Taking it easy... some times, on the ride home.

Morning is not my best time. Often I wonder the kitchen, bouncing between the cabinets which contain my morning sustenance. My head doesn’t start to clear until around 7:00 am, which is when my commute starts. Sometimes its earlier, and if I decided to enjoy the warmth of my bed for just a bit longer, it might be a bit later. Since I prefer to train in the morning its often earlier. No matter the time I often spend this part of my day alone, its the moment my brain turns on.

The ride home is often a different affair. Most of my co-workers live in South-East Portland, and therefore ride in groups of varying size. Some times as many big as six and sometimes just me plus one.

If the morning trip prepares me for the day, the ride home is the place where we decompress – each pedal stroke taking us further from the place we spend most of our time.

The ride home is taken at a slow clip where conversation is valued over time hammering on the pedals. Though all of us are itching to get home, none of us are in such a hurry that we rip the legs off our companions. Most of the time.

At certain points, on certain days attacks fly off the front of our small group, each one pulling me out of our small pack. We rush up NE 77th, Theo or Hammerfest trying to out spin me to the light. That, or I try to set a pace high enough to discourage attacks, seeing who will crack first. Practice for the real thing, all in good fun and always done with a look and a smile at the moment of attack.

I ride with these people more than I ride with anyone else, but never for longer than thirty minutes. After that I’m alone again left to work through the events of the day on my own. Each turn of the crank taking further and further from the place I spend most of my time.

My training has been going well, very well in fact. I feel much better now, than I did at this point last year. At least that’s how it feels now that I have full year of on the bike training in my legs. Last week was the second recovery week of this year’s work, and I backed off even more than I did during the first recovery week.

I poured it on in the last few days before the rest week came around. A cold, rain soaked team ride on Saturday, and a hard workout on the rollers the day after. That night I felt a slight twinge in my knee, perhaps its the onset of the tendonitis that laid me up last year. It never comes at a good time, but at least this time it was during a week where I’m not riding that much.

Times like this I start to second guess everything. Should I have gone so hard? Is this the self sabotage that constantly haunts me? Am I paying enough attention to recovery? Only one of those questions has a concrete answer. The others are clouded by a lack of objectivity on my part.

What I do know is that this wasn’t a problem until I changed my pedals to an older version of the same brand. That version isn’t as wide. I can’t know for certain, but I think this has something to do with it. For most of last season I rode Speedplays. Mid way through I switched to looks, which coincided with the onset of the knee pain. I soon went back to Speedplay and after some very frustrating rest,  the pain went away (all this form and no place to race).

What I do know is that I needed this rest week. You need to let up to move forward.

Though one could contest the wisdom of being in top form for the first race of the year, you can’t deny the fact that Greipel had a great week. It seems that he will benefit from being on a team that’s built around his powerful sprint.

Historically, the man also known as The Gorilla has always done well during the first week of the season. Taking the overall twice. He didn’t have much choice during his HTC – Highroad days, since it was about the only time he was guaranteed the dedication of HTC’s magnificent lead out train.

What we saw down under was a fitter, leaner Gorilla who made every sprint look like a cake walk. At the end of nearly every finish Greipel was protected by at least three riders. All the while Team Sky’s Evald Boasson Hagen and Garmin-Barracuda’s Heinrich Haussler were often left looking for a good wheel in the final meters (it needs to be noted that Boasson Hagen won the Sprinter’s Jersey)

The lack of other team’s dominance in the sprint doesn’t mean that they won’t be there when it really matters, and if we’re being honest the Tour Down Under is a training race and therefore…. All that being said Greipel does have time to win some races, build his confidence and peak again for when it does matter.

Which is to say: IN PARIS.

Of course, he could be showing us that he has his eye on another race that matters: Milan-San Remo.

For so long Gorilla Greipel has had to live in the shadow of Cavendish that a big win against the World Champ would show the world that he’s capable besting the “fastest man on two wheels”, and not just running his mouth about how everyone is against him.

My heart will race for a few minutes, until I start to feel a shortness of breath. It takes that long for my mind to realize that my body is not absorbed in the joy of racing. For those few minutes I’m not sitting down to lunch, or reading my email, I’m off on a gambit. Sometimes I’m working with a small group desperate to escape the Peloton. Most time I’m off alone. I’ve attacked out of the group. Playing my cards in an impetuous moment.

