five

two weeks ago I pushed my way through and survived my VO2 sub-max test, a prerequisite for participation in power camp.
I do not like that thing.
as much as I try to talk myself out of it, I suffer from test anxiety, and all 3 times I've done this test I have had moments where my mind tells me I'm going to die.
yes, die.
now I know that this is ridiculous, but I cannot seem to stop the process.
all the positive affirmations and self-talk in the world cannot keep my mind from sending out death warnings.
you've got to stop, you can't do this, your heart is going to explode, ooh, we don't feel good . . .

sure enough, during my test 2 weeks ago I had my moment of panic. it happens when I hit a high heartrate (zone 4) for the first time during a workout. especially if I have to keep going higher and higher without being able to back off for a while before I do so. once I settle into those higher heart rates I can work there for literally hours; it's just that first time that sends me into a panic.

some day I plan to be different.

some day I plan to ace these tests.

because it's truly mind over matter, mental over physical. I have learned this lesson well, yet I still have internal battles within my mind. it's like there are two of me in there (oh, I am grinning at myself), each completely certain that they are on the right side of the war.
I am going to die!
no, I am fine--no one is dying on my watch!
no, I know best: I'm going to collapse and die right now, watch me!
no, I can do this, I am fine, I am fine.

regardless, I am beginning power camp in 5 days.
with a new set of numbers and zones: my examiner determined that my top zone is 5 beats lower than it was last time.
now I can either woo-hoo! about this as I won't need to work as hard, or I can stress about whether it's right or not and wonder if I'm slipping and losing strength and capacity.
my two of me are battling that one out as well.
relax, enjoy not working so hard, I'll be fine.
oh no, the whole program will be ineffective for me because my zones aren't quite right: I'll end up weaker than before; this is a disaster.

yikes.
perhaps somewhere between now and five days from now I will come to some agreement with myself and meet somewhere in the middle. a compromise. a truce, an agreement that in return for giving up panic, we will work just exactly hard enough to be the best we we can be.

wish us luck.

assessment

yesterday I went mountain biking again. that makes twice in one year.
watch out world: I might be on my way to becoming a convert . . .

not likely.

I still stand by my statements after mountain biking the mid-mountain trail last year: I am too old for this, and too female. I am the slowest one on the trail, and I practically wear out a set of brake pads with each ride.
three or four times yesterday these thoughts moved through my mind: what in the world am I doing here? what made me think I could do this?
riding up (key word, up) dry creek, I hit a sharp turn that flowed into a steep grade, and I couldn't do it. off my bike I went, and up I started walking, pulling my bike alongside me. I could hear voices coming up the trail not too far behind, so I pulled off to the side when there was a small space so the upcoming bikers could pass me. the first guy made the turn and kept pedaling up, but the second guy couldn't do it, and had to dismount as I had.
we commiserated for a moment, and he commented on how hard it is to get going again on a steep hill.
that's a skill I haven't yet mastered, I said.
ha. I haven't even passed Steep Hill Starts 101, let alone graduated or worked toward my masters.

all of that just to lead you into a discussion of another skill I haven't yet mastered: the art of assessment. of assessing oneself.
I am not always right.

example: last saturday I woke up slowly, achingly, a little stuffy and not eager to do much of anything. this lasted through coffee and reading, through housework, and through my entire decision-making process around To Ride or Not To Ride.
it was one of those times I thought I might be better off staying off the bike. resting. letting my body recover from whatever was bugging it.
but I wasn't sure.
do I push through it and go ride?
or do I pamper myself and stay home, maybe sit on the sofa and eat bon-bons?
I had thoughts of riding up to brighton: was that too much? or would it be okay? or should I plan a tamer ride?
how do you know what's best?
because the weather was so perfect, I decided to ride; I compromised and planned to only go up big mountain instead of the more aggressive brighton climb.
and I had one of the best darn rides of the season.
I felt good, I felt strong, I felt powerful, and I set a new Personal Record.
go figure.
of course, it could have been the awesome tailwind and the caffeinated shot bloks . . .

I'm left to wonder, still, how one knows what is best for one. push? rest? push gently? eat bon-bons?

