The Catholic Gerbil

I decided to explain one of the biggest fears of cyclists today. It's not that we're afraid of Catholic Gerbils...it's that we're terrified of becoming one! What causes this fear of conversion and becoming your pet?

 ...This...the bike trainer...

I know why could such a small contraption of exercise equipment cause sleepless nights and dark and dreary days? Well for starters there is typically no need except when the nights are stormy and the days dreary to use such a machine. But also it relates to pain...trust me, when attached to a bike, which is then attached to your legs this becomes a torture machine....but that should be okay, cause we're cyclists, we're used to pain.

The problem stems from psychology (and no this is not meant as a marketing gimic, although any psychologists who wish to sponsor this post are perfectly welcome to do so (preferably this sponsorship would be in the form of evaluating the mental health of the author)). Yeah, our minds are trained to pamper our ego, egg it on, and generally make us out to be incredible. As I climb a hill on one of my regular training rides, I feel the glory of being the first man to the top of the Himalayas. On the decent, I transform into a man breaking the world speed record...and foolish enough to do it on a twisty mountain road in the Alps instead of some salt flats. In short we're vain, conceited, self-amazed guys in spandex. A perfect example of positive thinking and self-confidence at work.

Unlike shaving our legs, the trainer removes any sense of manhood we have. We discover that we're simply gerbils frantically attempting to spin our pedals as fast as we can.

40mm driver headphones are an absolute necessity

necrosis

There are small attempts we make to hide this fact. First, we listen to Aerosmith...really loud...like right on to of the amp tower about to do a stage dive loud. It somehow convinces us that the burning from our legs is a side effect of being a ROCK STAR! OH YEAH...but my stage dive ended up landing in a pile of week old sweaty chamois :(

In addition there are the fantasy stories we read. We set up our laptop and read and re-read the blogs of all our favorite pro cyclists. Mostly these blogs revolve around the incredible food these guys cook and eat between 23 hour training rides in the Alps...so then it inspires us to go pro and eat some all natural, omega 256 rich donuts. Oops, I only burned fifty calories on the trainer...that didn't work out well.

Notice this is pink-ish berry flavored...not the yellow-ish banana flavor I won a ton of 8(

To make up for that I'll do better on my hydration. I'll drink six bottles of water per hour (warning: this leads to more time spent on "nature breaks" than on the trainer). But guess what, this water is boring...I'll super charge it. I'll put these holy Nuun tablets in my water, no sugar, lots of electrolytes...and they were blessed by a Belguim-ish priest. These provide entertainment because A. they fizz when you put them in your water B. they taste slightly like some fruit and mostly like hard water and C. THEY FIZZ!

And when all else fails, you resort to these...

...my lucky, ugly, freakishly long, almost a winner socks I got in my bag of schwag at my last race!

oh yeah, and you can blog about it...like I'm doing right now.

First Loser...

So like both of the Sequim races, it was Adam Cramer (Big) and I representing in the 4's. At Sequim Adam and I had focused on dialing in the teamwork. We had succeeded in working together an following our plan, but our plan had some flaws, so our results weren't exactly great. This week the team plan was for Adam to be the designated sprinter if we finished together and my job to ride the front and look for a break. I've gotten into the habit of writing a simple plan for my races about a week before. For Independence Valley my plan was 1. Fight my way to the front 2. Stick to the front (the first 10-15 guys) 3. Save my legs (like only work when I needed to) 4. Attack within 1 km of the finish. Incredibly, I actually followed these steps.

I warmed up a few minutes earlier than usual so that I could line up 20 minutes before the start...I'd rather have cold legs than be forced to fight my way through 50 guys during the neutral rollout and the first climb. This worked well as it allowed Adam to um, "talk to his teammate" and then not go to the back of the group. During the neutral, we allowed a few guys to com up around us and pull the group to the first climb. As the road pitched upward, I kicked into work mode and tried to keep with the first ten guys over the top, while Adam practiced some sag climbing to save his legs. As we did the typical sprint over the top, a gap formed between the first 15 guys and the rest of the field. Usually, when I'm descending, I'm the fastest guy, in this group though I actually had to pedal and focus on drafting the wheel in front of me. As we turned onto Lincoln Creek Rd., our group solidified and a number of racers started hammering around 30mph at the front. 

After taking a couple of pulls, things settled down enough that I could take a look around. I saw that our group had established a solid gap. I also saw that we had 3 men each from Audi and Starbucks, along with Herriot and Cycle U having at least two men in the group. At that point I waxed philosophical...more like simply thinking of what the pro's always do in these situations. Seeing that there was one of me and I had no teammates in the break, and I'm not great at working hard in a break all day, I decided to pretend to work enough to keep anyone from getting to mad at me, and mostly sit in. It quickly became apparent that simply sitting in would be a challenge, let alone the occasional pull to calm down the other guys. The second climb was a definite challenge, particularly holding on as we accelerated on the top. I hung tight though and managed to recover a little before we tackled Michigan Hill again.

