Brilliance

ذيس إس brilliant

Brilliance

Brilliance

I love this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PzoxTgfRO0&feature=player_embedded

Entertainment and Betrayal

If you ride a bike you know who Lance is.
If you don't ride a bike, you probably know who Lance is.

There are 2 (two) camps: Haters and Lovers.


And maybe a 3rd.


If Lance did cheat, the finger pointing needs to start at him and work its way back. Back to the domestiques, to the managers, to the soigneurs, to the bus drivers and back to the UCI or USAC (or whomever else is out there). The finger pointing needs to go all the way back to you and me.

I can't and won't deny that I really hope he's been clean. But after reading so many articles, so many books and first hand accounts from domestiques, I truly doubt that anyone in the peloton is THAT clean -- B12 shots, hot/cold therapy, vacuum chambers, etc. These aren't things that "naturally" exist, they're provided for a price. Whether or not they're against the rules, they're still enhancing performance in a way that is separate from the eat, train, sleep cycle that most people know -- especially Grand Tour Winners.

As humans, we want to see others succeed in ways that we can't. Maybe we're hoping for some taste of immortality, maybe we just --for a second or two-- put ourselves in their shoes and imagine how wonderful it'd be if we were blessed with superior genetics and will-power. Maybe we want to be famous by association (Who hasn't heard someone say, "I saw _______________ do __________."

Whatever.


Landis told.
Tyler told.
George told.

Lance looks to be in trouble.


The people that will really suffer are the schlubs like me that were looking to be entertained and accidentally started to expect more. The people that will suffer are those just getting into cycling. The people that will suffer are those who looked to Lance as a hero -- not for cycling but because he was able to overcome a metric-fucktonne of crap and then win.

He didn't ask for it. We did.

Why would he act any different than anyone else?

Trying to break the cycle.

My mom was adopted by missionaries. My dad's parents were officers in the Salvation Army.
Up until I was about 10 Sundays were reserved, not for cartoons or little league, but for Pastor Martin's sermons at an Evangelical Free church in a Chicago suburb. I attended Our Lady of Perpetual Help from 3rd through 5th grade, did a brief stint in a public junior high, kicked out in 7th, kicked out of another school halfway through 8th grade and found myself finishing JHS at Immanuel Luthern. A few months later I was an angry freshman at Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Il. Four years later I found myself with a full ride to Trinity University (no, not the good one) a place that had rules like, "No Dancing." "No smoking." and "Members of the opposite sex may only enter into each others dorm rooms on the weekend and doors must remain open at all times."

(I promptly dropped out.)

I am too hard headed to follow a book or pastor or priest blindly. Sometimes I'm too cocky to believe that an action might send me to hell. I'm smart enough to realize that god isn't punishing me, I just get the short end of the stick sometimes.

All these years I've found myself ignoring the idea of Easter. Hunting for eggs seems weird to me. Chocolate bunnies never taste as good as good bars of chocolate. And well, the whole religious thing . . . I got kicked out of Sunday School for asking if Jesus was a zombie.

Though I've been brought up in/around religion my entire life, it's never played a huge role in my life. Sure, I pray and believe in a higher power but its always seemed to me that we make God in our image and not the other way around.

For several years now, riding has been a way to make me a better person. I am a very high-keyed person. I grind my teeth, I stress to the point of making my face twitch, I often fail to keep my mouth under control. My advisor in grad school suggested that I try pot to keep myself reined in. It worked--a few puffs before going to sleep kept me from waking up with a sore jaw, kept me from picking holes in my skin while I slept, kept me from waking up sweating and unable to remember why. But I'm not a drug user. I suppose pride keeps me from using drugs to "get by." I don't like loosing control or giving control to somethings that isn't me--No, I won't ride on the back of your motorcycle. So after a month or two and a few hundred dollars (that should've been spent on film) I gave up smoking weed and instead pulled my bike out of the corner and started riding. I figured that maybe if I rode myself to exhaustion I wouldn't have energy to grind, gnaw, sweat or pick. It worked.

The first year back on a bike (I had raced and worked at a bike shop in highschool) I found myself being exhausted after 20 miles. I was proud when I hit 1,000 miles in a year. I found myself almost needing a nap after rides and I found myself much more calm. I didn't snap as quickly. I slept harder. I figured out problems. In some ways, riding a bike was like praying -- I had time to reflect and time to find the answer. Friends noticed my change in attitude--they also noticed how cranky I got when the New England weather forced me off my bike.

