Back outside!

 Back outside!

One hundred and six days since the last time I had been outside on my bike, but then again who is counting, not me.  After a winter spent spinning indoors and lifting weights, the temperatures finally warmed and the sky dried up enough for me to get back outside!  

I couldn’t wait.  I was trying to get everything done in a rush yesterday.  Breakfast, lunch, recycle center, car wash, taxes, everything that was on the list, I had to get done so that I could get outside and get on my bike.  It had been far too long.  Plus, when the cleaning lady is here, Kona, is sufficiently distracted and I can sneak off and go, go, go. 

Yesterday, my training schedule had me scheduled for a LSDR for two hours.  That is a long slow distance ride.  The goal is to keep my heart rate low and not go to hard.  This is tough for me because I can’t walk out of my house and spit without hitting a rolling hill.  

I was not going to do another LSDR in the house.  As Doc used to say “No, no, hell no!”  My sanity couldn’t take the boredom of a LSDR in the house again.  Not only that but neither could my ass.  I don’t know what it is about riding in the house that makes one’s ass hurt so much more than riding outside.  It could just be the fact that you are stuck in the same place, and all the great TV in the world can’t make you forget you are stuck in one place, and you aren’t going anywhere, so you could drown on things like, OMG, my ass hurts so bad! I must get off tis fucking bike right now, I can’t take it any longer.  No matter how many people Daredevil beats up, the Punisher kills, or Reacher pummels, the ass, always gets it say in and it is always OMG, I hurt, please get off this seat.  

Do you think I matter that the seat on the bike inside is the exact same seat as outside?  That they are positioned the same.  Had profession fits on both bikes and they have the same geometry now.  It doesn’t matter.  It is a mental game I can’t win.  My ass always does.  I have cut last three indoor LSDR’s short b/c my ass.  Don’t even get me started on the chaffing.   

So, thank the gods!  We are Back Outside!

Two Rides

So much of life is heads you win, and tails you are going to lose.  There is rarely a beautiful day without some sort of drama.  It is the Yin and Yang always pulling in equal but opposite directions.  Things usually don’t go perfect, and yesterday’s ride was a perfect example of that.  

I had not route planned.  I was just getting outside for an easy ride.  I figured an hour out and hour back.  I had been working really hard on my rides indoors.  I have been consistent and working my ass off.  Literally, my ass is a bit smaller, jeans are fitting better, so this is not an exaggeration.  

I put myself in granny gear and headed out.  Went I started I just let the air hit.  I enjoyed the rolling along letting the world pass around me.  I peddled, I coasted, I went up and I went down as I drank in the sun and wind.  I just let myself feel great and really take in being back outside.  I was content.  

Although no route was planned, I had an idea where I was going to go.  I live in southern Indiana; I am going to run into rolling hills wherever I go on my bike.  I knew this and I was ready to dance with those dragons.  I took Fairfax to Moffett and I rolled up and down.  Then I cut over onto Harrell and rolled up and down there too.  

As I rode, I knew my HR was a little higher than I wanted, but I was just so happy to be outside, I didn’t care.  Plus, I was having fun.  That is what this is all about right.  Having fun and enjoying the ride.  In this case literally enjoying the ride.  So, I kept going.  However, when I finished Harrell, I was only for like a half hour.  So, I couldn’t head back home.  That was not going to get me where I needed to go.  So, I went left towards Handy.

Like most roads around here, Handy rolled.  I was peddling feeling good.  I mean feeling really good trucking along in Granny.  I was not happy that my HR was up, but I would back off and try to let it go down.   

The self-talk was good too.  I told myself I could just keep going and get lost and it didn’t matter because I was strong.  I could climb any hill I came across, so just keep going.  Just keep peddling and enjoying the wind as it danced in your beard. Don’t need to fear, you are strong, you a better ridder than before.  You got this!

I got passed by a ridder and he was nice and friendly.  I followed him on to Sleigh Ridge.  It like every other road rolled.  I was enjoying myself and peddling along.  All was right with the world.  Then it wasn’t.  

At some point you go from Sleigh Ridge, to Church, to East Ramp Road and let me tell you when you are out doing a LSDR ride, you don’t want to be on East Ramp Road.  I heard the words of a former cycling mentor in my head you see.  Whatever goes down must eventually go back up.  I heard this because on East Ramp Road, I was going down, and I was going down fast into a valley.  My brain kept saying stop and turn around, but I would be turning on a step incline and I can’t peddle my way out of that.  Note, in millisecond of a thought, the self-talk flipped.  The confidence was gone, only the fun was gone, the proverbial monkey of fear and self-loathing that had sat on my back for so long was back and he was vicious.      

I ended up at the bottom of East Ramp Road in what felt like a valley.  Either way you went you had to go up to get back to civilization.  I stopped.  I ate my PBJ b/c I had reached the hour mark.  It was after all now time to turn around.  I asked myself what I was going to do.  I tried to answer with bravery and bravado.  I was going to climb my way out of here.  I could do it.  I have been training and working hard.  