Knowing myself, I’ve probably attacked at the wrong time. I can, while eating my lunch, be racing down the road in one of my target races. Being able to sit and visualize these moments, helps prepare me for the real thing.

I did this race last year. I missed the brake, because I hadn’t quiet learned where I needed to be. Near the front. Still, I felt stronger than I can ever recall feeling, even with the nagging tendonitis. When I finally broke free of the group and began my chase it was too late. That didn’t stop me from burying myself. My right knee throbbed, but my legs failed to feel the burn they should have been feeling. Recalling that feeling now is a small, but important part of recreating that strength this year.

It’s my goal to win this race. I’m excited to race — to bury myself over and over again — just for the sake of doing it. But what excites me most the opportunity to engage that voice that tells me I can’t reach my goals. That voice that always haunts me. I most look forward to actively fighting against those parts of myself that hold me back.

I race with the hopes that those moments, when I win and silence the voice will directly translate into my life off the bike. I race for the sake of learning about who I am, as well as the person I can become. Above all, those moments are my reason for living. To always be learning. Two wheels are the vehicles for that growth.

My razor laid fallow during the slow season. My once smooth legs took on their natural hairy appearance. My face sprouted a beard, they likes of which I hadn’t sported since I could first grow one (at 22!). Letting my legs and face go feral was my way of telling my body it was ok to slow down. That it was time to rest. By restarting the ritual I’m telling my body its time to start going fast.

Once a week, for the next nine months I will take a razor to my legs and face (I really don’t have to shave anymore than that). A ritual, that calms one’s mind and preps one’s body for the rigors of racing. Each stroke of the blade will rest and reassure my body that there is work to be done. That the time to start going fast has come.

Tools for the ritual

Ryder Hesjedal sporting all the markers of PRO style (taken from trainharder.com)

How do we amateurs channel these Kings of Style?

PRO style is seen in the ranks of the blue collar racers in the form of slammed stems, often accompanied by huge drops. Handlebars and shoes dressed in white (and just about anything else that can be white). By channeling PRO style, we hope to grab a bit of what makes our heros PRO.

Last year, at the begining of my first season as a “racer” I centered my cycling asthetic around emulating PRO style. I rocked a big drop. Dressed my bars in white. I fretted my tan lines, and wore my socks over the top of my leg warmers (though there is some debate in pro ranks on this point). I slammed my stem, and moved it back up after I got tired of robbing my self of power every time my thighs hit my non-pro belly.

But something happened in the down time between the end of my season and the start of training for this current one. I realized that by trying to emulate my professional cycling brethren I was in (like I had with professional climbers who I admired) in danger of loosing my self.

What’s been on my mind lately is the preoccupation with being and looking PRO. In fact, I think that this preoccupation is getting in the way of our cycling enjoyment. If prevents us from learning the myrid of lessons racing has to teach us. For the most part (in my experience) some Amateurs are more concerned with looking PRO than acting or training PRO. So today I decided that I will do my part to carry on Joe Lindsey’s plea to stop the use of the adjective.

For 2012 I’m going for something unique. ME. This year I will be Anti-PRO. My shoes will not be white. The sticky back of a roll of the finest white cork tape will not cover my bars. What I will do is race and train like I mean it. I will channel my PRO brethren by taking my turn at the front. By attacking with abandon. I will do my best to learn, and grow from whatever lesson I learn while in throes of hypoxia.

In my 2012 season I will eschew all the superficialities of looking PRO. In other words I will be and race like myself.

I do most of my training alone. At first this was because I knew no one who raced. Then I joined a team where there were the occasional team rides outside in addition to weekly spinerval sessions at Athlete’s Lounge. Those were nice. From a group standpoint as well as growth perspective. There’s no way around it, training with people who are better than you will make you better. But one must not take that to the extreme and always train with a partner.

A short, totally non scientific study conducted by me, using ROAD magazine’s twenty questions as source shows that most PROs train alone. A good partner will push you to be better than you are. Perhaps raising you to a level you once thought beyond your ability. There’s a flip side to this. Often a hard effort undertaken with a group often turns into a pissing contest. These contest have a tendency to get out of hand and end up blowing the focus of the session. Ruining the work that needs to be done.

Most (who don’t like training alone) will say that solo rides are boring, just as riding the rollers is boring. To them I say: Why are you doing this if you aren’t capable of digging deep when no one is watching?

