the last .1 percent

a while back (on my other blog) I wrote about the final mile.  about making it 999 miles, and feeling like the last mile in your effort to reach 1000 will possibly break you.
this was more about mental and life journeys than about real cycling . . . that is, until a climb I rode a week ago brought this sharply, clearly, fully in focus, right in front of me.

last week I was in maui (I know, not one bit of empathy out there from all y'all, that's okay), home of Haleakala.  the volcano.  my sweet john rented road bikes for us for the week so that I wouldn't go stir crazy and start chomping on or throwing things, and if you have the slightest idea of who I am, you'll figure out that I decided I had to ride my bike up haleakala.   john, willing knight, dropped me off at the ocean and I started pedaling up baldwin avenue toward the crater 35 miles ahead.  up.  up ahead.

I spent the first ten miles swiveling my head from right to left, up and around, amazed by the lush greenery surrounding me, the neat plantations, the old buildings, the low lying land off to my right.
while panting.
because the road was gently but consistently arching upward, with a gain of 500 feet in elevation every two miles or so.
about 10 miles into my ride I hit "the rodeo road"-- a cut-through that led me from olinda (which took over from baldwin avenue) to the haleakala highway-- a blessed down-and-up level half-mile stretch before the climb once again resumed.
at about 15 miles I hit the turn-off to the crater, where john had parked the car and started pedaling, elevation 3500 feet. and I kept climbing, john somewhere up there ahead of me.
I watched the painted messages on the side of the road ("breathe," and elevation numbers with every 500 feet gained), stopped when I needed to, sang praises for the visitor center (bathroom, water refills) at 7000 feet, and just kept pedaling up switchback after switchback after switchback.
when I reached the visitor center at the top, I saw a road stretching dramatically up to a smaller observation center higher up on a peak.
no, I thought, as I circled the parking lot, looking for john, for john's bike, for an excuse to stop.
no john, no bike, no excuse.
I headed up that last steep incline, gritting my teeth, telling myself I had enough left to get there.  after perhaps a quarter mile, I saw a cyclist waving at me from beside the road where it leveled off . . . it was a happy-to-be-there john.
and then I saw that the road hadn't yet ended . . .
there was one last extremely steep-looking climb to the round observation center on that little peak.
we sat and talked, we breathed, we drank water, we both looked at that last little climb and said, no.  our legs were fried, we were fried, and enough is enough.  we'd ridden 99.9 percent of it, and I was done.  done.  done.

then john looked at his garmin, which told him we were at an elevation of 9928'.
not the 10,000' we'd been promised.

we looked at the road up, looked at each other, and climbed back on our bikes for that last push.
as we crested the ridiculously steep little climb we saw the small wooden sign pounded into the volcanic rock on the right side of the road,  ELEV. 10,000 FEET.
we road on up to the lot, circled a time or two, and returned to the sign for a picture.

I honestly didn't think I could make that last push, that last tenth of a mile, that last teeny little climb.
but I did.
we did.
and life is all the better for it.
nuf said.

me and scarlett o'hara

my legs are tired this week.
and today is my day off the bike.
so I got to sleep in (yummy), and go to yoga (so good for me), and recover (I hope).

but what happens to me on days like this is that I start thinking about the weekend's rides, and a thought ribbon starts going through my mind:
it'll probably be a big ride on saturday with lots of climbing and oh my gosh, my legs are tired, I'm not going to be able to do it.

snap!
what the heck am I doing?
it's thursday, I don't have to ride anywhere today, in fact, I am resting my legs today.
susan, let yourself enjoy today.
stay right here, don't even go to tomorrow, let alone saturday.
snap!
knock it off!

the other night my almost-16-year-old daughter was stressing about her upcoming AP test, a spanish test, another project that's almost due, volleyball practice, her peer court commitment, on and on . . . I told her maybe she could think as scarlett o'hara does at the end of gone with the wind: tomorrow is another day.
I'll think about that, I'll create a plan, I'll tackle all of those issues tomorrow.
tomorrow.

today I'm going to just be where I am---right here, no thoughts of being anywhere else---then I'm going to go to sleep, and then tomorrow I'll wake up to a new day.
by saturday I'll be ready to climb hills again.

me and scarlett.

cresting

peter wilborn calls it riding through the top of a climb.
shannon mulder, one of my favorite power camp coaches (think Korn, raunchy jokes, drop your shoulders and consistently genuine enthusiasm) told us not to let up just because you've reached the top.

