The Recycled Cyclist

Senseless Spinning

2007-12-24T13:57:00.000-08:00

A burst of snowy and icy winter weather shut down the roads more completely than usual this December, forcing a retreat to the spinning class a bit earlier than normal. Entering the squalid little room full of pounding music, I remembered the inadequacies of spinning cycles, and how those harm the experience and value of the training that is possible with indoor riding.

I attend a spinning class at a local gym. It's pretty fun overall, and a good workout, but after going a few times, a factor that I'd only realized as a passing annoyance finally crystallized as a pure inadequacy -- you can't set a quantified resistance on a spinning cycle.

It took a few classes in a relatively few days to see the problem. Before, I'd gone about once per week, so usually had the same instructor. Attending more often let me see the variance between instructors, which made clear the problem with normal spinning cycles.

When I work out on a stationary bike in a regular gym, usually you set the resistance within a range of numbers, and you can go up or down by some perceived percentage. Best of all, if you travel and go from gym to gym, you can set each bike to the same resistance level, and have comparable workouts.

In a spinning class, you rarely get the same bike, and even if you do, someone else has used it and set it up for themselves. So, you have to adjust everything (no problem), and then find a resistance level to start.

This initial resistance level can be described by instructors as "like you're on a flat road" or "just a comfortable pace" or "about a 5 or 6 on a 10-point scale". It all depends. And so the trouble begins. Increasing resistance then can be described as "increased 6%" or "increase a quarter turn" or "increase to about an 8 or 9".

If you're fortunate enough to consistently get the instructor who at least strives for quantitation ("about a 5 or 6 on a 10-point scale"), things can seem OK. But when you move from this class to the one in which effort is described based on turns of the resistance knob or percentages of an unknown basis, you're lost. And, worst of all, you are not able to compare the workout or effort to the prior class'.

Cycling is about consistently maintaining or improving abilities for long-term achievement. Spinning classes pose a problem for cyclists trying to stay fit in the winter, because they don't allow for longitudinal comparisons on a known basis. Too bad. With just a few changes -- more consistency between instructors, or numbers on the bikes' dials -- it could all work so much better.

At least the music's usually pretty decent . . .

Incompetence

2007-10-14T09:56:00.000-07:00

After a few years of consistent training, riding thousands of miles every 365 days, acquiring and understanding equipment and clothing, and paying attention to what I eat on and off the bike, a transformation has taken place for me. When I first started riding again, I would greet challenges like a century with training and obsessive planning. I would have to go to the bike store or sports store and buy special gels or snacks for the ride, pack the night before, and sleep fitfully in dread of oversleeping.

Those days seem long gone. Lately, long rides have become a habit, and preparation has become almost an afterthought. Training is geared toward overall fitness, and I now know how to peak, and making a mental note of when I will need to peak and taper is second-nature. I effortlessly flow into the rides, pace, and nutritional requirements I need. Packing for a long ride is stress-free now, because I have a whole range of clothing, know what works under what conditions, and can go with the minimal requirements with confidence. Eating on the bike is not a big deal, and I know what works and what doesn't. So, now having a late-season century pop up a few weeks away is a matter of turning a dial or two slightly differently, not a cause for anxiety.

Habits and competence can be overwhelming and comforting. I think one challenge for new cyclists is finding the well-spring of commitment to warp the competence achieved in the sedentary lifestyle (or in whatever sport they are doing), and being incompetent at cycling. It is painful for adults to feel incompetent again, and avoiding that feeling is easy and readily rationalized. The vulnerability of feeling incompetent at something again is awkward and socially humbling. I know people who have not become incompetent at anything in years or decades, and the confidence they exude is palpable.

Recent reports suggest that arrogant cycling shops and mystifying equipment may be demotivating potential cyclists. If these phenomena are making those feelings of incompetence more acute, it makes sense that adults reluctant to expose themselves as lacking knowledge or skills would choose to stay away.

Of course, once the incompetence is overcome, the feelings of competence are very rewarding, and having climbed the learning curve, you can ride on, with new capabilities, knowledge, fitness, and skills. It's very much worth the investment of incompetence.

Disorderly Conduct

2007-09-15T04:08:00.000-07:00

Season after season, I have a pattern of rides. Favorite charity rides are repeated, local century club rides are revisited, and commuting patterns re-establish themselves year after year, yielding a familiar sequence of training that is modified only by intensity or new rides layered atop the annual system.

This year started out for me as one that would rely on the system more than ever, as my plans for a major ride mid-summer were ejected in favor of other priorities. This meant that an overlay of more training and a goal of a new ride both evaporated, leaving only the standard foundation for training and mileage.

However, even this relatively stable system was disrupted by illness, botched plans, and inclement weather. An illness forced me to squander an early spring race, weather and illness forced me to skip a spring century, and botched plans forced the cancellation of a traditional metric century ride in the early summer. These early-season setbacks left me undertrained and seeking to compensate through other riding patterns. However, these rides were hard to replace, as all were group rides, with the higher intensity and group dynamics that lead to better training and riding experiences. Going out on my own on rides wouldn't get me into the same kind of shape, by a long shot.

One event this summer was a big surprise, as I came across it accidentally -- a local time trial. Riding a favorite route in the evening (one that often made me thing, "This would be a great time trial route"), I came across a group of riders, many with aero bars, grouped at a corner and taking off at one-minute intervals. I turned the corner as I normally would, and was in-between riders for a while, but chasing the one ahead. This intensity of training was something I'd missed all year, and even this one evening's work snapped a lot of pieces back into place. The ride was fast, and the next few rides were on a different, higher level, one that I've sustained.

Now, looking across the season, which is largely spent, it seems this year was completely out of order. The traditional metric century was rescheduled for the fall, and went off without a hitch. One major charity ride in late summer occurred as planned, and while my lack of distance training showed in soreness near the end of the ride, overall it was a great event. And a late-fall century should replace the spring century on the mileage charts.

Oddly, even with the disrupted schedule, I find myself in about the same physical condition in the fall as I would have otherwise, with my logs showing equivalent speeds and perceptions of strength and fitness for this year as compared to others. I feel in peak form again, even if it was attained in a disordered system.

Next year, I plan to not only re-establish my basic system, but layer on top of it a major event as a goal to provide the push for greater fitness. But, despite my worries, even without a major event and with a basic foundation that was cracked and broken, persistent riding and training along with some surprises were able to regain what I thought I'd lost. I guess that sometimes, a season creates itself.

Frames of Mind

2007-08-11T05:03:00.000-07:00

After a few years of renewed cycling, the seasonal build to one or more peaks of fitness has shown me that part of the joy comes from rediscovering and rebuilding the frames of mind necessary to ride at high speeds, climb long hills, and plan complicated training protocols, and translating these into other domains, such as family, work, or life in general. For me, cycling not only fortifies the body, it informs the mind with models and habits that help me adapt, cope, and gain an advantage.

One of the most divergent frames of mind a cycling season hones comes from climbing. We live in a culture of instant gratification and elimination of physical exertion -- escalators, moving sidewalks, and automatic doors. Exerting effort to grapple with a physical reality is less and less common. Distance, mass, and leverage are often handled by motorized systems. Climbing a long hill or set of hills on a bicycle sweeps all this away. You are alone, the climb will take many minutes, you have to pay attention throughout it all and work the entire time, and it can hurt. There is often silence, punctuated by your labored breathing and the sound of gears and tires.

The mental benefits of a season of climbing are many. I think it instills a tenacity and toughness that is unusual in the modern world. It teaches patience and delivers the lesson of work and reward. I have found myself shunning the moving sidewalks and elevators, taking the stairs and walking the entire concourse because I'm now a bit uncomfortable with abetted effort. Hard work is its own reward, I've been reminded. Success isn't easy, and getting it without earning it cheapens the achievement. Climbing humbles you, and puts you solidly back in the real world, not the modern world with its contrivances and softness. Climbing toughens you up again, physically and mentally. It makes you unafraid of a challenge that may look daunting at first, teaching you that persistence and effort can prevail.

Endurance rides create a different frame of mind, and one that I can call upon when needed to handle challenges off the bike. Riding a century teaches pacing, planning, and measured exertion. If you go all-out at the start of a century, you will likely pay a price about 2/3 of the way through, when you either bonk or cramp, or both. Starting out at a more moderate pace, realizing the effort is long, and pacing yourself is really the way to go. The fastest centuries I've ridden have been the ones on which I've purposely paced myself.

Long rides with groups also teach you about teamwork, and often with lessons that are more direct than those in the abstract areas of business, education, or home life. Feeling the benefit of a paceline, being heartened by a "good pull" as you shift off, or getting a bit of energy bar from a fellow rider all bring the joy of teamwork down to a level that is visceral and pure.

Riding long events also teaches you about planning, especially for resources. Nutrition and equipment are the keys here. Over long courses, weather can change, you get thirsty and hungry, and if you don't plan well, you can find yourself without a tube, a rain jacket, a gel, or a drink when you need one. Having real-world lessons about this at my age is helpful. These lessons ground you in a reality that I think shines through in other settings because you totally grasp some of the key concepts of resource planning, pacing over the long haul, and working together. I've often found myself over the last few years being the only person in a group who thought ahead to bring exactly the item needed after a few hours. In the modern world of conveniences, people are forgetting how to pack.

Sprinting and speed work also teach lessons about intensity, timing, and limits. If you've ever mis-timed a sprint attack, and run out of gas before the town line, you've felt, rather painfully, the reality of not estimating limits correctly. But, if you sprint without the proper intensity, you get beaten. Sprinting teaches you to bring things together at the right time, the right place, and at the right pitch.

The physical realities of cycling leave a deep imprint in the minds of attentive cyclists. I've seen people change as they've explored cycling. The modern world works to put layers of technology, services, and convenience between you and physical reality. Cycling blows all these away, and gets your mind re-engaged with the fundamental elements of physics, physiology, and time. These teach your mind to be normal again. You regain your sanity in a subtle but important way, and that's an important frame of mind with which to approach the world.

Why Cycle?

2007-07-24T18:03:00.000-07:00

The new revelations of blood doping at the 2007 Tour de France might lead someone to question the root motivations around cycling. If professionals at the sport's highest level are bolstering performance in ways not related to training or natural ability, doesn't the inspiration derived by non-professionals wane, and the domino effect lead to a diminution of cycling motivation and meaning?

Hardly. In fact, it leads me to think about the bright line separating sport and entertainment. Sport, as an ideal, is about attaining fitness, enjoying health, and competing fairly. In this regard, despite its lack of corporate or "big time" success, soccer is a huge success in the United States already. Millions of children play it as a sport. Will it ever turn into huge corporate-infested entertainment, designed to separate people from their wallets? That is the goal of the LA Galaxy and MLS currently. If their ploy succeeds, will the sport of soccer in America be better or worse? I can conceptualize it actually deteriorating, as more pressure is placed on young athletes, as competition becomes infected with team partisanship trickling down from the professional ranks, and as money brings the corruption it inevitably delivers.

For cycling, the sport -- from cyclosportif events, amateur races, charity rides, and personal fitness training -- is in great shape in America currently. There are more people riding, and there is momentum for this to continue. The cycling community is robust and fun to be a part of. These trends seems independent of the travails of the professional ranks, and in fact the sport may improve as the entertainment convulses. Imagine local team and ride jerseys instead of Rabobank and T-Mobile jerseys on riders; local sponsorship and event management; and strong regional rides for amateurs. It is already happening.

Great stage races like the Tour and the Giro can be inspiring and awesome. They entertain and, when the competition burst beyond the limited boundaries imposed by the conceits of entertainment, they can still inspire. Levi Leipheimer in this year's Tour de France was a perfect example of a sportsman propelling himself beyond the boundaries of the event. But these grand entertainments, with their roadside clowns, corporate sponsors, and television coverage, are not equivalent to the sport of cycling amateurs enjoy. Doing our best, improving year after year, beating out a friend in a sprint, suffering stoically on climbs, and losing the townline sprint gracefully -- these will remain the heart of the sport of cycling. The challenge for professionals is to return to the wellspring of the sport and remember . . .

Tour de Fiance

2007-07-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

When the 2007 Tour de France began, cynicism and shame enveloped cycling. Doping scandals, admissions of dark secrets a decade old, and old battles between journalists, authorities, teams, and riders cast a cold shadow across the enthusiasm of cycling fans. Could the great race of the year boil away the fog and reveal a grand exercise of athleticism and competition again?

The first moment of television coverage revealed the answer -- a glorious day in London, nearly a million spectators lining the time trial course, and an amazing sequence of rides capped by the world time-trial champion eviscerating the field (and nearly overtaking the race motorcycles on one curve). The Tour de France was back, with defiance.

Each of the first four days -- the prologue and the first three stages -- has been magnificent, from Robbie McEwen's phoenix-like performance rising from the road and flying through the peloton to mysteriously grab a sprint victory to Fabian Cancellara's amazing tactical sense and strength to catch a breakaway and then hold off a surging sprint, it has been amazing.

The crowds lining the roads, the scenery, and the sportsmanship have all been exemplary. The Tour de France lives on as the world's premiere sporting event.

Bike Cities

2007-06-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

Cities are mostly designed for cars and trucks these days, but some are trying to reincorporate the bike into their transportation equations, and some never abandoned the bike.

I was recently in Vancouver, BC, Canada, for a quick business meeting. I've ridden in Vancouver before, and loved it. Bike rental shops are plentiful, the bikes are excellent, and riding through the city is easy and rewarding. Seeing the bike signage, bike lanes, and bike racks again made it clear that Vancouver is still committed to remaking itself as a major biking city. It has to, because it is growing very rapidly, and even its mass transit system is bursting at the seams. Bikes provide space-efficient, zero-emissions, affordable transportation.

Vancouver also participates in the World Naked Bike Ride, an annual event held in a number of cities around the world on the same day in June to draw attention to a host of environmental and anti-war issues. On my recent trip, the ride was scheduled for the Saturday I was in town, but weather unfortunately forced them to delay it a week.

A few weeks later, I found myself in Amsterdam, arriving after an overnight flight and taking the train from the Schipol Airport to the center of town, and being greeted by a riverfront railing draped in bicycles, bikes speeding by in cobbled bike lanes, and people of all ages and types of dress pedaling around town, having full right-of-way.

Amsterdam is a city that became a bike city and never gave it up. It makes too much sense for them, and their city's design remains compact and approachable. Of course, Amsterdam has a canal system, another odd transportation option compared to most cities, but one that is mainly used by tour companies, tradesmen, and a few devoted boaters.

The cyclists in Amsterdam are nonplussed by biking, carrying umbrellas in the rain, chatting on cell phones as they ride, and riding with groceries. Cycling is completely practical and integrated into daily life.

As US cities like Boulder, Portland, Salt Lake, and others move to become cycling-friendly, other mayors and town planners should pay attention. It is a way to make a city more livable, more pleasant, more efficient, and more rewarding for its residents.

First and Last

2007-06-15T03:27:00.000-07:00

When winter doesn't have New England in its chilling clutches, there are two dates we bike commuters anticipate -- the first day and last day of school. The school year changes everything on the road, and these dates are highly correlated with the number of drivers, their speed and determination, and the presence of school buses, all of which make commuting by bike a white-knuckle affair.

