Ride Lots

Eddy said it best, but in my case it's Ride Lots of hills into the wind. Whatever your weakness the only way to cure it is to face it - over, and over, and over and over again. My two weaknesses with riding are, and have been, wind and hills. So I gotta face 'em, two days in a row I have and don't have any intention of letting up. Riding one of the favorite local roadie routes - Highway 2 to Bennett - yesterday was pretty fun but today the way out was pretty dang difficult. 20+ mph headwinds the whole way out, good lord did it hurt, but man did it feel good on the way back. I picked a big gear on the way back and pushed hard.

But man, that's what you've gotta do. It hurts, it really does, some days the hurt tries to beat out the good. The good is always there, some days you've gotta dig really deep to find it - but it's there. Yesterday the good was the way back, that mean headwind made for a big gear spin on the way back, wow did I pick up some speed.

Hell week - Kanza is now a month and a half away, and yeah I'm nervous. The first week of May I'm taking as a "furlough" week, so I've been thinking to myself that I really need to do something good and difficult that week to really prep mentally for Kanza. Physically I'm not going to get much better in 45 days, but mentally I can go some ways. The idea now is to do a (metric) "century a day" that week. 62+ miles/day for the 5 weekdays. If it doesn't hurt I'll push the mileage to where it does - but I have a feelin' it will. That will be some good mental prep, I think, to really make it so I know I can do it come May 30.

See, that's just it - it's really all mental. I mean there are points where physically you just can't go on anymore - a la the GLGA cramps that wouldn't let up enough for me to actually spin the cranks - but most of the time the muscles are sore yet still poppin' out the miles. Those days you just have to dig down, find it, and run with it. If this thing was easy, I'd be done already, but I'm not. I'm still struggling to lose weight, still struggling to find the motivation and still trying to just crest that one last hill before I get home.

So don't feel bad when you can't - because you can, it's just really tough. Dig a little deeper, reach for the apple instead of the burger, and know that in the end it's really goona be good. Like me, it might take you a couple years of repeated failure, but it's good.

Lemonade

Bad luck comes in multiples, but it's how you define bad that determines how it's going to impact.. am I right?

Sunday we're off to my folks' house for dinner, and about a mile from home I'm slowing down from a turn and the van does a big "THUNK" from the front end. Like, not good really bad probably terrible thunk. I limp it around the turn and off to the side of the highway and get out. Look underneath, sure enough, a geyser of transmission fluid is making it's way to the pavement. Managed to get home, thank everything, as neither my wife or I brought cellphones with us - how ironic, right? Of course I was a little bit stressed, I mean, being kind of a car geek it doesn't take much to figure that thunking plus a geyser of tranny fluid /= good.

This was particularly annoying, of course, because I spend time and money to maintain vehicles well so they don't fail. All our vehicles are full of Mobil 1, have K&N filters, quality (Goodyear) tires, etc etc - I'm pretty anal about keeping vehicles running well. However, front wheel drive vehicles, Chrysler products in particular, are well known for transmission failures no matter what you do.

Came to work yesterday, and sure enough the LHT had two flat tires. One theory is that it was mad I left it here all weekend. The other is that, well, the Jamaica Me Crazy trail eats tires. Last night went to replace 'em, and realized I'm out of spare tubes. Crap.

Today I hear that yesterday there was a cyclist killed in a vehicle/cycle accident downtown in the morning, and a elderly woman died after a horrible accident about a half mile from my home. My little annoyances are nothing, but rather just minor setbacks.

These turn of events certainly are not missed on me. I got a second chance a couple years ago, I shouldn't have, but I did. Is it highly likely that I'm going to have to pay a couple grand for a new transmission? Sure. Does it suck that I'm not going to get to ride my bike a lot this week? Yup. You know what doesn't suck? Sunshine and being able to appreciate it another day.

Like I said, lemonade in a half-full glass. That's how I roll.

