I've always liked cycling. At least I thought I did. I mean, I've always owned a bike. And I rode sporadically all my life. In later years this has meant a mostly mellow cruise down a forest service road alone on my mountain bike. Though I've always considered myself a hiker first, a quick hour ride on the bike was a good way throughout the years to get a fast effective workout along with some sunshine and fresh air.
And I've always really enjoyed my rides. I've always returned feeling rejuvenated. More than once, I found myself thinking, “If something makes you feel this good, you should probably do more of it.” In the back of my mind, I always thought I could have been a pretty good cyclist if I took it seriously and have even daydreamed about someday, somewhere doing on of those multi-day bicycle tours perhaps through the wine country in Napa Valley, or a rail trail across Idaho, or even the annual Ride Across Iowa.
Like a lot of things, it was a nice daydream. Something to put on one's “bucket list” with no real plan or urgency. Some day. Maybe. It'd be fun, wouldn't it?
Then the pandemic hit. Work became my entire life for a while. Not only was it exhausting, mentally and physically, but it drained something out of me. I realized quite suddenly that I did not like my job. I mean everybody says that, right? But for me, I realized it went deeper than that. I really didn't like my job. I was completely living for the sporadic day off. Furthermore, I decided I was living a spiritually poor life.
Now in the movies, when the hero comes to this profound realization, he does something dramatic. He quits his job. He goes on a quest. He joins the Peace Corps. He starts a soup kitchen.
I bought a bicycle.
I'd been looking for a while causally out of curiosity. I kind of knew what bike I wanted. Something that could handle both roads and dirt. Gravel bikes they were being called. And suddenly they were a very hot segment of the cycling industry. Of course being the new darling on the block, they were all rather pricey and, during the pandemic, forget about buying anything used. Bicycles, kayaks, backpacks, tents-- everybody suddenly wanted them. I had been toying with the idea of buying a cheap old steel-framed ten speed and converting it to a gravel bike, but, due to my limited mechanical skills, it'd have to be the right bike. I was surfing Craig's List one day, marveling yet again how people could spend car money on bicycles, when the perfect bike fell into my lap. It was a 6-year-old cyclocross bike, hardly ridden, in my size, with disc brakes for under $500 dollars. And it was in Flagstaff. To make a long story short, I dropped everything and drove to Flag..
It's hard to describe how excited I was. I was giddy. Suddenly all these doors seemed to be open. Yes, I could ride across Iowa. Yes, I could ride cross country. Yes, I could join a club. In fact, somewhat serendipitously, the day after I picked up the bike, a Facebook post hit my news feed. They were accepting registration for the Chino Grinder—a 60 mile gravel race not far from my house. And, get this, it was the day before my 60th birthday. It seemed perfect. It's give me all summer to train and then I could ride 60 miles on my 60th birthday. I signed up without giving it any other consideration.
And then I started riding. Soon, very soon, like the first mile, reality booted me in the butt.
Riding was hard. Hills were hard. Riding long distances hurt. Wind sucks. Those were all the obvious things. But I also discovered there was a real learning curve from transitioning from causal mountain biking to gravel riding. Skinny tires just felt unsafe and rough terrain seemed to throw this new bike for a loop. My first few rides found me in deep trouble. I was blowing tires left and right. One day I went through all my spares out in the middle of nowhere and had to call my brother to rescue me. I was riding alone and learning by trial and error. Or maybe that was trail and error.
Slowly I started to learn the bike. And I was also beginning to learn how much harder gravel riding was than road. 6O miles is a decent but doable distance on a paved road. On gravel, on the mountain grades this race was going to be run on, it would be hell. Some of the riders, I was learning were insanely fit—like ultra-marathon fit. There would be pro teams at this race. Unwittingly, I'd signed up for one of the hardest events in the state. Not one to back down from a challenge or admit that I was wrong, however, I vowed to just train harder. Shame and embarrassment were things I was used to anyway.
About the same time I was seeing a glimmer of hope, I cut the end of my finger off at work. I won't dwell on the whole subject except to say that it set my training back and highlighted, in a major way, my main obstacle in getting fit. Work. Being a 59-year-old man and working a physical, fast-paced, stressful job 40-48 hours a week was bad enough. Add some hard, physical athletic training on top of that and the result was not always pretty. I vowed to ride every single day off—but sometimes I would work 10-11 day stretches in a row. There were days when I got on that bike and wanted to cry. I went to bed with Charley-horses. And Charley-cows. I developed a strange twitch in my thigh.
