01.10.2007 | 11:48 am
I occasionally wonder if anyone in the history of the world has embraced middle age as fully as I have. As a 40-year-old, I observe the following:
- I have less hair to worry about. Until I was about 30, my hair was so thick it was a nuisance. Barbers remarked they really ought to get out a lawnmower to get the job done. My hair care budget was exorbitant. Now, however, my hair is obligingly simultaneously thinning out and backing off. The day where I shave it off once and for all is not far off.
- I am mellower. Once upon a time, career stuff freaked me out. So did the future. So did politics. Now, very few things freak me out, and nothing freaks me out for long.
- I can own a red sports car with impunity. I’ve always loved red sports cars. As a middle-aged man, owning one is now my right.
- I am entering the prime age for the kind of cycling I like best. Go to any endurance cycling event and you’ll notice: most of the guys are 40-55 years old. Now I’m one of them.
The thing I like best about middle age, though, is my newfound ability to — after an epic ride — take a nap.
Before
I haven’t always been able to take naps, you see. Until about a year ago, no matter how tired I was, I simply couldn’t sleep during the day. I’d go on a big ol’ hundred mile training ride, get home, eat everything that looked even a little bit like food, and then drag around the house all day. Totally useless, but awake.
Or, on the rare occasion when I did fall asleep during the day, I’d wake later with a logy feeling, a low-grade headache, and an unfocused grouchiness.
And then I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night.
Now
All that’s changed now. After a four-hour ride I’ll come home, eat everything in my zip code, go take a shower, and come back downstairs to the family room, still feeling beat.
“I think I’ll lay down here for a few minutes,” I’ll tell my wife, as I stretch out on the couch.
This is not a signal to my wife to keep the kids quiet. It is not a signal to her to do anything out of the ordinary, except maybe not give me the phone if someone calls.
Part of the magic of my new nap-taking-gift, you see, is that I like sleeping with the family around. The kids are still playing, my wife’s still working on jewelry, and I’m close by. While I definitely get wakened a few times during my nap, it doesn’t bother me.
40 minutes — or maybe sometimes an hour — later, I wake up. And I feel good. Not headachy. Not logy. Not grouchy. Good.
Real good.
Better than I usually feel after a full night’s sleep, actually.
And I know that I’ll be able to sleep just fine that night, too. Naps don’t throw me off my sleep cycle at all.
I tell you, a nap after a long ride is pure magic. I’m so glad I can enjoy them now.
Comments (33)
01.8.2007 | 1:12 pm
I, like most Leadville 100 junkies, was looking forward to racing with Lance Armstrong this August. In fact, I had spent a great deal of time and had gone to considerable expense to figure out my strategy for beating Lance Armstrong at the Leadville 100. I feel confident I am not revealing too much when I say that these plans involved the procurement of:
- 18 specially-trained sheepdogs
- A goat
- A pair of pliers
- A very, very powerful magnet
- An oscilloscope disguised to look like a giraffe
- 50 gallons of vinegar
- One cubic foot of baking soda
- A tangerine, impregnated with iron filings
- All the strawberry jam I could find
I don’t think that I need to point out that acquiring these items was not easy, nor was it inexpensive, nor did it raise my standing in the community to have 18 sheepdogs in the backyard.
I did not let the naysayers, the detractors, nor the tut-tutters distract me, though, because I knew my plan was foolproof: using these items (among others which I shall not here name) in a certain combination, at a certain place, at a certain time, virtually guaranteed that I would beat Lance Armstrong in Leadville this year.
And now, of course, he has backed out of the race.
I am so angry.
Speculation on Scheduling Conflicts
The vexingly-brief announcement Mark Higgins — Lance Armstrong’s manager — made to cancel Armstrong’s participation in this race is, well, both brief and vexing: “Lance had a scheduling conflict come up and he regrettably cannot participate in the event.”
“Scheduling conflict?”
“Scheduling conflict?!”
Is there anyone in the world who does not agree that “scheduling conflict” is an excuse you use to get out of doing one thing, so you can do something else you’d rather be doing?
Anyone?
OK, so the real question is: why isn’t Lance racing the Leadville 100? I, fortunately, have some helpful theories to address this question. I’m sure one of them is correct.