I'm sure I will master Understanding One's Body about the same time I master Steep Hill Starts.
in other words, I'm not holding my breath.

annual events

I have so many things to catch up on here: a two-week absence results in numerous unrecounted and un-documented experiences.
but since it's late and I've had a long week, I will give you an abbreviated version of my great ride two weeks ago today.
to begin with, it was a special occasion in that I dragged my mountain bike from the back of my garage, removed the spiderwebs and dust that coated it, pumped up its tires, and refilled its pack with a spare tube and a few dollars, but forgot the tire levers. (my pump is attached to the downtube, and always ready to go; no cartridges needed. only roadies use cartridges anyway, snooty sniff.)
I was heading out on my annual (as I laughingly call it) token mountain bike ride.
I hadn't ridden my poor, neglected mountain bike for 13 months, and it was time.

bill, kind soul that he is, agreed to ride with me, and suggested a nice, tame route that would keep me from stressing over its technical challenges and sheer drops. he said, why don't we ride from your house up millcreek to elbow fork, and take the pipeline trail down.
sure, I said.
now, just to clue you in, last time I rode a brief section of this trail I spent a fair bit of time hanging upside down (well, okay, in truth, just lying with my head pointed downhill and my legs and bike up above me) off the sloping side of the narrow trail, trying to decide how in the world I could get myself out of that predicament. I knew parts of this trail were a tad scary (as in, don't look down), but decided I could handle it.

that saturday morning dawned cold and overcast, but not even the rain 2 miles from the mouth of millcreek deterred us. I was on a mission. this annual event was happening, no matter what.
rain came and went, and we plowed ahead.
then came the hail.

this is when I laugh.
during the past 3 years I have placed myself (yes, I take full accountability) in the craziest of situations, and have laughed at what mother nature has blessed me with. I cannot wait to tell my grandchildren stories of how I rode in thunderstorms and torrential rains and under moonlight and in the midst of hail storms. I have earned these memories and cherish them. (my son has a t-shirt that says something like this: you can fall off your raft and die, or you can stay home and fall off your couch and die. get off your couch! I love this shirt.)

the hail started reasonably. and then intensified. and started coming down so hard and fast that it hurt.
we pulled off the road and tried to burrow beneath overhanging trees, protecting half of our bodies and bikes from the white iceballs, and watched the road get covered by millions of small white bombs.
I giggled.
it slowed, and we climbed back on our bikes for the last half mile or so of pavement before the trail began.
in this pic, those white dots are hail balls, and if you look closely, you'll notice that the normally black asphalt is light gray, due to being covered with little white hail balls.

the trail was astounding. beautiful. wet. full of mud puddles and sopping leaves. dry in spots mysteriously covered by shadowy trees, and gutted and worn away in others. the trail hangs high on the mountainside for miles, as you gaze out hundreds of feet above the road, staring into deep and dense pine hillsides. I rode over hundreds of thousands of slippery leaves and spent more than a few minutes listening to kris kristofferson singing in my ear, when it's scary...... don't look down.

I ended the ride muddier than I've ever been in my life, I'm sure, and living an adrenaline high.
okay you mountain bikers, I get it.

but I'm not giving up my road bike.

verbs

at the beginning of today's ride I knew the ride would be all about soaking in this amazing fall day:
65 degrees, blue skies, crisp fall leaves on the ground, the earthy scent of autumn everywhere.
I decided to ride as slowly as necessary to allow all of my senses to soak in every aspect of what will soon be a fading memory.
it was all about marinating myself in this unbelievably fragrant and beautiful gift of a day.
but apparently soaking and marinating weren't the only verbs on my plate today: I also spent quite a bit of time being buffeted, sand-blasted, and wind-whipped. yep. in fact, I believe I recorded my slowest speeds ever coming down emigration canyon, and that wind tried with all of its might to push me back up to the top.
which reminds me of aesop's fable of the sun and the wind, and their dispute about who was the stronger:

The Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger.
Suddenly they saw a traveler coming down the road, and the Sun
said: "I see a way to decide our dispute.  Whichever of us can
cause that traveler to take off his cloak shall be regarded as
the stronger.  You begin."  So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and
the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveler.
But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveler wrap his
cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair.
Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the
traveler, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on.

today I think they were having the same dispute, but this time perhaps the agreement was just to prove strength by causing me to fear for my life.
the sun played its part by hiding behind some clouds, and the wind won, hands down.

acknowledgements

they say one sign of strength of character is owning up to your mistakes.
taking responsibility.
acknowledging your weaknesses and errors.

here goes: I blew it already.
I lay in bed last night, lightly reflecting on my day, when suddenly I realized that I hadn't posted anything here.
you know how I feel about honoring commitments: I was appalled at myself.
I thought about getting out of bed, turning the computer back on, and writing something quickly and posting it. just so I would honor that commitment I made.
but I couldn't do it.
primarily because my alarm was set for 5:13 and it was already after 9:30 . . . and I love and need those precious hours of sleep.
my alarm was set for 5:13 because I had a morning ride planned. yep, you bet, even in this cold.
because, you see, last year when the time change happened I was all geared up for a few more early morning rides in partial morning light, but the weather turned wet and bitterly cold and those morning rides never happened.
this year, I was determined to have at least one.
and then we had a full moon, to boot . . .
so I couldn't resist the pull of a moonlit ride that ushered in the early morning sunrise, even if it was not quite forty degrees.
and that, my friends, is the story of my non-posting odd day and my even-day post today.
as my kids would say, TMI, mom.

