the signal that hey – we’re good enough now thanks.  Progress comes to a halt.  You must push the bounds to grow.

As I rode out this morning, a couple of factors conspired to push me back into the panting-and-sweating zone from what has become my effortful-yet-casual mode of late.  I found myself pushing harder than I had in weeks, re-discovering the Grail zone in the process along the way.  As I approached the 8^th Ave overpass, another rider shot in ahead of me having come down from my right on the far side of the overpass.  His quick cadence implied that he was at least an attentive cyclist and the growing gap confirmed his speed was slightly faster than mine.  I briefly pondered following him but you know how that goes – we’re going the same direction, he’s not leaving me in the dust and therefore I must try.

I thought I was going to lose him on a couple of occasions as he managed to put some distance between us before I sorted out the best gear to reel him in.   I slowly bridged the gap and when I’d caught up to him, it occurred to me that I might not have it in me to get the job done.  It was not a quick pass and required an unsuccessful attempt at looking casual as we rode side by side for the eternity it took to get by.  I found a surprise burst of energy as he moved into my peripheral vision so I picked up my pace again, dropping him as best I could before taking my exit and heading east, while hoping he was headed west so I wouldn’t have to burn myself completely trying to keep my lead.

My point?  Good question.  Oh yes – that I wouldn’t have pulled that off if I hadn’t been in push-to-adapt mode.  Good enough wasn’t going to cut it.  The best part?  I felt fantastic all morning and that win – petty as it might be – fuelled my good mood (and sarcasm) all day.  I look forward to another adventure with the Grail tomorrow (assuming whatever sickness that is presently ravaging my wife is gone and I actually get out of the house – I arrived home this evening to find her sicker than I’ve ever seen her).

You don’t wear spandex do you
This seems to be the primary concern of my friends.  It’s almost as if they’re afraid of catching some heretofore unproven-but-suspected sickness that might render them powerless against showing up at the office Christmas party or the Friday-night poker game in head-to-toe spandex.   Ken, completely bonkers downhill racer, a man I’ve known since before either of us could shave and never noted as a conformist rolled his eyes “oh gawd, you’re not wearing those black spandex shorts are you?”, the disgust dripping from his words.

In truth, I don’t but that’s not because I’m unwilling…now.  When I was 40 pounds overweight (as opposed to the optimistic 10 I am now), you wouldn’t have been able to bribe me into them in public at any price.  I rode in my cargo shorts with the stealth chamois shorts hidden underneath.  I thought it was perfect but then single-digit temperatures arrived.

It didn’t take too many mornings in the almost-freezing air to figure out I needed something to cover my knees if nothing else.  Enter my first stretchy-pants – the MEC winter cycling tights.  When asked recently if I wear those shorts I replied “no – I have stretchy pants, like tights” just to watch the reaction.  As predicted, my friend reacted with horror, disapproval and disappointment.  You’d have thought I’d just told him I’d been having an affair with the neighbour’s poodle.

It’s not like I’m asking them to join me in my new-found clothing choices.  I’m comfortable in my choice of clothing – I don’t need someone else to validate it for me.  Yeesh – it’s not even like we’re riding together and they can’t handle being seen with a lycra-clad rider in the group.  Doesn’t matter though – switching back and forth between the cargo shorts and the stretchy-pants leaves no doubt – stretchy-pants rule and stretchy shorts are a foregone conclusion when the temperatures relent.

You’re not going to be one of those guys
Jason and I went for lunch recently and the topic of my riding came up…because I brought it up.  Jason, who doesn’t ride and hasn’t expressed an interest to (yet) has no problems with my stretchy-pants though he expressed some degree of relief that I wasn’t wearing them in the restaurant.  Jason was supportive and complimentary, arguably the most supportive of my small cadre of friends.  He came from a different angle.  “Are you going to ride this winter” he asked, to which  I replied with an enthusiastic maybe.  “I’d like to” I told him “but we’ll see how much I want to when there’s snow on the ground and no room in the lane”.

“Noooooooooooooooooooo” was the immediate response, his head shaking .  “Don’t be that guy!  Put the bike away and just drive a car like a normal human”.   Now, I could see if I was his courier or pizza delivery service how my desire to pedal through the winter might cause him some concern.  Luckily for both of us, I am neither of those.  So, what’s the issue?  We don’t work or live in the same quadrant of the city and virtually none of our respective commutes or general travel overlap…so what if I ride?  The reaction is almost reason enough and Jason is not alone in his disapproval of my plan.  Well, not really a plan so much as an idea.

Now these are all friends that have eaten my food, who have fed me and my family.  They’ve taken their weekends and evenings to move me – in the case of Ken, 3 times in a single 12 month period.  These guys aren’t peripheral or fair-weather friends – they’re the real deal and I’m lucky to have them.  So what is it about cycling that makes even your closest friends hang their heads, cluck their tongues and nod disapprovingly?  If I’d bought a motorcycle and we were talking about leather chaps or riding in the rain, there wouldn’t be any such reaction – unless I demonstrated my predilection for wearing the chaps without anything underneath them.  What is it about bicycles that puts everything on its head?

Unless you’re constantly surrounded by riders significantly more able than you and particularly if, like me, you ride 99.9% of the time alone, you begin to develop delusions of your ability.  I often find myself thinking “yeah – that’s right, I did just pass you like that, because I can”, while completely ignoring that they’re pushing their bike with a flat tire, thereby reinforcing my imaginary super-cyclist powers.  My favourite though is to be howling along the path with a wicked tailwind while watching all of the on-coming cyclists suffering, struggling mightily to keep above a jogging pace as their headwind acts like molasses.  This really inflates one’s illusory talent.

