Category Archives: Cycling

I haven’t done a cycling post in a while, not because I haven’t been riding but because the riding hasn’t been all that terribly exciting. But yesterday I did something I haven’t done in quite a while: rode on my mountain bike. I’ve had one for 3 or 4 years, but it generally sits out in the shed; I don’t think I’d been on it for almost 2 years. But the Hobgoblin got them out on Saturday and cleaned and repaired them, so yesterday we took them out to a local park and rode for an hour or so.

I’m not a very good mountain biker, but I shouldn’t be surprised or upset at this, as I have done maybe a dozen off-road rides in my life. But I’m always surprised at how different road and mountain bike riding are; they feel like two completely different sports. Mountain biking is much more intense, I think; I’m worn out after an hour, whereas on the road, an hour is about the shortest time possible to make the ride worthwhile. That the mountain bike is much heavier than the road bike is part of the reason, but also the hills tend to be steeper, and you have to guide yourself over rocks and roots, which takes extra power. A short hill that takes less than a minute to climb can leave me completely out of breath with my heartrate sky-rocketing.

Yesterday was a beautiful day, although cold — cold compared to what I’m used to at least; the last week has been in the 50s and 60s, but yesterday it was barely 40 when we left home. We drove to a park about 5 miles a way, one that is well known among local mountain bikers for having excellent trails. I like the park because it’s got a variety of trails — lots of carriage roads for the unskilled like me, and even more single-track trails for the experts.

As I got on the bike for the first time, I realized that I’d forgotten how, exactly, to fit my shoes into the pedals, and once I’d figured that out, I saw I was heading down a hill steep enough to make me ride the brakes the whole way down. It took me a long time to get back in the groove of mountain bike riding; that hill was actually insignificant, but I forget so easily what I’m capable of and what the bike is capable of, and so I spent quite a while riding around the easiest trails getting the hang of it again.

By the end of the ride, though, I felt skilled enough to try a short bit of single-track. Here things got a lot more interesting, as all the sudden I had to maneuver my way between trees terrifyingly close together and over jagged rock gardens that took up the entire space of the trail and up little hills where I felt my front wheel was in danger of lifting off the ground.

No, I’m not a very good mountain biker. I didn’t crash, but that’s because I got off the bike and walked it over anything too dangerous. Good mountain bikers crash now and then because they try risky things. I even walked my bike around a few menacing puddles and mud patches because I didn’t want to get wet and dirty, which is totally not in the mountain biking spirit.

But I did get an excellent workout. I’m hoping if I keep mountain biking now and then over the winter, I will build up some power that will help me out with racing in the spring. At any rate, it’s nice to do something a little bit different. Okay, it’s not all that different; I was still on a bike after all, but different enough for me.

I think I’m a poor student. Or maybe it’s that I’m an obnoxious one. I’ve been in a number of classes lately, short, half-day things, and each time I find myself resistant, rebellious, and generally annoyed at the procedings. I don’t know if this is simply my (not very nice at times) personality, or if my years as a teacher have made me extremely sensitive to less than perfect teaching. Not that my own teaching is perfect, by any means, let me be clear; it’s just that I’m very tuned in to what’s working and what’s not.

Yesterday evening I went to a bike repair class and had a mixed experience. I think I learned some things, so I’m not unhappy I went, and I got a pretty cool bike repair book, but there’s a lot the class covered that I didn’t really learn because I had a hard time seeing what was going on and I didn’t get the chance to try it out for myself.

The class was at the “novice” level and some of it was review for me; I already know how to fix a flat for example, although I did learn some tricks to make it easier, such as shifting the chain into the smallest cog to make getting the rear wheel back on a bit easier. I had a bad moment when we were practicing fixing a flat and I was struggling to get the tire off the wheel and the instructor, trying to be nice and help me out, took the wheel from me and took the tire off himself. That’s exactly what I don’t need! But he was just trying to help out. And as a teacher, I know it’s hard to figure out when to let students struggle on their own and when to have mercy on them and provide assistance. But as a difficult student, I got irritated at this.