I joined a bike club. I'd seen these geezers rolling around town, so one day when I felt particularly low energy, I showed up to ride with them. A bunch of 70-year-olds. It'd be like a rest day. Well, I found out there's a term for old cyclists—GODS. Gnarly Old Dudes. These guys are retired and ride every day rain or shine. They proceeded to kick my ass all over the town. As I struggled to keep up with them, I felt completely overwhelmed again and wondered, not for the first time, what the hell I was doing. How had I managed to sign up for a long distance endurance race when I couldn't even keep up with the local townies? For their part, they were very encouraging. They ignored my cheap bike, my non-cycling clothes and told me, “You really hung in there.”
I was hanging in there. But it was a struggle. Summer came on hot and strong. With temps in the 100s on a daily basis, rides had to be at the crack of dawn or required a drive to Flagstaff. The forest was completely shut down and off limit for weeks. So it was only highway rides for a while. But for every grim, I-don't-want-to-be-here ride, there were breakthrough rides. I rode the fifty mile Lake Mary Loop in Flagstaff. It was something I'd seen other cyclists do, had heard about it for years, always wistfully thought about doing it one day, and now, suddenly, I was doing it. And it wasn't horribly difficult. When the forest opened up, I did another long loop through the forest near Flagstaff; up through Fry Park to Woody Mountain Road past Roger's Lake, back to Flagstaff and down 89-A to my truck. It was a wondrous morning riding through forest and mountain all alone in the woods...
I was getting better. But the improvement was slow and hard won. The facts were, I just couldn't do it with just a sporadic day off. August rolled along, seven weeks to the race and I knew I had to up my game. I set up a trainer in my office, hung my mountain bike from it and started wailing away on it after work. I set it up in front of the TV in my office and turned on some YouTube videos of biking Switzerland, Spain and Italy. Indoors with no AC (that's a whole other blog), I was soon dripping sweat everywhere and getting Charley-horses in places I never knew existed. It was a new form of hell, but, as it turned out, it was the missing piece. Almost immediately I began to see results. Less than two weeks after I started my new regimen, I shattered my personal best on my training run to Sedona. I averaged almost 16 mph on my cheap gravel bike on the pavement.
Damn if I wasn't getting fit. But I was also feeling guilty. The monsoon rains came and with it a flood of yard work. Mowing, weed-whacking, and weeding. The rain gutters I'd put up slap-dash were a disaster. There were all kinds of home improvement projects that I'd either ignored, postponed or butchered. My brother needed some help but I mostly ignored him for the summer. I'd gone six months without doing a damn thing around the house. My wife was supportive and showing a lot patience with my new found obsession but... There is a real dark side to personal goals and self-improvement that bloggers and social media influencers aren't going to tell you about. Fact is: bucket list goals are often very self-centered and there is a very real price to pay for that.
Still, I kept at it. Thus far I had done a good job of pacing myself. I was slowly ramping my rides up but hadn't bitten off anything I couldn't chew. As the date of race approached, however, I found myself burning out. I was working a lot and was, frankly, getting sick of the bike. I decided I would spend the week before the race off the bike. My plan was to take a little backpack the weekend before, relax and enjoy nature, and spend the rest of the week resting. That was the plan. The hike to West Clear Creek's Maiden Falls, however, turned out to be a real ass-kicker. I assumed that the year spent cycling would leave me in awesome hiking shape. Turns out they use very different muscles. The hike was grueling-- up and down, swimming, boulder-hopping, tree-crawling. When I returned from the hike I was so sore I could hardly move the next day. Or the next day. The third and fourth day were somewhat better, but certain movements of my legs still caused bolts of pain.
Today, I am sitting at my desk finishing this story. Earlier this morning I went for a short ride and... it wasn't pleasant. As I sit here slathered in Icy-Hot painkiller balm, I am wondering if I just blew six months of training on a bad decision or will everything feel better tomorrow? Doesn't matter I guess. Tomorrow is the race and I am going to give it my best—whatever that means at this point. No matter how it turns out, I have learned some important lessons.
Beware of what you wish for. Beware of the god-damn bucket list.
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