Racing hard, or hardly racing?

 There's a long, steep hill to climb from "better than average" to "one of the best." Anyone who has tried to race knows this.

The rider is both driver and engine. These two functions operate separately more than you might realize. The pilot knows what should be done, but the machine doesn't always provide it.

"Scotty, I need more power!"

"She's givin' all she's got, Cap'n'! If I try to get more out of her she'll explode!"

Nothing feels better than digging deep and finding what you need. If you choose your companions right, you can have that feeling from your teens all the way to your 60s, perhaps older. It's all relative, of course. I'll be riding to work after a couple of days' rest, feeling pretty spry because I'm pushing the big ring and down around mid-cassette in the back. Then I do the math and realize I'm pushing what was my early season lowest gear in the 1980s.

The reflex to attack never goes away. The ability to do so definitely diminishes. So far, however, I have been able to exploit terrain, wind, and the scavenged draft of passing vehicles to meet the most immediate desires, like making a green light at the only traffic light on my commute, or sticking an elbow into the flow on Center Street inbound to work.

The sight of another rider sparks that hunting instinct. In an individual time trial, a competitor chases the clock, but also anyone who started earlier in the queue. In a road race, riders make their attacks and others chase. This can go on for miles. In short-course races the same thing happens on a smaller scale. The snake eats its own tail as the attackers thread through the stragglers. Officials will pull slow riders from a short course, just to clear up the clutter. I hated short courses and was usually pulled.

Racing balances a paradox: to be competitive, you have to go to the edge of everything: traction, strength, endurance, power, fear, without losing control and taking out a bunch of other riders. If you seem erratic, out of your depth, other riders might actively seek to weed you out. Sometimes, they would do it anyway just because some of them decided that you didn't belong with them. You have to risk everything without looking like you're risking anything. Push the margins of control without revealing that you're at the margins of control.

Over time I discovered that I didn't like racing as much as I liked training, and that I didn't like actual structured training as much as I liked just riding how I felt on a given day. Racing was too disciplined and becoming increasingly scientific, not to mention expensive. That's only gotten worse.

There are more than 50 distinct shapes of disc brake pad, not including ones that have already been discontinued. There are several different pad compounds, which might be described in different ways, such as: metal, metal ceramic, metallic, semi-metallic, organic, resin, or sintered. Some brake rotors can only take resin pads. But good luck finding a quality bike with rim brakes anymore. Everyone assumes that disc brakes are entirely superior in all respects. So what happens if you're out in East Bumfleck and you need a pad shape that the local shop doesn't have? Hope that Amazon drone delivery can find you? Stock up on pads and make sure they're always with you? People with electronic shifting go on trips and leave their chargers at home. You think most of them will remember to have brake pads in their kit? And that's only a fraction of the complication and expense. In general, a racer will be out there flinging around a bike that cost anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000, come what may.

As Lance had ghost-written for himself in the 1990s, it's not about the bike. But the bike is the machine that extends our capability and desire into motion. Racing eats people and equipment. You can't refuse technology and remain competitive among real racers really racing. And among the dubs and dilettantes you are even less safe. Those riders are liable to blow up at an inopportune time, like the middle of a tight corner, a crowded field sprint, or a twisty descent. Or maybe it's you who blows up.

Heart rate lags behind effort: you launch the sprint and the old ticker might not hit full bpms until you've leveled off. Pain lags behind effort: you attack that climb or push the pace because you feel good, and the legs feel like lead the next day. Each day of the commuting week gets harder anyway, because the demands of traffic management and hilly terrain make it impossible to avoid some level of destructive exertion. The commuting life is a stage race.

Riding alone, I get to choose when to let up. As soon as another rider is on my wheel, I can't slow down when I feel like it, because I might be that guy who sits up and takes out a whole paceline, or blows out of his line in a corner and sends the riders outside of him over the median.

A rider ahead presents a different prospect. It's fun to chase them down -- if you can -- but then like the proverbial dog, what do you do when you've caught the car? When I see another rider on my commute, I'll close distance to see if I know them, but if I don't it gets awkward. If I've caught them, it's because they're going slower than I want to go. To maintain my pace to work, I need to pass them. But then I look like the old fart on a heavy bike trying to prove a point. I'm not, really. I'm just trying to be on time to work, or get home for a shower and supper. 