- Possible Real Reason #1: The Landis factor. Sure, most bloggers think that Armstrong isn’t racing the Leadville 100 anymore because Landis might be, and Armstrong doesn’t want to have to train for this race like it’s the Tour de France. To this, I answer, “Lance, you don’t need to worry about Floyd. What do you think the magnet and tangerine are for?”
- Possible Real Reason #2: Lance now weighs 317lbs. Since ending his cycling career, Lance has been eating nonstop. Anytime you see him on video, that’s actually CGI animation. Including the NY marathon. But it’s a well-known fact that CGI animation doesn’t work above 10,000 feet, so Lance would have to actually lose half his weight by August. The prospect of having a bunch of 50-year-old guys shouting condescending encouragement to him was simply too humiliating to face.
- Possible Real Reason #3: Studio time is hard to reschedule. It turns out that Lance will be recording a cover of Sheryl Crow’s song, “Are You Strong Enough to be My Man,” with Matthew McConaughey. This is Dug’s theory. Frankly, I have no idea what this means or who Matthew McConaughey is. Oh, wait a second…
- Possible Real Reason #4: Doing some stupid cancer fundraising thing. Oh, brother. Pulling the ol’ “I’m raising bazillions of dollars and improving and saving thousands of people’s lives” card again, eh, Lance? If you don’t want to do the race, just say so.
- Possible Real Reason #5: Found out that this “mostly singletrack” race is in fact “no singletrack whatsoever.” Nowadays, Lance is all about the singletrack. He’s a soul rider.
- Possible Real Reason #6: Lance is afraid of me. Sure, I did everything I could to keep my plans secret, but you can’t by eighteen sheepdogs without attracting a little bit of attention. I’m guessing that when I put the vinegar on the credit card all kinds of red flags went up. Armstrong’s probably being told by the authorities not to race, for his own safety.
PS: Do something for me would you? You know, I’d love to say I’m the “Award-Winning Blogger Known as the Fat Cyclist” instead of just “Fatty.” In order to do that, though, I need to win an award. So why don’t you do me a favor and go nominate me for something in the 2007 Bloggies. Most Humorous? Best-Kept Secret? Best Sports? All three?
Please. I’m begging you.
Comments (32)
01.4.2007 | 10:07 pm
Important Note to the Banjo Brothers’ Big Bad Bulky Biker Bodyfat Competitors (All 60+[!!!] of you): This weekend is when you do your first TT: a three-mile all-out ride against time. If you haven’t already done so, by Wednesday next week, you must post your time. Since this first TT–along with your weight–is one of the absolute must-have measurements for this challenge, I will count your bet as null and void if you don’t post a time (unless we’ve come up with other arrangements, as is the case with a few contestants). If you simply cannot do a TT this weekend, post a reason and a date you will do the TT, and I will not cross you off the bet. Strangely, I may be one of those people, seeing as my chosen TT course has received about a foot of snow in the last twelve hours.
1. I Will Be Freakishly Light and Fast
Hey, guess what. By opening myself up to betting a $70 jersey against practically anyone who wanted, I magically find myself up against a $4000-or-so wager.
Yikes.
This has done wonders for my diet. Anytime I find myself staring into the pantry now, in the mode for an Improvisational Grazing Session (IGS), I start seeing price tags on food. I simply cannot afford to not hit 100% (or better) of my diet goal.
More importantly, though, I’ve asked Robert Lofgran to coach me in my training. He’s given me a day-by-day training program that’s got me putting an excellent base into my legs right now, and — for the first time ever — focusing on some of the technique basics that I seem to have managed to neglect my entire cycling career. For example, I’m finally learning to spin a 100rpm+ cadence when necessary.
It helps that he’s a really great guy and is customizing my program for the events I want to focus on, too. Good price, too.
Check out his site, especially if you’re considering getting a cycling coach for yourself. “Friends of Fatty” get a discount, so check out the ad on my site.
2. I Will Finish the Leadville 100 in Under Nine Hours
Rick Sunderlage (not his real name) has never done the Leadville 100 before, but he’s signing up to race it this year, and he’s as excited as I remember being the first time I signed up. As in, he can’t think of anything else.
The enthusiasm has rubbed off on me.
We’ve been talking, and he’s got me thinking that maybe — just maybe — if I train with a strong guy like him, and we get so we’re good at riding together, and we push each other, and we both have a good day, maybe then we could break that nine hour mark.
