Do you want to be in good shape, or do you want to be a bike racer?

 Trainee David has signed up for delayed entry recruitment into the Navy. He'll be a senior in high school this year, but decided he'd like not just a job, but an adventure. So now he's learning a lot about how he measures up to other recruits, and about military organization.

Here's a kid who can hold his own on a sponsored junior team, who has been racing since he was 12. He's not a star, but he's a solid team rider, following a disciplined and supervised training program to compete in bicycle racing. He prefers cyclocross, but he's done quite a bit of road racing and has raced mountain bikes as well to round out his experience. But he falls short in PT tests because of his complete lack of upper body strength.

Climbing specialists, time trialers and competitors in long road races end up with shoulders like a cat. No need for brawny arms and broad shoulders when you're trying to reduce frontal area and put maximum power to the legs.

When I dabbled in racing, off-season training meant something off the bike. Some people speed skated. Some people weight trained. Some people did that weird cross-country skiing thing where you could actually ski uphill. Only a few people that I knew of could or would go to a warm place where they could stay on the bike all year. Others experimented with new indoor training devices like the RacerMate. And I mean the original RacerMate, with no electronic devices, just a couple of squirrel cage fans that provided resistance against a roller that pressed on the rear tire when your bike was clamped in a stand. It was the original wind trainer.

It wasn't supposed to be good for you to do just the one thing. Obsessive training has become more commonplace these days, but you can mess yourself up pretty well if all you ever do is ride in some form or another.

David has gotten a few pointers from our resident climber/former ropes course builder/former power lifter and trainer Sam. As a teenager, he can command his body to do something different and see immediate improvement. He's already gone from "Oh my god, pushups are hard!" to counting off by the dozen. And he was already working on core strength as part of his cycling regimen.

Never an obsessive trainer, I would usually lose interest in the bike racing season right after the district championships. I would still "train" as an excuse to go on long rides almost every day, but I didn't really enjoy most of the actual racing. Throwing elbows with a bunch of testosterone-saturated lunatics didn't appeal to me that much. I just liked having a nice bike and riding kind of fast. But if you say you're a competitive athlete it sounds a little less wimpy and aimless. Or so I hoped, anyway.

Riding around the countryside fit in with a generally exploratory curiosity. That led me to backpacking, rock climbing, various boats propelled with paddles, and cross-country skiing, which led to New England. In any season, a wanderer can find a way to find out "what's over there?" by a human powered means. Faced with the example of my parents, who lived normal, productive adult lives in modern civilization, and therefore got fat and spent much of the time unhappy about it, I figured that no matter what happened I wanted to stay in motion. Civilized society wants you to throw yourself into deterioration for the sake of the economy. Embrace that decay! Whoever works the longest hours wins! Your life should destroy you either because it makes you sit at a desk too much or beats you to death with grueling toil. Either way, if you're not well on the way to disability by the time you're in your 40s you've been slacking off.

As I paid attention to other responsibilities, my activity had dwindled to mostly just bike commuting. The kayaks hung from the rafters, ready to be lowered onto the car, but never used. They became dance halls for mice. Once in a while we might use them. For a while it wasn't too bad, but then came the day when they suddenly seemed a lot heavier than they used to be. Use it or lose it. I looked in the mirror and saw those cat shoulders. That warning propelled me back to the free weights and exercises to see how little I could get away with and still regain the ability to lift and lug things.

Cross-country skiing no longer provides. When we had the shop at Jackson Ski Touring, I made sure that everyone who wanted to get out got to tag out during the best part of the day to taste what we were selling and keep enthusiasm high. The shop opened right onto the groomed track, so transitions were instantaneous. This is not true in Wolfe City. We are operating with minimal staff, and the nearest trail access is still a short drive from the shop. Tag outs are rare, and temperature conditions make night skiing after work treacherous as things freeze up after sundown. In the morning, it's hard to get organized and get to town early enough for a meaningful workout before shop hours. So I basically just get fat and irritable. I even wrote a song about it called "Snacking out of boredom and depression." We'll see if minimal indoor training keeps me more or less together for the eventual return of spring.

When gentle exploration seemed like a good example to set, it felt more worthwhile. Now it seems like the time would have been better spent on direct political activism and preparing for the bloody time that will follow the collapse of civilization when that political activism failed anyway. Oh well. Live and learn.