I did not intend to write today. After all, I wrote entries both for this blog and for Random Reviewer yesterday.

But something happened this morning, and it just can’t wait.

I Briefly Consider Myself an Accomplished Downhiller

I’ve started attacking the climb on my commute each morning. It’s about four miles, 1500 feet of climbing. I’m trying to re-learn to ride at threshold. It’s a painful skill, but incredibly valuable if you’re going to race.

Today, the climb went well. I suffered the whole way up, but did not crack. I was pleased; how could I not be?

Feeling good, I hit the downhill hard and fast, and it wasn’t long ‘til I was spun out. I looked at my speedometer: 52.2mph. Considering that I was wearing a bike messenger bag and was not in any kind of tuck, that’s pretty danged fast.

I said to myself, “I should write a blog entry about how I’ve learned to be a fast, fearless descender on the road. I’ll find a self-deprecating angle, but will nevertheless make it clear that I’m a force to be reckoned with.”

All Hell Breaks Loose

That’s when the bike started shaking side to side. No, not shimmying. Not wobbling. Shaking. Shaking hard.

I went for the brakes and slowed the bike down a bit.

The shaking continued. In fact, it got worse.

I kept braking. The bike was now shaking so hard that both the water bottles were flung from their cages.

I remember very clearly saying aloud, “I’m going down.”

But I didn’t. I managed to bring the bike to a stop. Even at slow speed, though, the bike kept shaking.

I sat on the guardrail, adrenaline making me completely unfit to ride.

I looked over at my bike. This is what I saw:

OK. Well, that explains things.

A wave of nausea hit me as I realized exactly how close to dying I had just come: My downtube had snapped at 50mph.

Wait a second, I think I need to emphasize that a little more strongly:

My downtube snapped at 50mph.

How to Ride a Bike with a Broken Downtube

I went and collected my waterbottles, sat down on the guardrail, and thought for a moment. I was eight miles into a twenty mile commute. I had a broken downtube. What should I do?

Gingerly, I climbed back onto the bike. To my pleasure and relief, it held my weight. May as well finish that ride into work.

Here are some observations I have about riding a road bike with a broken downtube:

• When you’re off the bike, the break in the downtube merely looks like a crack. When you’re on the bike, there’s a gap of about 3/4 inch.
• A road bike with a broken downtube steers very much like a boat.
• A road bike with a broken downtube is very vertically compliant. Really absorbs the road vibration, bumps, everything. It feels just like a full-suspension mountain bike, really.
• Looking down at a big jagged gap in your downtube is not confidence-inspiring. I rode the rest of the commute at about 10mph. This affected my average speed significantly.

Goodbye, Old Friend

I’ve had that Ibis Ti Road for nine years. I planned to keep it forever. I still might, but more in a hanging-in-the-garage way than in a ride-it-til-I’m-old-and-gray way.

On the positive side, I now have the best possible reason to buy a new road bike. The shopping has already begun. Suggestions are welcome.

PS: Note to road bike manufacturers: There has never been a better time to step forward and get actively involved with the Fat Cyclist blog.

I love big rides. Even when I am suffering monumentally, bonked and sick and barely able to turn the cranks at all, there’s a kernel of my brain that knows I’ll be back. Because every once in a while, an epic ride will go perfectly and you’ll feel like you’ve seen half the world in a day.

That’s how last Saturday was.

BotchedExperiment and I met at the Grove Canyon trailhead at 6:00am (others were invited, no others came). Over the next six hours we’d do a thirty mile loop, at the end of which I would effuse, “This was the best ride of the year.”

Somehow, everything that could go right, did. And everything that could go wrong, didn’t.