Last year, I did this race on The Weapon of Choice — my highly modified, tricked-out Fisher Paragon, set up fully rigid. I think this was a good bike, but I wasn’t ready for it. This year, I will have a full season of riding fully rigid, and I’m already much, much better descending fully rigid than I used to be. I think, for the first time ever, my descending won’t be the weak link in my racing.
I’ve been close to beating the nine hour mark before. If I train better, weigh a little less, descend faster, and have a strong riding partner to work with, why not? Hey, I’ll be 41 — just entering the prime endurance racing years.
3. I Will Do the RAWROD on a Rigid Singlespeed, Unsupported
Kenny’s annual Ride Around White Rim in One Day (RAWROD) event has become huge. Last year, close to 50 people (or was it more) showed up to do this cool fully-supported one-day MTB century. It was awesome.
This year, I understand that Kenny’s going to have two versions of the RAWROD: the big supported version, and a much smaller, totally unsupported version where you don’t even get to ride if you’re not on a singlespeed.
I’d like to do both, but if I have to choose, I’ll definitely take the singlespeed version.
4. I Will Do the Local Weekly Races
The prizes for local races aren’t worth anything. The bragging rights aren’t worth anything. But I still get a knot in my stomach when I line up, and I still work myself over like I’m trying to win the world championship.
5. I Will Finish the Brian Head Epic 100 in Under Nine Hours
This is an exquisite course that is — in some ways — even harder than the Leadville 100. This will be the race where I prove that I have turned myself into a fast rider.
6. I Will Have a Very Cool “Fat Cyclist” Jersey Designed and Produced
And, if I don’t meet my goals, I’ll wind up giving about 60 of them away.
Also, sometime soon I hope to have a major announcement or two to make about this jersey. I think you’re going to want one. I think it may be your favorite jersey.
7. I Will Win a Lot of Wacky Stuff from People Who Lose the B7 Challenge to Me
Like a salmon, and some cookies, and a lot of cheese. Everyone wants to give me food. Cut it out. You’re not making this easy.
OK, your turn. What are you going to do this year?
Comments (46)
01.2.2007 | 10:00 pm
Yesterday — New Year’s Day — a dozen or so of us celebrated our lack of hangovers by going on a little mountain bike ride.
And by “little,” I mean a 4.3 mile trail.
With 1700 feet of elevation gain.
On semi-packed snow.
On — for many of us — singlespeeds.
I’m happy to report that I had a great time, and that I felt like I was going to throw up for most of the climb.
Oooh, Graphs!
As any accountant will tell you, nothing is as exciting as a good chart. So, using my upload from this ride to MotionBased (click here to get more detailed information on this ride), take a gander at what the distance to elevation profile looks like:
That’s kind of steepish, isn’t it? And so what did my heart rate look like during this ride? This:
Yeah, I spent an hour in the 170s.
With That Kind of Intensity, You Can Bet I Was First
I’m quite proud of the sustained effort I made pedaling through soft snow on a singlespeed mountain bike for 4.3 miles. So, as you could imagine, I was the first person to the top of the hill.
Or, it’s possible that I was one of the very last. As it turns out, that kind of effort doesn’t pay all that great of dividends when you’re thirty pounds over racing weight.
Still, to my pleasure, I didn’t get off the bike and push at all until the final third of a mile, where the road stops being merely steep and becomes ridiculous. I walked most of that (that’s where you see the dip in my heart rate in the chart above).
Pleased to get to the top, I asked frequent commenter Sans Auto — whom I briefly chatted with during the climb for the first tenth of a mile before he got bored and rode away — how he did. “You were first, right?”
“No.”
“Well, who was faster than you?”
“Everyone but you.”
Thanks, Sans Auto. Please enjoy your demerit, which I hereby now issue to you.
Rest at the Top
Even when it’s freezing cold (and it was), a full-tilt ride on an intense climb warms you up. So I was plenty sweaty at the top. This sweat quickly evaporated and formed a nice dew – then ice – on my forehead, which you can kind of see here (note how nice the pictures from my new combo camcorder/camera turned out):
Within a couple tenths of a second, that sweat/steam/condensation all turns your carefully chosen wicking layers into the clammiest, coldest, teeth-chatteringest ensemble in the world.
And yet, we posed for a group photo. Gotta document the madness, right?
The Real Reason We’re Here
Of course, all that riding up means we got to now slalom our way down a steep, slick, snowy mountain road with dozens of switchbacks.