And then we went over some maintenance things like making sure the stem is on tight and adjusting the brakes and the cable tension. This part really irritated me because I didn’t get a chance to try it out myself. But then again, it would have been very hard to have everybody try these things out without enough instructors to really keep an eye on each person to make sure nobody did any damage. We didn’t really have enough time for all that.

The Hobgoblin has very nicely tried to teach me some things about bike repair over the years, and I’ve learned some things from him, but if I was a bad student in the bike repair class, I’m a truly awful student with the Hobgoblin — for lots of complicated reasons, it’s probably best that we not try to teach each other things. It just doesn’t work.

But the good thing about the class is that it’s motivated me to continue to learn more about bike repair and maintenance. I think I really do enjoy working with mechanical things when I have some sense of what I’m doing; up till now I’ve been reluctant to learn much about bikes because how they work seemed so mysterious.

I’m also very bad at regular maintenance; I just don’t like the constant cleaning and fiddling and adjusting and testing that keeping a bike (or a car or a house, for that matter) in good shape requires. This is one area where I’m decidedly lazy. I know that good maintenance can extend the life of bike parts and save me tons of money, but it’s still so hard to drag the bike outside for regular cleanings and to check the tires for wear and do all those things I’m supposed to do.

Anyway, there will be follow-up classes to this one, which I am going to try, partly because I heard they will have only 4 students in them, which will make it a lot easier to really learn stuff.

Yesterday I had one of those rides where everything goes wrong. Almost everything. I set out on my ride around 11:00, planning to ride for an hour, shower quickly, gulp down lunch, and make it to my mid-afternoon class. But 45 minutes into the ride, I got a flat.

This is never good, but today it was only in the mid-40s outside, so I was worried about cold. And it’s hard to change a tire when your fingers are a bit numb. But I got started. Another rider from my racing team rode by and stopped to see if I was okay. I said yeah, no problem, I’ve got all the equipment I need. He stuck around for a while, suggesting that he could wait until I finished so we could ride into town together, but I urged him to go on – partly because I wanted to be nice and keep him from getting cold but mainly because I’m slow at fixing flats and would have felt embarrassed to have him hanging around while I fumble with the tube and the tire levers. So he rode on.

I got the tube in the tire and was ready to use my CO2 cartridge to fill it up – those cartridges are so much easier to use than a regular old bike pump and are easier to carry – but it wouldn’t work. I tried, but in the process of trying, I let all the CO2 out into the air, where it did me no good.

So, I was stuck 4.5 miles from home without a way to fix my flat. I don’t carry a cell phone on these rides, although even if I had one, I didn’t have anyone to call. The Hobgoblin was in class and couldn’t come get me, and I couldn’t think of anyone else who would be home.

So I walked. I watched what felt like hundreds of SUVs pass me and construction vehicles and pick-up trucks, and I thought oh, why don’t you stop and ask if I’m okay! Because I’m not! I thought about hitch-hiking, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I kept hoping a police car would pass me so I could wave it down and get a ride, but no luck.

I ended up walking 2.5 miles. Walking 2.5 miles isn’t normally a big deal for me, even with a bicycle at my side, but I was wearing those fancy cycling shoes that don’t bend in order to get maximum efficiency as you ride and that have plastic cleats that snap into the pedal. So basically I had horrible walking shoes. I didn’t have a normal stride with the stiff soles and the cleats get slippery on the pavement.

At mile 2.5, though, things got better – I came across a group of men working on a construction project, just hanging out next to a couple of trucks, and I said any chance you can give me a ride? One of the guys put my bike in the back of his truck and drove me the rest of the way home. He told me how his secretary rides also, and how she’ll be thrilled to know he helped out a cyclist because normally he gives her a hard time about her riding. He doesn’t understand the point of it.

It turns out I didn’t mess up with the CO2 cartridge, which I thought I had, since I’ve had trouble getting those things to work in the past – the trouble was that I had the wrong kind of tube. I needed one with a longer stem. Even with a bike pump, I wouldn’t have been able to pump up that tube.

I did make it to class on time.