I was having such a great time, I found myself making a list of what was great about this ride. I doubt that I remember all of them, but here are a few, in semi-random order: 

• Terrain changes: The ride we did starts by making you climb steeply on dangerously exposed, loose shale for a few miles. Then you cross a bridge to the other side of the canyon and you’re on forested singletrack. That turns to tall grass and ferns, then to high mountain desert. Then you’re in an alpine forest, then in a giant grassy meadow. Then a boulder-strewn, hair-raising descent. Then twisty, buff singletrack. All within in 25 miles.
• Feeling cold in July: We were in the shadow of the mountain until about 10:00am, which—coincidentally—was about how long it took for us to do the bulk of the climbing for the day. I had expected to be uncomfortably hot for most of the ride, so to be cool—and to have my wet feet (from the dew on the plants and from the occasional stream crossing) be cold on the first day of July—was a great surprise.
• Telling complete strangers about the ride you’ve done so far, knowing there’s almost no way they’re doing something as awesome as you: As Botched and I rolled into the Timpooneke parking lot—about 2/3 of the way into our ride—a guy in biking clothes asked us what our ride plan for the day was. I was so happy to say, “Well, actually we started at Grove Canyon, rode up until we caught the Great Western, then took that up to the summit of Timpooneke and rode that to here. Next, we’re going to head toward Pine Hollow, connect up to the Ridge Trail, take that to Mud Springs, and then follow Tibble down to the reservoir. From there, we’ll just take the road back to the Grove trailhead. What’s your plan?”
• Botched’s hairpin: In a completely non-show-off-y manner, Botched pulled off the most elegant downhill hairpin maneuver I have ever seen. Instead of approaching the hairpin (a tight U-turn) slowly and then trying to stay upright as you squeeze your bike through a turn with a smaller diameter than the length of your bike, Botched did this: He rode smoothly to it until his front tire was at the inside apex of the turn. He then locked his front brake and did a nose-wheelie, pivoted the rear-wheel in the air 160 degrees, set the rear wheel down and continued riding. It was a thing of beauty, I tell you.
• 25 miles of singletrack, 5-6000 feet of climbing: Neither Botched nor I had an altimeter, so I really don’t know how much climbing we did, but I think 5000 feet is a conservative guess. 7000 is probably the outside limit. But we spent the whole day on singletrack, and the trailhead was no more than five miles from either of our houses. Oh, and that 25 miles of singletrack only scratched the surface of what was available to us. Utah is, in fact, a pretty great state.
• Running across two groups of cyclists and a couple of hikers in 25 miles of singletrack: During the big six-hour ride we did, on a holiday weekend, we saw a couple hikers on the trail, one tent (at Indian Springs, where there is always someone camping), and a couple hikers. Otherwise, we had the trail to ourselves.
• The Apex Trail Moment: In Utah, a given trail is going to be perfect twice in a year: Once in the Spring or Summer when it dries out but before it gets dusty, and again in the Autumn when the rain packs down the dust. Botched and I hit this trail at its absolute best.
• Small groups: It’s a well-known fact that a large group is difficult to get moving, and just as difficult to keep it moving. When you’ve got a small group—up to four people, say—you can cover a lot of ground, even if you’re fat and slow. I don’t think Botched and I stopped for more than five minutes at any point.
• Similar abilities: It’s bad form to apologize for your lack of cycling ability—it puts the people you’re riding with in the awkward position of either having to tell you, “no, you’re a super rider” or forgiving you for aforementioned poor riding ability. But while Botched is clearly much more technical than I am, we climbed at similar speeds. Meaning we didn’t have to wait for each other every ten minutes.
• Outrageous view, earned by outrageous amounts of climbing: It’s always great to look down from the top of a mountain. It’s even better to look down from the top of a mountain when you realize that three hours ago, you were at the bottom of that mountain, and have climbed the whole thing on your bike.
• Showing someone new trail: Botched hadn’t been on parts of the ride we went on last Saturday. I love showing incredible trail to someone who appreciates it.
• Julie Andrews Meadow: Julie Andrews Meadow is right in the middle of the Timpooneke trail. It’s the most appropriately-named meadow in the world. Big, beautiful meadow. Giant vistas all the way around. It makes me want to spin around and sing “The Hills are Alive.” Luckily for Botched, I decided not to.
• The term “choclatiest:” Unable to resist playing the part of the tour guide, I was constantly telling Botched what was coming up next. As we neared one particularly sweet piece of buff, packed, banked and otherwise delicious singletrack, I told Botched that this was the “choclatiest” section of the whole ride. “The what?” Botched asked, not unreasonably. “Choclatiest—the superlative form of choclatey,” I replied. It’s a good, descriptive term for high-quality dirt, and I stand by it.
• Climbing first, descending later: If at all possible, I will arrange my rides so that I do all my climbing first, and finish with a downhill. The ride Botched and I did has that characteristic in spades. I’d guess we did nothing but climb for three hours, then alternately climbed and descended. We finished, though, with a massive descent down Mud Springs and Tibble. And nothing’s better than that.
• Finishing a ride tired, but not bonked: After six hours of riding, Botched and I were both fairly cooked, but neither of us were bonked. I tell you, I love that exhausted, happy, been-on-a-big-adventure feeling an epic ride gives you.

