Friday night was date-night with Ms Katherine, which amounted to dinner at Little Saigon -- she had the special soup, I had the awesome tilapia onion fish -- and then a viewing of Michael Clayton. That's a rental I recommend.
On Saturday, I went for a four hour bike ride with the gang, riding with all kinds of people for a first time, including: Captain Extreme (Matt), my neighbor Sean, Legg, RF, Roxy, Bryan's wife Chris and about 40 others including a guy who was wearing jeans, polo and a pullover while riding his Bianchi. Fantastic! It was like the good old days when the circus came to town.
Oh, and Fred saw me. I'm like a rock star!
As for the ride, it turns out that massive group rides are like an amoeba trying to replicate and then reabsorb itself. The lead pack hammers and stretches the group until it snaps, then recoils upon itself for the tail to catch up. When the tail arrives, the entire group starts riding again. After about two minutes of warming up, the dysfunction cycle begins again after the hammer group has pushed all the lactic acid out of their muscles and start whaling on the pedals again. This cycle repeated every ten minutes until someone finally flatted. Fortunately, we were just rolling into the sleepy town of Waterloo, NE when that happened.
If you've ever been anywhere rural, you've been to Waterloo: it has four bars, a laundry mat and a convenience store. When 40 cyclist roll in, the convenience store is more than likely able to make the month's rent.
After waterloo, there was one final hammerfest that broke the chain for good. I settled in with Bryan, Mike, Legg, Sean and Matt for the ride back to Omaha. In total, about 59 miles in under four hours.
After church on Sunday, Katherine and I cleaned house. Next, I finished building a PVC workbench bike stand from instructables. By the time that I was ready for my 90 minute run, the weather had turned nasty and dropped twenty degrees while picking up 25 mph winds with 34 mph gusts of rain, sleet and snow. I still went out, but didn't enjoy it as much as yesterday's ride. In fact, it wasn't much fun at all.
Which brings me back to yesterday's ride. It was nearly 60 degrees and sunny and I was rolling with friends. I remember passing an oncoming runner with a gaunt look and strain in his face. I saw a little of me in him from years past and felt a twinge of pity for the poor sap. If he only knew how much more enjoyable it is to bike than to run.
Riding is ruining my affair with the mistress Nike. I'm guess I'm becoming more of a triathlete with each passing day.
Goldilocks and the 3 Bears
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Let's pick up the story in roughly the middle of the action.
... Goldilocks first sampled Papa Bear's porridge, "Holy shit, that's hot,"
she cried, toss...
2 years ago
Bike...gooood. Running.....baaad. You are now seeing how much fun it is to let the frame geometry take the brunt that use to fall on your knees & hips. At the end of a ride I feel tired--a good kind of tired. After long runs I hurt the rest of day and next day--requiring advil.
ReplyDeleteHammerfest--good. That is if you are keeping up with the hammer group. Nothing more demoralizing to be the dropped.
My advice, toy with the drop-ees. Pull away. Wait for them to catch up. Help them for a while and slowly pick up pace til you drop 'em again. Sincerely apologize. Repeat cycle.
Remember this saying:
Modesty is the worst form of conceit.
What I like about riding is how far you can go. I mean, I couldn't even begin to trace the route where the streets had no name.
ReplyDeleteHammerfests are relative to the riders you're with. There were plenty of cyclists in this group that could have really put the hurt on me if they wanted to do so. I got caught up in the frenzy more out of basic, animalistic survival instinct than anything else. I didn't bring my compass and would still be out there if I got dropped.
Hey Brady, Jon here (Bryan's Kaos teammate). How did the bike stand turn out? After I saw your post, I am thinking about building one.
ReplyDeleteHey Jon...welcome to steel-cut!
ReplyDeleteI had it all assembled yesterday but didn't have the bolts to anchor it into the workbench. I swung by the hardware store tonight for the bolts and will probably install tomorrow...it's getting late, I'm on a conference call and I don't want to be running the drill after 10pm to wake the wifey up, you know. I'll post an update soon as it's tested.
I missed the first part of the journey to Waterloo, so I have to ask the question: That was a hammerfest? I could see a lot of people in front of me the whole way? My sense of distance must suck, because it didn't seem like we were far back. Probably another one of those riding the rollers all the time things.
ReplyDeleteIf there was a frenzy featuring animalistic survival, I wish I could have been a part of that.