I can’t have great rides without having some terrible ones, I suppose. And this one wasn’t so bad. If I lived in a different time and were a man, I think I’d get a kick out of hitchhiking – there’s something about traveling and not knowing exactly what’s going to happen that I find appealing. And that’s a little bit true about every bicycle ride – most times they are uneventful, but other times, I have no idea how I’ll get home.

Yesterday I rode for two hours, and I had to wear both knee warmers and arm warmers for the first time. This is a sign of cold days to come, and of all the layering I’ll have to do in an effort to keep warm. I’m going to try to ride regularly all winter so I can be in shape for the races in March, but, boy, let me tell you, riding yesterday when it was 58 degrees out felt cold, and I’m not looking to riding when it’s 28. Or 18. I might draw the line about there. At that point, I can ride indoors on the trainer, much as I hate having to do that.

Riding in the winter is complicated because I have what feels like endless layers of cold-weather clothing. All this takes forever to put on as I’m getting ready to ride, but it’s also difficult to figure out exactly what clothing I’ll need. 30 degrees on a sunny, windless day feels very different than 30 degrees on a cloudy, windy one. If I put on too much clothing and get hot, I can take some of it off, but then I’ll have to carry it around, which is annoying, and if I don’t put on enough, I put myself in serious danger of frostbite or hypothermia.

And I have a lot of options for what to wear on the bike (probably more options than I have for my non-cycling clothing!): I always wear cycling shorts, a jersey, socks, shoes, cycling gloves, and a helmet, but to these I can add arm warmers, knee warmers, tights, tank tops, t-shirts, a thin fleece jacket, a heavy fleece jacket, a nylon jacket, thin long-fingered gloves, thick long-fingered gloves, thin shoe covers, medium shoe covers, thick shoe covers, thick socks to cover my regular cycling socks, an ear band, and a hat. The Hobgoblin plans on ordering both of us balaklavas for those really cold days, and I might look into battery-powered shoe-warmers, as all those socks and shoe covers still don’t keep my toes warm. I need some long-sleeved t-shirts also, I think.

And in what combination do I wear these things? If I wear a jacket, do I need arm warmers? If I have shoe covers, do I need two pairs of socks? Thin gloves under thick ones, or thick ones all by themselves?

And I’ll frequently make trade-offs. For example, I hate wearing knee warmers (they go from mid-thigh, under my shorts, to mid-calf, but they frequently slide down my legs and then I’m out on the bike trying to hitch them back up and looking like an idiot), so I figure I’ll wear a lot of layers up top so I don’t need them on my legs. And sometimes that works. Or I may wear my tights over my shorts, but then not have many layers up top, in an effort to avoid those knee warmers again. Or I’ll figure if I have a jacket on, I might not need the super-heavy gloves, or if I wear a hat under my helmet, I can get by without the jacket because I won’t have all that heat escaping from my head.

You see how complicated this all is? It can take me as long to get ready for the ride as it does to do the ride itself. But the worst thing — the absolute worst thing — is when I’m all ready, I’ve got all my layers on and I’m walking out the door, and I realize that I forgot to put my heart rate monitor on. The heart rate monitor is a strap that goes around my chest right next to my skin. So I have to peel a bunch of layers off, put the thing on, and start all over again.

How long until spring?

On my last century (by “century” I mean a 100-mile bike ride — no, this isn’t a post on my last 100 years of life or a report on how the 21st century is going for me), I actually only rode 98 miles. The course wasn’t quite as long as they said it was. I really don’t like planning on riding 100 miles and only getting to 98 — it’s not quite the same as 100 is it? But as it was raining that day, and I’d been riding in the rain for 4 hours or so, I left it at 98. Today, however, when I got near the end and found I’d only rode 95 miles, I turned off the course to add some miles before heading to the car, in hopes of reaching 100. And then I did a few laps around the parking lot to make sure my bike computer reached the magic number, which it eventually did. So, yay! A real century!

Unfortunately, when I got back to the car, I found out that the Hobgoblin hadn’t had a good ride. I won’t describe that, as he has written about it, but rest assured that no crashes were involved, and he and his bike are doing okay.

