An Attempt At Fairness

to myself.

I spent much time early on in this blog complaining about my weight. So it is with a sense of fair play that I announce, despite an earlier pledge not to mention my weight again (this year, right? that was just for this year. I'm pretty sure) that I have finally broken below the X barrier at which I feel much better about my physical specimenhood (yeah, I just made that word up). In fact, my scale indicated nearly 10 days ago that I had fallen below the magical number (said number being the square root of what Oprah weighs, but that's another story) but I felt like I had to give it some time to make certain it wasn't just water loss, but real and actual weight loss.

I was so excited. I just had to share.

Tomorrow night will be another TNPT. I'm going to show up sporadically now, as I have classes every other Tuesday and Thursday evenings. They're professional development classes that I am choosing to take. But they're going to eat into my Tuesday night hammer-festing. Cest la vie!

I'll post how it goes either tomorrow night or Wednesday.

Worst day of the year

Yesterday was the worst ride of the year for me, bar none. I rode the Tad Beaton Memorial ride, which commemorates the last ride of a local police officer/cyclist, who was felled by heart failure during that ride. Around 200 riders gathered yesterday morning to complete the route that he started two years ago.

It seemed like a worthy event, and I was on my own as friends have other things going on, so I thought, why not? It's a route I like, with a lot of climbing. While the official route is 50 miles in length, a few of my club friends were planning a 120-130 mile ride in preparation for the BBC Double, coming up early in September.

Unfortunately the day started off badly when I forgot my water bottles. No too big of a deal ordinarily, because I could get 25 miles in, and buy a couple of gatorades at the BP in Vandiver. Then reload them on the way back through and finish the ride. But, the day was exceptionally humid. I don't normally sweat heavily, but I had it literally running down my face all morning. The air was heavy, and overcast, and worst of all, I just had no legs.

Oh, I did okay climbing Cahaba Beach Road up to Sicard Hollow, but each climb after that was tougher than the last, until the climb up the steep side of Double Oak Mountain left me completely drained.

Eventually I made it back to the end, but I really didn't have any fun yesterday. Which is distressing because I am asking myself if I've really lost that much fitness, or if I just had a bad day.

I'm hoping it was just a bad day. I'll find out on Tuesday.

Got the Bull By the Horns...

Unfortunately, where I've got him is with his horns planted firmly in my backside tonight.

It was a strange night all around. I was feeling pretty good at the start. You know, the testosterone is flowing, the big boys are all out for the big night. Ron Williams, a 2 time paralympian with 2 silver medals and 3 National Championship jerseys, another rider who was once upon a time an age group World MTB Champion (yeah, that's really cool!).

I knew it was going to hurt, but I didn't care. The smart thing to do would have been to pack up my stuff back into my car and go home...but then I've never been prone to doing the smart thing when it comes to competition. Playing golf, I go straight at the flag tucked into the corner, over water, with a bunker on the short side. In cycling, I go to the front of the big boys and try to throw it down. As usual it backfired.

The "How"

Making the right turn onto Ruffner Road, I slipped up the inside and found myself in the second row, flying up the hill (no mercy for newbies tonight), down the other side and onto the flats and over the small rollers at 33-34 mph. Was I hanging? Yeah, I wasn't doing to badly. Then we got to the final climb on Ruffner, a truly small hill, but steeper than the rest...usually the group slows just a little on this rise, but not tonight, 34 mph we went up that hill. Shortly after that, I was done. Cooked. Unable to do anything other than limp up John Rogers Drive and spin back to my car to go home.

The "Why"
It's been a very unusual week for me since last Tuesday's ride. I've been very out of sorts, my schedule has been wacky and I haven't followed my routine the way I should. As a result of this disruption, I obviously expended during the past week tremendous amounts of liquid, sodium and protein, without replacing them. Leaving me susceptible to dehydration, cramping, and muscle fatigue.

Add in a heat index of 106, and that's just a reciped for disaster. On the other hand, I had an hour to spin along with myself to keep me company, daydreaming and thinking about things. Stuff I haven't done much of lately. It was very pleasant.

The "Fix"
Probably, I need to go back into Aerobic base mode. I've been in Anaerobic mode for about 8 weeks now, and that's enough at once. Jeff would say it's time to put the bike down for a week and cross train, but I'm not going to do that. I'll just try and get back to my routine and I'm sure I'll come around in a week or two.

TNPT Strikes Back...

...or tried to anyway.

Once again it's time for the recap of the Tuesday night hurt-fest. I was feeling pretty good before the ride started tonight. The previous few rides I had done, along with the past few TNPT's had me feeling pretty confident of my ability to throw it down along with the main protagonists tonight. It turned out to be a night of going deep and long.