Every year, it is amazing how dramatically traffic volume falls after the school year ends. Cars vanish as soon as school closes, as parents shuttling children can stay at home, as traffic can redistribute itself throughout the day because deadlines around school hours have vanished, and as vacations draw off a percentage of automobiles each week.

Not only that, but drivers' attitudes shift noticeably. The less frantic pace of life when school is out helps with this, but also the greater awareness of outdoor activities, and the outdoors overall, probably contributes. More drivers have their windows open, are wearing lightweight clothing, and are on their way to hiking or biking themselves.

Roads when school is in session can be so crowded that we cyclists need the cops. This has happened a couple of times, when I've been hung up at a particularly bad intersection and a police car happening by turned on its lights and blocked the traffic long enough for me to get through. This would only happen during the school year.

School buses are another source of stress and traffic woes for commuting cyclists. Because they clog roads, they slow drivers down and clump cars together artificially. This has two effects -- one, cyclists encounter packs of cars; second, the drivers are trying to make up for lost time after getting a school bus out of their way. Combined, these two effects make cycling commuting a little more nerve-wracking.

This all confirms how the car culture occurred because of a threshold effect or "tipping point." We've all experienced this -- we drive somewhere nearby not because we couldn't bike or walk, but because there are too many cars, the roads are too busy, the streets are too dangerous because of the cars, so we add to the cars on the road by driving. Summers confirm that if we might ultimately be able to tip back into a more balanced transportation picture if we can get enough cars off the roads or redistributed throughout the day. With the end of the school year, cyclists see car volume edge down toward the threshold again, and can ride more comfortably during commutes. And that's the lesson. Have a nice summer.

The Bird Nest

2007-06-09T18:35:00.000-07:00

Bikes that have fallen into disrepair appear regularly in our lives. Cyclists are particularly sensitized to notice them as they hide out along the sides of houses and relegated to the backs of sheds. We look for bikes, and when we see a clunker out at the curb with a "Free" sign hanging from it, we even contemplate our options. However, there are stages of disrepair that bikes fall through before becoming complete junkers, and these early stages can be particularly enlightening.

For a lot of kids, their bikes fall into disrepair when they hit their teenage years. It's no longer cool to be seen pedaling a bike, and raising a sweat has suddenly become a distinct disadvantage in social situations. So, the bike hangs in the garage, protected from the elements but slowly rusting and growing stiff and outdated.

Adults who flirt with cycling can have furtive relationships with their bikes, which means bouts of neglect and bursts of rehabilitation. The bike may have a long winter hanging or sitting, then be enthusiastically embraced with the first days of spring, only to fall back into the category of the forgotten once the swimming pools open. These bouts of repair may seem hopeful at times, but really just constitute a multi-stage descent into disrepair.

Even serious cyclists can let bikes fall into disrepair, as newer bikes are purchased and the old ones are ridden less often.

But I recently heard a great story of a new stage of bike disrepair -- the bird's nest. In this case, the person I talked with had a bike hanging on his garage wall, entering a state of disrepair and neglect, but reminding him that he used to ride and should ride again. His helmet still hung suspended from the handlebars, like a bowl. In the past few months, he had often left his garage open most of the day, working from home and enjoying the mild spring climate. Recently, he heard a strange noise in his garage one morning, and sure enough, noticed that a sparrow had built a nice nest in his bike helmet, and was carefully cultivating a couple of eggs.

Now, why I like this story is that it works on several levels. For the human involved, the bike has definitely fallen into disrepair, and the sparrow's nest represents a poignant reminder of empty promises to ride and months of procrastination. However, for the sparrow, the bike is now a home (or, at least, the helmet is), and the neglect has yielded a safe, warm, and useful home. The bike is so neglected it has entered the ecosystem, and its usefulness has crossed species. It is no longer useful to humans, but has gone to the birds.

Cracked

2007-05-19T04:57:00.000-07:00

As a recreational rider with some ambition, I sometimes participate in races. I haven't been very successful, but the fun of preparing and participating makes up for any disappointment when the results are tallied. As a Clydesdale compared to the ponies who sprint up the climbs, I thrive on routes that have long stretches of flats or false-flats, and struggle more on the hills.

Recently, I participated in a local race and, for the first time, really cracked, so much so that it revealed something I had been in denial about probably for years.

The weather was beautiful, everything (trees and flowers) abloom, and the course a 24-mile route consisting of three 8-mile laps. The route is notorious for a climb at the finish (on the laps, it seems to be in the middle of the course), but otherwise is fairly innocuous. In prior years, the start line was placed at the top of this hill, with a neutral start from the bottom easing the riders up.

This year, due to local traffic and parking limitations, the neutral start was placed two miles away at a local school, and riders rode to the official start line from there. The majority of the two-mile neutral start consisted of generally flat roads, but because of the length of the neutral start and the natural tendency of racers to race, as soon as the bottom of the starting hill came into view, the racing started, for all intents and purposes.

While I wasn't caught out or surprised by this, snapping to this sudden acceleration and climb required a real effort. It is a race, after all. But by the time I reached the top of the hill, I had cracked -- I had no energy, my legs were gone, and I was ready to quit. Why had this happened? It was just a quick sprint up a hill.

I completed the first lap, and despite feeling better during portions, I realized I was toast, and felt so ill I abandoned the race. Soon, I was coughing prodigiously and productively, and began to wheeze. It was an asthma attack!

I'd been diagnosed in my early 20's with exercise-induced asthma (EIA), and given an albuterol inhaler to use prior to exercise. I'd used this most of the time to control my symptoms, and it seemed to work. I'd never had an acute attack, despite cycling, and playing other sports (tennis, basketball). However, I had not been to a physician since the 1980s about my asthma, and when the topic came up in general office visits, I routinely stated confidently that all was well, it was under control.

Well, apparently it wasn't. I had used the albuterol prior to the race with an older inhaler (you see, I didn't take this seriously enough to use the inhaler I'd just gotten for this year, and was still using the 2-year-old inhaler, which was running on fumes). Once the attack set in, I grabbed the newer inhaler, took a couple of puffs, and started feeling the pressure in my chest lift within a few minutes. The coughing continued, and it wasn't pretty. The fact that pollen counts in the area were at their spring peak contributed mightily to the event, but I was a little shaken by all this, of course, and began to think about what to do.

The next couple of days were tainted by the effects -- I was tired, coughing, lethargic, and unwilling to ride. By Monday, I was clearing up, and planned to commute home, but I also called for a doctor's appointment, and was able to get an afternoon appointment on Tuesday. My commutes from work on Monday and back on Tuesday were slower than usual -- I was skittish about exerting myself too much, and the cough was always threatening to return -- but otherwise I felt fine riding again.

What I learned was that I had not been nearly as aggressive or demanding about treatment and relief as I should have been. Not surprisingly, a number of excellent maintenance therapies have been developed over the past two decades, and I was using what amounts to the most rudimentary and least aggressive of anything available, despite my ambitions as an aerobic athlete. Suddenly, a theme emerged that I could see clearly over the years, of likely near-misses on the asthma front.

Now, I'm on a more aggressive set of therapies and moving down a path toward getting this thing under control for the next few seasons. Cracking up in a local race revealed the deficiencies of my approach. Now I have to crack the code of my exercise-induced asthma, and get back in the race.

Culture

2007-05-02T19:14:00.001-07:00

Charity rides are a common way for recreational cyclists to participate in long, organized rides. As a participant, you do good, while also creating a domain of cycling culture for a day or weekend. And it's this last aspect -- the creation of a temporarily cycling-centric world -- that I think makes these rides and events so appealing, interesting, and memorable.

When you sign up for one of these rides, the fund-raising that is required begins to shift you almost imperceptibly into the domain of cyclist vs. non-cyclist. It's a gentle nudge consisting of priorities, focus, and goals. You become a little different, a little distinct and monotonous in your focus. You have a date on a calendar that others don't, and you are tracking totals and training to that date.

Donors are often sympathetic to the cause the ride is supporting, so they donate, but they are not typically cyclists, so the point of commonality is the cause, not the cycling. This is all for the good, but begins to demarcate where the cause ends and the cyclists begin. It becomes clearer and clearer as the ride approaches that the donors will be independent of the event, while the cyclists are committed to riding on a specific date, and training for that event.

As the date approaches, the cycling culture around the event becomes stronger and stronger. Often, if it's a well-known ride, you begin to see jerseys from prior years on riders during morning commutes or weekend training rides; you get shouts of encouragement from friendly drivers and joggers; and the bike shops are filled with riders making preparations and getting their machines tuned. The momentum is building, and the cycling culture is emerging.

If the ride is a single-day event, the "event horizon" is fairly short -- usually, about 24-48 hours, with smaller pieces occurring farther out during training rides and perhaps some related events, such as team picnics or group rides. If the charity ride is a longer, weekend or full week event, the event horizon is usually much deeper. In fact, the event horizon is, I think, equal on either side of the ride to the length of the ride. So, for a single-day event, the day before and the day after the ride will usually be consumed with aspects of preparing or recovering from the ride. For a 2-day event, the entire event -- pre-event, event, and post-event activities and immersion -- will last about 6 days, given the approximate event horizon on either side. And for a full-week ride, the ride's effects can last about 3 weeks.

During the ride, and within the event horizon, you get to experience a culture in full that we, even as cyclists, only see fleetingly otherwise -- it is the cycling culture, manifest as hundreds of people with helmets, bikes, and cleated shoes all bringing the same traits together independently to form a cohesive picture of a culture. Diets and customs are similar. Gels, bars, and PB&Js are compared with often ribald remarks. Normal indications of social rank and many signals of cultural status are obliterated, so people are simply cyclists. They talk about the hills, the wind, the events on the road. They complain about their seats, or recount flats, spills, or great descents. They talk about past or planned events. They are tired, hungry, and thirsty, so everything is a bit more mellow. There's a lot of laughter and genuine discussion. It's a good culture.

It's tempting to wish the our dominant culture were more like cycling culture, and in some ways, I wish that were the case. But, instead of wishing for an ocean of cycling culture, I'll enjoy the lakes and ponds I find, and wade in whenever I can.

Eating

2007-04-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

In some ways, cycling again at this point in my life has become for me a story about eating. And, like a lot of stories, there are high points, low points, tension, intrigue, moments of despair, and ultimate triumph. One of the main lessons I've gleaned is, it's amazing how little most of us know about what we put into our bodies and what the effects can be.

When I got on a bike again, I was overweight and out of shape, a typical story for most people getting back into cycling after a hiatus for building a career and starting a family. In order to lose weight, I began taking notice of what I was eating, but cycling alone began to peel the pounds away, so I didn't analyze my diet too much. I really didn't know that much about hydration or carbohydrates at that point, so I didn't know what I was doing wrong. Ignorance ruled.

Once I was able to train harder, ride longer, and go faster, I began to create some gaps in my nutrition plan. My hydration was obviously inadequate, and my recovery was, in retrospect, an abomination. But, at the time, I thought I was doing pretty well, because I was losing weight and feeling stronger. I was faster, and I was riding centuries. I bought some more things to drink on the bike and for recovery, and a box of gels. It seemed sufficient.

Juggling my dietary options became a new dimension of my life. To lose some weight, I'd trim out a part of breakfast, or stop eating a type of food wholesale (no ice cream, no cheese, etc.). Instituting these simple rules made avoiding some foods very easy. However, looking back, this was a form of fad dieting at its worst, and didn't make much sense.

Another approach I drifted into was to be disciplined throughout most of the day. I'd start with a small breakfast, snack a little, have a small lunch, snack a little, and so on. The problem became the "and so on." What I soon discovered was that starting with dinner and continuing throughout the rest of the evening, I would be so famished that I would devour anything in my path, including cookies, cereals, nuts, and such. I was holding my weight, but at a price -- I was grumpy, unfocused, and lightheaded if I stood too quickly, throughout most of the day, mainly because of this poor nutrition pattern. My favorite primary care physician, when consulted about the lightheadedness and after giving me a once-over, diagnosed it properly. "Maybe you aren't eating enough," she said. I scoffed, but she was right.

I simply couldn't bring myself to believe I had to eat more. To me, that meant eating more food. What I didn't know is that it meant eating the right food at the right times.

During all of this, I resisted getting analytical. Enter Google Spreadsheets and the Nutrition Data web site. After reading a couple of cycling nutrition books and getting the quantitative aspects through my thick skull, I decided to create a spreadsheet to track my eating habits. Because Google's spreadsheets are virtual, I could enter data from work or home or on the road, and track what I was eating. Because Nutrition Data has a great database, I could look up nearly anything and get the right portion size and actual data. What I found was that my "diet early, gorge late" habit was giving me sparse nutrition through the afternoon, and then I was almost making up for it with the evening chowdown. However, even at that, I was probably chronically depleted of glycogen, due to training and poor recovery. The effects of this -- foggy thinking, bad mood, poor recovery, and such -- were very apparent. And, as with so many things, the symptoms created an inability to think clearly about the cause. Foggy thinking isn't the best state for epiphanies.

However, bull-headed analytics had shown me the problem I'd created for myself through iterations of dietary voodoo. Once I corrected these things using basal metabolic rate (BMR) estimates for daily caloric intake, percentage allocations for carbs, protein, and fat, eating timed with the goal of eliminating late-evening snacking, and actual caloric consumption for rides with matched recovery, including 0.5 g of carbs per pound consumed in the first 30 minutes after a ride, everything fell into place. My mental acuity returned, from morning until night; my sense of humor came back to where it had always been; I recovered from rides faster; incidents of lightheadedness after rides disappeared; and I rarely snacked before bedtime. Best of all, my average speeds rose yet again, I felt better, and riding 3-4 days straight didn't leave me a burned out heap of glycogen-depleted human anymore.

What I learned from the analyses I conducted was that when I added up what I was eating before I made these improvements, despite it seeming plentiful from a visual perspective, it wasn't adequate from a nutritional perspective. A sandwich and two Fig Newtons were not an adequate lunch, for example. It looked OK, but it wasn't even close. With the new plan, it looks like I'm unloading a day's rations when I get out my lunch, but I know that this is what I need for a nice, big mid-day intake of about 800 calories. It will last through until I have a smaller dinner, and balances out a smaller breakfast. The facts from the analysis had to emerge to trump what I was using before, which was just visual feedback informed by a wish to lose weight, a combination that was producing very misleading guidance.

Looking back, it seems somewhat ridiculous that eating properly took me so long to dial in. All the numbers were in front of me, all the information had been published, and the math is absurdly simple. I was just reluctant to implement it, and probably a little lazy. Also, ironically, I was too tired when I needed it most, because my diet was so poor. After 2-3 weeks of tracking my daily eating by calories, carbs, fat, and protein, as well as hydration, calories burned riding, and nutrition on the bike and during recovery, I know what to do. It's completely different than what I was doing, but it works a lot better. I have feedback that is much more meaningful than just what it looks like I'm eating.

Ultimately, with a lot of details in the midst about what foods to include, the basics still seem to be: Eat a good breakfast, a good lunch, and a good dinner; don't snack; eat 0.5 g of carbs per pound of body weight after a long ride (smoothies are great for this); eat more carbs later (bagels are great); and drink plenty of fluids.