As for me, I set out on my own, fully expecting to ride by myself the entire time, but somehow I fell in with this guy around mile 10 or so, and we rode the rest of the way together. It was nice to have a partner; often I don’t find anyone who rides at my pace, but this guy did, and we talked off and on, which made the time livelier. And when I got a flat tire, he helped me change it. While I can certainly change a tire all on my own (I’d be highly embarrassed if I couldn’t!), I’m not that fast, so I’ll let someone faster help me out, so we can get back on the bikes sooner. After that, I had no troubles whatsoever. It was a beautiful day, sunny and in the 70s, maybe hitting 80, I’m not sure, and I realized that since it’s probably the nicest day we’ll see for a while, it was a very good thing I could be outside for most of it.

Now I think I’ve reached the end of my riding season. A century is a good way to end, a culmination of hours of training, a big event that requires a lot of effort and feels like a worthy accomplishment.

But don’t think this means I’ll be off my bike until spring — oh, no! It means I’ll be off my bike for a few weeks. My races begin in March, which means I’d like to start my serious race training in December to be ready for the March races, and I need to do 1 or 2 months of preparatory riding before serious training, which pushes things back to October. I have grand plans for training and what I’ll accomplish at the races next year, although I realize that it’s easy to make training plans for January and February when it’s only September and still in the 70s outside and I’ve forgotten what it feels like to ride when it’s in the 20s and snowy. This year I won’t be wimpy about cold weather training, I’m sure of it!

We shall see.

Litlove wrote a great post on creativity and play recently, and I’ve been thinking about how cycling is a form of play for me. In a way my cycling isn’t a good example at all, since many aspects of it are not in the least “playful” — the fact that I measure so much of what I do on the bike, that I’m training and I plan my training carefully, that on the bike I’m performing the same motions over and over again, and I’m frequently out on the same routes again and again. I have a bike computer that sits on my handlebars where I can read what my heart rate is at the moment, and my speed, and cadence, and a whole bunch of other things. There doesn’t seem to be much room for the creativity of play — it’s more about repetitive motion and numbers. Litlove says that play is “open-ended, unconstrained, free from debilitating rules, mutually engaging (if in involves another)” and that isn’t really what my riding is about.

Except in another sense that IS what it’s about, because what happens with my mind isn’t the same as what happens with my body. Even though my body is doing the same thing over and over again — pushing the pedals, turning the handle bars — my mind is free to wander anywhere. I spend a lot of hours on the bike, but I rarely find myself bored. Even riding in a century, when I’m on the bike for 6 or 7 hours, I don’t get bored up until the very end when my mind starts to focus in on my aching body. When I’m riding I often get in what feels like a meditative space, where I’m not really thinking of anything at all. I may have a song in my head, I may occasionally think ahead to what I’m doing next in my day, but mostly I’m just … thinking nothing. The very fact that my body is performing a repetitive motion helps free up my mind, I think; the constraint of being on the bike creates space to just exist in.

I think my mind accomplishes something while I’m out playing on rides; it doesn’t solve problems, or come up with creative new ideas, or reach fabulous insights, but my mind does a lot of letting go — letting go of worries, mostly. I almost always come back from a ride feeling much better, much happier, much less anxious, much more energetic.

Litlove says that play is “a state of creativity that is of necessity inconclusive.” Riding my bike is in a sense all about conclusiveness: I’m out there in order to do the ride and get back home again, in the fastest time possible, or in order to gain a certain amount of strength and power. But in another sense, I’m out there and have nothing to do with my mind, except for the minimal need to pay attention to traffic and the road (actually, my mind tends to wander so much I can have trouble with this, and have been known to let my bike wander off into the grass), and am free to think or not to think, whatever I want. My mind has no goal or task to accomplish. Thinking of riding in these terms helps me understand why I love it so much.

The good news about my century ride: it rained only about half of the time! Or maybe it was 2/3. I was chilly, but not dangerously cold! I had only one awkward run-in with an annoying guy! My neck and shoulders are killing me, but I can still move!