A couple of weeks ago, I chased down a rider on 28, thinking it might be a guy I know whose commute sometimes coincides with mine. When it turned out not to be, I still hung back there because he was a sparky racer type maintaining a decent pace. But then we hit a little jumper of a hill, and the guy stood on the pedals and dogged right out, rather than shifting down and pushing into it. Over the crest on the flats beyond, he didn't really pick it back up. On the next little drop, aided by the draft of a passing pickup, I sling-shotted around him.

"Late to work!" I said on the way by, to excuse the maneuver. I figured he would counterattack or get on my wheel, but when I finally could glance back he was nowhere. It seemed odd, since I was riding those high-to-me gears that are low to anyone young and in shape. Maybe he was just being nice to the elderly. No time to muse, I had to keep going to work. It was true.

As I noted in the previous post, I pay attention to the feedback from my body. You hear all the time about people who "died doing what they love." That can be poetically beautiful, but what I really love is remaining alive; getting home to a nice supper and some snuggling with the cats. Hanging out with my spouse when she's in town. I got lucky in the genetic department, but I know better than to think I'm immune to aging. I know other riders who were looking good until they developed issues that seem to stem from pushing too hard for too long. That urge to attack will lure a committed athlete to dig too deep and scrape something down in there that doesn't heal.

I keep hoping there will be time later to plan the purposeful "last hike" or other exit strategy, when I feel more like exiting. But one never knows.

The War Effort

The commute gets harder every year. I'll be 60 in July. That's not old by modern standards, but it's not young, either. I'm as tired on the third day as I used to be on the fifth day.

In 1979, emerging from college to make my mark on the world, I assessed the situation and decided to live in a way that any number of people could imitate without fear of making things worse. Imagine a world in which people at all social levels in industrialized nations felt well rewarded by modest dwellings and non-motorized mobility. It's hard to picture, because it's not enough, after centuries of conditioning to revere wealth and opulence, and the power these convey to our fellow apes.

In the 1970s, military service did not look like a good idea, when the United States government had just finished demonstrating how many lives it was willing to waste in pursuit of a mistake. We were told to expect a nuclear war, which would render conventional forces irrelevant. How many service members does it take to keep fingers on the button in an undisclosed number of missile silos, and keep our submarines patrolling? By the time I got out of college, bombs delivered by airplanes were a quaint anachronism. Conventional forces appeared to have some parade value, if news photos from the Soviet Union were any guide, but in the big exchange of fireballs they were just one more thing to melt. Sure, this is a simplistic view, but the media and the educational system already excelled in presenting simplistic points of view.

My peers and I were taught to get good jobs and make as much money as we could. Some of us learned that much better than others. I flunked it completely. But I stayed in the system long enough to absorb the intent. I have a dutiful sense of failure because I did not prosper. The fact that I live well is due partly to my own frugality and largely to a couple of unanticipated lucky breaks. But I feel an even greater disappointment that I never figured out how to inspire widespread change.

The plan remains the same as it was before the little windfalls that made my hovel a bit larger. Behind the facade, I am just another idiot whose retirement options consist of either a refrigerator box in a warm climate or a shotgun in the mouth when I realize I am no longer able to support myself. I'm holding out for the refrigerator box, or perhaps a hike into beautiful wilderness, without food or water. But the gun thing sounds nicely dramatic.

It seemed to me -- and it still does -- that one can serve one's country and the greater good of humanity better by setting a good example of how to live than by how one kills and dies. I don't know what to do about the human compulsion to force other people to die for things, but I do know that accepting it as the unchangeable norm locks us onto a course toward global destruction.

In the decades I've ridden, I have noticed a slight increase in understanding from motorists, but hostility remains a problem. Internet postings, bike path assaults, and road rage killings remind us that bicycle riders are outcasts, and fair game as far as many people are concerned. And a silent majority does nothing to harm, but nothing to help, hoping the problem will go away on its own. If that means road cyclist extinction, good enough. Go play on the bike path. Drive to a mountain biking venue.

The life I pledged has lasted nearly 60 years. The fortune I pledged by declining to amass it. I don't look forward to being a casualty in the lifestyle revolution, but I like even less the idea of prospering at the expense of others. Who is enslaved on your behalf? What makes you better than they are, other than the accident of your birthplace? You may be completely comfortable with a harshly hierarchical view of humanity, but at least think about it. Be certain in your conviction that a large number of people deserve to live downstream from your toilet and downwind from your smokestack.

