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.