Force

Good days feel like flying. Bad days, days when you're off and the elements or the gods (whichever you happen to believe in most strongly) are not with you, it's like swimming through porridge with your hands tied behind your back. The constant struggle to keep your head clear and to keep yourself high and above all of the crappy things - the rain, the wind that threatens to blow you into the guard rails, not seeing any other cyclists and wondering if you're mad to even be trying this - is taxing.

You fight by trying to keep your pedal stroke as smooth as possible. You put your forearms over your brake hoods and bend over the handlebars on the flats, hoping that that'll cut down on the wind resistance. You remind yourself that you've been through far worse weather than this, and at least you don't have someone bitching and moaning behind you about what a bad time they're having. You think of anything that will keep your mind off the current circumstances - yummy leftovers in the fridge for lunch, Oscar Pereiro in a Speedo, different ways you would spend the money if you won the lottery. But when the body fails, there's not much you can do.

It's easy to think of power as something that someone wields over you, a thing that people use to control each other. It's easy to forget that power also talks about our own ability to do things and get things out of the way. But power doesn't come from outside sources: you have to generate your own power. And it's on days like today that I fail miserably, somehow. I look up the Alto de León and it certainly doesn't look like anything that's beyond my power - but I cannot get my legs in action long and hard enough to make it work.

My heart rate doesn't respond. Mentally I feel like someone's replaced my brain with a bag of M&Ms. I want to take this on, and if I were to give it enough and work at it hard enough I know that, eventually, I'd get my ass up the pass. But it's just not there today. Nothing is responding. Someone, somewhere, between the turnoff off the M607 and Cerceda, has kicked a plug out of one of the walls of my mind and I cannot turn over. I'm not dying the way I did up the back end of Morcuera two weeks ago, but there's no mind to get over the matter because today is suffering from a distinct lack of mind.

I start to wrack my brains. What the hell has happened to me this time? Was it the antihistamine? Was it not having pasta at lunch yesterday? Was it only getting six and a half hours of sleep? The weather? My own attitude? Have I somehow let myself down on this? I come up blank. The only thing that I can think of is how dodgy my stomach was this morning -- did the diarrhea cause dehydration? Or is....

It doesn't matter. The force is just not there today.

Having debated whether it's fair to bother him at home on a Saturday, I send Yago an apologetic SMS asking for advice. He calls two minutes later: "Hombre, no pasa nada. Sometimes it just take a little longer for things to kick in. Try it and if, after five or ten minutes, you see that you're not responding, give it a break. The weather sucks and it's rainy."

This is what I love about having a coach: it's such a relief to have someone who manages to keep his head on when I don't know where the hell mine is.

So I try the Alto, and what little there is left of my brain is somewhat aggravated to see the route and know, Damn, on a better day, I could SO do this. But it's a mountain pass. It's not going anywhere, and it's not like it's the only shot I have at climbing this.

I cut off at Km 51 just as my stomach lurches again. No time to go to San Lorenzo, and anyway, it's better to go to Villalba, where the two commuter lines converge and the trains will be more frequent.

I'm so spent can't even be bothered to freak out about Quebrantahuesos. All I can think of is Michael Barry's description of how Allan Davis spent the better part of Wednesday's stage of the Giro filling cycling caps with diarrhea and praying that I get to Villalba before my stomach starts acting up again or my brain goes totally to hell.

Later, when I'm sitting at the computer and listening to the guys downstairs blast "Fire Woman" by The Cult (one of my climbings songs - an omen?) I'll realize that I don't even remember much of the ride back to Villalba. I'll rememeber seeing the McDonald's and realizing that it's been two years since I set foot in a Mickey D's, and I'll remember trying to dodge the steel plate in the road and coming dangerously close to a blue transit van whose driver was blasting La Paquera de Jerez singing bulerías. I'll remember the Brazilian woman in Villalba station who asked for directions and that the train to León came in on the other side of the platform -- but not much else. I won't remember the ride home, as I fell asleep on the newspaper as I was reading on the train. I'll get home, scarf the leftover salmon and mango salsa from last night, and then promptly fall asleep for damn near four hours.

When there's no power, there's no force, and no sense in forcing. I guess.