And track your diet using a spreadsheet, real data, and goals. Do the math. You might be surprised at how far off-target you really are with your eating.

Pickup Trucks

2007-04-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

Cyclists have a special relationship with pickup trucks, and lately I've found myself trying to figure out why. The relationship is full of tension, and even anxiety for cyclists. When a cyclist hears the familiar roar of a pickup truck engine, which is usually accompanied by some rattling as equipment or gear rattles in the bed, a chill of expectation surges through the rider's nervous system. The impression that a high percentage of cyclists are hit by drivers of pickup trucks -- whether this is true or not -- comes to mind as the pickup truck nears, along with the stories of riders brushed off roads by passing pickups.

Most encounters with pickup trucks are uneventful. My experience is that the drivers are only slightly more aggressive or more anti-cycling than any other driver category. I think there is an attitude against cyclists and what they may or may not represent that is a little more prevalent among the people who use pickup trucks. And I share the anxiety provoked by the approaching pickup truck. I've seen my share of encounters that went less than well.

I think cyclists and pickup trucks intersect more often because both are typically on the road earlier than other vehicles. A lot of contractors are up at the break of dawn, and on the roads, and cyclists like to get their rides done before work starts. From both perspectives, it can seem like the morning is filled with bikes (if you're driving a pickup) or pickups (if you're riding a bike). The roads are relatively clear otherwise, emphasizing the presence of each to the other.

The anxiety created when the rattling ladders and growling engine of a truck are heard has real causes. Trucks are larger than cars, with more protuberances (large side mirrors, ladders hanging off the sides, materials sticking out). On a narrow road, they can seem immense. And while the drivers may not be more anti-cycling than any others, they often seem rather distracted and irritable in their driving habits. They also seem to be more hurried, unaware of their truck's limitations as a vehicle, and more convinced of their invincibility. Of the near-misses I've had, the majority have involved pickup trucks -- right turns directly in front of me (overestimating their speed and maneuverability); brush backs on narrow roads (squeezing through impatiently when waiting a few seconds would make more sense); and darting out of side streets (again, impatience and overestimating their acceleration and maneuverability).

Finally, there are the angry pickup truck drivers, who I have encountered on large group rides. The congregation of many cyclists, and the congestion this can create on a road, seems to trigger the worst among the pickup trucks. Windows roll down, crude advice and admonishments are provided, and gestures are demonstrated. It seems that a natural frustration with being slowed and poorly processed fears of hitting cyclists generate irrational anger. For cyclists, this same type of irrationality can make us anxious about pickup trucks, and so perhaps at the base of this strange relationship is a sort of mutual irrationality.

This is strange, because when the vehicles aren't involved, the people in pickups and on bikes actually get along quite well, more proof that fear and loathing of one another is purely irrational.

Reality

2007-04-06T16:22:00.000-07:00

Early in the cycling season, perceptions can be deceiving. Nearly every year, I castigate myself over poor performance, shaming myself for what must be the obvious end product of lackluster winter/holidays training, sloppy nutritional planning, and inadequate commitment to my goals. I feel slow on the road, sluggish on climbs, and fatigued during longer than normal recovery times. After more reflection, I also begin to feel older, when I realize that my nutrition, training, and commitment have actually been adequate. Maybe I'm getting too old for this, I despair, and, if that's the case, then what?!

I was having one of these mini-meltdowns after a 30-mile ride early in the season, but while I was recording my stats in my homemade ride log, I found the time to compare this year's ride with rides of the same route at the same time of year in prior years. What I found surprised me, namely that I was actually riding the same route faster this year than in previous years, even with tougher headwinds. Aside from the relief I felt at this news, it also brought to mind the value of objective data during training, and how dunderheaded humans can be.

Basically, I don't think cyclists (or humans in general) are very good at assessing or recollecting reality, especially when it comes to purely sensory input. We are unreliable witnesses. We don't explain ourselves well. Collectively, we used to think the world was flat, the stars pinpricks in a cosmic sphere encircling the Earth, and the sun moved across the skies. These were all valid perceptions, but only objective measurements and mathematical proofs revealed the true nature of reality. As Robin Williams said early in his career, "Reality . . . what a concept."

Most of the pleasures of cycling are sensory and perceptual. Riding, testing yourself, feeling fit, and improving over time are all aspects of recreational cycling that feel good and make it worthwhile. But I've found that balancing these perceptual aspects with objective data is critical to really measuring improvement during a season and over multiple years. I may feel I'm slower and older, but the data show that I'm not, so I can reinterpret the sensations of early season sluggishness as just that, not a sweeping and fatalistic indictment of my advancing years.

On the bike, objective data can help a lot, too, push you to do more. Riding up a hill with a perceived effort that feels difficult, you may glance down at your speed and note that you are going well under the threshold you prefer, so you pick up the pace and hurt a little in order to meet objective standards. You can be fooled by your perceptions, and these can be corrected by real-time feedback.

The days of affordable power meters for recreational cyclists are on the horizon. Once these devices arrive and are widely adopted, objective data of greater utility and importance will be within most cyclists' grasp. No longer will we have to infer from speed, perceived effort, heart rate, or other proxy measures. We will have power output presented to us, front and center, and be able to strive to that. This is akin to the sailing vessels of old going from sextants and star charts to GPS in one fell swoop.

Doses of reality are crucial for any recreational cyclist determined to improve. Keeping my ride log current and accurate -- and keeping rides named consistently across time -- has provided insights that my memory could never have summoned forth on its own. I can remember events in more detail, see trends, and plan training more accurately. And that's a concept worth making a reality.

Repairs

2007-03-30T05:20:00.000-07:00

When I became reacquainted with cycling after years of riding the same old bike only occasionally, my new devotion and equipment meant that I had to learn about a lot of new advances that had been made in the intervening years. Integrated headsets and shifters and new types of bottom brackets were just a few of the differences. Another difference lay within me -- I was more mature, and had learned the benefits of maintaining things, of prevention instead of intervention. I wanted to know how things worked so I could be self-sustaining and a better bike owner.

I also discovered another benefit of this virtuous-appearing stance, which was I could spend more time and money on bike stuff, from cables to tools to tires. I had another reason to visit the bike shops and bring gear home, whether it was a crank puller or some lube and tubes. I was a sustenance cyclist, and I was saving money in the long run, I told myself and my spousal unit.

The first piece of repair equipment I purchased was the big one, the repair stand. I got an inexpensive but sturdy stand, portable to an extent, and reliable. It has served me well. Then, I found a small basic tool kit, the kind meant for a traveling mechanic. This was fairly inexpensive, and gave me all the basic tools -- chain whip, bottom-bracket tool, cassette tool, and chain tool, to name a few. After getting crank pullers and tire levers, and a scrounging a few normal household tools (screwdrivers, cable cutters, and pliers) from my tool boxes, I was pretty much set. Oh, yes, and I needed a box of those cloth rags on a roll, and some good lubes and cleaners. And a box of latex gloves -- the latex gloves are vital to keeping a homespun repair approach viable, because if you have to scrub grease off your hands after every session, you will soon tire of it all.

I transformed part of my work room into a bike room -- well, OK, I transformed most of my work room into a bike room, relegating my work bench and standard tools to about 40% of the room. And I signed up for a repair class.

The local bike shop's repair class was very useful. As I mentioned, I had a lot to learn about the new bikes, and taking my new steed apart and putting it back together taught me a lot, with enough at stake that I truly paid attention and retained a lot of what I learned.

But hands-on, mistake-riddled home repairs proved to be my most important education. I can't recall any particularly bungled repairs or attempts at repairs with any shop pyrotechnics. I did have one bad outcome that taught me a lot about properly setting a chain pin. I had taken my chain off for cleaning, and put it back together, setting a new pin in place. I was a little careless, and didn't notice that it didn't seat quite completely (that magic little feeling of setting just right), and didn't visually examine it. I just set it and walked away. The next morning, six miles from the end of my longish commute, the chain popped. Lacking a replacement pin or anything that could substitute, I was forced to walk six miles pushing my bike. I have since switched to the chains that link using linking plates, so there is no doubt about the chain being whole.

I also briefly became the neighborhood shop, as people bought new bikes or spruced up their kids old bikes. This ended by and large, however, because their interest in bike maintenance lapsed. Now, in the spring, I will get a few calls asking me to go over a bike that has sat all winter or sounds odd when first taken out, but the issues are usually simple (lube or brake offsets are very common, new cables often are involved).

After about five years of privately repairing and maintaining my bike, it has become a part of the entire ritual, and I am quite adept at it, I feel. I can get in and out of my little shop, even for a major repair, without taking much time or breaking a sweat. I am also much better at on-road repairs and issues, seemingly having acquired a bit of a knack based on the work I've done at home, what I've read about, and practice through repetition. When stricken with a flat, I can get it fixed quickly and reliably. When a riding buddy has an issue, I can fix it, or at least explain what's going on so that we can fix it later if it's just a minor annoyance we can't fix well on the road. I even found myself serving in the role of medic after a riding buddy crashed, washing asphalt out of his wounds with my water bottle and checking his bike over before declaring it fit to ride again.

These new skills have even carried over into a renewed craftiness when faced with minor breakdowns in non-cycling life. While I've always been fairly handy, honing my skills with bike repairs also honed my handyman skills in other areas.

The mechanical side of cycling, aside from its sweet aesthetic and glorious simplicity, delivers great benefits. Taking responsibility for it has been a boon for me, and given me another dimension to enjoy as I speed down the road.

Grease

2007-03-17T07:26:00.000-07:00

Bike grease. I can hear the words spoken with alarm and disdain, in my own voice and in the voices of my family. Bike grease! In the past, it has appeared as if by dark magic after seemingly pristine encounters with my bike, manifesting as stains on fingertips after merely being near a bike, on furniture after a thoughtless moment resting a bike against a couch on the way out the door, and on carpet after cleaning globules off a chain (and apparently on to my socks or shoes).

At first, the dogs were blamed, not for the grease but for the splotches on the carpets. Surely, I rationalized, the dogs must have tracked something in from the outdoors. But, upon closer inspection and after frustrating many of the normal cleaning aids, it became clear that another culprit was to blame, and that I and my bike habit were closely associated with it. The spousal unit was not pleased.

The solutions were urgently sought and relatively simple, but required some diligence to implement routinely. First, a pair of slip on shoes (ala crocs) were purchased, and these used exclusively in my bike room. Second, a grease-absorbing mat was placed beneath my bike stand to catch the stuff and keep it from moving around on the floor. Finally, a box of latex gloves was purchased from the local hardware mega-store to keep my hands clean.

The essential nature of grease in bicycling is clear -- it lubricates moving parts and keeps water and dirt in check to some degree. But choosing the right lubricant usually does not involve grease, per se. In fact, most modern lubricants are synthetic blends of super-particles, some for airliners, others for race cars. I think that in this case the substance dubbed "grease" emerges after the lubricants are polluted with grime, dirt, and grit, resulting in sticky black surfaces that, when turned into globules or wiped clean, expel the grease we dread.

Removing grease from a bike can be a challenge. Getting it off the chain usually requires giving the links a bath in some degreaser, and then a careful wipe down. Eliminating grease from the rear derailleur is often an overlooked chore, but essential to a properly functioning drivetrain. Grease tends to gunk up these small sprockets, and a carefully wielded screwdriver tip or mascara brush (cleaned first and then dipped in degreaser) will do the trick. Other components (bottom bracket, wheel rims, and front derailleur) are important to clean now and again, as well, but to me the chain and rear derailleur are the most regular recipients of grease maintenance.

Of course, grease can wander from Point A to Point B (or well beyond) through innocent actions, despite the preceding precautions. The most likely culprit is the careless hand. Even in gloves, an itchy nose, a reflexive grip on the bike seat, or a habitual wiping of hands on garments can result in unpleasant and surprising outcomes. The nose is a particular problem, as you can't see what you've done, but spouses and children take enormous glee in the result. The other problems reinforce to me why bike shorts are black. Fighting with a skipped chain on the side of the road will get your hands greasy, and black cycling shorts can be a great and discrete towel.

Perhaps someday some engineering or materials science genius will invent a lubricant that is inexpensive, incredibly effective, long-lasting, and non-staining, even when beset with road crud. Until that day comes, we have with us always the necessary but problematic companion we call grease. And it will remain a challenge to keep it on your bike!

The Wrong Reasons

2007-03-15T17:52:00.000-07:00

As someone who commutes by bike, I'm occasionally assumed to ride for all the right reasons. In some cases, I'm taken to be a fervent environmentalist, commuting by bike to save the world from the impending doom of global warming. In other cases, I'm granted the qualities of a health fanatic, someone who rides many miles most days in order to extend my life and heighten my health. Finally, more pragmatic types think that commuting by bike must save time and/or money, and attribute my riding to shrewd calculations and logistical insights. In each case, there is a reason beyond riding itself that makes me commute by bike. After all, why else would someone choose as laborious and difficult a way to get to work? I must have higher ideals driving my decisions, these people seem to assume.

The fact is that I don't have any real higher ideals that make me cycle to work. I just plain like it. I have done a bit of the math, and I think it actually costs me more to bike to work than it would to drive. At an assumed fully loaded rate of US$0.45 per mile, it costs me about $27 per day to drive round-trip to and from work. With all the extra food, drink, and equipment I have for bicycle commuting, the laundry for the bicycle clothes, and the amortized costs of my bike, I think I'm coming out just about even. After all, two bottles of decent hydration can run US$6 by themselves, and I need two each way, so there's US$12 right there! Add to that the extra breakfast when I arrive, the gels on the way home, and the extra food at dinner to replenish after what is a relatively long commute (about 27 miles each way), and we're just about in the same ballpark. I may save some money, but it's not hundreds of dollars a season, more like tens, and probably in the lower range all tolled.

Global warming isn't the reason, either. I think I've done my homework here, as well, and despite the Oscar-winning histrionics of An Inconvenient Truth, the facts seem that global warming may be something that the globe is just doing, with a little human embellishment occurring right now as icing (no pun intended) on the cake. In fact, it's a very complicated planet,we seem less significant than we want to believe, and our computer models and investigations of empirical evidence yield rather crude predictions about where we're headed. Some pollution cools the planet, other types warm it a bit, but human ingenuity is probably our best bet for getting us to move away from fossil fuels. I personally would love a solar-charged electric car that would be cheaper, quieter, and more efficient. I think nearly everyone would. But bikes aren't a practical response.

My health may be part of the reason, but again, I could be almost more healthy by not commuting by bike. Small particulate air pollution is at its densest in the middle of a road -- so, if you're breathing in a car all the time, you're breathing in a lot of small particles -- but it's nearly as dense on the shoulders. Breathing around traffic at a higher rate and more deeply due to cycling probably doesn't do my lungs many favors. In addition, the cardio benefits of 2-3 more rides per week by commuting versus just riding on the weekends are probably marginal. If fitness were my goal, I could probably achieve all I need without commuting by bike.

And I don't commute by bike to save time. While there are days when commuting by bike is nearly as fast as driving, due to traffic congestion, it's unpredictable. Usually, I'm about 15-20 minutes longer on the bike, and sometimes have dinner warmed over.