I'm no better than anyone because of the choices I have made. I'm an idiot. But I'm not wrong.

The energy I've put into trying to live a simple and relatively self-propelled life, other people have put into things they think are worthwhile. Evolution will log the results. In all likelihood, no one will be around to sift through the archeological record to find out who predicted the end correctly.

Blast from the past

Yep. It's just not training unless your upper lip is stuck to your top teeth in a rictus of agony, moistened only by occasional vomit.

For all my insistence that I do not want to flail myself through a training schedule, I rode to work this morning thinking about options to put tighter gearing on the road bike. Certainly not higher gearing, I assure you. But closer steps in the geezer range I can push will make the pain more micro-adjustable.

It might be kind of a hoot to throw a straight block 6-speed on the old Campy Record rear hub I took off when I built the cassette wheel that's on there now. Swapping wheels is quicker and less grimy than changing cassettes. For flat-road intervals, how many gears do I need? I certainly don't need an enormous big meat gear.

The danger of training is that I might become stronger. Then I plateau, fall into half-fast syndrome, and have to climb the pain ladder to a higher rung to keep from getting stale.

I'm pretty averse to pain, so suddenly discovering masochistic drive in myself is not a huge worry. In any case, closer steps in the freewheel or cassette will make life better. Either that or just keep slogging with what I have, remembering that this is only for a couple or three weeks, in all likelihood.

When there's nothing to do right now, one can't help but think.

I'll go through the cog stash when I get home.

Ruth doesn't want to quit

Ruth is 92 years old. Her husband and two of her sons are dead. She lives in a cottage her family built in the 1930s -- if not earlier -- on the shore of Lake Wentworth. She stacks her own firewood and shovels her own roof. All the way through her 70s, if you saw her from behind, walking down the sidewalk in her tennis dress, you'd take a minute to admire the view.

Great laugh seeing young strangers in town speed up a bit to pass her and see her face. She does not pretend to be young, beyond an excusable use of hair coloring. Wrinkles to the contrary, she has somehow managed to make that work.

At 92 she shows the miles now. She's fought off Lyme disease, cancer, and been treated for rabies after an animal bite. I joke that other people say, "oh no, I got an illness!" Illness says, "Oh no! I got Ruth!"

She's not one of those annoying sunshine-pumpers who are just so dang positive about everything that you need a nice salty shot of tequila after being around them. She just doesn't want to quit. She gets out and about. And, until some more medical challenges got in the way, she rode her bike nearly every day.

When she tried to resume riding, she discovered she could no longer lift her leg high enough to get over the dropped bar of her 1995 Univega step-through hybrid. She had had her bike rack modified several times as she had more and more difficulty lifting the bike onto it to drive to safe venues for an older rider, but now she couldn't get on the bike, even though she could still get the bike on the car.

She started getting depressed. She grumbled about her physical infirmities. We were used to hearing about her various mishaps, but now she talked of little else.

We hunted around for quite a while to find a new, deep step-through model that weighed no more than her old bike. Then we did, so she was ready to go again.

But she wasn't. The position on casual bikes these days is way more upright than on her old bike. We had to figure out one problem after another. Each time we though we had it nailed, she came back again looking sad.

With every setback she seemed more discouraged. She talked about how old she is and how many friends she's outlived and all the things that are wrong with her, not in a raspy, carping way, but in a weary litany of hopelessness.

We changed the stem to get the bars lower and closer to her. We cut the seat post so she could get the seat lower until she got used to things. Then the seat itself had such a wide and sudden flare that it shoved her forward of the pedals. I switched her old seat over to the new bike. And we had to modify her car rack some more to fit the new frame.

I forget the last rabbit I pulled out of the hat, but she came back from that test ride with a tentative smile. Twice more she went out to test further adjustments, each time returning with a bigger smile and more of the old Ruthie vigor.

The bicycle is a machine for rejuvenation. The change in her as she realized she could ride again was astonishing, even as it confirmed my belief. Old Bill, cancer stricken and knowing he was dying, had said, "whatever else happens that day, you get on the machine." No one knows how long Ruth will last. All we know is that the time has been made brighter by getting back on her bike.