Calculations

Sometimes, in the interest of HTFU, I enjoy setting myself an unreachable goal.  Yesterday’s ride was like that.  Leaving at 3 for a three plus hour ride, the true length of which would be determined by riding hard for an hour and a half on the way out with a predominant tailwind, and returning fatigued into a headwind while trying to beat the sunset at 6:00.  This is, quite simply, a formula for not getting back by sunset, for bonking into a headwind miles from home as the darkness slowly and inevitably descends, and for getting home solely on the anticipation of warmth and a hot cup of tea.

I had taken a hooky day and was feeling quite Buelleresque.  The miles rolled by as I headed north on the Burke-Gilman, not to any physical point on the trail, but to a point in time.  I love this trail on quiet weeknights, the cold February wind keeping the fair weather riders, joggers, and walkers away.  As the trail turned east and then south at the top end of Lake Washington, my tailwind turned to a sidewind to a headwind, and I got my first real taste of what would await on the return trip.  My legs turned to mush, but I still had 20 minutes remaining to meet with my date in time, which I stubbornly refused to miss, despite my legs telling me otherwise.

The wide open and windy stretch of the Sammamish River Trail where I turned around.  Beautifully deserted on a cold Winter day.

This is how it is early in the year, the legs unaccustomed to rides lasting more than a couple of hours being reacquainted with such efforts.  I checked the phone a couple times to see whether it was time to turn around yet.  Nope, 14 more minutes, then 4, then finally it is time.  This too frequent checking a sign of weakness of resolve, it must be quashed.  Turning around for the short downwind leg brings brief respite, a chance to get some food and fluids down in preparation.  A turn back to the south, and boom – headwind.  I knew it was coming, it was a part of the calculations, and these situations often feel to me to be both easier and harder than anticipated.  Harder as the legs are protesting against the increased mileage, and easier because there is nothing to do but keep going, keep changing position, stand up and push a big gear, sit in the saddle and spin a small one, change rhythm.

Most of the way back down into this headwind, I get a text from Velomihottie, who is done with a frustrating day at work and wants to take a ride, she will come and meet me on the trail.  In a short while, she is there at the side of the trail, and proposes I turn around to go back up to Magnuson Park with her.  No, thanks, I tell her, let’s just head home.  With her, we chat about the day we’ve each had, plans for the evening (Taco Tuesday), and just generally converse.  This takes my mind off the legs and makes the rest of the ride home a relative breeze.  In fact, the last couple of miles, I seem to recover a second wind, and we joke around by her grabbing onto my jersey and me pulling her along coasting.  We got home, and then it was time for Taco Tuesday (all you can eat for $6.00 – I had 8) and a couple of large beers which taste like the best beer ever due to the effort.

Sacre Bleu!

One of the best things about new people in our lives is how they often end up challenging us to go beyond ourselves, doing things that would never had occurred to us previously.  The Velomihottie and I have been together a couple of very enjoyable months now, and one of the things that initially attracted me to her was that she seems to enjoy cycling about as much as I do.  She is much more a cyclist of the Mountain Biking variety than I have ever been, but has been reasonably good, giving and game, to use a Dan Savage expression, to indulge me by joining with me on a couple of road bike rides.

So it was that I felt a similar need to giving Mountain Biking with her the old college try. I'd been poking around the interwebs, looking at various entry level and used mountain bikes.  Happily, the Velomihottie pointed me in the direction of the Bridgestone MB line, and a quick craigslist search turned up an old MB-4 for sale from Sprocketts Recycled Bicycles in Interbay.  A cursory test ride and $125 later, I was the proud owner of this fine retro steed.  Further poking around on the interwebs, courtesy of Sheldon Brown's fine work, revealed it to be circa 1992.

1992 Bridgestone MB-4

We decided that Sunday would be a fine day to pop my MTB cherry, and we soon found ourselves at Duthie Park up in the Issaquah Highlands for my initial ride.  The day was foggy and quite chilly, with ice on the sides of the trail, but the trails were mostly dry as a result.  My first initiation was on the Boot Camp trail, and I was mostly able to not make too much a fool of myself as I repeated my mantra of, "rubber side down."  The riding and companionship were both very enjoyable, and it seemed I learned new skills with each corner.  For instance, I was advised to look only where I wanted to go to avoid banging into things or falling off the trail, and I also found the rapid changes in gradient and incredibly tight banked switchbacks to be very challenging.  The uphill corners were initially very hard for me to keep the front wheel down on, but I soon learned that actually dialing back my effort enabled me to steer through the corners.

A foggy day in the woods.