No, I have to admit, I like commuting by bike because it's pleasant for many months of the year. I arrive at work mentally refreshed, calm, and at peace. My energy level is good, and I have a better attitude and perspective on things thanks to 75 minutes of trees, pedaling, concentration, and free thinking, combined into a commute. Commuting by bike is fun. It's purely selfish. I commute by bike for all the wrong reasons. And that's good enough for me.

Waiting

2007-03-11T10:44:00.000-07:00

It happens more often than I'd care to admit, especially in the fall and spring, when the peak of the day is the best time to ride and mornings are not yet amenable to a dawn spin (too cold, too icy, too dark) -- I end up waiting for my ride time.

In the summer, early rides spare me the anxiety of waiting. I can sneak out of the house while others are asleep, and arrive home just as they are rubbing the sleep from their eyes. There is no inconvenience, no competition for time, and no trade-offs. My devotion to cycling is as inconsequential to them as it can be. I am just a few noises in the drowsy morning, a couple of hours of quiet, and then more rattling and steps as I return home. I am barely noticeable.

During the times of the year when sunlight and temperatures are most bearable at the peak of the day, competition for time slots becomes keener, and my riding is the subject of negotiations that often begin mid-week, with blanket pronouncements about my intentions to get in 1-2 rides over the weekend, blatant interpretations that the weather forecast supports my plans, clear hints that riding is part of the weekend plans, and so on. In order to be strategic, I initially have to perform some quiet reconnaissance of the field of battle, usually by inquiring about the planned and/or required activities of the upcoming weekend. Once having surveyed the terrain ahead, I can begin to plot where and when I will strike, and the games begin.

All this said, my family is remarkably supportive of my cycling, as I think they know it is my primary passion as an individual. Given the amounts of time I spend on homework, evenings out, my own career, their activities, and in the inevitable downtime parenting brings (waiting, watching, and worrying), I am grateful that my escapades are as integrated as they are.

Waiting for that magic, negotiated spot in the day can be fraught with anxiety. Clouds scud across the sun, threatening to blot out the warming sun and bring along a punishing, cold wind. Temperature fluctuations become worrisome, as dressing for these mixed seasons can be tricky at best, and unpredictable temperatures make the job a bit more difficult. The hours tick by, and you fret about whether your ride window will remain open, the air will be warm, the sky sunny, and the ride long enough.

It is the season of waiting -- waiting to begin the negotiations, waiting for the weather, waiting for the right days to emerge, waiting for the right hours to be set aside, waiting. But once the road and tires meet, the waiting is over. It was worth the wait.

Resistance

2007-02-20T03:34:00.000-08:00

Every winter, the trainer comes out, dusty and cold, from its spot along the side wall of the storeroom. Whether yours operates on principles of magnetism or fluid dynamics, the trainer is an unwelcome sight, like bars on a prison, a reminder of captivity. You will clamp your bike into it, and it will hold you to the floor as you pedal and sweat in your lonely cell.

Whining through sprints and intervals, and clanking through mock climbs, the trainer is a poor substitute for the open road. Not only does it not vary as much as a real ride, but it deprives you of natural bike movements, whether that is canting through obstacles or swaying up a standing climb.

However, the real problem with the trainer comes not from the trainer itself, but from the fact that you have to exercise indoors. Cycling is meant to be an outdoor sport, and the stifling heat of a long indoor session is the most depressing part of indoor training. Even with a good oscillating fan set on high, the amount of perspiration you lose during a long indoor session is remarkable. This is because the evaporative cooling you experience on the road is optimized when the air moves all around your body, over the cylindrical shapes of your arms and legs, and around and across your back. With a floor fan or even multiple fans, a high percentage of your body's surface area doesn't receive a breeze, so evaporative cooling is greatly reduced, leaving you gasping in a pool of sweat.

These associative memories of indoor training make the appearance of the dusty trainer all the more dreaded. You can feel your dry skin crackle at the thought of soaking in a film of sweat, and you recall the towels and jerseys drenched in last year's Tour de Basement. You shudder. But, no matter how you might resist, you realize that you have to press onward.

For, odd as it seems, an unpleasant indoor training session is, ultimately, better than nothing. By the end of it, and after the obligatory shower, you feel a lot better, and you know you've invested in your fitness again. It will pay off. You will ride farther and faster this year. Resistance is not futile.

Bike Lust

2007-02-10T12:34:00.000-08:00

Lust is sustaining, because it is fundamentally hopeful. Even in the cold, dark, isolating winter, the mind and body need enticement, excitement, and arousal. During pleasant weather, cyclists can gain and sustain an upbeat attitude with rewarding rides and beautiful mornings on the road -- but bike lust is all winter's isolation and chill leave. The prospect of acquiring a new bike, whether realized or not, can help the avid cyclist survive the season when snow, ice, cold, and winds combine to deprive him or her of the basic pleasures of cycling.

Bike lust comes in different flavors, from the wholesome to the lurid.

Wholesome and publicly acknowledgeable bike lust is the tempered and balanced admiration of a nice bike of less than $1,000 that has a modest componentry and is made, usually, of aluminum. Wanting one of these is like seeking a hug and a kiss on the cheek -- socially acceptable, no signal about further intentions, and low-risk.

A less temperate mode of bike lust includes sexy black carbon weave in erotic arcs and bends, draped with an unseemly amount of componentry. Or even the sleek and frosty titanium, which titillates with gorgeous welds and a soft, matte finish that glows with youth and vitality. Gazing upon these beauties, salivary glands begin to fire, pupils dilate, the pulse quickens, and blood is shunted to your hands as they grasp for your wallet.

Catalog companies know how to exploit bike lust, sending their thick, glossy editions as winter's nadir is reached, making the lonely, trapped cyclist yearn for contact with these enticing fresh and nubile cycles. It is not a mistake that both cycling catalog promoters and "Sports Illustrated" exploit February. We're simply more vulnerable to being plied by gorgeous, curvy, and seductive shapes. And girls in swimsuits are nice to look at, as well.

Infatuation is the next step after lust, and this is a dangerous transition. The object of your lust is now clear, and singular. You think about a particular bike constantly, you may have touched it in the store, and you remember how you approached it -- how it felt, how it responded as you lifted it, how its clean drivetrain beckoned -- and you contemplate the electricity of that first, furtive contact. It becomes an obsession, and you must have it.

If you hold out, however, you may find that, as the weather improves and the roads become available yet again, your current bike feels great, and the familiar joy of riding returns. Its little idiosyncrasies charm you yet again, the shared stories you have and the quirks emerging from years of repairs, maintenance, and miles. One warm day with some tailwinds, and your infatuation dissolves, your lust is vanquished, and your love for your current ride returns in full force.

Or perhaps you indulged, and are riding your new bike. It is then that the charade is revealed, as bike lust returns soon enough. Did you buy carbon? That titanium rig that just blasted past, with its icy skin and smooth ride, looks pretty good. Aluminum? A nice carbon downtube flashes some weave, and your head is turned. The lesson of lust is reinforced: as the famous TV line goes, "Sometimes the wanting is better than the having."

Sick

2007-02-01T11:11:00.000-08:00

You get sick during the winter. No matter how optimistic you are as the season of minor and major ailments approaches, how many oranges you eat, how many times you wash your hands, how short you keep your fingernails, how well you dodge the phlegmatic, or how hydrated you keep yourself, an errant germ will wend its way through your defenses and bring you to your knees for at least a week.

Illness affects every dimension of your life, and reliably gives you time to cogitate on each aspect as you lie aching in bed, strung between immobilized exhaustion and bitter resistance. For cyclists, losing lung and muscle power during an illness can be alarming, especially at the physical nadir of winter. Missing rides can be demoralizing. Losing valuable training sessions can set you back.

Some illnesses are mere nuisances, like a head cold can be for a cyclist. The rule of thumb is often stated that if the symptoms remain above the neck you can ride. It's when the lungs begin to fill and myalgias make muscles weak and painful that you need to stop what you're doing and lie down. I don't know how much I trust this. I've had head colds (above the neck) that have made me want to medicate and rest exclusively. To me, if you feel like a ride, you are probably OK to ride. Otherwise, rest and recover, and fight another day.

Riding with a head cold can isolate parts of your aerobic system for analysis unlike anything else, as your clogged nose makes mouth-breathing necessary and you realize how that passive 20% extra you get from a clear nose makes riding at intensity possible. It can also make you more mulish, giving you increased stamina and stubbornness, perfect for long, cold rides in the winter.

When I'm sick, I'll often see things from a different perspective. It might be the virus disrupting my brain, or it might be the time of recovery giving me extra mental cycles to consider the different dimensions of life. In any event, I often leave a severe cold with a slightly different agenda than I entered with it. I also gain a renewed appreciation for the support systems I rely upon but take for granted when I'm well.

For me, the sign that an illness is over is the day I find myself with boundless energy and drive. These super-charged days always strike me as remarkable, and I wish I could time them to correlate with days I actually need them. Riding in a state like that must be amazing.

Illness is like a long, uncomfortable car trip or airplane flight -- it seems interminable when you're in the middle of it, endless and agonizing at times. Yet, when it's over and you have emerged, the memory of it vanishes nearly perfectly, erased from your mind as you reorient forward into the future and become engrossed by the activities around you. You emerge in a different place than you started, and have nowhere to go but forward.

Leap of Faith

2007-01-19T03:34:00.000-08:00

Winter often means fewer rides and less time on the bike. The rides we in the northern climates are able to accomplish in the winter are shorter and less intense than rides in moderate weather. If you're committed to continued training and improvement, compensating for the diminished ride time means riding the indoor trainer, lifting weights, attending spin classes, and cross-training (playing basketball and other indoor sports). For the avid recreational cyclist, these activities are focused toward the next cycling season -- the implicit goals are improving strength and aerobic capacity, maintaining or losing weight, and diversifying your lifestyle for a mental and physical break so that the main cycling season is better than ever.

Fundamentally, winter activities aimed at improved performance months in the future represent a leap of faith. When you ride consistently, and begin to repeat routes or sections of routes overlap, you receive feedback in the form of higher speeds, easier climbs, or better endurance, making it easy to gauge progress and remain motivated.

Even workout rides during the season can be thought of as deposits in the bank of fitness, and feedback again comes soon. If you do climbing intervals, you will see within a few days some improvement, or feel less fatigue. If you do speed intervals, you might nip the town line sprint win. This type of training doesn't require the leap of faith that winter training does -- there is very little faith expended.

During the winter months, feedback can go into the deep freeze, as well. The feedback from weight lifting, spin classes, and indoor training is inadequate to measure true improvement on the bike. You enter the realm of doubt, delayed gratification, and faith. It is the trust that the program will work, that shedding 5-10 pounds will pay off, and that sacrifices, diligence, and commitment will mean you'll ride longer, faster, and stronger when the trees bud.

There is a more macroscopic leap of faith over all of mid-life cycling, and that is that in addition to the fun and camaraderie, health benefits will accrue, we will live better and longer. Given the larger leap of faith we all take as cyclists who are trying to extend our athletic careers, I suppose these seasonal leaps of faith are relatively trivial.

Ask any cyclist what exists within this leap of faith, and you are very likely to find a lot of well-informed planning and strategizing. From dietary theories to training hypotheses, many based on sound studies, at least the best we have today, cyclists typically devour information about nutrition, physiology, and training, and use this information to sustain their commitment, to extend and justify their faith.

As you experience your annual leap of faith, be assured that it will pay off, both this year and overall. It is not actually faith, but science, you are using to propel your leap. And that's what makes it safe.

Planning

2007-01-02T18:56:00.000-08:00

One aspect of cycling for serious recreational riders is planning for and around major cycling events each year, from local races to centuries to multi-day events. Juggling work, family, and friends can be a high-stakes adventure, so long lead times and complicated logistics are inevitable. You'd better plan early and well, or someone will be upset or your plans may fail.

With the dawn of the new year upon me, I find myself suddenly thrust into the first bouts of planning rides that are many months away, with maps of half-remembered regions flashing across the screen and terrain profiles boasting their high points in defiance.

This rush of future realities comes at just the right time, jarring the restful holiday gentleman out of a reverie of food and drink and sweets. Snapped back into the reality of training and diet, I have already reaped one benefit of planning for future events -- I stopped eating pie and dip, and started back into a training routine, well before much harm could be done.

That nice side-effect of planning is but one of many. In addition, planning for future cycling events reinforces dates many months into the future. Armed with the knowledge of your key ride dates, you can astound colleagues and friends when you can immediately identify which day of the week the 4th of July falls on this year and the day of the week that May 20th is. Because you've planned rides in these months, you know the weekend and holiday dates already, so you appear to be a calendar shaman or savant.

Planning for rides well ahead also means a lack of spontaneity as the halcyon days of summer actually move into view. Having plunked down a registration fee and perhaps set some travel plans, you are loathe to whimsically shift plans for a picnic or softball game that comes up spur of the moment. This can make you appear more rabid a cyclist than you truly are. You aren't rabid -- you just planned ahead.

I seem to like having 5-7 major rides per season, just enough to sprinkle through the peak summer months, with a spring warm-up and fall cool-down ride thrown in for good measure. I can't imagine balancing more and keeping relationships and career both on-track.

Good luck with the plans you hatch over these dark and cold winter months. Casting your plans into the future is an act of optimism combined with discipline. May your discipline pay off, and your optimism be exceeded by results.

Bones

2006-12-17T19:04:00.000-08:00

The news that Lance Armstrong broke his shin running the New York marathon should give cyclists pause. The link between osteoporosis and cycling is well known. And when an athlete at Lance's level breaks a leg bone through repetitive stress, the lesson's severity likely doesn't quite apply to those of us more toward the median of cycling accomplishment. But there are things to be remembered and learned from this precipitating event.

Lance was hyper-trained, and his bones are more porous likely for two main reasons: he had an incredibly low body mass index (there is a correlation between low BMI and osteoporosis, but see my post on BMI for some reflections on the problems with that measure), and a lack of weight-bearing exercise. He then turned to running, and trained at a fairly high level to participate in an endurance run. It was akin to spending years as a professional deep sea diver and then scaling Everest a year after quitting the sea. The body was bound to complain.

There's a fair amount of lore about what causes osteoporosis in your average person. The most common misconception is that drinking soda is a cause, with the theory being that the phosphoric acid in most colas leeches calcium from the bones and weakens them. However, research has shown that this is probably exactly wrong -- high intake of phosphoric acid may actually strengthen bones. This is actually a classic "correlation, not causation" case of confusion. Phosphoric acid is in colas, and people who drink colas have been found to have weaker bones. However, this is because they are drinking sodas instead of milk, and displacing so much calcium from your diet will lead to weaker bones. Correlation, not causation.

But the link between a lack of weight-bearing exercise and osteoporosis is clear. The jarring and shaking of pounding the pavement stimulates osteoclasts, the precursors of bone, leading to more bone formation. Go long enough with suppressed osteoclast stimulation, the natural processing of calcium and reabsorption of bone outstrips its replacement, and you get Swiss cheese at the microscopic level. Soon enough, the holes combine and, snap, you can have what is termed a "fragility fracture."