Somewhere.  In the distance, I heard a snicker of laughter.  The proverbial monkey was sitting somewhere with a bag of popcorn and his feet kicked up just waiting to watch this one play out.  See, I knew the great win this would be for me if I got out.  It would escort that monkey out of my head and off my back.  There was nothing for it, I was going to go back the way I came.  I was going to climb out of here. 

East Ramp Road and its 15% incline had other ideas.  I look back now and realize I had two things working against me.  First, and foremost I was not mentally prepared to climb yesterday.  Second, was the biker that passed me before I ever got back to climb.  I watched him going up before me, and he was out of the saddle working hard.  If a young, thin, person was having that much trouble climbing this, what chance did I really have.  By the time I got to the climb, I had failed to climb it, in my mind.  So, I do what I always do when I fail to climb.  I panic. 

Once I panic, I can’t even try to climb anymore.  I speed up my cadence.  I over-exert on my effort.  I started thinking about what I am doing, and I start telling myself I can’t do it.  Then I do the one thing you can’t do going up.  I stop.  I stopped on a 15% grade.  Once you stop you can’t start back up.  

So, I started walking my bike.  At this point the monkey is literally hopping up and down on my bike screaming in laughter.  I find a point where the incline lesson.  I do my best to remount.  I start trying to zig zag the hill.  I get passed by a car.  I lose any thought about making it up even from this point and I am walking again.  I think I probably walked less than a quarter mile yesterday our over 15 or 16 miles, but it is literally the only thing I remembered most of the way home.

The Monkey on my back

When you grow up fat and you allow your spirit to be broken by that, you develop one hell of a demon of self-doubt.  This demon, which I invasion as a howling made monkey riding me with a whip that barbed with spikes and glasses and spurs, laughing at my torment (King helped me with this vision in the Drawing of Three) has lived in my mind for as long as I can remember. 

If you go to the buddy system and read from the beginning, you will meet him.  You will hear him overshadow everything I do and write there.  Then when you transition to Dreaming of a Life Less Ordinary, you hear him pushed away.  As if he were gone.  Oh, he is never gone, not really.  He goes and comes.  Most days, he loses.  Most days he can’t get me to play his reindeer games.  However, he holds on, for days like yesterday.  Days where you feel humiliated and beaten.  It’s those days that the rat trap of self-doubt gives him just enough nutrients to hang on and start his mischief. 

I will never make it up Enchanted Circle.  I will never be able to climb for 20 straight miles.  How could you, you couldn’t climb for a quarter mile.  I can’t do it why even try.  

You are too fat.  Since you are so fat you cannot climb.  All I do is sit around and snack.  You will never make it up these hills.  You don’t belong out here.  

It is no wonder your jersey does not fit.  That is because you are just too gross and big to be doing this.  Just quit.  You failed.  It is over.  Just stop now.  You can’t get a refund of you air b & b.  You don’t need to invest anymore into this.

The stinging at the corner of my eyes was not from the cold head wind I was riding into.  It was because the Monkey had sunk its claws into me and was whipping merciless. 

I wanted to cry.  I want to stop the bike and get off and scream at the top of my lungs.  I am sure if I had done that, I might well not be sitting here typing right now but in the looney bin somewhere.  I wanted to do all these things, but I just kept peddling.  

What? Was that?

I just kept peddling. 

One more time please. 

I just kept peddling. 

I felt the wind dancing again in my beard.  I took in a long deep breath.  Then I thought it one more time.  I just kept peddling. 

When I stopped peddling on the incline, I didn’t sit down and start crying.  I didn’t curl up in a ball and suck my thumb.  I didn’t call everyone in the area I knew to ask them to come get me.  I found a place to remount my bike, and I just kept peddling.  

But you failed to make it up, and after that I just kept peddling.  The grip of the monkey was loosening.  

Well at Enchanted Circle you will not make it up 20 miles of straight climbing, but I will keep peddling and get as many miles in ask I can.  All I must do is just keep peddling.  

The cloud that had covered my mind from the time I left East Camp Rod, reseeded.  It reseeded because I just kept peddling.  No matter what happens, or however many hills I don’t climb, I don’t call for help, I just keep peddling.  Thus, the power, of demon, his whip and his grip are gone.  

I never give up.  Maybe I am too stupid, or proud to do so, or maybe just maybe I have the heart of a champion.  So, I peddled back to Handy, then to Moffett, then Fairfax and home and while there was a little bit of a mist in my head, for the most part it had cleared.  I made it back to my house and I didn’t quit.  I didn’t think about quitting.  I just kept going.  This was ride one of what will be a countless number of rides this summer and they will have good parts and bad parts, and I will just keep peddling through them all.  That is what I do.  That is who I am.  

This was one ride, that I psyched myself out on, when I went down.  I came home and I ordered da note.  I only order the notebook for one reason.  That is because the cover simply says the following:

KEEP CALM and CLIMB ON!

Maybe I should find one to go next to that says and just keep peddling!

This is Kona not talking to me b/c I was gone for two hours.....

This is Kona saying ok, I will talk to Dad, but just not right now... b/c he weft me alone