Only when alone are you able to ask yourself the hard questions. Like why you are out there. Only when you are free from the distractions of others (and life!) are you capable of asking and hopefully finding the answers to those questions.

We’re a new outfit over here, and though I’ve ridden with most of these  guys before, this was the first time we’ve had most of the team together. For those interested can be found here, if you’re of the details type that is. Details are nice — needed in fact. But in the post workout haze, as I celebrated the birthday of a friend I realized that my mental capacities were starting to fade as our game of Apples to Apples dragged on. In the moments before my mind faded I took the following note on my phone.

The first long ride of the season strips you of everything. Leaving you a tired mindless mass, only capable of consuming calories.

To which in my head I just added “sometimes to excess”, but that’s a distraction. The crux of this situation is that you sometimes have to write down all the ideas that came to you while you were capable of advanced thoughts. These “troubles” aside, it makes me happy knowing that soon I will be spending long days cruising the amazing roads this town has to offer. Sometimes with teammates. Sometimes with friends, and hopefully plenty of time alone.

After a long day...

Photo taken from the Guardian

Yes, I know that he was caught. But like Cav said, he’s done his time. Not only has he done his time, he has done his damnedness to clean up the sport that he loves. The sport that I love.

In the interest of full disclosure, Millar is one of my favorite racers. It wasn’t a crazy exploit that made me a fan. Nor is it is work to clean up the sport (thought those things don’t hurt!). It was this interview he did with Bill Strickland. Read that and tell me that man doesn’t love to race. That interview made me confront some of the reasons I race. Millar isn’t out there for a pay check. He’s really there because he loves the ACT of racing. You can’t get better than that.

The fact is that it was ok for Millar to help bring the World Champ back to Britain. So why isn’t he allowed to help try to bring gold back as well? Yes, they have that rule, which apparently runs afoul of the CAS, but Millar more than paid his dues. It would do Great Britain well to have such a classy guy representing their country on their home course.

If you agree with me tweet your feelings using the has tag #letmillarrace! (retweets to this blog are of course welcome, but not mandatory.)

I had planned on saving my excursion to the roads near Estacada for this day. Yesterday I did the same old route. Out “Dirty 30″ to Sauvie’s, with some tempo thrown in to make it “fun”, then up to the west hills and screamer down Cornell. I’m starting to get tired of it. On the other hand I have yet to explore the rolling terrain to the South East of Portland.

We fought the wind as we worked our way east, first along Sunnyside rd, then a brief stretch of HWY 224 till we crossed the Clackamas. There the traffic died down, but didn’t completely disappear. We’d talk, riding side by side till a car would speed up behind us. At which point one of us would drop back let the car pass and resume pervious position.

A few weeks ago I tried to Buck and Ray-Ray out here, but Buck turned back because it was cold and Ray – Ray and I never made it to Estacada. I didn’t tell Matt, but I was still flying a little blind. I kinda knew the route, but I wasn’t wearing my glasses so reading the street signs before we were right on top of them was out of the question. Still I had a vauge idea of how to get there. Hopefully with enough daylight to get us both home before dark.

Matt’s much faster than me, and a fine cross and short track racer as well, but the dictates of the training season kept the pace firmly in the endurance zone. No attacks came on the hills, the descents were fun, sending us speeding across smooth(ish) roads and past the gates filled with cows, or lined with Christmas trees fortunate enough to escape the axe this year. Town line sprints went uncontested. We just rode. Matt turning a big gear, me doing my damnedest to keep a high cadence. Earlier in the week I was told that I looked like I was “dancing on the pedals”. Progress comes slowly, even when we think we’re standing still.

My blind guidance got us to Estacada where I decided we would take HWY 224 back. Not the prettiest, but the fastest route back into Portland. In Estacada the bike lane along 224 is wide enough to easily ride two abreast. There we talked about how great the riding is here, how sometimes I’m not always into the people, but the environment some how makes it all worth it. But neither of us are from here.

Soon our wide lane was gone, and we were trading long, hammering pulls single file with the hopes of not getting run off by the increasingly small shoulder. After about twenty-minutes Clackamas River Road saved us and carried us back toward my house and then along the Springwater. Which is, after leaving Matt to turn back to my house, where I saw, everything we had been talking about when we started back toward home. With the sun setting behind the West Hills I was caught off guard by a sense of appreciation. Appreciation for all the support the Lady give me, for being able to live in this place, for being blessed with first world problems.