I simply describe it as don't stop pedaling as you crest, and this has been one of the best tricks in my little cycling bag.

many cyclists dread hills.
I don't; I rather like them.
I prefer them to the flat (ish) sections where men (and strong women) can outpower me significantly, where I usually find myself at the back of the pace line, heart pounding just below zone 5, trying to hang on until I eventually get dropped.
the hills are much better: the line splits up, everyone goes at their own pace, and I get there when I get there without that fear of falling off, being dropped, failing to hold on to the draft off someone's wheel.

and shannon taught me, that first year of power camp, always ride through the top of the hill because that's where people slack off. now I don't care too much what everyone else does, but this taught me a huge lesson that has benefited my training (and experiences) significantly. this is when I learned one of cycling great truisms:
you can always recover on the down.
since I don't race, it's really not about beating anyone else, being faster than anyone else, getting further down the hill before they do: it's about training your body that it can work just a little bit harder for just a few seconds longer, and then find its way to a resting place while coasting (or pedaling with much less intensity) downhill.
to stop at the top of the hill destroys my momentum. it's anticlimactic: I find myself so much more gleeful as I ride through the top and start the descent, grinning and relishing the joy of the much-deserved swoop. my heart will still be pounding as the grade slips into negative numbers, then gradually tick its way down to a hardly-working place as the scenery slips by.
I love this.

to be clear, there are definitely times when I stop at the top of a climb. brighton, alta (or albion basin), city creek, lamb's canyon, millcreek: when you reach these summits the road ends and it's time to savor your victory for a bit.
but on the climbs that are simply leading you to the next leg of your ride---whether they be 10-mile climbs or 1-mile rises---the trick of powering over the top and continuing on teaches you that you are tougher than you thought, more capable, stronger, and, I dare say, wiser.
the road will ease, you'll be given an opportunity to recover.
need I say this holds true in other aspects of life as well?
nope, didn't think so.

power on, don't stop when you reach the crest.
keep striving, keep reaching, give it a little more, and the rewards will shortly follow, when you can doubly enjoy your swoop.

PS: nineteen years ago today at this exact time I welcomed my incredible son beau into the world . . . happy birthday, big guy!

the ipod experiment

in all of my years of riding (okay, almost 5 now), I have never worn an ipod and listened to music as I've pedaled up the road.
until yesterday.

some organized rides have Stated Rules that forbid the use of ipods while riding---which some people ignore---and I've always thought of ipod use as something that would interfere with my interface with the natural world. pearl jam blaring, drowning out the chirping birds, kenye west's lyrics messing with the sound of rushing water, bob dylan mumbling so loud I couldn't hear the crickets.
I have friends and even a few riding buddies who listen to their ipods while riding, and even do it when we're on a long group ride: I've never quite understood why they choose to do so. which is a little strange, I'll admit, given my absolute love of listening to music while I run.

and then came yesterday, when I decided to try it.
I planned a route with as little traffic as possible, and as few intersections and stoplights. hah! I chose to ride up my favorite canyon! what a surprise. it was all in the interest of being safe.
it was a gorgeous day, and I wrapped my little ipod holder around my arm, earbud around my left ear, pushed the "shuffle" button, and set off.
within a minute a smile crept onto my face, and there it stayed.
I had a great ride.

now, it was 70 degrees, and I was in my favorite place, and I did get to ride all the way up toward east---on a closed-to-cars road---until snow covered the asphalt right before the first switchback . . . but I do have to give some credit to the music playing in my ear.
it was fun.

so, what did I learn?
I liked listening to music as I rode
it was motivating
I could still hear everything: birds, cars, my pounding heart, my labored breath . . .
the only time I had to pause it was to hear more loudly the rushing creek
I need some good climbing songs

I know lance used to listen to linkin park: guess it's time to me to google motivating cycling music, and dig out one of those itunes gift cards lying around, and reload my ipod with some great cycling tunes.
and see how it goes.

goats

capricorn is the sign of the goat, a determined climber.

many people in my life were born under this sign, and I send birthday wishes to both C and J today.... two pretty great goats. you are both loved.

I, being a cancer, have few things in common with capricorns, but the image of the goat resonates intensely within me . . . as you can probably imagine.

in one interpretation of the capricorn personality, it's said that the question for them is not "can I climb the mountain?" but instead, "which mountain shall I climb?"

I would take this one step further for myself and ask, "which mountain shall I climb first, and then which next, and then which one after that . . . ?"

