Tag Archives: rabbits

The Quest for the Holy Cyclist Grail

Posted on by

I rode to work with a headwind today.  I rode home with one too.  That is decidedly uncool – one shouldn’t be forced to ride with a headwind in both directions.  I keep telling myself it will amount to excellent training come the change of season from windy to still windy season.  It’s not the speed of the wind that’s changed – it’s the direction relative to my own – which is suddenly causing me grief.  I’m looking forward to the days of mostly tailwind both directions.

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?

Conehead

Posted on by

As noted previously, I tend to ride alone.  Not like my daily rides are anything to share anyway – a short commute to work and home again along some fairly innocuous bike paths.  The stuff of legend I know.  One result of riding alone all the time is developing your own habits that may not be compatible with those I will respectfully refer to as my fellow commuters.  I say respectfully as I’ve been dropped hard by more than one of them in the past and I’m sure I will again.

Yesterday as I approached Edmonton Trail, preparing mentally for the climb up to Centre, there was a rider already stopped at the light.  Things, for me, got strange immediately as his stopped position was too far away from the intersection though he was clearly intending to cross it.  I do it one of two ways – in heavy traffic I wait at the crosswalk as it puts me ahead of most of the traffic so I have a clearer view of the intersection and nobody is trying to run me down making their right turn.  Or – if traffic is lighter I’ll ride up to the front of the empty right lane, but on the inside of it.  This rider was back a few feet from anywhere I’d normally stop, so without really thinking about it, I passed him and stopped in front.  I realized too late how it must look and it was admittedly rude but I don’t run into other riders at this light when it’s red.  Ever.  I didn’t really know how to approach it.  I commented on the wind and as the light went green he continued to chat about the state of the bike path.  This is all together new to me – stranger / cyclist chatting.  This too presents a conflict with my established habits.

As a new rider, a new, aging rider watching “the big four-oh” coming at him full speed, a new, aging, 40-ish rider with asthma and a not-that-long-ago tobacco habit, any departure from level ground to a positive angle – meaning uphill – is noted immediately and tends to be a challenge.  My normal course of action had until recently been to simply stand up and mash away while trying not to slow too badly.  As an experiment I’ve been staying in the saddle and dropping into the middle ring (the bottom of the middle ring if I’m honest) and pedaling furiously and while the results have been not all together bad, there are times when standing just seems to be the right thing to do.  Like this section of my ride.

So here we are stranger-chatting as we approach the first bit of incline, him on my right and me wondering if I’m capable of making this little hump while I’m still in the saddle without getting run over by the cyclist that suddenly appeared behind us.  I’m not sure if I earned it with all this headwind riding or if he opted to play nice but by the time we’d made it to the first false flat, he’d stopped chatting and slowly dropped behind.  Before we made it to the next intersection, he was far enough behind me that my habits were no longer his concern.  I rolled through the stop sign and continued to pedal up the gentle slope past the Handi-bus barn to 1st street.  He gained ground behind me and I figured here was where he was going to drop me.  Heading south onto 1st, it turns into a short, steep climb of perhaps 10 meters over 70.  Having ridden the previous 25 minutes home in a headwind, it was nice to have the wind at my back but I was a bit knackered so I stood up and mashed away pushing myself up the hill without so much as a Fred-mirror glance.  Again I was conscious of how it might have looked – me trying to drop my new chatting friend but I didn’t stop.

The truth is though, I wasn’t looking for him, no longer paying him any attention and I hadn’t noticed the 3rd rider since we hit the first slope.  I don’t know if he followed me south on his own route or headed north instead.  I was tired, near the end of my ride and wanted to finish it my way.  I rounded the bend onto 34th and made the climb up to Centre with everything I had and found Centre empty, so I crossed it and went home a sweaty, mushy, happy rider.

9 times or more out of 10, I ride my commute like a man possessed, pushing my mental limits, pushing my legs and lungs.  I like to ride like that, I enjoy that suffering, pushing the boundaries for more growth.

While I am absolutely helpless against chasing down a rabbit, or trying to run away as one myself, it’s  only me I’m competing against.  If I manage to chase down a rabbit, I’ve earned that pass.  I know I’ve been travelling faster for however long it’s taken me to catch them and I can continue that pace (probably).  Passing the rabbit is not a conehead move.  Likewise, being passed while I’m riding hard means they earned it – nothing coneheaded about that.  Pulling in front of another rider at a stoplight and then racing away on the green – it might look like I’m trying to drop them but –honest – they’ve just wandered onto my private track.

I’m Warm! Or Numb?

Posted on by

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.