Meanwhile, Adam was keeping things in line back in the peleton. He went up front and blocked, allowing our gap to be over a minute before the second climb, and grow to around five minutes during the second lap. When the break hit Michigan Hill again, it turned out to be the entrance to the pain cave. We had already dropped a couple riders on the second hill, and I ended up being the last man in line over Michigan. It was one of those times in racing where, you forget about trying to finish, you forget about hanging on the backstretch, you throw out any ideas of the power you need to accelerate over the top, all you do is try to get every ounce of power you can out of your legs in that second. Somehow my legs had the exact amount of power I needed to stay on a wheel over the top. As we begun the descent, I was slightly cross eyed from the climb, and our group went considerably faster than I've ever been down that hill before. There were a couple moments, when I wasn't sure I was gonna stay on the road. Our second time across the backstretch, our group took it a little easier (25 mph-ish). But after all the work earlier, I had a harder time staying on wheel. As we made our way up the last climb, the toll of the previous miles calmed the other guys legs, so I didn't hurt too bad there. On the last stretch to the finish, it became a game of "don't be the leader" and we happily let a Starbucks rider hold a 100 meter gap for around 5 km. As we got within 3 km of the finish, guys started heating things up and jockeying for position. I hopped on the wheel of the larger HSP guy, because he made a good draft and wasn't too skittish, however, just for my faith he started putting his handlebars inside the bars of the guy next to him 8( I backed off and sat on the back for a minute, but next thing I knew I was on his wheel again. As we got inside 1 km HSP guy started making his way up the right side while the whole group accelerated. Around the 200 meter sign he hit the front and accidentally gave me a great lead out. When I saw that I had good momentum and was at the front, I decided to just sprint for it. As it turns out my legs had a lot more of sprint than I expected and I was in the lead. One of the Starbucks riders caught my wheel on my way by and managed to come up around me at the line. I was quite happy with "first loser" though.

(Warning: the following contains TMI) the entire race my stomach wasn't completely settled, one of the reasons I sat on rather than make people happy and take my fair share of pulls, however racing ain't fair. As I came across the line I felt like I was gonna throw up, like one normally feels after a great sprint or time trial...however I did...yeah, I'd heard of it happening to runners, but never cyclists. Anyways, I positive proof I was working hard :/ (end of TMI section)

Adam pulled out a solid finish in the group, and we were pretty satisfied to have pulled off our plan. I definitely wasn't the strongest rider there, however racing is 50% training and 50% smarts...in this case the smarts paid off!

 .

Emo?

Hey hey...yeah, I know, it's been a while. I'm just figuring with the twist and turns and "oh dude, we're gonna diiiieeeee!" plummets my life has been taking lately, and I see continuing into dark, dark tunnel of the future (oh hey, is that light at the end of the tunnel a freight train?) I might hijack this blog and turn it into a more typical "my puppy just died and I'm really sad" blog. Well actually more like the "I ate toothpaste for breakfast and it tasted good, then I did my art homework by throwing eggs at the prof and taking black and white pictures of it, then I talked to my hipster friends under the bridge..." life story blog. So I'll try to stay out of the emo end of things...but I just had to tell you, there are these starlings outside my window in the cold wet snow stuff that's coming down and they look really cold and miserable, almost as cold and miserable as my heart after my iPhone 4 left me for the love of some filthy hipster pickpocket on a longboard.

Um yeah, now that that clarification debacle is cleared up, I'll get down to the knitty gritty story of my life; it starts with this weird apocalypse barely averted bike race thing. I got up at five o'clock...and it was dark. Now you're probably thinking, "dude, that's way to early!" for me it was a case of "hur...graaaa...yaaaaawwwwn.......AHHH, WE'RE LATE!!!" I was supposed to get up at quarter to five...and this is the morning before a bike race...so this is life and death stuff we're talking...well not really, but my nerves can't tell the difference. Anywho, I got up, put on my pajama pants and a sweater, loaded up the car, ate some breakfast and rolled out...on time.

CAFFEINE! After an hour of driving down the road in a sleep hazed fog, there was finally a coffee stand open. And not just any old burnt your coffee to a crisp and gave you a "large for a miniature dwarf" sized cup of sugar flavored liquid ********* (name removed to protect the pristine reputation of Starbucks) place. This was a true Pacific Northwest coffee stand. It was a tiny little shed in the middle of some gas station parking lot, the barista seemed to be an ex-hippy who married a logger, and there sizes were differentiated by ounces, not Italian words for crazy small cup of American burnt coffee. So after an infusion of 20 ounces of a quad mocha, we were rolling down the road again.

This injection of espresso helped to awaken my mind not only to the fact that it was still dark out, but also that there was snow...down to about 300 feet on all the hills. After another two hours of driving and contemplating the risks and advantages of hypothermia, we got to the race start. It was 37 degrees and raining. To clarify, the weather folks would put that at a real feel of about 30 degrees, when you add in the wind chill of riding your bike along at 25 mph, it comes down to around 20 degrees.

