Cold, Clear Water, Thawing Manure

 Here in the southern part of northern New England, April weather notoriously bounces between occasional pleasant days and raw, wet ones that can bring rain or snow. This gradually transitions to the somewhat milder promise of May, before giving way to the tepid disappointment we call June.

Yesterday was one of the mild ones. The wind was light, the sky was clear. I needed a ride to continue my recovery program from a sedentary winter. The commute doesn't feel any longer than it used to, but it takes a little longer, and I feel its effects longer afterward.

During my first spring in New Hampshire, in 1988, I was training for an epic ride that I hoped would form the basis for one or more magazine articles. Starting in March, I went out on a set of training routes through the rural landscape just to the south of the eastern Sandwich Range. I watched the snow recede, the brooks and wetlands fill to flood, the brown and tan dead vegetation pressed flat by the weight of winter slowly rebound, pushed up by the green growth seeking the sun. It was a time of creativity and hope.

Every spring has its version of this, enriching spring training rides with actual and remembered rejuvenation. Where I live now, I pass several places where they keep livestock. First is the draft horses, less than a mile down the road. Their manure pile is well thawed now. On the opposite side of the road, a brook rushes with clear, cold runoff, that started as snow melt from our meager winter, and now conveys the rains that follow. Wood frogs and peepers have begun to sound, when the air is warm enough.

A cold snap shuts them up. I imagine their annoyance.

Around the route I pass several other places where the smell of animal dung dominates the atmosphere. It reminds me of a race I used to do in Carlisle, PA, when I lived in Maryland. It was a 50-mile race in April. For some reason I believed that the other competitors would be in a similar state of early season development as I was. I thought I trained over the winters: commuting, riding rollers, sneaking in a road ride or some fixed-gear training as it fit with weather, daylight, and a full-time -- albeit low-paying -- job. Hey, it's April. We should be easing into our season. Right?

Invariably, I ended up chasing the breakaways from somewhere in a splintering field torn apart by the riders who had gone south for their early miles, or perhaps for the entire winter, or who had pounded their bodies with high-intensity alternative training during what passed for winter in the Mid Atlantic coastal and Piedmont region. Any longer race -- more than 30 miles -- was open to Cat. 2,3, and maybe 4, in the years before Cat. 5 was anything but a joke we would make about novice riders. The difference between the categories is not subtle, it's exponential. The top category sets the tone, chased by the most ambitious of the category below them.

Once the field breaks up, you may find yourself alone or with a group of riders sizable enough to create the illusion that it's the main field or a significant chase group. Thus I would hammer through the early spring landscape of central Pennsylvania, sucking in oxygen with whatever other freight it carried. A lot of that air smelled like a large farm, because a lot of large farms lined the 50-mile loop of the Tour of Cumberland Valley. Except for the part of the course that crossed the Appalachian Trail, we rode through a landscape dominated by agriculture.

Regardless of the annual rebuke the race always provided, it still felt good in its weird way to be out there, immersed in the almost inescapable hopefulness of spring.

Every brook and stream, every vernal pool, marsh, and wetland is about as full as it's going to get, unless we have a summer of floods. Yesterday's route was calculated to mix steady cruising with some climbing. The fixed-gear forces continual effort and smoothness. Every pedal stroke moves you the exact same distance forward, regardless of the slope or wind. Slope and wind determine the effort demanded from the rider. Grunt harder or spin faster. Look to the scenery for distraction and inspiration, or just to enjoy it. Each year adds to the fund of similar memories to deepen the connection to grateful observance.