Nearing Ruffner Rd, DirtDog came along side me and asked me to go to the front with him to slow the pace a little on the initial climb near the ballfields. Doing this ensures that some of the newer riders don't get shelled on the first climb, and have the descent to work their way up to speed.

Sprinting up to the front, I happened to notice my HR monitor. That can't be right, I thought, as the digits were displaying 182 bpm. That's really high for me, near max HR, and certainly not commesurate with the effort being made. My legs weren't hurting, so I didn't think about it again until later on down Ruffner, I noticed once again that I was running in the high 170's, but felt fine.

On John Rogers Drive, I grabbed a wheel on the steep part of the climb and soon found myself climbing the steeper section at 22mph. With a HR of 189! At this point my legs had started to ache a bit, so I backed off, still with about 100 yards on the main group to recover for the flatter top half of JRD. It worked out fine, and I made it over the top in the front group, but still, HR in the 170's and 180's.

On Old Leeds Road, there were a couple of points at which I had to make a decision as to whether to keep pushing, or to sit up and take it easy. I fought through it and stayed with the group, but going down the descent of Old Leeds, a motorcycle passed the back half of the group (where I was located) then pulled into the middle of us and caused a split that despite chasing as hard as we could, we were unable to pull back.

When I got home, I downloaded the data from my Polar and saw why this ride hurt so badly. I had 21 minutes of riding with my HR above 176 bpm. More than 1/4 of the ride time. Another 12 minutes between 171 and 176. Jeff, you're always telling me to go deep and stay there. I guess I did tonight.

As a side note, I've really noticed how much nervous energy I expend riding in the peleton. A lot of the riders are triathletes who don't know how to ride around other riders, and the group as a whole is very nervous, and at times a scary place to be. I've seen a rider laying in the road with multiple broken bones and a 3" wide stream of blood running from their fractured skull into the gutter, while his wife lay yard away from him also with multiple broken bones, with two other riders scattered about similarly injured. All victims of a rider who decided to push his limits beyond his capabilities. It's so important to become comfortable with riding in a group if you are going to race. I've spent years riding in large groups, and I still get nervous if one rider is twitchy. Then the ride becomes even harder because I'm wasting energy on something I can't control.

Anyway, tonight's ride was good. It hurt, which I'm actually glad about. If it didn't hurt, I guess it would have been a waste of time, but after looking at my HR data, I feel like it was undoubtably the best anaerobic workout I've had all year. I actually feel like I could go race in Huntsville the end of this month and do well, (but I won't because the last time I raced that event, there were 5 crashes, and I have too many responsibilities to get taken out by some less than intelligent person who can't keep his front wheel out of my rear derailleur).

But I'll keep training anyway. There's something really great about being out in the open, pushing yourself and seeing improvement.

That's what it's all about.

Feeling Beastly

As my friend Jeff, aka "The Beast" occasionally says, "I gotta brag for a minute".

On Saturday, my friend Russ, who I ride quite a bit with, was in Sylacauga attending to an on call rotation that he has there once a month, and so I found myself anticipating the Saturday morning rollout for a ride with the boys and girls from the club. It's been a while since I've done a weekend club ride, and once my sweet wife gave me the go-ahead to join them, I was feeling good.

Unfortunately, my alarm didn't sound loudly enough to wake me up at the right time, so I pulled into the parking lot at 7:30, the appointed leave time for the ride...but luck was on my side, as they were a few minutes behind in getting started, as the group was exceptionally large, probably about 55-60 riders.

This was a day with climbs on the menu, and I was really kind of excited to see how my climbing form would match up with some of these folks. I quickly found out as we reached the bottom of Smyer and I took off. The group had gotten strung out on the flatter roads leading to the climb, and I reached the bottom about 7th or 8th in the group, and 300 yards behind the leader. I easily caught each of the riders ahead of me and continued to work hard the remainder of the climb, setting a new PR by 5 seconds.

Next up the climb up Caldwell Mill road, a bit steeper than Smyer, but just as long. 5th to the top of Caldwell Mill, in the lead group. Then out the half dozen climbs heading east on Sicard Hollow. Again, in the front group all the way to the end of Sicard Hollow/Rex Lake.

After a brief stop to reload water bottles, I had to make a decision. I could head back west on 78 into town and go home, or I could continue on with the group out to Trussville. I've never been on the roads they had planned, but I wanted to try them. Also, I was feeling like I haven't felt in years. The decision was made easier when I remembered that my wife had mentioned she was taking the kids to a program at the library that morning, and I knew I wouldn't be missed for the extra 90 minutes the rest of the ride would take. So my decision was made and I continued on the longer route.