I tell you what: I love biking.

Saturday, BotchedExperiment and I went on a big ol’ mountain bike ride. Tomorrow, I’ll write all about it – and there’s plenty to write about; it was one of the best mountain bike rides I’ve been on all year.

Today, though, I want to talk a little bit about pain. The worst, most sustained pain I have ever lived with. So bad that I had forgotten all about it—my subconscious mind’s way of allowing me to go outdoors again—until reminded of it last Saturday.

A Little Nettle

In the shade of the mountain, vegetation grows thick and lush in Grove Canyon. At a certain point, the plants grow so tall and close in to the trail that there’s no way you can avoid having them brush against you as you ride. Since we were riding early in the morning, this meant our shoes, legs, and gloves got soaked from the dew on the plants.

It also meant that we each got a good dosing of stinging nettle.

Now, stinging nettle is not a big deal for me. It mostly just causes amusement-level pain that I notice when it first hits me, then fades quickly.

Saturday, though, I must’ve hit a batch just right, though, because my entire left shin lit up bright red for about twenty minutes.

And that’s when I remembered.

Evil Portents

About four years ago, Kenny and I rode up Squaw Peak road on our mountain bikes. Like we had dozens of times before, the plan was to ride up at top speed, then bomb down the narrow, very steep singletrack from Hope Campground back to Provo Canyon. It combined a great climbing workout with an adrenaline rush payoff.

The standing tradition was that the first to the top got the honor of leading out on the descent. As usual, that meant Kenny went first. I gave him the ten second headstart (gives dust time to settle, and reduces the likelihood of a one-person crash turning into a two-person pileup), and then took off.

The thing about the Hope descent is that once it starts, it never levels off or slows down. You just fly, the whole time, grinning even as you know that you could turf it—and turf it badly—at any moment.

About a quarter of the way down, I felt something flicking against the underside of my right thigh and the back of my calf. I knew what it was instantly: a weed had got caught in my cassette and was whipping against my leg with each rotation of the wheel. No big deal, no reason to stop.

Discovery

I continued to the bottom, the “thwish-thwish-thwish” sound and feeling following me the whole way down.

At the bottom, I pulled up by Kenny, laughing—as usual—from the adrenaline that accompanies a white-knuckle descent. I leaned over and started picking the weed out of my cassette.

“Dude,” said Kenny. “That’s poison oak.”

Please, Just Cut Off My Leg

Twenty minutes later, the back of my right leg—starting right below where the shorts ended and going to about halfway down my right calf—was red and itchy.

Within two hours, it was unbearable. Blistered and burning. I was unable to stop myself from clawing at it, even as I knew that I was just making it worse.

And from there, it just got worse.

The burning and itching on the back of my leg became the center of my universe. I could not wear pants. I had to sit on the very edge of chairs. I slept on my stomach (and I never sleep on my stomach.