We rode both the Boot Camp and Moving Up trails twice, and the second time on each revealed that I had more confidence than the first.  I love the steep part of the learning curve when one is first trying a new activity, and I seem to have a natural inclination to dive right in.  This led to the only violation of my mantra to keep it rubber side down, after I saw some kid wheelie past us and decided to attempt a wheelie of my own, landing flat on my ass.  The issue, it seemed, was not in getting the front wheel up, but in keeping it down.

Going just fast enough to be blurry.

After this, we had a final run on the Moving Up trail, and I started to notice that I was fatigued and losing the ability to focus on my new found lessons, making silly mistakes of some of the lessons that I had just learned.  Nonetheless, it was a very good workout that elevated the rate of the old ticker on multiple occasions.  Moreover, riding the trails and mostly keeping up on such a retro machine made me feel somewhat badass in an old school way.  I went to sleep last night with visions of mountain trail switchbacks still dancing in my head.  I will definitely be going Mountain Biking again.

Trail Map - Next time we'll hit something just a bit more advanced.

2012 Mileage and Time Summary

A screen capture of my weekly mileage in bar graph form, and yearly mileage and time, courtesy of Strava.

Winter Cross Country Ski

While wintertime in the Seattle area is often correctly characterized as being quite damp and cool, one does not always have to go out riding in the humidity.  On this day, while it was raining buckets in the lowlands, I decided to head up to the higher elevations where the rain would turn to snow.

For my first cross country ski of the season, I typically take it slow and don't go too far, in an effort to ease the old corporeal body into the new activity.  Muscles that haven't been used since last February or so are called into use and sometimes complain.

This plan of taking it easy was dashed by improving snow conditions as I went higher and further along the Mountain Loop Highway, climbing up to near Barlow Pass from the road closure gate at Deer Creek.  Initially, the snow was crusty and icy, as well as being packed down by snowshoers, walkers, and snowmobiles.  But fresh stuff was falling from on high, and it just kept getting better and better.

I stopped to refuel before turning around to head back down.  Mmmmm.  Fudge.  Super calorie dense sweets like this are made for those days when one is burning calories not just from the exertion, but to stay warm as well.

Both cycling and cross country are about getting out into nature, finding that sometimes elusive rhythm, and just going and going.  This day ended up being about a 3 1/2 hour ski, or about an hour and a half longer than I had planned.  Sometimes when the conditions are improving, one just has to keep going.  I was sore all over the next couple of days, but it was very much worth it.

Winter Baby

I was hanging out chatting with my Velomihottie the other day, and happened to mention that I had gained about 8 pounds over the course of late November through now.  She remarked that 8 pounds is about the average weight of babies born in the US, and quickly made the connection that she should call my winter weight gain my "Winter Baby."  She's funny that way, which I love about her.

This has also given rise to other jokes, for instance, last weekend, I went on a fairly long steady ride without taking any calories along in order to burn some fat.  The idea is to burn the energy out of the legs first, and upon bonking, ride slow and steady to teach the body to burn fat.  This gave rise to all kinds of jokes about feeding the Winter Baby to my legs, which continues to be quite amusing to both Velomihottie and I.

Just thought I'd share.

This is Funny!

Mt Baker Hill Climb 2012

I made it up the Mt Baker Hillclimb.  This was the first time in 3 years that the event was able to make it to the top.  Last year’s conditions were miserable, but this year was much better, despite there being a cold windy fog at the top.  It wasn’t so much a fog as being in the middle of the clouds that were passing through.

This year was a struggle, though, despite the more favourable conditions.  Part of my strategy to improve my time was to ride with the competitive field this year, but I didn’t manage to hold the wheels for as long as I had visualized being able to.  I was dropped about 8 miles in, as those folks set a rather vigourous pace.  Left to my own devices, I battled through feelings of guilt and shame at destroying my rides earlier in the month, and not being able to continue my training due to this.  Sometimes, I am my own worst enemy, but of course there was nothing I could do to change the past while climbing the mountain, so I just focused on the present moment and kept going up.  Inside the final 1 k, another rider who was already finished and appeared to be climbing up again passed me and encouraged me to put it on the rivet.  I was spent already, and didn’t have it in me to push any harder, which was the goal.  Leave it all on the road.  I did feel satisfied that I had done that, despite the disappointment of not doing my best time.

There are so many lessons to be learned.

The ride back down the mountain was so cold, I shivered and cried.

Apres velo, I met up with some of the folks from the Velominati site for pizza and post ride malted recovery beverages, and really enjoyed the company of like minded compatriots.

The link below is to a photo of me climbing just before the first ski area parking lot.  I seem to be enjoying the suffering at this moment, which is nice to see.  In cycling, as in life, there is suffering, but we can face it and move through it with positivity if we so choose.  Lessons, indeed.

http://burkehovdephoto.photoreflect.com/store/Orderpage.aspx?pi=0KXN001S000376&po=376&pc=386