Walk, jump, dance, run, climb stairs, and do plyometrics. Jar those bones, shake those osteoclasts, and activate those bones. Then, give them what they need to grow and rebuild: eat the cheese and yogurt, drink that skim milk. Or the next break you have may not be a lucky break.

Cheating

2006-12-10T13:28:00.000-08:00

The layers of idealism, politics, science, phobia, and greed that combine to form cycling's doping problem deserve to be taken apart. For me, the impetus to finally attempt this is the Landis Tour de France doping situation, which I think is clearly a French conspiracy -- after seven years of Lance dominance, the French partisans were fed up, couldn't quite sully the name of Armstrong with even post-career scandalization, and decided to frame a successful active American racer and deprive him of his rightful win in the 2006 race. And they knew all they needed was a semi-serious accusation that would resonate in the press. Since they couldn't win legitimately, they cheated.

For the 2006 race, I really started paying attention when they hit the mountains. The course was such that the mountains were going to be decisive. Watching Landis on the day he cracked, I remember thinking, "That's one smart cyclist. He's realized that he can't win today, so he's going to preserve himself by crawling up the last climbs so he can bounce back with extra energy tomorrow. He's even willing to suffer the humiliation of this grandmotherly pace in order to execute sound strategy!"

Of course, the next day, Landis scorched the field and surged back into the lead. And then the framing began.

This particular frame was made from existing materials. First, cycling is the most monitored sport outside of weightlifting for banned substances. Baseball and football fans are living in a fool's paradise of ignorance -- many of their players are playing juiced all the time -- but those sports have decided to put in the most rudimentary and beatable testing schemes imaginable, yet they still catch juicers, if that's any indication of how widespread the practice is in those sports. The hypocrisy within the sports world is already severe when it comes to the notion of ingesting or injecting performance-enhancing substances. Cycling's idealism about doping is perhaps admirable, but also perhaps foolish. Idealism can be either.

Another raw material used to make the frame is drug phobia. Athletes can specifically gain advantages through altitude training (which boosts their red blood cell counts pretty much as EPO can); through carefully managed, professional nutritional programs that shed pounds; and through massage, jacuzzis, and other recovery strategies. None of these is banned. Each can enhance performance. But, heaven forbid you drink too much caffeine or take anything else that's deemed a drug. You can use money (to support travel to and living at altitude), staff (get the best masseurs and physiologists), and chefs to gain advantages, but not a drug.

And this is not for reasons of safety. Look how long it took cycling organizations to make helmets mandatory. If safety were a priority in pro cycling, then descents would be less dramatic (lower speeds, fewer hairpin turns, more concern about skirting cliffs), sprints would be forbidden, and races over cobbles wouldn't exist. Safety is something sponsors and organizers worry about occasionally. And drug safety is addressable even if drugs were allowed.

If the notion is to eliminate one-sided advantages, then training programs, nutrition, and masseurs would be equalized. If the problem were safety, then the demonstrated dangers of descents, sprints, and cobbles should be addressed. So, the drug issue is not about unfair advantages, safety, or the ideal of the untainted athlete (is a pampered athlete who trains at altitude and sleeps at sea level untainted?). It is about drug phobia. In cycling, the drug phobia can be used to smear people without adequate evidence. Just the allegation carries such taint that it effectively cancels out performance.

We live in a culture that is hypocritical about drugs -- we are appalled that competitive athletes might take substances to recover faster, breath easier, or compete more effectively (forgetting that they are running these risks for millions of dollars), but give us our caffeine, cold medicine, Viagra, and bogus nutritional supplements when very little is at stake -- well, we have stressful lives and are fighting to stay young. But let's make sure our athletes are pure, as ideals. We'll be the reality, they will be the idealizations. We can't let them manage risk on their own when it comes to things they put in their bodies, but we can let them deal with the risks on the road at high speeds, despite the fatalities that occur each year.

The frame around Landis needed this high level of drug phobia to work, because the circumstances and science don't hold up on their own. Not only were multiple procedural steps missed in the test, with not even the correct rider number assigned to samples at key transitions, but the communications from the authorities involved had "frame up" written all over them (it was like a bad murder mystery, in which the killer gives himself away by stating something only the killer could have known). However, facts, forensics, and science have an uphill battle against drug phobia brandished by witch hunters, nationalists, and a corrupt lab.

Plainly, slathering yourself with testosterone cream one evening is not going to create the kind of performance that Landis gave that day. Let's be realistic. Testosterone cream doesn't work that way. In fact, testosterone doesn't work that way. What does work that way is this: a super-fit rider preserves his strength on brutal climbs the day before, nurses the sting of humiliation overnight, and transforms that sting through recovery into an inspired ride. That is the formula for a spectacular rebound performance. That is what enhances great athletes.

The Landis affair is a travesty. The French partisans combined nationalism, drug phobia, and pseudoscience in an effort to drive a great American champion from the podium, or at least taint his win severely. Landis was framed. Fans and cyclists deserve better. Our experience as fans and the reputation of cycling has been cheated by misplaced idealism, drug phobia, or the misconduct of authorities.

Freezer Burn

2006-12-09T13:17:00.001-08:00

Temperatures have just dropped down into the teens for lows, and the sun cannot pierce the opaline skies most mornings. Winter riding has started again, and the sensations forgotten in the intervening months have been reaffirmed -- painfully cold fingers, frigid feet, the icy nose, a frozen mouth, and a chapped face. Most importantly, these first few rides in the subfreezing weather have revived another set of memories -- that cold weather makes breathing and pedaling more difficult.

Air actually becomes thicker and heavier in cold weather. It is, after all, its new proximity to stasis that creates cold. Water is more condensed in cold air, air that is not as available to the lungs immediately as warm air. This makes breathing on colder rides a bit more of an effort. In addition, the energy needed to continually warm the cold air leads to extra depletion, not to mention the most obvious side-effect, the increased production of mucous to compensate for the cold.

Evaporation in the cold can be deceptive, and it's easy to think you don't need a bottle of energy drink along. After all, how much sweating will you do in 20F weather? But the extra evaporation from your lungs in the cold air, along with the mucous production, can combine to deplete as much water as a heavy sweat, especially when you realize that you are also sweating, but at a lower level and with less of a sensation of sweatiness.

Rides also get shorter in the flash-freeze. There is the first psychological barrier to get over (damn, it's COLD out there!), and if the wind is also blowing, you may just choose the indoor trainer and a grainy old Spinervals instead. But the extra effort, dicey roads, unpleasant sensations (cold feet are among my least favorite things), and limited daylight combine to truncate rides. And the intensity is harder to maintain, even on shorter rides, as cold keeps your own molecular activity on the slower side.

Yet, there is a burn to a winter ride, and the feeling afterward can be sensational. In addition to the pleasant feeling of being outside, in the weak sunlight and biting air, there is the fact that, happily, all this culminates in a hot post-ride shower, after which toes are pink and warm again, fingers move effortlessly, and speech is once again fully articulated. Savoring the reassuring pain of frozen fingers and toes straining back to temperature is what the wrap-up is all about. Then, warm, fit, and relaxed, you glide back into the day, and realize that you have been fully a part of two worlds -- the frozen natural world, and the world of manufactured warmth humans huddle inside these dark months. And, soon, you're ready to go again . . .

The Paceline

2006-12-02T06:47:00.000-08:00

Watching professional cycling races on television a few years ago, before plunging back into cycling, I was astounded at the power and speeds generated by pacelines. The ease with which riders cranked up to and sustained such velocities was seemingly unattainable. I'd never experienced the feeling, having ridden mostly solo in college and afterwards, or enjoying single-track during a few years of mountain biking before getting married.

After about two years of riding at this point in my life, I had been in a few pacelines, but nothing very well organized. Either the line would fragment soon after forming, or the pace would be too unpredictable for the coordinated power to emerge.

Then, in the early part of a local century ride a few years ago, I found myself in the midst of a strong paceline, one with an unspoken and broadly shared sense of how to do it. The weather was sunny and temperate, and people pulled for about 5 minutes each before rotating off to the back. Everyone took turns, and murmured "nice pull" as riders drifted back to nestle in for a draft. Soon, I glanced down at my cyclometer, and noticed we were effortlessly gliding along at 26-27 mph. The century was over with before I knew it, and I arrived back home well ahead of schedule, to the consternation of my neighborhood cycling buddies. They couldn't believe I'd ridden the whole event, showered, eaten, and driven home well before the afternoon had hit its stride.

Well, I was hooked on that experience, and of course began seeking it out. It was occasionally frustrating. Again and again, pacelines would start to form, only to be thwarted by a lack of coordination among the riders, a route interrupted too frequently by intersecting car traffic, or hills that would shatter the group. But, the pacelines did start to happen more and more often.

The next paceline I caught was the next spring, at an early-season century, and it emerged as we left the start line. For about 25 miles, the line snaked through the route at high speeds. The time flew by, the chatter was fun, and everyone was doing their job. Then, we caught and absorbed another group that looked coordinated and speedy, but turned out to consist of two strong riders who shared pulls and a set of wheelsuckers. The group was wedged apart when the wheelsuckers came to dominate the back half and we hit the hills. Luckily, I was toward the front and pressed on, but our ranks were depleted, and the rest of the ride to the first water stop was a bit more ragged than it should have been.

Since then, pacelines have become commonplace. In fact, I rarely ride an event without one for the majority of the ride. After feeling not only the clear aerodynamic benefits that allow you to conserve your strength and energy, but also the thrill when the group collectively cranks it up, I rarely allow myself to be caught without one.

A recent double-century was an event in which I was caught out, however, and I clearly saw the other side of the coin. Riding into headwinds for hours on end solo was exhausting. And, the clearest lesson is that that lonely no-man's land outside a paceline is self-reinforcing -- you get too tired to catch a passing line of fresher riders, so remain stuck in a netherworld of solo riding, never able to recover enough to link up with a swifter paceline.

With this bitter experience in my mind, I was reassured when recently, out on a solo ride, I was able to hook up with a few riders finishing their ride on a common local route. I knew one of the riders, so we fell into talking, and then instinctively formed a paceline and worked it efficiently. It was what friendliness is all about -- working in coordination to cut the headwinds for your pals, taking turns, doing your part. And for cyclists, the paceline captures the essence of the sport, and why it touches on some of the larger lessons of living a good life.

Icons

2006-11-28T18:52:00.000-08:00

We're constantly surrounded by icons these days, as our televisions, Web browsers, digital thermometers, smartphones, and computers all attempt to distill complicated data into simplistic graphical elements. Perhaps the most prevalent icon set is the weather set, consisting of simple drawings combining sun, clouds, rain, wind, and snow. For cyclists, who often need to plan ahead in order to set aside ride time, the deceptiveness of these weather icons can be infuriating.

As I write this, I am looking at a 5-day forecast in my browser, which shows three days of rain and two days of sun. Looking at this gallery of horrors, I could deduce that the next 72 hours will be predominantly rain-filled, with only days 4 and 5 having any chance of possessing the right weather for a long ride, assuming I want to avoid getting wet. However, pushing further into the forecast, I find that actually the number of hours with likely rain to be less than 20, or less than 1/3 of the hours presented as rainy via iconography. This is akin to someone saying that you will be asleep for the next 3 days just because you sleep 8 hours each night.

Yet, people take these icons to heart. I have heard many people groan at the sight of a rainy cloud icon over a weekend day, only to learn by drilling into the data that the rain is a) for a small portion of the day, or b) for the region but not for the person's particular locality (rain to the north, etc.). Some defense mechanism informs the creation of these icons, as if the news they convey should be the most pessimistic possible so that the meteorologists can't be accused of presenting a forecast of false hope.

The oversimplification of forecast presentation is perverse, given the vast amounts of data about the weather now available instantaneously. For cyclists, this facade of icon simplicity is just noise they have to fight through to get to the gold of the hourly forecast. It is misleading, however, and almost comical that we now depend on cartoons of the weather for our first-glance assessment of what's to come.

These icons are more powerful than they deserve to be. I have even seen people check these icons, see sun or rain, and conclude that was the weather, only to look out the window and be confused at how the actual weather -- the actual weather, now -- doesn't match the icon in front of them. How could it be sunny out when the icon shows rain? Well, because it's now 2 p.m. and the rain was for the morning commute, but the lazy icon format only allows one icon a day, and it's always the grimmest one . . . It's as if we've forgotten that the world is out of our control, that the world is not a cartoon manifestation of our imaginations.

Luckily, cyclists are data-driven most of the time, wanting the precision of miles to the 1/10th, at least. Imagine if all your ride data were eradicated and you were just presented with a simple green circle for a good ride, an orange triangle for an average ride, and a red square for a poor ride. Icons have their place, but when it comes to expressing complex data over time -- whether that is a cycling event or the weather -- they are not icons of virtue.

Parallel and Perpendicular

2006-11-26T14:38:00.000-08:00

Cycling can seem complicated at times, especially after the disassembly of a bike, the analysis of a year's riding, and the selection of winter riding gear. But could it be boiled down to two simple dimensions, parallel and perpendicular? I first observed this simplicity while zipping along a favorite road that had a crack in the asphalt running parallel to the edge of the road. By staying just between this crack and the edge -- by going parallel myself -- I could avoid innumerable bumps and potholes, in addition to annoying jarring ribbons of repair tar set down hastily by a late summer road crew.

Crossing some railroad tracks later, I instinctively made sure my trajectory was perpendicular to the tracks, to minimize the risk of a tire wedging itself along a rail's cheek and taking me down hard.

These kinds of calculations occur all the time while we're riding, and include how we use our bodies. When we stand on our pedals to climb a steep hill, we move perpendicular to the flat surface of the road. Yet, when we seek speed and aerodynamics, we tuck ourselves into shapes that parallel if not the road, at least the wind.

Running parallel or perpendicular to the wind is another noticeable phenomenon. Parallel a headwind for a down and dirty fight for dominance, with the wind usually prevailing. Parallel a tailwind, and you fly forward effortlessly, with speed high and effort low. When we form a paceline, we indulge in group parallelism, and the advantages can be wondrous to experience.

Switchbacks thwart this simple categorization, and I find climbs that include them to be some of the toughest. Part of the difficulty of the climbs, of course, is what forced the road designers to include switchbacks -- these are usually long, arduous climbs that needs to be buffered by switchbacks. But riding parallel to a switchback creates real drag as you round the inside corner, as gravity pulls hardest on you from more angles than at nearly any time. Of course, going perpendicular leads you off the road, so the best answer is to compromise, and do both a little, swinging wide on the turn to modulate the forces of gravity while also completing the turn.

Certainly, cycling's physics are more complex and subtle than just these two simple and contrary dimensions. Angles, speed, draft, aerodynamics, inertia, and many other factors figure in. But these two simple relationships cover a lot of what we experience. But don't ponder it too long while riding -- remain perpendicular to the road.

The Peak

2006-11-20T03:21:00.000-08:00

Periodization is a training approach advocated by many cycling coaches. It involves carving your year into four zones, typically: transition, preparation, foundation, and specialization, all culminating in peak fitness usually attained during the specialization period. These terms and phases get pushed around by various coaches, but the general message is the same -- strive toward a peak, and take a measured, stepwise approach to attain it.