I am a goat at heart, though I may scuttle sideways at times just like the crab I am. the goat's persistence, determination, and ability to get there are traits that just scream "susan."

today the thought of pedaling my bike up a mountain is pretty foreign. it's rained, sleeted, and snowed today, the clouds parting momentarily and occasionally to reveal sun and blue, then pulling back together and chilling my entire world. the gloves have been on today, then off, then on again, and for the brief moments that I thought january might tease me into crocus form I lit with hope. the sign alerting me that chains or snowtires were required to head up the canyon reminded me that it will be a while before I will choose which hill to climb first.

but choose I will, because the day will come when they spread again before me in an array of beauty, temptation, and challenge. and I will return to form choosing first one, then another, and once again become the goat who knows she will always, eventually, some day, reach the top.

rubber band man

VIPRSSS

drove past me this morning . . .

which made me grin.

but today's real story is about rubber bands.

about the fact that the city library system uses rubber bands to attach slips of paper with names on them to the items being held for those people. a few months back, somebody high up in the library powers-that-be decided that each branch should have their own color, and my local branch now has big, fat, hot pink rubber bands around the books you pick up off the hold shelves.

and,

about the fact that I was singing Rubber Band Man to myself as I was riding up big cottonwood canyon yesterday. you know, the song recorded in 1976 by a long-lost group called The Spinners. just for fun, you can click here and check it out, if you've forgotten this classic: rubber band man.

office max used this in their back-to-school commercials a few years ago, and it's just one of those songs that has stuck itself somewhere inside my memory bank and just won't let go.

and it was revived yesterday thanks to john and his buddy casey.

casey is the cycling guru at the health club john belongs to, and a few weeks back john shared with me this casey-ism about climbing: as you're heading up a hill, pick an object somewhere in the distance, and imagine there's a huge rubber band connecting you to that object; then just let the rubber band pull you up to the object and bingo, you're there. then pick another object further up the road, a new rubber band (or the same one, if it worked well for you) and keep on climbing.

yesterday I decided to try this. so I visualized a big, fat, hot pink rubber band looped around a pine tree way up the hill and me much further below, and let it just pull me up.

and it did a pretty good job.

then I thought I'd try a yellow rubber band. I looped it around a telephone pole way up ahead, and it did pretty well, also.

I tried to use a green one, but I just couldn't make it work and went back to pink.

while singing Rubber Band Man to myself, of course.

it's probably a good thing I was riding by myself.

but I cruised up the hill in record time, and even felt so darn good I climbed guardsman pass as well. I forgot to use the rubber band trick going up guardsman, however, probably because I had depleted all brain cells within the first mile or so of that leg.

hot pink seems to be the best color, so my thought is that next time I'm at the library I'm going to ask if I could please, pretty please, keep one of those rubber bands so I can wear in on my wrist next time I ride my bike up a hill, to remind me of this great trick.

I don't need anything to remind me of the song: I'm pretty sure it will magically appear in my brain every time, from this point forward, that I ever see, use, or even think about a rubber band.

reconciling oneself

I fear my thoughts are leading me to become a broken record, one which is stuck on the refrain,
why am I doing this?

it happened to me yesterday when I was climbing the final mile to the top of big mountain.

and then a few more times over the next several hours before I was finally descending that same climb, heading toward home.

[let me give you a bit of history regarding big mountain, because I didn't realize this until just last month, and it's possible you don't know this. (it's also possible that you do, especially if you were a better Utah History or Geography student than I.)

background: I thought that little mountain and big mountain were just names us cyclists used to describe where we rode. how egocentric can I be? and where the heck did I go to school?

truth: pioneers 160 years ago called these places little mountain and big mountain. (I have been trying to research who gave them their names and when, and cannot find those answers. if you know, please let me know!)]

back to me: I cannot always reconcile myself with myself.

I love to be clean, to wear nice clothes, and to look, if not my best, at least good. I love comfortable temperatures, say sixty-five to about seventy-nine degrees. I love to curl up on my couch and read, and I love being productive whether it be working, writing, cleaning, or just in keeping on top of everyday life.

so why in God's name do I spend hours and hours each week sweating, straining, forcing my muscles and lungs to work lightyears beyond their comfort zones, getting dirty and looking like crap and hurting, hurting, aching, unable to talk because I can barely breathe? why do I do this?
rewards, yes, there are rewards. but honestly, truthfully, I'm not quite sure why I press so hard.
the answer doesn't take long to come to me:
yes I know why I do. it's because I can.
see, I've learned that I can do these things, and if I can, well then, why not?

(see reasons listed above, which I know you already know, because you're probably not as scary crazy as me.)

I keep doing this to myself.
in the past two and a half weeks since I've returned to riding post crash/surgical recovery, I have climbed the following hills and canyons:
american fork, mt. timpanogos side and from sundance up on the other side
little cottonwood, all the way to albion basin campground
big cottonwood
millcreek
emigration, both sides
big mountain, both sides
morgan to east canyon dam
mountain dell to little dell
lamb's canyon
suncrest, both sides

in other words, just about everywhere along the wasatch front except city creek. (I'd better get there this week, hadn't I?)

now most of this has been in an effort to confirm for myself that I'm okay. that the nasty spill didn't hurt my strength or spirit. that I will not be defeated.
and the other piece of it is the big lotoja hanging out there: gotta keep moving forward, and forward draws me ever closer to the reason I train so hard all summer.

maybe next year I won't commit to lotoja.
maybe then I could ride less intensely, with less push.
maybe then I could stop asking myself why do I do this?

