A Vist From Misery

It’s wintertime and cold outside and I’ve been training indoors since November.  A few weeks ago I decided I would try shadowing Fred’s workouts.  Fred’s workout schedule is prescribed by Coach Jane.  Coach Jane works for Carmichael Training Systems and has been managing Fred’s workouts for the past three years.  I wanted to follow a training program this winter, rather than just attend the random spin class at the gym and I knew shadowing Fred’s workouts would be much more challenging.  I love a challenge.  There was some concern about the workouts being too intense for me.  I don’t have three years of prior workouts under my belt and I was jumping right into the deep end of the pool.  I figured, the worse that would happen is that I would find I couldn’t keep up with the workouts.  If that were the case I’d fall off the program and go back to random spin classes.  The initial workouts were difficult but not impossible.  Last week we moved to Power Intervals and life became more interesting.  Power intervals are (relatively) short intense efforts followed by an equal recovery period.  That means pedaling practically all out for the entire interval.  I try to keep my cadence around 115 for the entire interval and my heart rate is typically pinned in the upper 170’s by the end of the interval.  In short, it’s torture.  But hey, nobody said it training should be easy. 

On Wednesday I do 5x3 power intervals.  That means a total of 5 intervals, each lasting 3 minutes, with a 3 minute recovery between intervals.  The first two intervals don’t go well.  I feel like I’m struggling and I’m working too hard.  The third interval goes a little better and I settle in and finish up the 4^th and 5^th interval feeling a little better.  Overall it’s very difficult but not impossible.  Thursday is the day of reckoning with 8x2 power intervals on the heels of Wednesday’s 5x3 workout.  I start the workout with a progressive warmup and convince myself that 8x2 intervals should be easier than 5x3 intervals because each interval is an entire minute shorter.  What I failed to consider is that back to back power intervals are crushing and the reason the second day has shorter intervals is because it would be impossible to repeat interval duration on the next day.  My first interval doesn’t go well at all.  I feel like my legs are stuck in concrete blocks.  It’s a Herculean effort to complete the first 2 minute interval and I think to myself, “I’m never going to be able to do 7 more of these.”  The 2^nd and 3^rd intervals don’t go much better.  This really does feel like torture.  On the 4^th interval, Misery walks in, sits down next to me, and pours himself a drink.  I find this very unsettling but I try to stay focused on completing the interval.  Misery won’t be ignored and starts up a conversation with me.

     Misery:  “Nobody is forcing you to do this.”

     Me:  “I know.”

     Misery:  “You can stop anytime.”

     Me:  “I’m not going to stop.”

I finished the interval on fumes, feeling my pulse throbbing in my head.  Not good.  There is no way I’m going to be able to do 4 more of these.  My two minutes of recovery end much too soon and I start my 5^th interval.

     Misery: “You’re not going to make it.”

     Me:  “F*ck you.  I’m not going to quit.”

     Misery:  “I’ve beaten much better than you.  You’ll fail too.”

     Me:  “We’ll see”

A minute into the interval and my heart is pounding out of my chest and although I’m panting hard, the room seems to be devoid of oxygen and I feel like I’m suffocating.  It’s at this point that I think, “It’s only another minute.  I can tolerate anything for a minute.”  I closed my eyes, put my head down, and kept pedaling.  50 seconds…40 seconds… “This is taking forever”…30 seconds… “I think I can make it”…20 seconds…”I’m going to make it”…10 seconds…5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and done with the 5^th interval.  Three more to go.

During the sixth interval I started feeling better.  I wasn’t feeling good by I wasn’t miserable anymore. Suffering walked in and escorted Misery out the door.  I much prefer Suffering to Misery.  I suffer through the last three intervals and finish my hardest workout to date.  I didn't quit.

Guest Post:: American River Bike Trail in Folsom

[This is a guest post from a friend who lives in California]

Perfect weather yesterday – so I hit the bike trail. I’m going medium pace, and a guy with no helmet in a yellow jersey passes me. About 10 miles in I see a new person hop on the trail up ahead.  He is wearing a skater helmet and riding a older road bike with shifters on the drops.  Skater helmet quickly comes up on yellow jersey guy.   Yellow jersey picks up the pace but is no match for skater helmet and goes way ahead.  I eventually pass yellow jersey. About 4 miles later who do I come up on but skater helmet, who is not going as fast as I thought he would be.  Here I realize skater helmet is probably in high school, with a lot to prove. We’re going 18 on the flats, and much less on the small hills (he has to stand for every one – maybe because of the shifters that went out of style in the 80’s?)  I am on his wheel for about 3 miles, waiting to pass.  I think maybe we should trade off leading, but I don’t think that is skater helmets style.  I know as soon as I pass skater helmet will see that as a race – and affront to his manhood. I really just don’t want to be stuck behind him anymore. Finally – I am fully rested up -  “on your left” I say and quickly ramp up to about 23mph.  Skater helmet – who’d been happily cruising along at 18mph, picks up the pace.  24, 25 … skater helmet’s shadow is still there – hanging on.  Down a hill 26, 27 .. skater helmet trying to still hang on.  Since we’re on the bike path – there is no way out.  No “other road” to take to save face.  I see the trail flatten out – skater helmet is fading fast.  After the first small hill – he is nowhere to be seen.   Winner! :)   Definitely the highlight of my day.