The peak is a mysterious notion in athletics. In the physical world, a peak is something you can see from a distance, climb to stand upon, and stay atop as long as you like. Some people even build houses on the peaks of some accessible mountains. In cycling, the peak does not have these topographic characteristics. While you know it is far off, especially after a long winter returning to the valley of your fitness, you can't tell how far away it is, the climb can't be reliably measured, and you certainly can't plan to stay once you arrive.

In the springtime, the peak can seem impossibly remote, especially on those cold, rainy days riding amidst the detritus of winter's sullen fury: the sand, the sticks, and the puddles. Sluggishness blends into aches and pains as your body works to respond to the familiar demands of longer rides and faster paces. At times, you cannot see how you can yet again achieve the impervious fitness that was yours mere months ago.

A physiological peak is elusive, fragile, and transitory. It also cannot be summoned by precise actions or plans. Your body conducts an underlying and complex set of negotiations within itself outside of your awareness or knowledge. The methods we are given to elicit the peak are crude at best -- training, rest, nutrition. You may titrate your training, taper your efforts, plan out your nutrition, and periodize until your head hurts, but you can still arrive at a crucial event or race feeling tired, sick, or out of sorts. Then, a couple of days later, with nothing at stake, the peak will appear unbeckoned, you will seem to fly, and then the peak will fade again.

The peak is also troublesome in that struggling to maintain it can make it crumble away or slip out of reach all the faster. Effort wears the peak down rapidly, yet too much rest and you slide down from the top. Keeping a peak as a plateau isn't possible. However, it is possible that achieving a new peak repeatedly will raise your training plateau, your base camp.

When the peak manifests itself on event day, the results can be memorable. I can recall a few centuries during which I was at peak: the speeds were fast, the high effort sustainable, and the recovery quick and effortless. In fact, one annual event that requires nearly two back-to-back centuries was so easy to complete one year that I felt by the end that I could ride it all over again.

Achieving the peak through periodization is sensible and straightforward. It requires discipline, planning, and sacrifice, but the benefits are clear as you approach top form, and sustain it. For me, the most difficult part of periodization and the peak is leaving. Once you achieve the condition from which you can ride for hours, pace at high speeds, and enjoy climbs, consciously dropping back to riding more slowly for shorter distances and less intensely is difficult. You can feel the fitness slipping away. While there are moments when you experience the reassuring feeling of healing and relaxation -- along with the mental break from training -- you worry that you may not see the peak again. I find the discipline of staying away from cycling during this period very difficult. Rituals have to change, and measurements of success shift from miles and speeds to gaps in training and diversity of activity.

In pursuing peak fitness, you realize it is the pursuit itself that is the substance of the cycling life. The peak is a goal, not a state. It is like having your true love flash a glorious and unexpected smile your direction -- your heart jumps, you savor the moment, and you find yourself recharged, your affection affirmed. And you begin the chase anew.

Wandering

2006-11-12T18:36:00.000-08:00

In training season, before I leave the house, I often know by heart the route I will follow, and nearly to the minute how long it will take to complete, as well as the usual average speed. The hours leading up to the critical moment of departure during training season are filled with competing rides jostling in my mind to be chosen, with those only recently done competing on the grounds that training means repetition. Then, one route will suddenly crystallize with a feeling of completeness and appropriateness. It will be my ride du jour.

This time of year, however, when training has tapered off to become just plain old riding, I find myself leaving the house with not much of a riding plan, and after no real mental preparation or evaluation of options. In fact, with schedules winding down overall so that there are fewer demands on my time, I am finding a definite lack of a need to start early or define an upper boundary to the length of time I'm away. So, I have taken to wandering around on my bike.

Wandering is a completely different mode of riding than purposeful, route-driven training. Instead of completing a well-worn route by ticking off the mental cue sheet as you go, and monitoring time and speed and hydration and nutrition as the miles go by, you instead think mainly of what to do next, and have to improvise as you go. This improvisation takes a fair amount of getting used to after a season of pre-programmed riding, especially if you are integrating familiar roads as you go. It's easy to lapse into a habit, like accidentally driving to work on a weekend just because you're on the highway with that exit on it. If you don't concentrate, you might find yourself on the old route and have to work your way out, grumbling at your own Pavlovian responses to the jingle of a familiar landmark.

You have to learn to plan ahead, but in smaller batches, and strike a balance between going far enough afield to make it a long ride (usually, you know about how many miles you want to log), without going so far astray that you end up either needing a map or logging 40 miles when you wanted to do 25. This leads to relearning pieces of routes and how they relate to each other. The wandering season is a time of discovery, and I have often been surprised to realize how two routes I've ridden as unconnected traversals turn out to be linked by a sneaky little sidestreet or an unusual set of twists and turns.

This kind of stitched together riding makes wandering feel a bit melodramatic, like a plotline forced together for maudlin effect. Terrain can add to the unintended drama, as you may find yourself having scripted in 10 miles of hills unintentionally or a long stretch of divided highway, something that would make any work of fiction or drama deathly dull. Making sure there is some comic relief, a pastiche of emotions, and interesting characters can make all the difference to the wandering cyclist's level of enjoyment.

But the fun of wandering is in the freedom, the fact that today's ride has no label in your log, in fact may be completely new if not in parts at least as a whole. And who knows? You may just find a new combination, a new route, that will be enshrined in next year's training load. And then you'll have to wander away from it again . . . next year.

Envy

2006-11-09T05:23:00.000-08:00

You know the feeling -- you're traveling somewhere, you hear the familiar clatter of a gear shift or the sizz of a freewheel, and there you are, watching a cyclist fly past you, decked out in full kit and totally focused on the ride. Or, you're in the middle of your commute, trapped in your car for another session with National Public Radio, and there they are, a flock of brightly clad cyclists, chatting and laughing and working out the pack structure.

These encounters usually come when there is no recourse, no way to gain access to a bike, no time to ride, no way out of the current situation, yet when the urge to ride is high. Usually, time pressures or business travel have forced an unpleasant choice, a week off or a glorious, sun-drenched morning without a ride.

The empathy for the cyclists you observe is immediate. The focus and energy they throw off is easy to feel, and you know how it is to possess those traits, to feel the power of a strong hill climb, the speed of a fast paceline, and the adrenal kick of a quick descent. Intensity radiates from these cyclists, a blaze of energy and determination you hope to reignite soon.

In the midst of this envy, there is also the obligatory scrutiny. What brand of bike? What level of equipment? What brands? Any interesting new lights or gadgets? How fit are they? How young or old? Are they dressed correctly for the weather? Are they at the beginning of their ride or nearing the end? Could you ride with them? Would they trash you? Or slow you down?

These thoughts flash by too quickly to observe clearly, but they do flash through your mind, even in the midst of open envy, and they mitigate the jealous feelings to some extent, especially if the cyclists in question are obviously riding worse equipment too slowly and look cold and tired. That subtext to the observation ameliorates the sting of envy. It's not noble, but it is true. We're all petty at times.

However, most cyclists observed from afar are fit, fast, and riding nice bikes. They are happier than you are, because they are focused and active, and doing something that completely absorbs them. You know this happiness, and you admire it in them, and envy them for it.

In this sense, envy in cycling is like a one-way mirror. When you are riding, your focus obscures the outside world to some extent, boiling it down to navigation, obstacles, noises, and terrain, a set of external factors competing only slightly with the pack you're riding in or with your solo ride. You don't have the spare attention to observe the hangdog looks from the earthbound cyclists you pass, the knowledgeable scrutiny they give you, the second looks from the passersby who are a little more fit than usual, and who pay more attention than usual to the passing cyclists. Because there is nothing to envy, you don't peer out from the cycling world. You are where you want to be. Why look beyond? But from the seat of envy, you are an observer, not a participant, and like watching a psychology experiment, you can only jot high-minded notes without visceral involvement in the activity. You become a cycling academic, a quasi-professional attendant to the sport.

All of this aside, there is just the smoldering envy as you are left in the dust, standing roadside or trapped in a vehicle. Nurture the feeling. You will soon be the source of envy for someone you don't even know, someone you won't even see, and you will be purified of your sour envy when that time comes.

Noiseless

2006-11-07T05:15:00.000-08:00

Looking back over the thousands of miles I've ridden over the past few years, one dimension lurks interstitially, bolstering and binding the larger elements of events and seasons. This aspect of cycling often goes unnoticed, and can be taken for granted, but it is one of the treats of riding. It is the hush, the quiet, the silence, of riding. It doesn't come often, but when it does, it's a time to savor.

The potential to find silence in modern culture is limited. Ambient road noise fills most of our lives, either from a nearby busy road or a nearby freeway. Stand outside on what seems a quiet evening and listen for it, and you will realize that it's there, in the background, blocking silence just as the cityglow blocks the stars. Indoors, noises from stereos, computers, HVAC systems, and plumbing keep silence at bay, as well. There always seems to be something whirring, ticking, or gurgling inside any building. Add to this the nice chatter of the folks in a building, or even the snoring of a placid dog, and silence once again proves elusive.

I first palpably detected silence on a winter ride while climbing a short hill between two forested hillocks about 20 miles from home. With the snow, the trees, and the mounds of earth on either side, along with the remoteness of the area, I suddenly noticed that I was in complete silence. Even the sound of my tires on the ground was being absorbed by the terrain. There were no car sounds, no voices, no breeze, no distant train, nothing, just pure stillness and silence on this sun-soaked winter's day. A hush had fallen over the world I was in.

This arrangement lasted just a few minutes, but left a deep impression. I can still conjure the memory. It was so unusual, so different, and so magical that it stands out among all the places, roads, and situations I've ridden in the past.

Since then, I've become more attenuated to the hush, and have been able to apprehend shorter periods of silence and stillness. Whether it is a 30-second stretch riding streamside when all other noises have abated, or 20 seconds of smooth road on a sleepy Sunday morning, I can now identify and curate smaller pieces of the same gem, seizing these moments with bright realization of how fleeting and unusual they are. When they occur, they can provide the centripetal of a ride, the moment around which the memory shapes.

While it is tempting to despair about the lack of silence in the busy modern world, I'd rather think that the better alternative is to learn to find and delve into those hushed moments we can still find, to enjoy the secret world that suddenly unfolds and that makes the moment yours in a way that is rare and immutable. Cycling can deliver these moments. This is the gift that sits out there for us to grasp, a hushed moment of tranquility, away from it all.

BMI

2006-11-07T04:44:00.000-08:00

Like many recycled cyclists, I have a story about a body mass index (BMI) that was much different than the one I currently can calculate. In the "pre" version of my BMI, I was out of shape, overweight, and not using much judgment in nutritional matters. Of course, I could rationalize how I looked in the mirror, and the occasional diet plan would knock enough weight off sporadically to give me false hope that I might find a sustainable non-exercise way to stay trim.

Now, in the "post" version of my BMI, my body fat percentage has fallen more than 10 percentage points, clothes that used to cling now hang, and muscle contours are clearly discernible. Yet, my BMI number has only fallen a few points. Why is this?

BMI has many problems as an accurate measurement of overweight in active people. Interestingly, part of its design was to account for the fact that most members of the general public will overestimate their height and understate their weight in the process of calculating their BMI. Therefore, the BMI scale was designed to accommodate these tendencies. This means that active people, who generally know their actual height and weight, will appear to have higher BMIs than average (they will calculate as relatively shorter and heavier than a sedentary peer who just estimates his or her height and weight as taller and lighter than actual).

In addition, the BMI measure does not take into account the fact that muscle weighs more than fat. If you train in the hills a lot and are generally a mesomorph (someone who adds muscle mass easily, a jock), you will gain muscle mass while maintaining or shrinking your fat stores. In either eventuality, you will weigh more despite having accomplished a generally commendable thing -- losing fat and gaining muscle.

Finally, BMI does not address anything like cardiovascular or respiratory health. So, a sedentary smoker may have a great BMI of 23 but an LDL cholesterol that is dangerously high and an inability to climb a flight of stairs without becoming winded. BMI is not a measure of health, in other words. It is a potential signal, but not a precise one. In fact, many who think hard about these things are beginning to drop BMI as a measure. It is too crude, even as a public health tool. For instance, BMI in Africa is quite low, but life expectancy and incipient health are both worse than for places with higher BMIs but better health and social infrastructures.

For cyclists, BMI should also be shunned as a measure of fitness or health, I think. My experience these past years has been of losing fat, gaining muscle, and maintaining my weight (even increasing it slightly this past year). Yet, despite gaining weight, my power:weight ratio seems better than ever, because what I've gained has been muscle. My legs are better-defined, small areas of flab have disappeared, and I continue to shrink in profile. I've become leaner and meaner, BMI be damned.

Cyclists are typically in-tune with their health. You probably know your cholesterol levels, your resting heart rate, your body fat percentage, your maximum heart rate. You probably have a nutrition plan, and a training plan. You don't smoke, and probably drink less alcohol than your counterparts who don't ride. And, best of all, you know how you feel when striving to do your best on your bike. This is the real test of fitness and BMI, the bicycle mass index. When you fly up a hill, you know your BMI is right. Otherwise, it's just a number.

Riding Cold

2006-11-01T13:02:00.000-08:00

For people who don't regularly go outside in the winter, it's amazing that cyclists can ride all year long in the cold and snowy parts of the country. Even skiers and other outdoor athletes can be astounded by the fact that we cyclists can log hundreds of miles during the coldest months of the year, and enjoy nearly every minute of it.

What makes this all possible? Winter cycling gear. With the addition of just a few strategic pieces of winter gear, and picking the best days to ride, winter becomes just another season to ride.

To begin assembling your winter cycling gear, it's best to start from the farthest extremities and work your way toward the center. So, the fingers, toes, and head are where the biggest improvements come.

For the head, I've found two options that work, one for mild cold and one for more severe conditions. On days above 20F, a winter cycling cap that covers the ears is usually all you need. The best ones breathe, and cling tightly to your scalp. Nike and Giordana make good ones. When the temperature drops below 20F (or wind chill is an issue), I'd use a balaclava made out of good materials and designed so that you can opt to pull it over your mouth or keep it beneath. One annoyance I've found with balaclavas that aren't soft enough on the sides is that the wind noise can be distracting because they flutter a bit in the breeze as you ride.

Your eyes are definitely worth looking after in the cold. I have to wear glasses, so mine were nearly always protected to some degree. However, during the winter, I would often return from a ride to find that I couldn't focus my eyes on things nearer than about 10 feet away. It would take an hour or so for things to return to normal, and I noticed also that my eyes felt cold and the movement in their orbits stiff. I began to think they were just freezing on these rides, so I plunked down some money on a pair of nifty cycling goggles with gaskets, the kind designed for motorcycle riders, in hopes that they would keep the wind and cold out. They worked like a charm, and to this day my vision is sharp when I return from cold-weather rides.

Traveling down to the other end of your body, you will need neoprene booties to cover your feet. Combined with decent socks, this combination usually does the trick. For the really cold weather (and to enjoy longer rides), you'll need chemical foot warmers, the kind skiers use in their boots. These are a real toe-saver on some rides, and make the whole experience much more pleasant. On days I've skipped these, I've regretted it.