and then again, perhaps I will always be me: a woman who can't always reconcile herself with herself.

yes you can can

it began with a pedicure.

it'd been quite a while since I'd had one, and I finally fit one into my schedule thursday.

the first thing you get to do when you arrive at the salon is to choose your polish color from the two hundred or so they have displayed on the shelves. I looked for my current favorite, espresso yourself --- the one I have a bottle of at home for touch-ups --- and it was nowhere to be found. (this could be an entire post itself: this company has terribly creative names for its colors: everything from blue my mind to kinky in helsinki. this is my dream job: to spend my time and be paid to come up with names for nail polish colors.)

but since my favorite wasn't there, I had to choose a new color.

I pulled colors that fit my general criteria (deep, dark purples or reds or browns) off the shelf, considered them, looked at their names, and after much consideration finally choose an intense, glossy garnet with a name that fit my upcoming ride: yes I can-can.

yes, I can ride those can-yons. I can I can I can.
I can.


I had grand plans for yesterday.
big tough ride; big tough me.
3 canyons: millcreek, then big cottonwood, then (eek) little cottonwood.

the day dawned bright and crisp (cold) with a forecasted high of 72 degrees and a 50 percent chance of afternoon rain.
perfect day to head up a canyon or two. or three.
I considered it highly likely that we would be rained on at some point, and tucked my beautifully painted toenails into warm socks and put my toe-covers on my shoes. I wore arm warmers to start, and tucked a wind jacket and skull cap, 2 Gu's and a pack of shot blocks, four fig newtons and my cell phone into my remaining pockets and stash zones.
ready to roll.

millcreek was fairly easy.
as I've said before, it's all about mindset. if I was only going to ride up millcreek, it would have been a sufficiently challenging ride. but since I knew I had a lot more in front of me, it was just one leg of the journey.
the down was cold, even with every piece of extra clothing I layered upon my body.
after a refueling stop at the 7-11 (banana, water fill, bathroom break) we started up big cottonwood. I had stripped back down to jersey with arm warmers rolled down to my wrists.
this climb was like just every other time I've climbed big cottonwood: at times I think I can't do it, at certain spots I think it might be easier than last time, at other times I want to quit and turn around, and then I reach the top and am so damn happy and proud I could spit.
well, you know what I mean.
then we started down.
with every layer I possessed stuck to my sweaty-from-the-climb body, I was soon frozen and shaking with cold. this is trembling magnified: I was shaking so strongly I was worried about the stability of my bike on the road.
then came the rain.
it was that little spitty rain that stings as it slaps your skin and bites right through your goosebumps. it only lasted a few miles, but between the cold and the wet it was enough to dampen my spirits tremendously.
at the bottom of the canyon we looked back east and south to little cottonwood, and decided we would be crazy to attempt the climb up to snowbird. actually, we agreed that we could handle the ride up the hill --- if the rain wasn't too serious --- but that the descent would be pure misery.
I love to bike, I love to push myself, and I love to achieve my goals . . . but there are sometimes when the cost outweighs the benefit.
we headed north, deciding to make emigration our 3rd canyon of the day.
a definite disappointment, but probably the right decision.

the story ends with a 90 mile ride with 9500 feet of elevation gain: nothing to sneeze at.
but if you know me, you know that a climb up little cottonwood is in my future.
my near future.
because I am one stubborn, determined, particular, bull-headed, focused, driven, committed, slightly sick and twisted
cyclist.

see ya at snowbird.

up and over

today I climbed a small mountain.
but first I battled weak muscles and a cough and little hills and wind and rain and more little hills.
and more importantly, my mind.
the one that said, you really can't do this. it's okay to just turn around and go home. you don't have to climb this thing, and besides, you really can't.

this is not truly my mind.
I think it belongs to someone else, someone involved in a great mind-control experiment, who has access to my brain when I become tired and weakened from one cause or another.
when my muscles fatigue and rob my brain of oxygen, the great experimenter slips in a substitute brain which is much less willing to support my choices.
it constantly tells me of warm beds and couches and cookies.
of the pointlessness of excess (meaning any) exertion.
of how silly I am to think that I can speed down bike lanes and up sharply climbing roads.
of how much stronger (wiser, smarter, cuter, younger) everyone else on a bike is.
of how I am not really capable of powering myself up anything more steep than a speed bump.
of how all of my past victories and successes are just that: past.

because there's just no reason why I would sabotage myself in this way, is there?
it must be someone else messing with my head.

today I climbed up and over that steeply climbing mountain road, and down the declivitous back side. I did it in the rain and without support of my brain, as it was so obviously occupied as described above.
I do believe my real brain has been returned to me, however, as I'm already planning tomorrow's ride and counting the peaks which I will conquer, with or without it.