This is when the mental rubber hit the road. First you lay ground rules: if my hands become so numb I can't shift or brake...I'm quitting, if I begin to uncontrollably shiver....I'm quitting. Second, you create faith. I'm not talking a well placed and logical faith like you have in a chair or as is explained in Mere Christianity...I'm talking that Disney type faith. "I'm here, I'm strong, I'm hyped, I'm a total freak'n idiot, I'm gonna race, and that weather is gonna be good or I'm gonna go buy a chain gun and go all Arnold Schwarzenegger on the weather gods." So guess what? Disney faith works...or maybe it was the chain gun? Anyways, the weather gods resorted to lightly sprinkling and letting the mercury go up a couple notches.

After warming up on the trainer (going from slightly numb, to almost not cold), confirming that my teammate in the race and I both remembered the same strategy, borrowing a second pair of glove from the aforementioned teammate (lets call him Big, he's got big legs, he makes a big draft...something about being six foot something, he's got a big brain...he's a dentist, and he's got a big grin) to make it harder to drop off for the aforementioned excuse of frozen hands, we lined up to start. Actually, I lined up to start and freaked out for ten minutes because Big didn't show up until about the time the whistle blew to start our race.

The strategy that we both happened to remember simultaneously, involved me going to the front with Big on my wheel and pulling the pack around the last corner and 1 km or so until we got to the 1 km to the finish sign. Then Big would come hauling around my dying form and sprint to the win. Thus, for the first 40 or so miles of the 48 miles of the race there was nothing for us to do. In this tough spot, we decided to chill on the back and swerve around the crashes.

Our chilling was good; with a little work, it was possible to keep the hands from turning into ice and the blocks of ice more commonly found to be feet weren't too distracting. Then some guys up front started working hard as we went past the start/finish line the first time (this was a four lap race), we figured it was just some guys showing off for the cameras, until we came around a sweeping corner and noticed some gaps in the group...time to move up. Without too much work I got to the middle of the group and things congealed into a more solid pack again (my teammate had the bad luck of trying to take off his jacket while this was going down and had to work a little harder to get past the guys who were getting shelled off the back). With the pack congealed, we moved back out of the madhouse known as the middle of the peleton and resumed chilling on the back.

Another lap colder and another 12 miles down, starting lap three guys showed off for the cameras again...except these guys were rather serious...about ten guys out of our peleton of fifty got up the road...and they happened to be reasonably strong guys. The downside of being at the back of the pack is that it takes some time to figure out how stupid the guys in front of you are. After observing the latest developments, I consulted with Big and determined it was time to get to work. I moved up to the front and saw that the gap was around 500 meters, a little too big for a solo effort. I decided to take off hard and either get Big up within 150 meters and let him close it while I fell back, or if the chase group stuck on our wheels I'd take a solid pull and then try to work with the other guys to bring everyone back together. I took off with Big barely sticking to my wheel (afterwards he mentioned that I just about lost him there) and hauled along at a crazy hard tempo...then the chase group started to follow us, so I let off the gas a little to integrate back in and get a serious chase going...however as soon as they caught Big and me, they decided they were done.

It was our misfortune to be stuck in a group of slightly annoying smart guys, and incredibly frustrating idiots. About half the chase group had teammates in the break, and therefore didn't want to help out. However, they were smart enough to move up to the front and then quit pedaling in order to make it impossible for anyone to chase. Then of the other half, a quarter were just fine sitting in the group and losing. The other quarter was willing to work. However, through lack of coordination and lack of man power, we didn't get a paceline rolling at the front. I spent the entire third lap attempting to unify and motivate the chase, involving spending a lot of time up in the wind. After a lap and some massive pulls, the gap between the break and our lethargic chase had grown to over a minute.

It was time for another team meeting. Our conclusion was: A. this chase group is apathetic B. catching the break is hopeless C. therefore, we might as well chill on the back and resort to our sprint plan. About halfway through this lap I decide it's critical to find my teammate. I drift around in the pack a bit until we happen to end up next to each other and then I ask my oh so important question; "is this the last lap?" In all the working, recovering and then working my legs to a pulp again, I had inadvertently fried my mind. I had been operating on the assumption that this was the last lap, however I had this little demon of doubt growing in my mind. Thankfully, my teammate was able to squelch that demon and confirm that I hadn't gone crazy quite yet.

So as the last lap progressed Big and I made our way up to the sharp end of the group. As we approached the final corner I did what I had to do to hold our position (a little wind didn't hurt anybody did it?) and looked for my opportunity. With about 3 km to go I jumped and started to pull out at the front...however, my teammate didn't agree and I found myself hanging off the front on my lonesome. I quickly chilled out and dropped back. I then waited until about 2 km to the finish and 200 meters from the last corner to jump out again...this time Big concurred with my decision and sucked my wheel as I motored along at a solid pace. My legs kicked their last as I flailed my way to the 1 km to go sign. According to plan, Big jumped around me and went flying down the road toward the finish with the pack strung out behind...however around the 200 meter sign everyone else started to sprint around him. I crawled my way to the finish, proud of my hard work...but a little bit angry that our plan had failed.

After that is was time to put on some tights (compression tights specifically designed to help your muscles recover faster I swear), eat a PB, W, and J and drive home. According to the reports of some of my teammates with later races, the weather gods noted my departure and resumed the program of freezing rain and other forms of punishment for their lack of faith.