Now, to the hands, and their needs. Silk glove liners are a great place to start, then a traditional cycling glove liner, a chemical hand warmer, and then a good winter cycling glove. The outer glove is where the options exist for me. For cold days, a lighter winter glove with fingers will do, but for those bitterly cold days (or, again, for longer rides), lobster gloves are the best choice. Even though they are scoffed at publicly, anyone who has tried them soon gains a silent respect for their design, which allows your fingers to huddle together for warmth while also leaving you freedom of movement to shift and brake with ease.

For the legs, full-length line bib tights with front panels that are both water- and windproof are necessary in the winter. You can get these either with a chamois (to wear alone) or without (to wear over cycling shorts). Either way, the front panels make the difference, especially when the cold winds assail your more sensitive areas. There's nothing like a descent at 30 mph in 15F weather to bring the "shrinkage" episode of "Seinfeld" to mind.

The torso is the final stop on this tour of winter weather wear, and there are two major items needed. The first is a good windstopper undershirt, full sleeved and with a front panel that blocks the wind. Combined with the right jersey and/or jacket, these things will keep you happy during the cold months. Just remember, you should feel a bit chilly going out the door. Once you're exerting yourself, you'll warm, and being overdressed in the cold can be as unpleasant as anything else.

Now, for the bike, which will take a beating in the winter, unfortunately. A front fender is a priority, to keep back road spray, and a rear fender is vital to protect your posterior from same. Winter riding means more diligent cleaning and maintenance of your bike, usually after each ride. Chains have to be cleaned, clusters wiped down, and wheel surfaces cleaned. The frame will get a coating of salt and crud, and this should be removed after each ride. Tires should be changed over to the kind that can take a real beating -- leaving your supple summer tires on is just an invitation to flat (and bear well-deserved derision).

Winter riding is something special. It takes preparation to do it, but once you've taken the plunge, you won't regret it. I've had some of my favorite riding experiences in the months between November and April. Ride cold.

Synthetics

2006-10-28T14:46:00.000-07:00

Synthetic fabrics are once again mainstream, and I have found myself among their biggest fans. When I was young, polyester and lycra were equated with cheesy clothes worn by throwbacks or the vain. Now, with innovative weaves, different weights, new mixes, and more creative implementations, synthetics are everywhere, and they are my favorite fabrics.

Cyclists are constantly clad in synthetics when they ride. When I renewed my cycling lifestyle, one area I entered with trepidation was dressing like a cyclist. Having added the pounds of a sedentary lifestyle, I was nervous for more than one reason. Not only did I worry about how I'd look, but I worried about being perceived clad in spandex as bizarre.

So, I dipped my toes into the synthetics pond very gingerly. The first items I bought were jerseys, and one pair of simple bike shorts. Occasionally, I would ride in this new garb, but usually would just ride in cotton shorts and t-shirts. The difference between the two modes was immediately apparent. Despite how these new clothes might be perceived, or even how I might look, they worked very well! Even though I snickered at the concept of "wicking," I enjoyed the benefits, and covertly noted that wicking was a true phenomenon cotton clothing didn't attain.

My pace of acquiring synthetic cycling gear accelerated, and continued through the seasons of the year, from sleeveless jerseys for the hottest summer days to cycling shoe covers to headgear and glove liners and vests and bins full of odds and ends. The jersey collection has become seriously overwhelming at this point, with each season adding jerseys from birthdays and charity rides to the already substantial base array. Because these synthetic jerseys are so durable and stink/stain resistant, even the oldest are still holding up well, so there is very little built-in obsolescence. And the collection grows.

Now, integration of synthetics into other areas of my life has accelerated, from t-shirts to shorts to socks to even some suits. It seems that most fabrics I find appealing and that work well for me have some percentage of a synthetic material in them, often for resiliency and breathability.

At the same time, companies like Life is Good have introduced cotton weaves in their t-shirts that seem to absolutely trap body heat and moisture, driving me further away from tossing on a simple t-shirt in the summer. Contrasting cotton t-shirts with synthetics makes the benefits of synthetics all the more stark -- they don't stain very easily, they don't stretch out of shape after being worn a few times, and they feel as good late in the day as they did at the beginning.

So, sorry cotton industry, I think our relationship may be ending, at least for shirts. It's definitely quitsville on the cycling clothing. You just don't have what it takes!

Solitary Refinement

2006-10-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

There are times during the year when the urge to fly free on my bike leaves me, and I want to endure the unrelenting grind of hard, isolated training. For some reason that I can't quite grasp, there are times when I just want to insulate myself from normal aspects of riding and go out alone with my bike into the realm of pure and solitary effort -- repetitive climbs, speed drills, repeats, and sprints. It's as if I crave a brainless time of muscle and effort in order to purge myself of any residual stress normal cycling can't whisk away on its own. It also results in noticeable improvement of basic dimensions of solid riding.

Most rides involve thinking out a route, following landmarks, dealing with busy roads with potholes and debris, and chatting with others on the ride. All of these things are typically quite pleasant, or, in the case of potholes and traffic, are tolerable. Scenery and speed more than compensate for any distractions or stress from the surroundings. The freedom of the bike is its own reward.

During repetitive training, I usually find a closed route of about 2-3 miles of hills, and ride up and down the same set a dozen times or more. Gearing increases as I go or, if I'm doing sprints, I try to stretch the sprints until my muscles are literally blazing with fatigue. In the silence that mainly accompanies these rides -- on lonely roads at odd hours -- my only companion is my breathing and the occasional mechanical sound of the bike changing gears, the soft purr of tires on pavement, and the ambiance of surroundings.

In this isolation, cycling becomes mentally undemanding. I don't have to think about gearing choices, varying terrain, pacelines, traffic, or route. Each repeat is the same as the previous one, with perhaps a single change of gear or cadence that, once inserted, requires no further attention or thought. This zen-like quality of empty focus is perhaps what I crave. In fact, the feeling of clarity is most akin to what I've felt when I've tried meditation -- shedding worldly concerns and finding the essential. On these special rides, the normal world of cycling is set aside, and the pure essences of rider, bike, and slope meld for an hour or two, with a clear mind and active body generating unpolluted thought and effort.

Best of all, after these times, the desire to fly free returns acutely, and I've gained a refined climbing style, new bursts on sprints, or extended endurance on long stretches. And I can rest assured that the werewolf-like desire for isolated training will return, unheeded, to make me better yet again.

Scents

2006-10-22T15:55:00.000-07:00

If you can follow your nose through the many scents of a ride, you should feel very fortunate. Cycling provides an unmatched and, unfortunately rare, opportunity in this modern world to move in the open air rapidly from place to place. Most people spend the majority of their time trapped in insulated, odorless (or nearly so) offices or cars, shielded from moving air and traversing space in a bubble of artificual scents. We are luckier. We travel through a continuum of diverse worlds, and environmental scents are a big part of cycling when you pay attention to them.

The olfactory bulb, the seat of scent, is actually a part of your brain, and is the only part of your brain exposed to the outside air. Cyclists’ olfactory advantage has to do with their probable lack of olfactory fatigue. Olfactory fatigue occurs after being in the midst of any scent for a few minutes or longer, as the olfactory bulb becomes saturated with the scent and stops sending signals to the brain about something new. Sedentary people tend to not notice the olfactory world because they don’t move through enough air to avoid olfactory fatigue. Their scent system is always fatigued, so they smell nothing much at all.

Meanwhile, cyclists are constantly stimulating their olfactory system with new smells. When we ride, we avoid olfactory fatigue because we’re always encountering new scents and clearing out old ones. On any ride, the smells are myriad, some familiar, others jarringly strange. Fresh-baked bread. A cluster of hydrangeas. The soft smell of natural gas on cold mornings as furnaces kick on. Fresh peat. Fresh mulch. Gas stations. Bad car exhaust. Skunk. A fast-food joint. Perfume from the lady joggers. Wet grass and leaves. Water. The array of smells is astounding, and we get to savor them all.

Follow your nose the next time you ride. Enjoy freedom from fatigue.

The Wind

2006-10-22T07:36:00.000-07:00

The warm, calm air of summer has been shoved aside by the winds of autumn, and riding is once again a battle against this, the toughest of the elements for cyclists.

Some experts ask us to greet the wind as a training partner, comparing riding into the wind with climbing hills. There are a few problems with this comparison. Before I climb a hill, I either know the hill already, or can visually assess its grade and length, and then gear down as needed. Also, the grade tends to be pretty uniform, so I can find a groove and crank away, steadily eating away at the definite distance to the top. Finally, once I'm over a substantial hill, I can recover on the descent if I choose, or if the ride isn't whipped up by competition.

Wind, on the other hand, is invisible, so there is no way to assess it. It comes in tumultuous gusts, swirling around you, most often catching you in gears that are not suited to riding uphill or against such an obstacle. The wind wears you out faster and consistently. It never seems to stop once it has started as the calendar ticks into and out of winter. A windy day is just that -- an entire day of wind. Worse still, if climbing is part of your ride, you can bet on a howl of wind being unleashed upon you just as you crest any moderate to major hill, taking away the feeling of accomplishment and replacing it with a stinging slap of cold.

In my cycling log (kept in Excel), the wind comes in five categories -- light, moderate, strong, gusty, and swirling. The main categorical tensions emerge amongst strong, gusty, and swirling. Strong winds are, in my mind, sustained with possible gusts and swirls, but their main feature is their constant presence on a ride. If I feel I can't get away from the wind, there is no respite, then it is a strong wind. Gusty winds, on the other hand, come and go. There may be stretches of light winds (in sheltered valleys or when hugging ridges), but there are strong, sudden gusts punctuating the ride. Swirling winds I added only this year, after becoming dissatisfied with using "gusty" or "strong" to describe certain experiences in the wind. Swirling winds are those that seem to come out of nowhere in particular, are constant and strong, yet never yield a consistent headwind or tailwind. These odd situations deserved a descriptor of their own.

The winds on these chillier days of late fall and early spring steal the warmth of the sun, depleting your enthusiasm as you go. Wind chill is amplified by speed, so it can easily double and drive a 50-degree air temperature into a 30-degree epidermal wrap. A vest is crucial. Gloves need to be heavier than usual.

Luckily, there is hope in a well-planned ride. The most sensible advice about riding on windy days remains, "Ride into the wind on the way out, and catch a tailwind on the way home." If the wind direction is reliable, you may be tired when you finally reach the midpoint of the ride, but when you do turn around, the push of a solid tailwind will soon have you cheering.

Aero bars provide some relief on certain stretches. In fact, they are one of better additions to a bicycle at this time of year. Just watch for unpreditable handling in crosswinds. My new wheels have bladed spokes, and handling is dicey in a crosswind. There is less leverage with aero bars, so a strong gust could have you crashing into the bushes faster than you can say "Rasmussen."

So, here come the seasons of winds. The best we can hope for now are those hushed winter days after a substantial storm, when the sun beats down warmly, the spray from the roads is clean, and the winds have abated. Those lovely winter days of quiet peace lie ahead.

Up Early

2006-10-22T07:20:00.002-07:00

Dawn is something you get to know as a cyclist, and noticing its waxing and waning intensity is how to judge the passing of the seasons. From the weak dawn of April to the full dawn of July to the fading dawn of September, getting up early provides you with a time-lapse vantage point to witness the figure-8 interplay as the tilted Earth circles its sun.

Cycling in the midst of a busy life (family, work) means adjusting your schedule to fit. Getting up early is the easiest way to accomplish this.

Getting up early has a feeling of determination about it, a sacrifice that is soon rewarded by gaining the road and generating speed in the nascent sunrise, while the rest of the world snoozes. Being up early lets you see things you'd normally miss -- the furtive fox scurrying away with its breakfast, the mist hanging over the hollow of purple flowers, and the delivery trucks dropping off the baked goods that will be sold as "fresh" for the next few hours. At dawn, birds are stirring, and the scrabbling of a squirrel on a pine trunk can sound as loud as firecrackers.

Danger also lurks at dawn in the form of solar glare. Pick a road that goes straight into the sun, and you virtually disappear from the view of traffic behind you. By the time the aurora ahead diminishes enough for your shadow to become visible, any driver coming up from the rear will be too close to adjust. Ride accordingly. Best to stay in areas with lots of trees and on roads that don't crest with a great view framing the rising sun.

As the seasons cycle through their phases, darkness returns, and the point of getting up early gradually recedes. The time you can steal with this technique diminishes and ultimately disappears from weekdays. But a dawn ride on a chilly fall weekend morning can be one of the most invigorating experiences, as it starts out cold and slowly warms, and as the smells of fall permeate the air.

Get up early. Say hello to the joggers, the birds, and the delivery trucks. The warm light of a fresh sun beckons.

Haunting Weather

2006-10-22T07:20:00.001-07:00

Riding year after year and keeping a log of rides can help you spot connections and trends that would otherwise go unnoticed. You can measure and quantify improvements in speed and endurance, and observe yourself tackling the same routes better and better as fitness increases. In addition to time, speed (avg and max), perceived difficulty, and distance, my log includes observations about the weather on various rides, and analyzing this dimension has provided some spooky insights.

I first noticed the synchronicity on a June commuter ride home, which I happened to take on the same day (+/- for calendar shifting) three years in a row. I can remember it because, each time, a local high school has been setting up its outdoor graduation ceremonies, and they appear to be quite elaborate, with plenty of white wooden folding chairs and a big platform with a podium. Each year, the temperature and wind have been almost identical, a few degrees off in temperature either way, but it has been extremely windy, with the ride notes recording very strong headwinds. The same relative day in June, very similar temperatures, and tortuous headwinds. In fact, this ride has been noteworthy each year because these winds make it one of the harder early season efforts.

After this initial observation, I started to look more methodically across the years in my bike log, and began to notice very similar notes in the weather documentation on the same relative day more often than not -- similar temperatures, winds, and experiences.

So, as August approached this year, I felt confident about a few things. First, a two-day ride I typically do at the start of August would have beautiful weather. After all, it had been beautiful the prior two years, and I had a hypothesis! Sure enough, the weather was fabulous, perhaps even more intensely ideal than it had been the year before, with better breezes and lower humidity. Maybe this was the year of similar weather at greater intensity? My hypothesis had a corollary!

Fast-forward two weeks to a ride that had been a rainy slog at the start last year. The forecast a week beforehand was for nice weather, perhaps a light shower toward the end of the day. Foolish meteorologists! I could have predicted this a year out! Yes, you guessed it, not only did the ride start with heavy rain, the rain abated only briefly, to return colder than before, and accompanied by headwinds to help it really penetrate and chill. The Intensity Corollary was proving itself true.

And now I sit in dread, thinking that if my hypothesis is correct, the next big ride may be my undoing. Last year, it was cancelled after 80 miles due to snow on the passes and hypothermia among the leading riders. If I'm right, this year we will not only encounter snow, but famished yetis will attack and disembowel us on the slopes.

Of course, the hypothesis (and its corollary) will not stand the test of time. The sunspots will continue their 11-year cycle, and these small observations are too closely spaced to be reliable over the long term. Other, macroscopic trends are already at work to supplant them and spin them differently. But, for the year directly in front of my nose, they have proven preternaturally reliable.

