The View from 58-inches High

Tomorrow I’ll officially start racing my 2013 season with the Tour of New Braunfels. Two weeks ago, I wasn’t thinking about my season at all. I assumed I’d start in mid February with Walberg or something. I was sure I would not race New Braunfels. Then one of my teammates put together a pre-ride of the new course. The pre-ride happened to correspond with a huge debate within the club about whether racing should be part of the mission. As part of this debate, my commitment to racing was called out. If there’s one way to get me to do something it’s telling me I can’t/won’t do it. So two weeks ago I rode one of the most difficult courses I’ve ever ridden. The next day I started race training, and 10-days later I was registered.

The background is that I started my race career at New Braunfels. It was my first race, my first crash, and my first DNF. I swore I would never do it again because the course is too easy and the racers too inexperienced. This year’s course is uphill for the first 10-miles. With that aggressive a course, the race should break up quickly making crashes unlikely. That’s really my only requirement for race right now. I have no idea how I’ll do on this course against this field. I’ve finished mid-pack in ever road race I’ve ever done, no matter how well I thought I was riding. It’s also been 2 ½ years since my last road race.

So I hope you will all eagerly await my report from tomorrow’s race. I have no predictions except that it will be very difficult. It will be windy so I’ll need to stay protected. The wind is supposed to shift from NNE to ENE during the race which will mean a head-wind/cross wind for most of the race. I need to be on the west side coming back down the river. Well, until tomorrow.

A cyclist will define a “good” friend as one that convinces them to do things that ordinary people would never do. Today, that thing was showing up to a ride when the weather conditions were 38F with 20mph wind (gusting up to 30mph). In parenthesis, it said “feels like 28F”. It took me 4 clothing changes before I was ready to brave this one. Selecting clothing is so much more than the temperature. A sunny day can feel 10 degrees warmer than a cloudy day and a windy day can feel 10 degrees colder. I finally decided on tights, knee warmers, shoe covers, bibs, short-sleeved base layer, jersey, arm-warmers, and a long sleeved jersey. I was worried about my selection until I saw that SG was dressed almost the same as I was.

We headed out into the headwind and averaged about 12mph. The pulls were awful and with only 10 of us, pulls came often. It was painful and most of me was numb. We joked that we must be nuts to show up to such a miserable ride. We all joked that were kept warm by the love of our teammates. Somehow we managed to laugh and enjoy ourselves. On this ride we didn’t have too many extra breaths to waste but when we had them we spent them laughing. When we were about 7-miles from home, one of the girls declared she would have to stop and pee. We didn’t have too many options so we stopped at a school that had a big stone sign that hid the girls from the waste down. Then they popped up, in only sports bra, DS snapped a photo. It was pretty funny.

This was a really hard ride for me being my first ride in 4-weeks. My HR was high but I think that was to be expected given that it was such a windy ride.

Long ago I had aspirations that this blog would capture the crazy “balance” of an armature athlete in the cycling community. I think my post-ride naps have all but killed that dream. The 2012 season is now at a close and we’re all enjoying the off-season and thinking of the season to come. With that comes all the drama of finding the right home. I’ve never imagined not racing for AFWC until this year. I’m just not sure what our focus is and it sure doesn’t seem to be racing. As an officer, I’m going to stick it out one more year but then I have to face the fact that I might be moving on.

This weeks ride was one of those that reminds me that this whole thing is only one aspect of our lives. I’m always blown away how much I need to be reminded of this. It was one of those rides I think everybody thought about skipping. Probably because it was windy, the holidays are fast approaching, there’s just too much going on. I wanted to sleep through it but when I woke up a full hour before my alarm went off I knew that wasn’t going to happen.

The ride started fine; pleasant in fact. I was surprised to see almost all of the regular players at the same time. Kate rolled up at the vary last minute. She looked less than committed but was there none the less. All in all, we rolled out with 14 women including 4 non-members. Things were fine until we got to the top of the long drag where the long group usually turns left. We’re all slowing down when SG starts yelling “straight!! straight!!”. Kate continues to peal off to the left. While SG was trying to figure out what was going on the rest of us had slowed and SG, looking to the left, runs into my wheel and goes down. This is no high-speed collision by any stretch and I’m able to pull forward and stay upright. It turns out Kate had to take a “natural brake”, not that any of us knew that.

