Saturday, November 14, 2009

The House of No (Part Two)

What the hell is it about the Teleférico hill that keeps destroying my rear tires? Today's workout was pretty straightforward - 3 hours, with intervals halfway through, then the final 30 minutes at 140-145 bpm. I felt good - I felt a hell of a lot better than I did yesterday with the power meter test (and the subsequent hour-long search along the sides of the El Pardo highway looking for my Polar heart rate monitor, which decided to take a flying leap halfway through the power meter test.) I did well. I hit 160, as prescribed. I managed to get my climbing time down from three and half minutes to two. And at the end of the sixth climb, which felt oddly sluggish, I stuck my finger into my (€37 Kevlar-threaded) rear tire, which had all of the strength and resistance of an unbaked croissant.

I sighed. I got off the bike, grabbed the pump and began pumping. If nothing, kept with the tone of the whole damn week - getting paid late, losing the heart rate monitor, the lack of interest, manners or even timely replies from a certain someone, fighting with the landlady, losing classes, doing the math and realizing that a trip to Canada at Christmas-time is looking even less likely.

No dice. No matter how hard I pumped, the air just wasn't staying in.

I've had days when it didn't seem worth the trouble to get out of bed. It's the first time in a very long time when the entire week has felt, as my friend Kim quipped yesterday, so bad that even bacon tastes bad.

And then I realized that I'd left the spare inner tube in the other saddle bag, the one that was still on the Orbea, the one I'd taken down to Jaén and hadn't switched back to the Specialized.

I am nothing if not consistent.

What has scared me most about this week is that it's the first time in a long time when I've started wondering if all of the sacrifice and denial is really worth it. The utter failure to connect with Whiteshorts in any way has totally thrown me. I didn't think I was ready to let someone to get that close to me. And the subsequent hurt from being ignored by him has made me realize how much I used training and dieting and cycling to keep myself from being hurt again after the mess with Joseba last year. (Worked well, huh?) And yeah, I know that hurt is what keeps you human; that pain, administered in sufficient doses, is what makes you feel empathy. No man is an island, that kind of stuff. Which is not to say that I want to -- that I am going to -- stop the sacrifice and denial. It's gotten me a hell of a long way this year. It's obvious now that I just have to think of the other...you know, stuff.

So I'll go to Mammoth on the way to Scott's, and I'll get another tire. I'll go grocery shopping, I'll make myself a nice dinner tonight and a nice sandwich for my walk in the sierra tomorrow with Alana. I'll bring the camera, I'll take photos of us getting soaked on the Camino Schmidt while we have a good time and a laugh and bitch about men. And I'll remember that nothing lasts forever. Not rejection or losing cycle computers (which have red plastic and can usually be found in beds of pine needles - they don't bounce very far, it seems) or not getting paid or rain or snow or pain.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

The House of No (Part One)

See, silly immigrant that I am, where I come from, if you don't wanna do something with someone, you just say NO. N-O. Consonant, vowel. Probably one of the most universal words known to mankind. One of the first words that most children master. I'm 41 years old; I've heard it at least once or twice in my life. It's nice if it comes accompanied with a little white lie or something like that, but I'd rather hear it alone and buck-naked rather than hear nothing at all.

I gave him twenty-five minutes. I'd called The Other One the day before: You still in for Chinchón tomorrow? Nah, he says, I've got the kids and it's Hallowe'en and all, so I won't be able to ride. But if he can't go, he'll call you. He's good like that.

So, silly me, I stood like a fool and waited in front of the church for Whiteshorts for twenty-five minutes before I called him. No answer. No more waiting, I thought, and I took off. When is a plan not a plan in this country? I tried not to beat myself up about it, but it still irritated the hell out of me -- especially since I had sent him two messages during the week asking, first directly and then indirectly, if he was going.

I went to San Martín, I saw someone who looked suspiciously like Contador (but then again, the Vegas are full of tall, skinny riders with big noses, wearing Astana kit and riding Trek bikes. Contador, it seems, has more doubles than Saddam Hussein.)

I got home at about one. Five hours later, I got an offhand message telling me that he went north to Soto, and happened to run into a couple of buds on the way.

And if being stood up wasn't bad enough....at the clubhouse last night, the big NO came when I found out that both Whiteshort AND The Other One met up with the guys at Fuencarral that very same Sunday as if nothing had happened.

Wow. I know that I'm not as good as the other guys in the club, but I had NO idea that I was so bad that people feel they have to lie. There's probably nothing that's more effective at putting you off someone than to find out that he felt some kind of compulsion to lie to you.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Move it, girlfriend!

I had no idea that Stephanie was involved so deeply in biking. I knew from Scott that his sister worked in administration at a small East Coast college and had travelled extensively, but I didn't know that she owned three hand-made bikes, competed with Team LUNA Chix and was about to do a 300-mile ride to raise money to combat global warming. I mean, Scott has known me for over twenty years...you'd think that it would have come up at some point in time that his sister spends more on bikes than most guys spend on their cars.

Which got me to thinking. Steph is about two years younger than Scott. Scott's not that much younger than me. And when I look at the faces of the women on Steph's team, it's hard to find someone who would be significantly younger than the bunch of us. This holds true for a lot of the female cyclists I know: cycling doesn't seem to grab hold of us until we're in our late 20s or early 30s, and when it does, it tends to invade our lives in ways that other activities just can't manage.

Which got me to thinking even more: Why is so much focus put on developing junior riders and younger riders when it's the older riders who are the ones who have the time, passion and money to really make a go of cycling? In the States, which uses a (seemingly) well-developed system of categories that allow riders of all ages and genders to move up logically through the system, there's a logical system of advancement. Presumably, that would mean that there's a logical system of rider development. It's a shame that there seems to be so little interest in the Spanish federation to examine this in more detail, and that they're so obsessed with developing medal-level riders that they forget to work from the base, la afición, where the money and passion truly lie.

Which makes me wonder if I shouldn't ask Pepe el Presi for the stats of how many women hold licenses in Spain. I bet it'd be a real eye-opener, and not a good one at that....

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

In the loop....

The 2010 season has, more or less, officially begun with the pre-registration process for Quebrantahuesos....

I'm lottery number 4018.

Fingers crossed, fingers crossed, fingers crossed....