So, please remember me in your prayers as the weather closes in for this last big ride of the year, and watch for a resurgent yeti population now that their food supply is about to be replenished!

Dangerous Cycling

2006-10-22T07:20:00.000-07:00

There is a fundamental issue in cycling these days, and it doesn't involve cyclists who know what they're doing and log a lot of miles. Instead, it involves people on bikes who apparently don't know the right side of the road to ride on, and a host of other rules that increase their safety, could increase their enjoyment, and make cycling a sport viewed more widely as safe and pleasant.

Why is this a fundamental issue? Because the statistics and stories these novices generate are cycling statistics and anecdotes, and any accidents or near-misses these people have increase the perception that cycling is inherently dangerous. This continues the downward dynamic that has made cycling less mainstream than it should be, as people avoid something that is not only strenuous but also (they perceive) dangerous. It also makes more cycling novices to drive the statistics further down.

This problem becomes clearest when I see parents -- many of whom might not have been on bikes for years -- riding along sidewalks with their kids, going the wrong direction (against traffic). Not only that, but often the parents send the children out ahead, so the parents can (ostensibly) observe them and herd them along.

Let's think through the myriad problems with this particular configuration.

First, there are the problems of riding on the sidewalk, notably the poor condition of many sidewalks, limited range of options in case something unexpected occurs, competition with pedestrians, and lack of visibility to cars coming out of driveways and intersections.

Second, there are the problems of going against traffic, mainly that drivers coming out of driveways and side-streets will first look the other way (toward oncoming traffic) as they emerge, and be unaware of approaching sidewalk (or road, for that matter) traffic coming from a direction it shouldn't.

Third, there is the problem of sending children ahead -- they are the smallest, least-visible part of the parade, and also the least experienced at anticipating and avoiding collisions.

Added up, this configuration has the smallest, least prepared, and most unsteady riders approaching intersecting traffic from the wrong direction with few escape routes.

Why do parents persist in riding this way? Well, it seems the safest way to the uniniated I suppose: you are keeping your kids off the road, where cars are; you are riding behind them, so you can yell a warning or command if you need to; and you can see on-coming traffic so no worries about being struck from behind.

Yet, the chances of being hit from behind by a car when you ride with traffic are very small. In fact, it's one of the least-common cycling accidents. To keep kids off the road yet allow them to still ride "in traffic" (with cars coming in from intersecting streets) doesn't make sense -- either they are ready to ride in traffic or they are not. If they are not, keep them on rail trails or bike paths and completely out of traffic. Once they are steadier and more mature physically, ride on some nice streets with wide shoulders. Finally, the illusion that a parent can use the rear guard position to adequately warn a small rider about a car that is coming out of a driveway is just that -- illusory. A more realistic picture is that a parent can provide a riding companion with traffic, and both will be more likely to be seen riding with the flow that intersecting drivers are first to observe and most likely to acknowledge.

So, please ride correctly, parents. Keep your kids off the roads until they are ready. Use bike trails and rail trails and the local cul-de-sac until they are steady and confident. Once they are, ride on the road, with traffic. They are safer this way, because they are more likely to be seen, they will have more escape routes, the roads will be in better shape than the sidewalks, and you won't be sending them out like canaries in the coal mine with empty "I'll be right behind you" reassurances as they ride against the grain and nearly invisible to cars coming from all angles. And then the next generation will have more cyclists who know the rules, and we move back into a virtuous cycle for cycling.

Cars, Cars, Cars

2006-10-22T07:19:00.001-07:00

It's hard not to become slightly anti-auto as a cyclist, even though I personally love driving, and have nothing but sympathy for drivers when I cycle. We share roads that weren't built to be shared, in many cases. It can be very trying and difficult on modern roads, at the speeds we force each other and ourselves to drive, to also slide by a cyclist when there isn't much shoulder, when terrain ahead obscures oncoming cars, and when you're on your cell phone (or doing any of the myriad other things -- shaving, reading, singing -- that drivers often do behind the wheel). But once I slip out of the driver's seat and into cycling gear, one problem with our reliance on autos become much clearer.

Sure, there are the usual gripes about consuming natural resource, creating pollution, and propagating the sedentary lifestyle. But my main complaint is that cars slow me down when I ride my bike!

Cars get in my way. I have seen my average speed drop 0.5 mph in just a couple hundred feet of slowly weaving my way through streams of traffic at a congested intersection. The home stretch on my commute is flat and fast on weekends, but clogged with cars on weekday evenings, and picking my way along the shoulder while avoiding cars that wander right, cars that turn right, and cars that let oncoming cars turn left, is pretty mind-boggling, and definitely steals speed.

Just the other day, I was driving my car into work, and passed a cyclist pedaling his recumbent along. He was doing a decent 16 mph, perhaps, and just cruising along. I thought I'd seen the last of him. Well, about 20 minutes later, after I'd been stuck at a major traffic bottleneck for a while, I was passed by Mr. Recumbent, who was still at his stately 16 mph, and happy as a lark. After he passed, he had to stop, as the cars coming from an intersecting side road had pushed their way across his path.

A local construction zone makes matters worse, as the cones and lane changes were engineered with perhaps a Hummer in mind, but not a cyclist attempting to co-exist with a phalanx of autos.

Of course, there are some moments of fun in the midst of this, especially in the spring and fall when windows are rolled down. Cruising by a car's passenger side at close range can elicit all sorts of surprised exclamations, from startled teenage passengers to mothers pointing out the cyclist to the kids in the back, buckled in their child seats. When stopped at about the same point, you can even have some nice conversations, and when wearing a well-known local jersey, you might even get a shout of encouragement (I think what they shouted amounted to encouragement . . .).

Cars aren't slow. We just have too many of them. The automobile passed well into the realm of the irrational long ago, and we are allowing them to squeeze the joy and fire out of many aspects of life. They make alternatives (cycling, running, walking, scootering) nearly impossible to consider at times. Let's find a better way.

New Heights

2006-10-22T07:19:00.000-07:00

I recently undertook a long high-altitude event, going from a home altitude of 435 feet to an even altitude that varied between 4,500 feet and 7,630 feet. I gave myself 3 days to adjust to the new altitude pre-event. It wasn't enough, and I learned a lot about athletics at altitude.

Altitude is a pernicious challenge for those of us who live nearer to sea level than to mountaintops. The world looks the same -- same sunshine, clouds, people, trees, cars, and dogs. If the air is cold, you feel it. But it's not as if going to an elevation of 6,000 feet tells you how to respond. In fact, the world can be deceptively similar to the one you usually inhabit, while at the same time being dangerously different.

Adjusting to altitude takes a long time, a lot longer than most recreational riders have in their calendars. Finding two weeks to spend pre-event just preparing to ride at altitude is unimaginable for those of us with families, careers, and other demands on our scant vacation time. Some know-it-alls claim that, barring a 2-week adjustment period, your only choice is to arrive the day of the event, and ride the event. I don't buy that advice. Mostly, that's the day you feel the most wiped-out.

In addition to thinner air, another atmospheric trait correlates strongly with altitude -- dry air. Not only is the air thinner (less oxygenated), it is less humid. This increases evaporation rates from skin and lungs and nose, meaning that riders feel less sweaty while simultaneously perspiring more (and losing more water as they breathe). Compounding the dehydration cycle like this makes it nearly impossible to stay hydrated during a long event.

So, your body is fighting for oxygen and water simultaneously. What a great situation! No wonder muscle cramps, dehydration, and labored breathing are the hallmarks of events at altitude.

Also, there are suggestions in the medical literature that the better your condition, the more susceptible you are. In addition, the more often you go between high and low altitudes, the more likely you are to adjust badly, as if your body's ability to adjust degrades with repetition. I think these are likely both correct.

So the next time you think about a new far-away ride, think not only of the distance across the map, consider the heights you'll be scaling. There is likely no perfect way to deal with it, but knowing that you will hurt more, struggle more, ride more slowly, and need more all along the way will help set expectations, and help you complete the work you've set out for yourself.

September

2006-10-22T07:18:00.001-07:00

The intensity of August -- when cycling is about hot weather, nutrition, endurance, peak performance, long rides, and numerous events -- has given way to the freedom and triumph of September. The air has cooled, the events are once again months away, and riding has regained a sense of joy, sharpened by the conditioning a few thousand miles will convey.

September is a favorite month for cycling, as leaves crunch and acorns pop beneath tires, fall colors dapple the landscape, and crisp mornings become the norm. Arm warmers emerge, knee warmers are located (probably for later, but you never know), and glove liners come out. It is a time to ride fast, with enough strength to also completely enjoy your surroundings. Training is no longer the goal, nor is optimizing performance. This is the pay-off. This is about riding the momentum of training into transition, into the end of the season, and loving every minute of it.

On the downside, school and the rigamarole of the normal has resumed, so roads are more crowded during commutes, and mornings are constrained. Shorter days also eliminate optimal stretches for riding, as dawn moves from 5:30 to 6:00 to 6:30 and later, and sunset arrives alarmingly early some evenings, especially when the longer shadows also dim the roads prematurely. Weekends become crowded with other activities -- apple picking, soccer, and yard work. The time to ride begins to drain away yet again.

Nevertheless, September reigns -- riding tempos are faster in September, and speeds reach their zenith. The air is less humid and cooler. Mornings are resplendent in color and change. September is the greatest month to cycle, so bask in its long shadows and warm sunshine. The chill of October, and the grim grip of winter, is just around the next corner . . .

Slow Riding

2006-10-22T07:18:00.000-07:00

Most riding I've done over the past five years has been focused on training -- speed, comparisons, endurance, effort, and all the mental games that go into seeking improvement. At the end of this summer, I began craving the simpler rewards of cycling, the engagement of all five senses and the relaxation of having a day before you, two wheels to carry you, and nothing but improv as a result. Luckily, my wife had been cycling a fair amount this year and last, and was also interested in getting away on two wheels under our own power. And so we went on our brief but wonderful slow cycling adventure.

The weather cooperated, and we had a stupendous weekend cycling around a local haunt, visiting areas we had never seen together and enjoying the days tremendously. We were like two buddies cycling, joshing each other, sharing stories and observations, and attending to cycling courtesies.

Payoff for me arrived when my wife observed that cycling was definitely the best way to travel because the pace is human, you are part of the environment, and you experience everything. Eureka! Once again, the magic of traveling by bicycle had converted another person!

One road in particular, on the second morning, will remain embossed in our memories. The grade was gentle, the pavement clean and smooth, the breezes light, and the air cool and fresh. Occasionally, a pasture of vibrant green would open to either side, or a jolly wall of mossy stone would shoulder us along. Above us, intertwined branches arched a ceiling of comforting complexity. And through this, we pedaled, our tires whispering against the road and our voices pitched warmly toward one another.

As we rode along, more slowly for me than normal, I found myself in a dreamlike setting with my true love. There is nothing better. I had not found my top speed, but I had found the perfect speed.

GPS

2006-10-22T07:12:00.000-07:00

Measuring speed and distance have been my two main sources of feedback and documentation these past few years of re-emergent cycling. The nice little magnet on my front wheel, the snap-on cyclocomputer, and the ride summary dutifully recorded in my ride log -- the ritual of it had become second-nature. Then, beckoning from the glossy pages of a winter cycling magazine in early 2006, there she was -- the GPS cyclocomputer, a culmination of technology and utility I soon found irresistable.

The Garmin 205 and 305 GPS cyclocomputers have been available all cycling season. Plenty of riders have tried them, and most who have tried them have adopted them. I use mine all the time, every time. But they do have their limitations, including a relatively short battery life and sometimes bewildering "live" readouts. Even then, the way they capture data and the tools available to play with these data make the ritual of using the GPS unit a lot more informative and fun than the old cyclocomputers.

I got my Garmin 205 in early May (the HR monitor and cadence of the 305 didn't seem worth the cost -- I learned how to gauge both my HR and cadence long ago). As a fan of Google Earth and a novice with GPS, I was intrigued to see what the emerging technologies would reveal using geo-location and satellite-enabled speed and grade calculations. I charged the 205 and went for a ride later that afternoon.

At first, I set the display up as if I could and would monitor it at as I rode. I learned not to do that after one good shot into a decent pothole convinced me of my mistake. Also, the real-time readings are often irreconcilable with reality, especially the gradient or grade readings, which can yo-yo between -12% and 24% on the same hill. The reason? It takes strong signals from six GPS satellites to generate an accurate grade reading. Take one or two away, and the little GPS brain gets confused and becomes incoherent. Soon, I learned that one of the nice parts of the GPS unit was that I could review a ride later via software, and recover all sorts of information about gradient and speed, so I didn't have to watch. Better still, the strange readouts magically disappeared when the unit's data were processed in the interpretive software. Great!

Garmin also purchased a cool community-based GPS Web site called MotionBased. This site lets users upload their data, analyze it (in a tool that is even better than the software that ships with the unit itself), and share data with other users. It's a great site, and when I saw that it also acquired the weather data for uploaded rides, I was hooked. The possibilities here are amazing.

Once the data are processed another way, you can upload them into Google Earth, which is a lot of fun, as well. You can share the data with ride buddies, too, so they can keep the ride record themselves, or with people who missed the ride or who want to try it, so they can map the route or see it virtually. Over the course of this season, my ride map on Google Earth is fun to behold, with rides in a number of different states and in some memorable settings. I can "fly" to these rides again, and even compare a previous ride with a new planned ride to see spots of overlap and difference.

The most impressive aspect of the GPS unit is that you get not only hill profiles and fairly accurate altitude data, but you get cumulative climbing data, something that has led to some surprising insights. For example, one local ride of about 65 miles nets more than 8,000 feet of climbing, yet I never knew that. I'd always assumed it was about a mile, so this explained some things. Then, I learned that one monster 200-mile Rocky Mountain ride nets just about the same amount of climbing as the local 65 miler. Comparing these to another local century that generates 9,000 feet of climbing over 100 miles changed my perceptions of difficulty, and made using the 65-mile local ride for training a more attractive because it's a more efficient use of time. Without the GPS telling me all this, I never would have known, and would have assumed the ride in the Rockies generated the most elevation change and steepest climbs of any (another lesson imparted: the Notches (Crawford and Pinkham) in New Hampshire generate some long, steep climbs, some of which can beat those in the Rockies).

My biggest gripe with the Garmins is their battery life. The batteries last with power to spare through a decently paced century, but for multi-day rides with primitive layovers or double-centuries, forget it. You need to recharge it after about 10 hours, max, or the thing just dies. It does retain the data, but you lose even things like average speed for the last 40+ miles or whatever is left. It might be nice to have the unit ratchet down as the battery dies, if that's possible, so that power consumption is constrained to core functions and the battery's life extends toward completion. I'd take a blank display and data acquisition over a dead battery.

Of course, it is also nice to not have a cable dangling from your handlebars or even a wireless magnet against your front fork. The simplicity of using a GPS cyclocomputer is striking -- just give it a minute to find its satellites, snap it on, and go.

My fear getting a GPS was that I was over-engineering my ride, and wasting money. While the latter may still be debatable, the insights I've gained by knowing where I am and how high I've climbed mitigate any doubts. These are pretty cool devices, and they are only going to get smaller, better, and have more utility. Now, about those batteries . . .