-CABikeNoob

 

Back to back to rides on LBI

On Sunday, Fred, his friend Nick, and I rode 37 miles on Long Beach Island.  Our goal was to average 20mph for the ride.  The advantage is that LBI is perfectly flat.  The challenge is the multitude of stop signs and traffic lights that pull your average down.  Fred was pulling for the majority of the ride.  Maybe 60% of the time.  Nick was probably doing 30% of the work and I did the best I could to pull about 10% of the time.  The interesting part of that ride happened at about mile 30.  We were on a 3 mile stretch of road, heading north.  The road didn’t have any stop signs and had a bike lane.  I was pulling at the front at, what I thought was, a respectable 22mph.  Fred rolled around me and started picking up the pace.  23, 24, then 25 miles an hour.  I’m keeping pace but I’m at my limit.  Fred ramps it up to 26mph and I’m hanging on for everything I’m worth.  I yell up to Fred that I won’t be able to hold his wheel at 26mph for very long.  I hang in there for about 30 seconds and I start to drop off.  A gap opens up between Fred and me.  It grows wider.  My heart is willing but my legs just can’t keep the pace.  Nick sees the gap widening and comes around me to give me a draft to sit in.  Nick pulls me along at 24mph and the gap between us and Fred continues to get bigger.  Fred is a pedaling machine and becomes an ever smaller dot on our horizon. Eventually Fred is out of sight (on a perfectly straight road).  When Nick and I finally catch up, he tells us he was feeling good and wanted to stretch his legs.  He rode most of the 3 miles at 27mph.  Holy crackers!

On Monday Fred and I roll out at 6:40am.  We head north up the island towards Nick’s house.  Fred and I agree that we don’t feel as good as the day before so we’re not going to try to hammer out a 20mph average again this morning.  That notion lasts less than 5 minutes, as Fred notes that there appears to be no wind on the island at all.  A rarity. Fred doesn’t want to waste the perfect conditions on an easier pace.  So off he goes and off I go after him.  Around 8 miles up the road we see Nick rolling along with another group of riders.  “Arrrr!”.  We hail him with a pirate greeting to let him know we’re coming through, and Nick jumps on the back.  Off we go hammer and tongs (again).  I’m feeling tired and we’re not even 30 minutes into the ride.  Fast forward to mile 40.  We’re heading back north towards Nick’s house and I’m starting to let gaps open between myself and Fred and Nick.  Small gaps at first but then they get bigger.  I’m exhausted and my back is letting me know that it thinks this ride should be over.  Nick turns off at his street in Barnegat and now Fred and I have a 7 mile ride back to the house in Surf City.  Fred’s been pulling for the last 10 miles but he knows I’m in no shape to pull so he stays ahead of me and jacks up our speed to 23mph.  Fred is the Ivan Drago of cycling. I imagine him saying “I must break you”.  I push into the pedals and think to myself, “Hang on for 7 more miles.  Just to see if I can do it.”  My back is on fire at this point but I refuse to give in.  I alternate standing out of the saddle and getting into the drops to try to alleviate some of the back pain.  It’s not working.  I could sit up and soft pedal home but that would be giving up and I’m curious to know just how far I can push myself before I break.  Fred keeps looking back.  The surprised look on his face lets me know he figured he’d have dropped me by now.  Seven miles doesn’t sound like much.  Especially when the road is completely flat and straight.  But seven miles can seem like an eternity when you’re at your limit and in pain.  For the first time ever on a road bike, I feel like I’m in the zone.  My world goes silent except for the sound of my breathing which I note is surprisingly regular and normal.  My legs feel fine too.  My back is killing me but I’m blocking out the pain and focusing on my breathing.  I think to myself, “This is amazing!”  I roll along at 23mph behind Fred all the way home.  Ivan Drago doesn’t break me.  I live to ride another day. 

That may have been my best ride yet.

Crazy-ass Squirrel

Went on the "Training C" ride out of Loantaka tonight with the Morris Area Freewheelers.  We were about 20 people when we left the parking lot and I hung out near the back of the pack for the first few miles and let everyone else sort out their place in the pack.  I'm always amused by the riders who jockey for position in the first five miles of a group ride.  What's the point?  Are you really planning on going off the front for the next 25 miles on a C ride?  Really?


After a while I noticed gaps forming and bridged between the gaps to move towards the front.  I felt pretty good and wasn't working too hard.  Not nearly as hard as I worked in the time trial race on Sunday.  I had just latched onto the back of the front group of five or six guys when four of them made a sudden right hand turn.  I turned with them because I'm too lazy and not talented enough to read my cue sheet and ride at the same time.  Turns out it was a wrong turn. The guy directly in front of me must have looked down to check his cue sheet because I watched him veer right into the curb and dump his bike as he executed a near perfect shoulder roll onto someone's lawn.  I yelled to the riders ahead of us to stop, slowed my bike, and turned around to see if the guy was hurt.  He was already up off the lawn and walking over to his bike.  He seemed a bit shaken up but able to get back on his bike and continue the ride.  It was so weird to watch the crash develop in front of me.  It was almost like watching it happen in slow motion.  I remember thinking, "Why is he riding into the curb like that?" followed quickly by "He's going head over handlebars." and lastly, "Don't run over his bike!".  Once I made sure he was ok, I started back up the hill we had just turned down by mistake.  It sucks to be in the big ring and try to pedal uphill from a standing start.  No fun at all but eventually, after much mashing of gears, I made it up the hill and back onto the route.  By this time the group had ridden past us, oblivious to the fact that we had made a wrong turn, much less the crash.