If I’d had a chainsaw or even one of those guillotine-style paper cutters, I’m reasonably convinced I’d have taken matters into my own hands.

That feeling did not go away for about twenty days.

Paris France, July 30 (Fat Cyclist Fake News Service) – In a press conference following the ejection of Tour favorites Jan Ullrich, Francisco Mancebo and Ivan Basso from the Tour de France, race director Christian Prudhomme announced that the 2006 TdF had been officially declared “The Year of the Asterisk.”

“I am pleased to announce that the asterisk (*) will play an exceptionally prominent role in this year’s tour,” said Prudhomme. “Of course, it already had a starring role, due to Mr. Armstrong’s absence and the universal certainty that the only reason he wasn’t going to win this year is because he isn’t racing.”

“Now, however, with Basso and Ullrich gone, combined with efforts to remove other racers like Vinokourov, we feel certain that any victories won in this year’s tour will be very nearly meaningless.”

“We are taking measures to really make the asterisk play a special role this year,” continued Prudhomme. “Instead of a stuffed lion, stage winners will be handed a stuffed asterisk. Instead of excited discussion about who raced how in a given stage, Phil and Paul have been instructed to talk about who would have raced better, had they been present.”

“Most importantly,” concluded the race director, “the leaders’ jerseys have been specially modified. The yellow jersey will be a much paler, washed-out yellow; in fact, it will be hard to tell it’s yellow at all. The white jersey will be more off-white than white, and may prominently feature a coffee stain if we don’t get around to washing it soon. The polka dot jersey will have red asterisks instead of dots, and the green jersey will have a camoflauge pattern. And of course, all jerseys will have a big asterisk over the right breast.”

Racers React

“I’m so glad all of these dirty racers have been caught,” said one professional cyclist, who on the advice of his lawyer asked to remain anonymous. “You see, all the rest of us are absolutely clean.”

“Yes,” agreed another cyclist, who also asked not to have his name printed, “With all of the leading names in cycling gone from this race, viewers—if there are any—can have high confidence that the person who wins has never taken drugs. You have my word on it.”

“Isn’t it amazing,” asked a third unidentified racer, “that there are so many of us who are dirty, but none of us were able to beat Lance? It just goes to show: clean living pays in the end.”

Fans React

Elden Nelson, an avid cycling fan who was so excited about the Tour de France he recently purchased a Slingbox so he could watch it wherever and whenever he wanted, looked despondent upon hearing the news. “This thing cost me close to $200.00,” said Nelson, close to tears. “And now I don’t know if I’ll even bother watching at all.”

“That’s not all I’m upset about,” said Nelson, who appears to be approximately twenty pounds overweight. “I was more excited for this TdF than I have been for three years. I mean, finally: a tour where there could be honest debate about who would win.”

“Now,” said Nelson, glumly, while idly scratching his paunch, “I guess people could still debate who’s going to win, but it’s not easy to get worked up about it. I guess I’ll cheer for Floyd, but that’s just kind of a fallback position.”

Nelson then wandered away, evidently looking for something to eat.

Race Predictions

With Ullrich, Basso, and Mancebo out of the tour, other racers suddenly have newfound opportunities to shine. Expert cyclist analysts say that faces to watch include:

• David Millar: Oh, the irony. It is rich, is it not?
• Floyd Landis: Dollars to doughnuts, Floyd will win the whole thing. And he might have won the whole thing even if Basso and Ullrich were racing. But now we’ll never know, and it’s suddenly tough to care.
• David Zabriskie: OK, I’ll admit: if Zabriskie shines, I’ll get excited. Really excited.
• Others: There are likely other candidates for a strong showing in this year’s tour, but—unfortunately—the expert analysts got bored of listing them, mumbled something about “doesn’t matter anyway” and walked off.

OLN Fails to React

OLN, the network broadcasting the Tour de France, was unavailable for comment on this development, because everyone involved in the broadcast (with the sole exception of Al Trautwig, who had no idea what had just happened) had committed suicide.