We're Putting Cover Sheets on All Our TPS Reports

Two races are in the bag. Well, one race is in the bag, the other melted down and sluiced out the bottom. In any event, I update this now after four months of on-again off-again training during the grayest and most unaccommodating spring I can recall.

The race that wasn't---a disheartening but educational day at the third annual Battenkill-Roubaix--revealed how the confluence of under-preparation, bad luck, and bad choices can turn a beautiful, challenging race into one of those embarrassing review sessions on a subject you know but nevertheless forget in a moment of arrogance or excitement. I lost a full water bottle on the first bumpy dirt section. Lesson: keep your gear buttoned down, but I knew that. I got dropped on the first major climb and had to walk up a steep pitch of soft dirt road. Lesson: should have done more hill work in my training, but I knew that. After stoically resolving to finish the remaining 45 miles of the race, even if it meant coming in last, I got a flat. As I reached for my spare tube, I could see in my mind's eye the image of my pump sitting on the seat of my car back at the start. Lesson: get your gear selection straight, but I knew that. After sitting on the side of the road, a rider stopped to lend me his pump. Feeling his impatience, I hurried to replace the tube and inflate it. I thanked him profusely, and started down the course to finish the race. A few meters later, another flat. Lesson: thoroughly check the inside of the tire for whatever caused the first flat so you don't get a second from the same piece of glass or nail or whatever, but I knew that.

I was getting cold, slogging through sand and mud on the side of the road in my cycling shoes, feeling sorry for myself, when some exceptionally kind stranger in a Prius offered to take me and my useless bike back to the start. Lesson: recognize your good fortune and seize it. This stranger reminded me of a corollary lesson: honor your good fortune by creating some good fortune for others in turn. After getting dropped off at the parking lot, it seemed only fitting to empty my billfold into the youth cycling development donation box.

So, to sum up my experience with the Battenkill-Roubaix, let's just say I forgot the cover sheet on my TPS report and had to listen to the Bill Lumberg of my Mind chide, "Yeaeaeah," all the way home.

I spent the week after the race in the worst period of doldrums and winter blues I've had since college. I managed to drag myself out to the shop and fix my flat so I could continue training, but every creaky, crunchy pedal revolution reminded me how beat my old bike was. I really love that old Cannondale, but it was in desperate need of retirement. Stacey and I talked. We agreed a new bike wouldn't really fit in the budget, but she acknowledged I needed one anyway. Perhaps she was impressed by my dedication to training, perhaps she was looking for a way to chase off my case of the blahs, perhaps she was tired of my whining, but whatever it was, she gave her blessing to the purchase of a new bike. Now that's love, dear readers.

The new bike, you ask? It's last year's model Felt F5C: a patrician, thoroughbred carbon frame finished out in modern, solidly working-class components. It fits, it's comfortable, and it was cheap, sort of like the papasan chair. Actually, it's exactly unlike the papasan chair in nearly every respect, but I just wanted to pay homage. I digress.

All of this is preamble to last weekend's Sturbridge Road Race. My goals: keep contact with the lead pack, attack or bridge at least once, and sprint. I made two out of three--I was too stuck in a tightly wedged bunch to safely launch a sprint at the end--but felt great about it. I got beat tactically, but I was climbing strongly and recovering quickly. My Felt raced like a dream. I took 18th out of 50 in the Men's 4/5 35+, my best result since Battenkill-Roubaix 2005. Not much to brag about, to be sure, but I felt improvement and progress.

Jiminy Peak is this Saturday. The competition will be stiffer, and I'll be ready.

Back to School

The trail has been blazed, the signposts are everywhere, the map and compass match the landmarks and confirm the path. So how is it that only two-and-a-half weeks into this training plan, I've already gotten myself lost, confused, and second-guessing my course. I want to throw the whole effing thing out.

Here's how it happened. My plan at this point calls for lots of low-intensity saddle time, so given that I was on vacation and had some favorable weather last week, I decided to get it done on the road instead of the trainer. I had been feeling confident about the trainer rides, knocking off two-hour sessions in the workshop while listening to the FredCast and keeping my heart rate in my base zone, but I had not been on the road at all. Can you see where this is going?

I live near the top of a modest mountain (just under 1,500 feet), so out the driveway and down the hill I went. The excitement of going fast and the joy of being on the road made keeping my heart rate down a challenge, even going downhill. Nevertheless, once I reached the bottom of the hill, I found a reasonable course of easy rolling hills, worked some big-gear exercises, then decided to finish my workout with some easy pedaling as I made my way home.

But home was uphill, and I ran out of gears right away. Not only was it impossible to stay aerobic on the climbs but it was also difficult in a few spots even to keep going forward without switchbacking my way up the road. The joy of reaching home, feet numb from cold and ice jamming the spouts of my water bottles, quickly gave way to disappointment and doubt.