SG checks out herself and her bike and then, with a look of vengeance in her eyes, hops on her bike and takes off at what must have been close to LT. The rest of us do our best to grab on for the ride. Kate is still fully drawers down and can’t see us to even know what’s happened. It’s unspoken but most of us in the pack know what’s happening now. After about 10-minutes of Kate chasing us into the wind

Vanessa: Hey, Kate’s trying to catch on to us. Can we slow down a bit.”
Shontell (without missing a beat): “Let her try!! I’ve got some blood I’d like to wipe on her if she does.”

Kate does catch us because she’s a monster. She goes to the front to find out what happened and an argument ensues and she turns around and heads home. I think that is some of us had realized she was turning around, we might have joined her. Someday it will seem odd to me that all of this occurs while we’re moving at  20mph 3feet from each other. For now, that all seems like a totally normal way to spend 3-hours.

The ride ended up being much harder than anticipated because SG was just pissed off. We dropped Amanda twice and had to send Jana back to get here. Even though it was emotional and grueling, It still felt like  a team. We didn’t leave anybody behind. Some days I love SG for that.

The really funny part was when we rolled up to the shop the same time as the shorter group was arriving back. They looked all fresh and happy and we looked like something the cat dragged in. We compared war stories over brown cows and called it a good day.

I made it out on a long ride for the first time in months. Now that I know I’m not going to stop breathing I’m willing to push myself a little more. This morning was the first 40F day we’ve had this fall and, as is always the case with the first couple cold rides, we all spent the first 15 minutes before the ride comparing wardrobe choices. We always seem to go from 65F mornings to 42F mornings in about a week. But highs will still be in the 70’s. Depending on how long the ride it, we could see 25F temperature change. We had all dressed slightly differently; base layers vs wind vests, long sleeved jersey vs arm warmers, and knee warmers vs bare knees.

Six of us took off at 8:00am for a perfect ride. The wind topped out at 4mph and the sky was bright and sunny from the time the sun came up. We headed north for a more scenic ride. The first 15 miles were very shady leaving us all with frozen fingers and toes. It felt like we didn’t pass any cars once we made it to the country. The ride offered so many beautiful sites I wish I could have stopped and photographed. We passed the bottle fence with the sun just rising on the other side of them; lighting them like little lights. As we got toward Hutto, we saw a half-dozen or so hot-air balloons just getting back from their flight. We then passed a small herd of zebras just off the road in a penned up area. At the gas station we pointed out the two hippo statues wearing bikinis to the two new Flyers. They seemed like a huge disappointment after seeing real zebras! On the way back, we passed a huge group of monks who stopped what they were doing and started taking photos of us.

In the end it was only 50-miles, which was shorter than I’d expected. It was a beautiful ride with some wonderful women. and it made me feel totally pro again (or at least like a legitimate amateur).

I struggled with whether or not to do “the ride” this morning. While I’m interested in really getting back to riding, I know that my fitness is low right now. The route was very hilly, which I don’t really mind, and the pace was going to be a fast “tempo” pace, which I’m not comfortable with. I’m also torn between the thinking that riding alot and riding hard will make you stronger and the thinking that training should be quality over quantity. While I know every coach out there, including my old coach, will tell you quality over quantity and yet all of the fast people I know ride hard alot! I ended up not doing the ride because my leg was hurting and it was just enough of an extra excuse. In the spirit of the ride, I did hill sprints instead.

The workout is one that I’ve done plenty of times before 20-min warmup, then 2-sets of 6 15-20 set sprints up a steep hill with 2-min between sprints and 10-min between sets. This workout is pretty key for races here because so many of them end on steep hills. While it helps to build those muscle fibers, it helps more because it gets you used to gauging the sprint. I still struggle with estimating the affect of the wind in a sprint.

I tried this workout on a few hills looking for the “right” one. The first one I picked was into a headwind so I only did that one once. The second hill (top right) I used for the next 5 sprints. I wasn’t really happy with the runway of this hill. To get to the steep part of the hill I had to go up a mild incline which put me in an awkward gear. For the second set I moved down the road a little and finally found the right hill.

My legs were definitely feeling this workout and I found myself having to focus on keeping my heels down during the sprint to prevent cramping. It’s been so long since I’ve done sprint drills that I still feel like it was a success. I do this in a nearby neighborhood and it’s always funny when I’m sprinting passed kids and their parents on bikes. I’m sure I look ridiculous to them. Sometimes little kids will “try to go fast” like me too.