July 4, 2013

• The Group Ride

       I wrote this last week, the day after my first group ride in years, but I had to go to work, so I didn't get the chance to edit it until tonight.

       So I finally got in my group bicycle ride last night.  I knew I was at the right place, when I saw a bunch of guys pulling their pants off in the parking lot to reveal the spandex bib shorts underneath and donning their jerseys.  Twenty eight miles and just shy of a thousand feet of climbing with a group of 30 guys (and a girl) whose weight appeared to range between about 120 and 165 compared to my 230, and most of whose bikes cost thousands of dollars more than mine.  I hung with them for the first few miles, then got shot off the back of the pack like a pea squeezed out of its pod.  Luckily the bike shop owner, a very fit 50ish guy, on his first ride back since surgery to repair a torn miniscus, and another girl who might have been 5 years my senior, hung back so I wouldn't get lost.  When I say hung back, though, I mean cruelly kept about 150 yards ahead, so I would have them in sight, while accelerating away if I ever caught up.  They'd wait at stop lights, long enough to catch their breath, 'til I arrived, ask if I was ok, then be off before my wheels ever came to a stop. I spent 51 minutes of my hour and 40 minute ride with my heart rate above 170, which translates for me to the threshold where my heart can just barely pump blood fast enough to resupply the oxygen my muscles were using.  I also spent 13 minutes at or slightly above 180, which is my anaerobic level, or a level where my heart is giving all it has and still can't quite keep the muscles resupplied.  Imagine that burning you get in your thighs when you climb a big set of stairs and then multiply it to a level where you simply zone it out or have to quit.  I offered once, told them to just go on without me, I'd find my way back, but they wouldn't hear of it, so I kept trying despite the fire in my legs and lungs.  About an hour in and halfway up what they call Stair Step Climb (because it climbs, then levels off and climbs again 3 different times, I could feel my energy dropping, so I grabbed a Clif bar from a pocket in the back of my jersey.  I was in my lowest (easiest) gear and was still at the limits of my ability.  Every...single...stroke...of...the...pedals was an exercise in will power and burning, pulsing pain. I grabbed the packet and stuck it between my teeth.  I pedaled a few strokes, 'til I got to a flatter section.  I had just enough energy to tear the package, and stick it back between my teeth.  I pedaled a few more strokes, took a big bite and stuck the rest of the bar back into my jersey pocket.  Then I chewed, and learned a new lesson.  At that level of exertion, chewing an energy bar while grinding up a hill and sucking huge, ragged breaths, takes concentration and effort to make sure the air goes to the lungs and the food down the stomach.  I was the rest of the way up the hill and around the next corner before I was finally able to choke down that mouthful of peanut butter energy bar, squeeze a mouthful of water from my bottle and start picking up speed.  It took a few minutes, but before long, my breathing came a little more regularly and the pain eased back to a measurable level.  Of course, they looked back, saw I was recovering and put the hammer down.  Up and down the hills we alternately ground it out pedal stroke by pedal stroke and flew effortlessly.  The work was rewarded on the downhills when at speeds approaching 40 mph, we swept left, right and left again around the snaking curves, feeling the wind against our faces and keeping it easy on the pedals to conserve energy for the next climb.  The bike shop owner, whose other knee was now giving him trouble, took us on a two mile shortcut from the original planned thirty, but when we got back the lead group had still beaten us back to the shop and were off their bikes and resting.  Why subject myself to this torture and the humiliation of being the slow, fat guy in the bunch?  Three reasons.  First, you never get better if you don't hang around people whose ability exceeds yours.  Second, and you may not understand it if you've never experienced it there is a point during extended, hard exercise, past which your body begins to release endorphines, wonderful chemicals that make you happy and make all the pain go away, at least temporarily.  I would imagine that the endorphine rush is what a drug like heroin would do synthetically, and the first time you experience that natural rush, you can become addicted.  Third, the wonderful feeling of skimming along just above the earth that is almost like flying.

         Today I hurt.  Though I have ridden for years, I found muscles I didn't remember I even had, but I am glad to have taken the opportunity, and now I know of a ride that goes out on one of my days off, so I may be able to work it into my schedule regularly.    I'm really looking forward to the next ride, already.

  • 11:00 pm
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