Now, to make a long story short, let's just say that I was feeling good, attacks were flying right and left, and all of them were covered. Never once was I in any danger of needing my iPod to keep me company as I watched the pack disappear into the distance. At one point, I charged up a small power climb, thinking that I was just keeping pace. Looking over my shoulder, the rest of the group was 50 yards behind. Now, normally, this is cause for alarm when I'm on a road I don't know. Why?

Flashback to a story from 15 years ago
It was race night in Provo, and the course that evening was from Springville, out around West Mountain, and back to Springville. Approaching the northest point of West Mountain, I managed to escape the peleton. Surprised that they let me go, I continued working my tail off to build a lead that I could sustain. Did I mention that I'd never ridden this route before? With a good 90 seconds in hand I looked ahead of me as I was riding down the west side of the mountain and saw a climb. Ordinarily, this wouldn't have been any bad thing but a) I had just worked like crazy to build a lead, and b) well, there isn't a "b", but in any event, they caught me just over at the top of the climb and while I was able to stay with them the rest of the way that evening, ever since then, I've been very wary when a group lets me go like that..

So, I'm 50 yards clear on a road I don't know, and alarm bells should be going off, but they don't. Instead, I gave it more gas and found that sure enough, there was a climb ahead. That's okay, I replicated the story told above, climbing strongly enough to just get caught at the top of the climb and then staying with the group until John Rogers Drive...the climb that is usually my undoing on the Tuesday Night Pain Train. On the early part of JRD, my legs started to feel twitchy. I guess I was about 5th in the line at that point, and as the climb steepened, my legs decided that they didn't want to slow down with the group, so I shot out of the line and began sprinting up the hill. I had a good head of steam up and had just sat back down to work the rest of the climb up when DirtDog came flying up past me, so it was back to sprinting trying to get his wheel, but I couldn't do it. It was my one failure for the day. It says a lot that I even tried to catch him, because normally, I would have chuckled and settled into my own pace. I have no pride and I usually back off if the pain becomes too intense.

But this was no normal day.

Then, to make a great day even better, when I got home, I found that my wife hadn't in fact made it to the library with the kids, but instead of being miffed that I had been gone longer than I had said I would, she said it didn't matter and was glad that I'd had fun! How great is that?

The moral of this story? Training pays off and every once in a while you feel invincible. And what a great feeling that is!

The Power of Recovery

As I have thought back over the past 3 months of heavy training and long rides, one thing (that I don't think I've mentioned yet) has become clear with the 20/20 capabilities of hindsight.

That "thing" is the importance of recovery.

At my age (42) I can no longer go hard day after day endlessly. In fact, one or two hard rides a week is all I can muster. But I'm noticing that as I have gotten older, my ability to finish a hard ride and still have energy to work in the yard, or run errands with the wife, or goof around with the kids, has increased. It used to be that the wife would be frustrated because a hard ride meant I was useless for the rest of that day. Not so anymore!

I know what some of you are thinking, "man, that EPO is good stuff". But I'm not doping, except for the occasional foray into sodium phosphate loading (which ought to be illegal). No, my secret is that I make sure I'm taking time to recover properly between hard rides.

So, that's my tip for the day (which would be a profound thing if I was doing something like a "tip of the day" type blog, but I'm not, so it's just today's tip, with no expectation for further tips to follow, though they might anyway at some point.)

Now that you're thoroughly confused.

Catching Up

Well, it's true that it has been a while since my last article, but you'll forgive me when you know that I've been occupied at a family reunion. Yes, I did bring my survival kit (bicycle, helmet, shoes, and Hammer Gel), so I'm managing to enjoy myself to an unprecedented degree...to start, let me catch y'all up to date:

Tuesday Night Pain Train (06/27): Great ride, super legs...felt great the whole way 'round.

Wednesday night I was playing basketball with the young men from church. Doing my best imitation of Dennis Rodman (rebounding...not kicking cameramen or bad mouthing Mormons) the ball hit my hand and I felt and heard a nasty "POP" in the middle finger of my left hand. One would think that this wouldn't affect my ability to ride. I discovered differently on Friday as I found I use it to shift between my chainrings, put a great deal of pressure/strain on it while climbing out of the saddle, as well as releasing my rear brake closure cam when beginning a climb. I also use this finger in concert with it's brothers to remove and replace a water bottle for hydrating properly. The moral of this story is, be careful playing basketball with Scouts, because cycling involves all body parts, not just the parts you think are obvious.