Off I go in pursuit of the pack again.  We're headed for the Great Swamp which is a terrific place to paceline, so I wanted to get back to the front of the pack and see if I could convince a few riders to practice rotating through a paceline with me.  I caught up with the front group just as we turned into the swamp.  There were five of us in our mini-group and the guys started long pulls at the front. After a few minutes of sitting on the back, hoping someone would make the brilliant suggestion of a rotating paceline, I decided that it wasn't going to happen unless I made it happen and pulled up along the left side of the line, asking each rider in turn if they were interested in trying a rotating paceline.  All said they were up for it so I started the rotation and off we went.  It probably wasn't the sloppiest paceline in the history of pacelines but for sure it wasn't the tightest either.  But hey, that's what practice is for.  


Paceline over and getting towards the end of the ride and there are three of us who made another wrong turn but the other two guys seem to know where we are going and assure me that we're almost back to the parking lot.  Rich introduces himself and we chat for a bit about the quick pace for a C ride, the condition of the road and such.  Rich is wondering how we didn't catch the riders in front of us when we were pacelining and I tell him that we were the front of the group ride at that point.  He's convinced that there were riders in front of us because he took a wrong turn earlier in the ride and a bunch of riders passed by while he got back on route.  I realize that I was in the same group as Rich when we took the wrong turn and that guy crashed, so I ask him if he saw the crash too.  He didn't see it.  In fact, he didn't realize there was a crash at all.  That's how fast the crashed rider got back to his bike.  All Rich saw was a few guys (including me) standing around.  He figured we were checking the cue sheet to get back on route.  Nope.  So I'm in the middle of telling Rich about the crash when I spot a squirrel up ahead.  It's hanging out at the edge of the brush under the guardrail and looks... squirrel-ly.  At this point, Rich is directly to my left, and I yell "Squirrel", but apparently Rich didn't hear me.  I watched the squirrel do that start, stop, start, stop thing that squirrels sometimes do and I realize that the stupid thing is actually going to pick now to cross the road.  By the time I see it dash out from the guardrail, it's too late to try any evasive measures.  I remember this scene from the movie, "Days Of Thunder", where there is a crash in front of Tom Cruise's car and there are cars skidding out of control all over the track and at least one car is on fire so there is smoke everywhere and Tom can't see through the smoke but he has to get past the skidding cars, so he trusts that he will find a clear path through the mayhem and he slams the pedal to the floor.  Tom is lucky and makes it through unscathed.  I figured I'd try the same thing.  Too late to react to the squirrel dash, I figure the squirrel has the trajectory and speed of the bike figured out and I trust he's going to miss me and cross the road to get to the other side.  I braced for impact just in case.  Apparently this squirrel either didn't pass his squirrel physics class or he didn't see Rich's bike on the other side of me.  It passed just in front of my front tire and got squished under Rich's tire.  Rich didn't see it coming and hadn't heard my warning.  He went down immediately and hard.  One second he was next to me in conversation and then the wasn't there at all.  I heard the crash and heard him groan and hit my brakes.  I honestly thought that in a bike/squirrel collision, the bike would simply roll over the squirrel and the rider, though sketching for a few feet, would stay upright and continue riding along.  Man was I wrong about that.  (note to self: In the future, yield to all crazy-ass squirrels)  My biggest fear was that Rich got hit by the car that just passed us going the other way when he went down.  He didn't.  Whew!  I turned to assess the situation and saw Rich lying in the road next to his bike and the now dead squirrel.  It didn't look good.  John, who was trailing us by a few feet when this happened, immediately called 911.  I stood over Rich and asked him if he was alright.  He wasn't moving but he was talking.  He had no idea that he just collided with a squirrel.  He took a minute or two to take inventory of himself and then peeled himself off the pavement and flung the dead squirrel back into the woods.  Road rash and bruises but nothing seems broken and no gashes.  I'm impressed with the Mt. Vernon EMS team.  They were on site in minutes and did an excellent job fixing Rich up.  Really nice people.  While John and I waited, I noticed Rich flatted his front tire during the crash.  I changed his tire for him and the EMS squad convinced him to take a ride back to the parking lot in the ambulance.  The whole event scared the crap out of me.  I was five feet away from two accidents on the same ride?  Holy crackers!  Rich seemed ok when I left him at the parking lot and I hope he feels better soon and he's back on his bike by the weekend.  He's a nice guy who had a bad day but lived to ride again.


Get well soon Rich.
Thanks for getting me back to the parking lot John.


Crazy-ass squirrels have the right of way from now on.