Actually, for all the rain and the temperatures in the 60s (60s make very nice riding weather — when it’s dry), the ride felt okay. It was only in the last 10 miles or so that I started to get impatient to get back to the car, and I know from experience that the last 10 miles of whatever length of ride I’m doing is the time I get impatient to finish up. I rode pretty slowly for me, averaging 14.5 miles an hour, although I think part of the reason for that is my reluctance to take the downhills fast when it’s pouring rain and the road is slippery. I learned all too recently what it’s like to scrape the pavement. That and I struggle to climb hills, needing stronger quad muscles. And since most of this course was either uphill or downhill, I wasn’t going all that fast ever. Do you know how badly rain can hurt when it hits your face when you’re going downhill at 30 mph? Pretty badly, I’ve found.

I rode most of the way on my own, and while having another rider along with me can make the time go faster, I like being able to keep my own pace. Riding 100 miles is stressful enough, but to try to keep up with another rider or to ride slower than I’d like and thus be out on the course longer, just adds to the stress. And until the very end, I’m not bored in the least; I’m happy to look around me, to think whatever I want, or, more often, to think nothing at all. I get into a meditative state when riding, where the most that’s in my head is a song. I think this is one of the things that keeps me riding so much — it lets me escape my brain for a while.

According to my heart rate monitor/bike computer, I burned 3,331 calories on the ride yesterday. Just think of all the eating that allows me to do! Okay, it’s because I believe that cycling equals more opportunities to eat that I’m not skinny. That, and genetics.

The encounter with the annoying guy: I’m riding along and two guys pass me (we ended up passing each other over and over again throughout the day), and one of them turns to me and says, “How old are you?” I get annoyed and say, “Hey! How old are you?” He takes a while to answer, appearing to think that he’s justified in asking me but not required to answer the question himself. He expresses amazement that I’m out doing the ride and I seem so young. This makes no sense to me. I figure since I’m out alone, I’m better off not being completely hostile, so once he tells me his age, I tell him mine, and things pretty much end there. I just make a point of not riding near him again.

The next century is three weeks from today. I’d like to do it, but I’ve already decided that if rain is in the forecast, I’m not.

I’ve written before about being a woman rider/racer who’s frequently riding/racing with men, sometimes with no other women along, sometimes with just a few. Overall, my experience with my particular club has been very positive. But I recently read Fendergal’s post on her experience riding with men and recognized what she was talking about: men who compliment women for being strong even when their performance falls below that of the men, men who won’t let a woman pass them but insist on jumping on her wheel or passing her right back, and most of all, men who offer unsolicited advice to women riders, assuming that they don’t really know what they’re doing. These things have happened to me before, and I find it annoying, although mostly I just do my best to ignore it.

The best response is to be strong enough to leave all those complimenting, advice-giving men behind, which is what I’d love to be able to do, but, alas, am not yet good enough to do. It’s tricky for me sometimes when dealing with people who give advice, because I’m a new enough rider to need it, and I have learned things from other riders offering unsolicited advice. So I have to figure out whether a person giving me advice is doing so for obnoxious reasons — because he figures he knows much better how to ride than I do and that he can condescend to offer some tips — or whether the advice is well-intentioned and useful. And getting compliments on my riding is quite nice, and there’s nothing wrong with compliments unless they have the wrong subtext: “you’re strong — for a woman.”

I’m glad to have found Fendergal’s blog because it’s fun to read about another woman’s experiences with training and racing, and I’ve been happy to find Itchy Bits as well — a blog by a woman who’s not racing now, although she has in the past, and trains seriously. I wonder if there are other women cyclists blogging out there?? Fendergal says the ratio of men to women in cycling is 10-to-1, so we need some solidarity.

It was a gorgeous day for cycling; when I set off on my ride it was mid-60s, and when I returned, mid-70s, low humidity, clear skies. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. So it’s good I decided to do a long ride: 65 miles, a little over 4 hours. The route takes me north, skirting a small city at the beginning, and then heading up into small towns and countryside. I had views of fields and woods and farms. I like riding from one town to another; somehow that makes me feel like I’m covering some significant distance (well, my muscles remind me of that too). After the small city, the only part of the ride that isn’t pretty, I rode through or skirted by six towns, and one of those I rode through twice, once on the way out and once returning. The town where I stopped to refill my water bottles was quintessential New England, with a prep school, antique shops, art galleries, pretty colonial houses, the white church and steeple, and the Appalachian Trail running nearby. I didn’t linger long, however; my muscles cool down fast and getting back on the bike can be hard.