The second year back on a bike I started riding with a group and logging more miles. 2,000. 3,000. I managed to find myself in a good relationship after a string of self-serving hookups.

It was the same with the 3rd year, the year I got back into racing.

Weight lifters go up in weight.
Junkies need more.
College kids no longer get drunk after 2 cans of Nasty Ice and find themselves with 2 40s taped to their hands.
Pete Townshend needed the volume higher.

Last year, I found myself at 7,000 miles. I was riding to get the miles in. Riding to find that . . . that . . . whatever the hell it is.

Moving to Los Angeles provided me with some wonders: mountains, riding 340+ days a year, etc. But at a certain point the benefits that cycling gave me started getting smaller and smaller.

When you train, this is called plateauing. When you're riding to be "human"...... I dunno what that's called.

When you couple that experience with the fact that I'm not physically blessed and I'm also trying to race you can imagine the discouragement that comes as a result.

2x20s
hill repeats
1 minute sprints / 30 second rests
Having to ride a trainer with a garbage can next to you in case you throw up.

Anything to get that "fix."

Some people refer to riding as "The Church of the Big Ring" or they say, "I'm praying to the bike god that I win . . . ."

My church started to feel a little like the world of William S. Burroughs and the goodness was being passed out by a junky-dealer named The Priest.

Who the hell argues about riding a bike? Who gets so discouraged because its 7:15 and now I only have 75 minutes to ride instead of 90? Who gets depressed because he's only ridden 1500 miles since Jan 1st compared to the 3,000 last year?

Me.

I am bored.
I am addicted.
I am a crotchety bastard.

A post or two ago I wrote about this. I'm trying to address it.

I work at a Jesuit college now. (Watch how I bring religion back into this.) It's Easter break. The students don't have to attend classes but since I'm technically staff, I need to be there. Except that I've decided to call in sick.

Yesterday I forced myself to get on a bike later than I wanted to.
I left with a few snacks, no plan and tape covering my wattage.

When you ride to ride you forget that you can look around.
When you ride based on numbers and time you can't get off your bike.
When you have 8 intervals 5 minutes of rest and 8 more intervals you can't allow yourself to get distracted.

Yesterday I tried to break that habit.

So its home to PCH.
PCH to Pepperdine and a random decision to try a different hill.
That hill lead to Malibu Canyon and a road that looks like it was laid 4 months ago.

I forced myself to stop the first few times. Stop and look.
I forced myself to breathe. To smell plants that I'm not really familiar with.
I coasted downhill and through a tunnel listening to my wheels spin.

A quick right turn put me at the base of Piuma Road.

I've only ridden it once before and it made me crack. I was underfed, and too new at climbing to understand what a 2nd 2500' climb at noon in SoCal might do to me. Last time I was furious that I had to stop 3 times to finish the climb.

I attempted not to care and to enjoy it for what it is.

I wonder what Jesus (the man, not the son of god) thought when he rolled back the stone and stepped back out into the world. In no way do I mean to compare myself with a religious figure. I mean no disrespect. Do you think that he slowed down for a minute? Do you think that he breathed in through his nose hoping to catch a whiff of something wonderful? Do you think he listened to the sound of his feet on the ground?

I don't know how long it took me to climb Piuma. I went slow. I stopped. I enjoyed the ride for what it is -- a gift.

Once you pass the summit there's a short, easy downhill to the beginning of Las Flores. I spent 10 minutes eating a peanut butter and honey sandwich and then followed it up with a Cliff Bar. I said my equivalent of "Hail Mary" and dropped back down to PCH.

Fear

Full disclosure: I’m a triathlete working on becoming more of a cyclist. I have promised not to geek out about tri stuff. I don’t usually make promises I can’t keep, so we’ll see.

***

I am motivated (and often unmotivated) by fear. My training and racing for the past couple years has reflected that and resulted in mediocrity. Another thing about me? I hate mediocrity. Despise it, and yet that’s often where I end up. Just how things go – I get that, but it doesn’t make me hate it any less. So for the last two years I’ve let that dichotomy hold me back, and then frustrate me for feeling held back, and on and on and on.