So, onto the ride report...I just returned from Sevierville, Tennessee, immediately adjacent to Pigeon Forge (home of Dollywood) which sits between Sevierville and Gatlinburg (I don't think it's named after Larry or any of his brothers). Gatlinburg is on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The GSMNP is unique in the National Park system because they are not allowed to charge admission. It has something to do with the way the deed was written when the park was created, but I think it probably has more to do with the fact that if they charged the standard $25 per carload to get between tourist traps #1 & #2 (Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg) and tourist trap #3 (Cherokee, NC) that the local economies of all three would suffer because thousands upon thousands of dollars per day would disappear into the dark recesses of the federal machine (on the other hand, perhaps the federal machine would use some of those dollars to install water fountains in the park). Or folks just wouldn't go back and forth, but the net effect would be the same.

Anyway, also unique to the GSMNP is that the second highest point east of the Mississippi river is found within its borders. This peak is Clingman's Dome, and is where I spent last Friday morning remembering why I love to ride my bicycle. I left our vacation home around 7:45am, and found myself whipping through patches of fog as I made my way south along the main road that runs through Sevierville, PF, and Gatlinburg. Once south of Pigeon Forge, the road becomes a divided 4 lane with a nice forest with a creek separating the two halves of the road. As I would many times later on the ride, I found myself wishing I had a camera with me.

I made my way through Gatlinburg, which can best be described as crowded and touristy, but a very charming little tourist trap never the less. Loads of character. And condos. And hotels. And time shares. And fudge shops.

As you leave Gatlinburg, you enter the National Park. I made a stop at the park welcome center to make certain that I was on the correct road, and found no help there as the girl who was impersonating a parks employee claimed she'd never heard of Clingman's Dome. "Hello...this is the biggest attraction in your park lady...get a clue!" Fortunately for me, there was a 3 dimensional model of the park and I was able to find that the road I was on was indeed the one which would deposit me at the highest point in the state of Tennessee.

So I went back outside and resumed riding. At this point, the climbing begins in earnest. (of course, "earnest" is a relative term, there's nothing too steep here) While I'd been gradually ascending for the past 5-6 miles already (at this point I had ~300 feet of climbing in), it is just inside the park boundary that the road really turns up. Now, I don't mean that it's steep, because it's not. I'd guess (without having downloaded my Polar data yet) that it averages 5-6%, with some shorter sections hitting 7-8% as you climb the switchbacks near Newfound Gap. The challenge here is that the climbing lasts for 22 miles. Plus the 5-6 miles outside the park. It's not a tough climb, and you can really move through some sections. There are a couple of tunnels that are a little scary due to the "riding in a dark tube with cars" thing. But this is a heavily shaded road, with lots of wildlife to see and thousands of rhododendron bushes to look at as you climb.

About 3 miles into the climb, I was passed by a caravan of family reunioners (my wife's cousins and uncles) who were driving to Newfound Gap to hike the Appalachian Trail section between that point that the top of Clingman's Dome. I made it my objective at that point to get there ahead of them.

I slowed down near some of the overlooks to check out the scenery. It's always a very cool thing to see the road that you've been riding waaaay off down below you somewhere, and I wasn't disappointed.

At Newfound Gap, you leave the main road and climb for another 7 miles to the observation tower at the highest point on Clingman's Dome. Except for a short 3/4 mile downhill on this part of the road, it's a steady climb from Gatlinburg to the top. It took me a touch over 2 hours to climb to the top, but I was riding into a headwind most of the way to the top. I also was taking time to really look around and enjoy the scenery, which is spectacular.

About 5 minutes after I arrived at the top, as I was searching for a water fountain to replenish my bottles, my wife showed up with a couple of kids and a cousin or two. She had dropped my son off farther down the mountain and he was riding up to meet us. So I kicked around for a while waiting until he arrived. Then we checked out the view from the observation tower, from which you could see Mt. Mitchell (highest point east of the Mississippi) about 50 miles east. Then we climbed on our bikes and headed down the mountain.

Now, if you've ever ridden in mountain canyons, you know that the temperature of the air in the mountains vs the temperature of the air in the valleys affects the direction the breeze is blowing. Remember I had said that I had a bit of a headwind for the climb. I wish I could say that it was a tailwind for the descent, but it was not. We had a headwind for the entire way back down the mountain, and still we managed to run at 35-40 mph the whole way. Despite the wind, it was a fun descent.

It was 43 miles from our lodging to the top of Clingman Dome. The first 20 miles of that was nearly flat, with only 300' of climbing. The next 20 miles climbs an additional ~5200 feet.

I'm already looking forward to my next chance to ride it.