I’m training to ride my first century (100-mile ride) on August 27 — this is an organized ride with a set route, food and water stops, and lots of people. I’ve done this ride 3 or 4 times before; I’ve planned to do it every year for the last 6 years or so, but sometimes other things get in the way — bad weather, fatigue, busyness. So that means I have two more weeks to train. My plan is to do 3 or 4 short, easy rides this coming week, to ride another long one, this time 80 miles, next weekend, and then to take it easy the week before the century. I’ve found that if I do at least a couple rides in the 60-80 mile range, I’m fine. There are two more centuries in September I’d like to do; one of them has a 125-mile ride that I’ve done once before. We’ll see about that one.

One of the reasons I began racing is that I couldn’t stand being a spectator-wife at races any longer. There were other reasons, of course — wanting to try it out, because it looked like fun, to improve as a cyclist — but I did get tired of seeing so many husbands/boyfriends out racing and wives/girlfriends on the sidelines watching. Compared to men, there aren’t many women who race. Those who do almost always got into it because of their husbands/boyfriends who also race. This is certainly true in my case. I’m not certain why there are so few women who race. I’m guessing women aren’t pushed to be competitive and aren’t encouraged to devote a lot of time to athletics in the way that men are; even though it seems like this dynamic must be changing, it’s still there. I think some women either enjoy riding or might enjoy riding on the recreational level, but don’t consider putting the extra time into it to begin racing. Or they don’t have the extra time — they have childcare responsibilities, perhaps, that keep them busy.

And I’m happy I began racing. But now I’m getting tired of it. I think I will pick it up again next season, but right now I’m beginning to feel burnt-out and I need a break. I had the chance to race last Tuesday evening at my local weekly criterium, but I decided to sit out. I’m tired of pushing myself so hard. The other riders, I think, were improving faster than I was, so it was becoming harder and harder to keep up with them, and I’d had enough of working my butt off to stay with pack for only part of the race, sometimes for as little as a lap or two. There are some riders who are at my level or even below it who are still out there racing, so perhaps this is a failure of will or drive on my part. But this is supposed to be fun, and if I’m not having fun, it doesn’t make sense to keep doing it.

So I’m back to being a spectator. I went to the race last Tuesday to watch the Hobgoblin ride (and I like watching him race, don’t get me wrong), and I sat around with wives and girlfriends and filled them in on how cycling races work. I felt the need to tell a couple of the women that I’m usually in the race myself, but I wasn’t happy with myself for that. Why do I have to make a big deal out of it?

When it comes to difficult, challenging things like racing, it’s hard for me to figure out if I should push myself to do it or not. Which do I like least, sitting around watching a race and knowing I could have been in it, or going through the pain of racing? If I keep racing, will I be glad I stuck with it, or will get even more tired and burnt-out? I’ve heard women racers say that they need more women out there on the race course to increase the level of competition — it’s no good being in a race with a really small field of riders — and I really want to help them out. But wanting to help the cause of women racers only gets me so far. I need to feel the interest in racing for its own sake.

I’m glad there is next season to look forward to: I can tell myself I’ll have recovered the drive to race by then and in the meantime I just need to rest. I’ll still be riding — I haven’t lost the desire to do that — but what I want is to ride at my own pace, without the pressure of keeping up with someone else.

My legs ache. I’m glad to be home, sitting in my study in the air conditioning with some ice water, catching up on blogging.

The race today was a road race back in my old neighborhood, run by my old cycling club. It’s a really pretty area, with beautiful countryside and great riding roads, which is the only reason I was sorry at all to move, 1 1/2 years ago. My new place is good for riding too, but it has more traffic and more hills.

Anyway, the bad news is that the Hobgoblin crashed again. The good news is that he’s okay (and we think his bike is okay too). I’m sure he’ll write about it, so I’ll leave it at that and let you read him.