Yee ha!
I got everyone to wait for a moment while I rode down to the first turn, so I could film the wacky action.
[youtube]DOO0UJY7Dxc[/youtube]
OK, maybe I should have put the word “wacky” in quotes. Everyone was being kind of timid.
Except me.
I’m serious. I was an aggressive nutball downhilling on the snow. I was faster than anyone, and that’s a first. I was passing people left and right, my butt hanging over the rear tire and my fingers only in the general vicinity of the brake levers.
It was glorious.
Kenny Picks Up a Souvenir
It was about the time that I caught up with Kenny, in fact, that he turfed it. Turfed it real good. I pulled up and asked him if he was OK and he said, “I popped a finger out of its socket.”
You know, I didn’t even know fingers have sockets. Do fingers have sockets?
Anyway, Kenny’s finger was sticking up at a freaky angle. He gave it a tug and it went back to where it belongs, mostly. And that was the last time during the ride Kenny mentioned it (if it had happened to me, I would have made it the central event of the whole ride, always finding a way to bring the conversation back to my royally screwed-up finger).
I asked Kenny to send me a picture of how that finger’s doing today. Here’s what it looks like:
Nice.
I Do Some Acrobatics
Elated in my newfound ability to fly on the downhill, I caught and passed Rick Maddox, which I have never ever done before.
Seriously, not even once.
Maybe that was the problem.
Right about the time Rick could get a good view of my back, I got stuck in a rut, hit a bump, nearly corrected, hit another bump, and flew over the front of my bike.
Rick assures me that I was screaming before I ever hit the ground.
The nice thing about a crash in the snow is it (unless you bend a finger back or some fool thing) softens your fall. So, in spite of the endo flip I had just executed at speed, landing on my back, all I did was get the wind knocked out of me.
You know, getting the wind knocked out of you is a scary feeling. You can’t breathe. And the part of you that draws clear lines between good and bad thinks not breathing is really, really bad. So it sends a jolt of panic into your skull.
Then the rational part of you tries to shut it down. “No, this has happened before. You’ll be OK in a moment.”
“You’ll be dead from not being able to breathe in a moment,” the not-so-rational part of you retorts, and makes you flop around like a fish, croaking out, “I…can’t…breathe!”
It was while I was doing this that everyone caught up to me and stopped to watch the show.
Sure enough, I was able to breathe again in a moment, at which point I became acutely aware of how funny I looked. I had a choice: I could try to rescue my dignity, or I could take things a little further.
“This was Rick’s fault!” I yelled.
“Wha?” replied Rick.
“Rick threw an elbow as I passed him! He forced me off the road and kidney punched me!”
“I had nothing to do with it,” said Rick, the very voice of reason.
“You did too! You forced me off my bike and then punched me in the nose, kicked me in the solar plexus, and tweaked my ear!
And then I got up and we started riding again.
Cold cold cold cold cold
Ironically, as you leave the snow in the final mile of the climb and hit the dry pavement, you get much, much colder. This is because you can start going road speeds again. Instead of tooling downhill at 18mph, you’re up to 35mph, creating a windchill that is technically a little bit colder than absolute zero.
This was, in short, the best New Year’s Day I have ever had.
Comments (34)
12.30.2006 | 7:23 am
OK, I realize that roughly .00001% of you actually live close enough to do this, but what’s the point of having a blog about bikes if I can’t ask people in the area to join me on a ride once in a while?
Yesterday, Kenny sent an email proposing that on New Year’s Day we all get together and do a fun ride:
Start the new year right. Come join us for a race/ride up the Squaw Peak road to the Look out parking lot. The ride starts at 10:00 a.m. on Monday the 1st. It should take about 45 minutes to an hour to climb to the top. Thanks to the snowmobiles packing down the road, we should have a nice hardpack to ride on. We’ll all regroup at the top and ride back down together to the cars.
Squaw Peak, for those of you who don’t know, is about a mile North up the Provo Canyon. It’s a four mile climb. In the Summer it’s a road climb, but during the winter it’s packed snow, powder, and ice. I’m planning on riding my singlespeed, with air pressure at about 18psi.
I’ll bring my new camcorder, too, and try to get some footage of people riding down for posting. It should be good for laffs-a-plenty.
As for today, the sun’s out, the sky’s clear, and I’m going on a group ride. Yay, no riding in the garage!
Comments (19)
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