Monday 18 January 2010

Room for Both

Apparently today is my day to yawn. Yawning, as you may know, is one of the most contagious things in the world. Some even say that yawning is so contagious that even hearing or reading the word "yawn" can cause one to yawn. Have you yawned yet? I just did it again.

So far, I've survived riding on the trainer. All of the riding has been wicked focused and the charts are graphs are looking splendid indeed. The weekend of riding outside made me anxious to get more outside miles in. The dynamic of riding for real has dimensions that riding inside can't match. The benefit of riding inside is, to me, unquestioned, but the need to ride outside is too. You get to dictate when to put down what kind of power and for how long when you're inside, but the rock doesn't care if your rest interval isn't over yet. The rock says "if you want to get by me, you're going to need to throw down to do it." The rocks, the roots, the muddy parts, the snowy parts, they all say the same thing. It's like the only thing they know how to say.

My chest muscles are tired, too. When was the last time your chest muscles got tired on the trainer? My back and shoulders and upper arms also got a lot of work in. There's a whole lot of stuff going on right there that a power meter would never get to read. I can ride for x minutes at y power when I'm on the trainer, but when I'm giving a lot of body english to stay on a workable line and finessing the bejesus out of the drive train to keep the wheels on the ground and moving forward the scoreboard is going to read a lot less even though the offense is playing even harder. The power meter may say 0 when you are going down a hill but if I needed to feel rested and ready to go after three minutes I would sure rather spend that time rolling along at 220 or so watts than trying to keep the rubber side down while trying to keep up with the Terrible and his enormous wheels, standing up while weighting and unweighting the wheels, bouncing all over stuff. It's all a very long-winded way of saying that man does not live solely by intervals or random mud-soaked mountain bike rides (or inappropriately fast group rides in January, or any of the other things we do). There's room for both.

Lance Armstrong is a copy cat. I'm flattered that he follows me as closely as he does, but you know, it gets to be a bit much. Respect to his people, though. It really brings "no stone unturned" to a new level when you reach out that far and consider "okay, here's some rapidly aging hack in DC, what's he been doing to crawl out of the bowels of the local Cat 4 ranks?" You're welcome, Lance. I hope it helps.

Sky won their first race with a one-two. It could get a little tiresome if they prove to be that good. There was an opinion article on CyclingNews about a week ago that was just the biggest hand job you've ever seen, all about how Sky had reinvented the model of how to do everything. Even the way they wipe their asses; they had a team of proctologists come in and examine the way that a pro cyclist should wipe his ass and found that, in addition to the myriad other things they had screwed up, the Italians and French would never win a race more significant than Tyson's Corner because they were doing their paperwork all wrong. The article got pulled pretty quickly, it was so in the tank for the home team (the author was a Brit), it was ridiculous. When you grow up in NY (or the area) you are either a Mets-Jets-Islanders (NJ corollary is Mets-Jets-Devils) fan or a Yankees-Giants-Rangers fan. There is no crossover, it is not allowed. Sky is on the Yankees-Giants-Rangers axis. I am on the other axis. You don't get to celebrate as many victories but I still like this side of the fence.

A couple of my favorite riders are on Sky (Gerrans and Boss), and it'll have to do to continue to like the individuals while disliking the institution with which they are associated. That's another theme going on right now. I have a lot of clothing that I used to wear while I was with a bunch of people I really really like, but now I look at that clothing and the institution it represents just bums me out. Oh well, that's life. You can usually expect this kind of shit to happen. We have this bag from a clothing store that has a bunch of sayings on it, one of which is "jealously usually acts the opposite of the way you want it to" or something like that. The same can be said about talking shit about people. It makes the small look smaller.

2 comments:

Cliff said...

I appreciate how you used the word myriad correctly.

Post some charts and stuff!

TerribleTerry said...

Geez man....I can't even read your blog without catching something contagious.