This winter, though, I found myself in a very strange position. My last race of last season was the one that I had spent a better portion of the year training for and obsessing over (naturally). The week before that race, non-training, non-racing shit blew up in my face and I was a miserable wreck. I went into it exhausted – mentally, physically, the gamut – but because of all that I really didn’t care if it hurt. I didn’t care if I blew up on the bike, and I didn’t care if I didn’t blow up on the bike but couldn’t pull out a decent run afterward (which happened, by the way). The thing was, once I didn’t have mental energy left for that asinine fear and just rode, I realized I had been a super-slacker in my workouts for the past couple years. My bike split was faster in Lake Placid than I had trained for, but it still felt “good” because what I had trained for was clearly less than what I actually could do. I had been stuck thinking that putting in the hours and miles would make me faster, but hadn’t really paid any attention to whether or not there was much quality to those. And because of that, the so-so pace and effort had come to feel like normal for me and the limit to how I could race.

It didn’t really occur to me until a couple of months afterward, when I was getting ready to start getting more focused in my training for this year, that that race was going to change how this year went. Since now I knew that I had control over one of the factors that was keeping me stuck where I was in the middle of the pack, I needed to do something about it. I knew that I may not actually get significantly better, but I felt like I needed to try. I still had the fear, but a different variety of it. Now, I was just afraid that I didn’t know how to train anymore. If getting on the trainer and doing a shoddy impression of intervals wasn’t doing me any good, what was I supposed to do instead (and how else would I empty out the DVR)?

Don’t ask how long it took me to take the new power meter out of the box this winter, because I knew that once I did I’d have to test on it and I was afraid to see where I was at – even though that’s what I knew I had to do if I wanted to get better this year. When its battery died shortly after, I waited a good two weeks before going a block down the street to get a new one and replace it. I just didn’t want to deal having to see where my fitness really was after the off-season, and not being able to hit the numbers where I “should” be. I was doing the same thing with my running. I was just repeating the same mistakes that I had been, and letting fear dig my brain back into its little hovel. The worst part was that since I knew what I had done in the past, now I was well aware that I was doing it again. It was a rough few months of training.

And then came my first race of this year. Smack. In. The. Face. It was not pretty and I don’t know that I’ve ever actually been so close to dropping out. But it made me realize that I’m sick of the way I’ve been going about things.

I’m still scared that I’m overestimating myself this year and I’m scared that to overcompensate for that I’ll start underestimating myself, but at least it’s given me a kick in the rear for now. I wouldn’t say that my training’s been back on track since then, but it’s been getting there. At least the frustration with letting myself slack and telling myself that I wasn’t is outweighing the fear of working hard.

So here’s to cursing at the training plan during an interval ride and wanting to puke afterward. It sucks (and scares my dog when I do it on the trainer), but I kinda dig it. We’ll see if any of it pays off next month.

The Same Ol'

I've been in Los Angeles for 21 months now.

The transition from NoCoaster to East Coaster to West Coast has been interesting. As a cyclist, I am, at once, too high-strung and too laid back when comparing myself to a lot of the folks in the racing scene.

Here, you can ride something like 348 days a year. You have the options of dodging cars, long and flat or climbing/descending some really killer canyon roads. This is, for so many people that suffer through cold/snowy winters, something to be jealous of. I knew it was a "godsend" and, last year, intended to take full advantage of it -- NoCoast average mileage is 3500; SoCal was 7500.

But at some point it happens. It becomes the same ol' same ol'.

The challenge is still there but when you keep most of your riding within a 50-mile radius, crits are crits, easy rides are boring and road races are few and far between. It ends up being hard to train when you know that your next race will be the same course as last year, etc.

Unfortunately, I'm the kind of person that doesn't realize that he's digging himself deeper into a hole until its a little too late. I made it a whole 15 minutes on the trainer this morning before I decided to give up. Sunday I bailed on a race. Saturday I tried a really hard canyon and gave up 3/4 mile from the top (in my defense, it's 3 miles averaging 11% with switchbacks in the 20% neighborhood).

So I'm in a hole. At least I'm smart enough to realize that digging down isn't going to help me. I suppose it's time to explore, to take pictures while eating some random power-food and try to rid myself of this malaise.

What do you end up doing to get yourself out of a funk?