Gave up

Sometime on April 1, I gave up on cycling. Seriously, it was all over, I was done with it - as evidenced by a twitter tweet I made. I wasn't feeling hot, legs were sore, just overall it wasn't good and I blamed it on cycling - but I was wrong.

It's not the first time I was wrong. Ironically, two days over 3 years before that, I almost died in a car accident - truth be told I probably should be dead, but for some reason live to tell the tale. Short story, full ton dually pickup pulled out in front of me, was traveling at 45mph, passenger and I weren't wearing seatbelts. Aside from a messed up back (to this day), a pretty good concussion, and one scary ambulance ride (midway through someone saw something, or I did something that prompted that ambulance to HAUL), I made it out OK. My passenger, on the other hand, was hurt pretty bad. She has some permanent damage, and got banged up bad.

Of course after the accident, the slimeball who pulled out in front of me changed his story, witnesses were lacking, and his insurance company did a great job of playing not-nice to both my passenger and I. Lawyers had to be brought in, the fault of the accident was brought into question, and my back started hurting pretty bad/weight started coming back on. To boot, I was pissed at the guy, spending about 18 months of my life obsessing over the damn thing. Sometime in the late summer of 2007 the word from my lawyer finally came, the guy caved and they offered a settlement, but no full admission of guilt. A big weight came off my chest, I smiled, and I used the funds to pick up a full olympic bench/weight set, along with some powerblocks and other stuff for our house. I wanted the money gone, gone to something good to have positive effects on our life.

Today I was at the annual county storm spotter training, and saw the passenger from that day. She first showed me pictures of her newly-born grandson (which since having kids of my own, such things melt my heart), then when I asked her how things were going I got a big smile followed by stories of her new car, and the trip she took to Jamaica last year with her daughter. "He finally admitted he pulled out in front of it, that it was all her fault" I got back with a smile, and that little bit of weight flew away - and I smiled a big genuine smile. See a year and a half ago I realized that I was finally somewhat right, but not completely. Now I knew that I was, and that she was OK. Knowing, finally, you 100% werent responsible for harm to another human being is a feeling of peace.

But that's not why I almost gave up cycling.

I realized, finally, the reason I almost gave up cycling had nothing to do with cycling. I have a lot of stress in my life, right now my job is a good 90% of that, and that stress was looking for something to give. Something to buy a little more time, give a little, to make the sanity flow a little more. I gained 5 pounds last week, which hurt after a week where I lost 10 doing exactly the same thing I had done when I gained 5. Then my wife sent me an article about some hormone your body exerts under stress that causes.. some reaction that can make you gain weight even though you are working hard. And it all just clicked.

It clicked yesterday as I was riding to Cortland, pushing hard into one heck of a headwind. That has to be my favorite kind of ride, pushing hard into a brutal headwind the whole way out, because then you know the ride back is going to be nothing short of phenomenal. The pain of the legs - and there was pain, covering the 20 miles to Cortland took probably an hour and 40 minutes. The last miles from Princeton to Cortland were particularly brutal, it's all open trail on open prairie with nothing to stop the wind from blasting into your face. I cussed, yelled out loud at it and reminded myself that it would be good, real good on the way back.

It was.

My mind was clear, I thought nothing of my inbox, to do list, projects, or the flipping economy as I found the biggest gear I have and just spun effortlessly as the wind pushed me at it's velocity - over 20 mph - home.

Now I get it, the stress we all live in, it pushes us to everything that isn't good. We don't have time, so we eat junk and eat lots of it because - let's be honest here - whilst eating it, it makes us feel good. We buy big cars and houses because they make us feel good, and feel like that money is going to something, money earned under constant stress to continue to produce so as to continue to earn to continue to buy and continue to eat. In the end we feel empty, so we find things that "take too much time" or "hurt too much" and get rid of 'em, so we can work more and buy more things. And we get more empty. I know I was.

We forget how pure, how great it feels to look to the sky as the legs just blur beneath you, the accomplishment of pushing yourself further than you've pushed before and man the feeling of that is better than anything money can buy.