So with all of this pent-up talent inside, it’s only natural that I would want to find another rider and pass them.  In the beginning I was content to ride down anyone and took great pleasure in the pass irrespective of the age or condition of the rider.  Of course not being able to catch the rider towing a two-child trailer up a hill…that’s not something we need to re-visit.  Or visit.  Where was I?  Oh yes, chasing rabbits.  As my condition has improved over the summer, passing riders who aren’t trying has lost its reward.  I still try (well duh – they’re on a bike, I’m on a bike, they’re in front of me – who wouldn’t try?) to catch and pass them, but when I pull up beside them and notice they’re wearing a heavy wool trench coat, their high-heels and are riding a Townie it’s not the win I was looking for.  Unless they’re all sweaty and out of breath.  Hey – a wolf doesn’t pass up a meal just because the rabbit is missing a leg.  Not that I’m a wolf…

With the cooler weather comes the dwindling traffic  thereby causing an increase in the percentage of more serious riders.  This means fewer opportunities, but better chases.  I’m still not certain that I passed Bearded Single Speed legitimately because he finally cracked or if he simply didn’t want to ride beside me any farther.  Of these more serious riders, I routinely see two women, always going the opposite direction to my own.  Given their velocities I suspect I wouldn’t catch them if we were travelling in the same direction and that they would catch and drop me with relative ease.

One in particular who, for reasons I can’t fathom, reminds me of an acquaintance I met when we hired her to work our motorcycle booth during the Stampede.  Taisa rides but recently left town thereby removing the last 1% of possibility it was her.  When I see this unknown-yet-familiar rider, she is always riding hard and fast – determined.

Which brings me to my point…finally.  I was fighting my way home in the omnipresent headwind the other day trying to talk myself into finding some positive benefit to it (the wind, not the ride).  I’d earlier passed one of the aforementioned casual riders but had had the path to myself and my wandering mind for the bulk of things.  As I approached the Trans Canada, a rider appeared coming towards me in full tuck, in the drops and pedaling furiously with full advantage of the tailwind and I was immediately envious.  I took this all in within the split-second it took for her to appear.  Right on his wheel.

You’re probably asking yourself how I knew she was on his wheel rather than having just been passed.  Two things.  First, the path at that point is a blind, slightly uphill S-bend with a relatively narrow path and a fence on either side.  Second, she had a heretofore unseen gigantic grin on her face.  If he’d passed her on that bend, it would have been a totally uncool move by all measures and she would not have been smiling.  No – that was the enormous, predatory grin of a successful hunt.   The grin of a predator who knows the kill is at hand and the prey theirs despite their thrashing about.  It was, in the purest of moments and expressions, everything that hunting rabbits is all about.

The chase is not a male thing at all.  It’s a for-those-with-drive thing.  It’s awesome.

So it was that I was heading home and thinking that I’d not had a good rabbit chase since the weather had taken a rather permanent turn to cold mornings and cool afternoons.  The less determined / smarter cyclists have parked their bikes and returned to their BMWs until the sun returns and warms things up in the spring.  The reduced volume means reduced opportunities.  It also means when the opportunities come, the object of the chase is likely to be that much more determined to drop his (or her) pursuer.  Such is the position I found myself in this evening as I tried to reel in the rider in front of me.

I spotted him as his path from downtown and my own  both turn to head north but are separated by the canal.  At this point he had the advantage as his path carries on straight and I have to cross the canal before tucking in behind him.  He had a pretty good pace going and I wasn’t sure whether I was up to the chase however being me I quickly determined that I was unable to ignore the fact that he was out front and not dropping me any further behind.  I was able to put a half-hearted and half-assed effort into playing the game.  It occurred to me more than once that he might be one of those who enjoys allowing himself to be painstakingly  reeled in and then dropping his pursuer when they finally get close.  We would see.

I managed to maintain my half-assed effort and was rewarded with half-assed results – go figure.  By the time we got to the Trans Canada, he was roughly that distance away – him under the north overpass, me under the south.  He looked back to check my position as he wove through the train gate and headed up my nemesis hill.  As I made my way through the gate it occurred to me that I was feeling pretty good though still skirting around the zone and never quite in it.

I stepped up my effort and found my lungs, which is to say I worked up a good panting – as I continued to chase him.  I’d almost dismissed the idea of catching him given my particular relationship with this hill but I kept at it if for no other reason than to knock some of this hill off.  As we reached the end of the climb he was less than 10 meters in front of me.

This was as close as I would get to him sadly.  I’d all but exhausted myself and had to watch as he slowly drifted further and further away, putting another cyclist between us.  It took me more distance than I care to note before I caught the intermediate rider and I was not over-joyed to see I’d had to expend great (non-zone) effort to catch a bearded guy riding a single-speed.  Maybe I should grow a beard.

A recent commute home had also been in a stiff headwind with some sprinkling rain here and there in less-than-warm temps if I recall.  Rather than being disappointed about it, I put my head down, my man-pants on and got to work.  I pedaled as fast as I could for as long as I could and ignored the rest of the world.  When I got home I felt fantastic and was certain I’d just laid down a solid time for the trip.  I was shocked to find it was in fact typical of my miserable headwind rides.  Genuinely.  It didn’t bother me in the least however, just left me surprised.  If you were to ask me “how was the ride home”, I’d respond “awesome!”.  Question is, how do I make every miserable headwind-plagued ride an awesome ride in the zone?