It's one thing to blow your workout. It's another to blow it and feel so weak doing it. Under my old "plan" I'd just ride like hell for as long as I could stand it and call it a workout. My cycling improved, I finished races, and I enjoyed long rides. If I felt weak climbing, I'd just climb more hills on the next workout, regardless of whether it was March or August.

Under the new plan, I am required to trust that periodization is the key, that the weakness I felt in the hills the other day is irrelevant for now: I'm building base, not climbing ability. Writing this all down is keeping me from scratching my plan in favor of just going like hell next time. That, along with the notion that each one of you who has stuck to a rational, periodized training plan and seen results is nodding in recognition and sending encouraging thoughts.

It's one thing to understand something intellectually and even to adhere to a rational course of action, but for motivation, nothing beats vivid, visceral memory. I return time and again to the feeling I had during a club ride with Dave and Alan one night after work. We had done a nice turn through Berkshire County around the Jiminy Peak course and were heading back to the parking lot when I took a turn on the front. Riding at threshold for a good long pull - about 8 minutes - felt for the first time like performance instead of training, like execution istead of planning, like life instead of school.

For now, I'm back in school.

I'm Not The Knife

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.

However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.

    -Billy Collins, from Litany

Those who know me may not find this shocking, but since I see in the glass but darkly, today's field test results were amazing. Here's the shocker: my average heartrate in a maximum sustainable effort during an 8-minute time trial is, repeatably and undeniably, exactly in the middle of the range predicted for my age. I am not a physiological freak, I am not to the cycling manor born, and when it comes to aerobic efforts, lactate thresholds, zones and maximums, it turns out that my heart (the pump, not the spirit, not the love) is completely unexceptional and prone to the same age-related declines that the rest of the world experiences.

In other words, there is just no way I am the knife.

Can I tell you how happy this makes me? You see, responsibility hangs onto unearned privilege like a cheap suit. Being free of this particular kind of athletic gift (and likely all other kinds as well) means I actually have a reason to train and will likely benefit from doing so. Indeed, if I have any hope of a top-ten finish, I will need to train with dedication, leaving the freaks to their chest-jabbing, onanistic displays of prowess. If my heart monitor won't give me satisfaction or appeal to my vanity, well, then that's what this blog is for.

Thanks for being the crystal goblet and the wine, you all.

Yesterday was Tomorrow

My last post concluded with, "Tomorow, I'll be sore." Well, yesterday was tomorow and, as it turns out, I wasn't sore at all. I'm baffled.

Well, no, I'm not. This lack of soreness tells me one of two things: either I'm in better shape than I thought (unlikely) or that I'm in such lousy shape that the perceived exertion of that climb up from the office was all out of proportion to the actual amount of work involved. In other words, I have a long way to go, and I look forward to the time when the days of struggling up the hill will seem like a distant embarrassment.

Today is a rest day.

And So It Begins

After spending last year largely overwhelmed by the muchness of life--starting a new job, living with my wife and two boys in my mother-in-law's basement (thank you, Christina), getting fat (thank you, McDonalds), buying a new house (thank you, Linda, Uri, Grandma and Grandpa)--I found myself last spring watching cyclists I used to ride and race with fly past me (thank you, Matt) as I stood on the shoulder with radio and hi-viz reflective vest marshalling at the Shaun Thornton Memorial Jiminy Peak Road Race. Instead of racing.

Marshalling is good and important, especially when you do it for your own club. My club, Berkshire Cycling Association, puts on one hell of a fine race, and I was proud to be volunteering. That, plus the post-race barbecue was indescribably good. Brian R. cooks like he trains--obsessively and with good results--and all of Brian's trainer miles logged while watching the Food Network clearly paid off with respect to the dozens of bratwursts he grilled up. Well, I don't know if all of them were uniformly excellent, but I can speak authoritatively and enthusiastically about the four that I ate.

Which would have been just fine if it was recovery chow. It would have been fine had I raced. Or trained. Or even took an occasionally roll down the hill. Alas. Not only did I fail to race at Jiminy, but I was a no-show at Battenkill-Roubaix, didn't even register for the Johnny Cake Lane series, and indeed failed in every way to haul my McNugget-and-bratwurst-laden kishkes over a top tube. Why? Muchness of life? Yes, I suppose.

With the New Year approaching, I took stock and cringed. I hit the trainer. I hit it hard. Afer that, I got on the trainer. After a few sessions of feeble spinning over the last couple of weeks, I thought it was finally time to hit the road. No, it was time to ride on the road. Since winter has yet to visit the Northeast, I decided to ride to work today, which was swell, not least because it was mostly downhill. Riding home hurt.

Tomorrow I'll be sore.