As for me, I did just about as well as I expected, which is to say, I didn’t finish with the pack, but I stuck with them for a decent length of time. My race was 30 miles, 2 laps of 14 miles each and a two-mile straight uphill finish. The course, excluding the uphill finish, is only fairly hilly; it has some flat sections, but a few hills that are just long enough to cause me trouble. I’m learning that my weakness is hills; I can keep up with the pack fine on flat stretches and even short hills, but those long ones wear me out. I was feeling perfectly fine until a long hill near the end of the first lap when I fell behind a bit, although that time I was able to catch up at the top of the hill. Then, a couple miles into the second lap, I fell behind again on another long hill. This time another woman who had also fallen behind raced on ahead when we got to the top of the hill, and I was able to grab her wheel and follow her back to the main pack. So far so good.

But around mile 21, we hit another long hill, and that was that. So I was by myself for the last 9 miles and very tired. I was very close to skipping the final hill, but kept going anyway, and while I’m glad I finished the entire race, let me tell you that hill was no fun. I was going up it at about 5 mph in the worst parts, barely fast enough to stay upright. I was starting to get worried about heat stroke and thinking I might just fall over. Somehow, I didn’t, and I finished, and there were a few people cheering at the top, and I was glad it was over and feeling just fine about the whole thing. I was all out of water at that point, and no one had water at the top, so I almost immediately rode back down the hill and back to the car.

This will almost certainly be the last weekend race I do this year; after this point, the races are mostly too far away. I will still have the local Tuesday night races, however, and a new goal — to get ready for the centuries (100 mile rides) that begin in late August and continue through September. It’s time to start piling on the miles.

This has been a week for trying new things. First, I finally went on one of my club training rides. I’ve lived in this area for 1 1/2 years and it’s taken me that long to get around to it. It’s just difficult to join a new group when there’s no way of knowing what kind of rides they do, how fast they are, whether they leave people behind to fend for themselves or whether they wait for people to catch up. So I’ve done almost all of my training by myself. But the group ride turned out to be a lot of fun, which shouldn’t have surprised me. When I finally do get around to doing the things I’ve been putting off, I almost always have a good time and wonder what took me so long.

We rode about 22 miles. For the first half of the ride or so, we stayed together, or at least the faster people waited at the tops of hills for the slower ones. After that we split up into smaller groups — not purposely or in a planned way, but letting people find other riders who were at a similar level. I had my usual dilemma, the only downside of group rides, which is that I’m slower than the faster riders and faster than the slower riders, so I end up either working my butt off trying to keep up with the faster ones and generally failing after a little while, or getting a little bit frustrated riding with the slower ones. I rode with the faster riders for a while, and then by myself for a bit when I could no longer keep up, and then three of us stuck in the middle between the two groups joined up and rode back together, more or less.

The other new thing I tried was a time trial. This is a race where you have a set distance and you ride it as fast as you can all by yourself, as opposed to other kinds of races where you are in a pack and can draft on others. Our club held an informal time trial yesterday evening; we were sort of competing against each other but the real purpose of it was training, not competition. Our distance was just under five miles, which is short enough that it meant we could ride it all out — as fast as we possibly could, since it wasn’t going to go on for long. No need to conserve energy. We lined up in a row at the start line, and then went off at 30 second intervals.

I was nervous about this partly because I’d never tried it before and partly because I still felt tired from the previous night’s group ride. But I had a great time and thought I did pretty well; I was able to work hard the whole time — with a heart rate in the 170s — and keep a decent pace of 21 mph. I was easily the slowest rider out there, but I’m used to that — at this stage in my riding, I’m faster than your average recreational cyclist and slower than your average racer. But people know I’m new to racing, and so I get praise and encouragement just for trying and working hard. I can’t complain about that. One of my goals was to get passed by as few people as possible: since we left at 30 second intervals, if you’re fast, it’s not that hard to catch the rider in front of you. I got passed by one rider right away, and by another one at the very end; considering that there were 9 or so riders behind me and that I was the least experienced racer, I thought that wasn’t too bad.

Since it’s just you out there, this kind of race involves a lot of mental work — you have to keep yourself going, there’s no one else out there to pace you or push you. That’s one of the hardest things about cycling, I think — the mental work. It’s easier to train your body than it is your mind.