my hands have finally thawed, though my toes are still a bit frigid, and I have once again been filled with the confirmation that there is just no better way to start my day than a pre-dawn ride up emigration.

happy trails!

some days are more odd than others

today I rode because it was too beautiful to not ride.
I didn't ride because I wanted to, or because I ate too many cookies yesterday, or because my training schedule demanded it.
it was purely because a sixty-degree, sunny, november day with nothing but painfully blue skies up above is too good to pass up.
big mountain called me, as it is close and demanding and when I finish that ride I feel like I've accomplished something significant. even on a too-beautiful-to-not-ride day I like to accomplish something significant.
and I had a new experience on this ride.
a few miles up emigration I was passed by two chatting women who breezed past me as though they were riding on a flat road. I was breathing heavily and my leg muscles burned, while their slender, sleek bodies floated by and their conversation filled the air.
a minute later I heard another bike approaching me from behind, and I steeled myself against that inner shame for being passed again, and turned my head to see another woman pulling alongside me. we exchanged hellos and I realized I knew her, saying "wendy? it's susan!"
she slowed a tad, I sped up a tad, and we rode hard and chatted for the next mile or two.
she was trailing the fast duo ahead, and I didn't help her gain any ground, but we got to catch up on each other's lives, as we hadn't seen each other in a good year or so.
wendy is one of those salt of the earth people. grounded, reasonable, focused on what matters, kind, humorous, loving. one of those people you know you can count on, someone who keeps her word, someone I keep in that little mental pocket of people who would help me if I ever really needed help.
she eventually pulled ahead of me, but the four of us leapfrogged a bit all of the way to the top of big mountain. there we all paused, downed a quick snack and some liquid, layered up for the cold downhill rush, then took off together.
and this is where I had my realization: I've never ridden with 3 other women before.
I watched them from my position in the rear, and felt this powerful, slightly odd, kinship with these women. they swooped down the winding road gracefully and a bit more cautiously than I'm used to, and I felt surrounded by this beautiful, feminine energy. from a woman I'd just met, another I've only been introduced to once or twice, and a woman I've known for years but never spent much time with.
okay, weird, I know.
but it felt really good.
and when the swooping ended and the road rose again, my leg muscles complained, just like they always do, and I was once again on a normal ride under an endless blue sky on a perfect fall day.

best of all, I felt a desire to write about it.

so here I am, back, and with a new plan:
since I have my own quirky view of the world which I and some others consider to be, at times, a little odd, I have decided that for the next bit of time I will post on odd days. odd-numbered days of the month, as well as any additional days I consider to be odd enough to warrant a posting.
and there you have it.
the way of cycling is not always simple or predictable. or fun. however, I believe guidance is always given to those who seek it, and yesterday I was given some from a sign I saw while riding on the narrow track that leads up and over our freeways, connecting our north-eastern foothills with those more central and southern:

stay on path.

namaste.

shavasana

I'm not always sure which phase I'm in: build-up, back-off, full-out train, push, rest, recovery, or something else. they all blur.
as well, I often just ride, without making my ride fit into how I should be training.
perhaps in my next life I'll be better about that.
for now, I just love to ride, and I love to ride certain places, and I go where I want when I can fit it into my schedule. this time of year it's emigration canyon 8 times out of 10, and I like to think I get a pretty challenging workout from the ride. there are rises and dips, and steeper long lasting sections, and plenty stretches that can be worked hard either going up or going down. unless I'm facing a ferocious headwind on the way up I can usually make my round trip in 90 minutes, which is a reasonable amount of time to carve from my day and devote to physical, mental, and spiritual health.
an emigration canyon ride can fit in a few different categories: build-up, full-out train, and push all can happen during that ride. back-off and recovery need a more mellow route. and rest, well, that would be the route that doesn't include my bike.

I've been thinking a great deal about recovery lately. I seem to need more of it than I want to need. I don't want to need recovery at all. that doesn't mean I don't want to have any of it: I very literally mean that I don't want to need it. I want to be supergirl; I want to be wonder woman. I want to be indefatigable.
and woefully, I am not.

it's not just that I need a recovery ride every week, it's also the feeling that I needed a recovery period after my season. say, a month or so. I tend to focus on something and work, work, work, and probably push just a little bit too far. that's when burnout sets in, and recovery time lengthens. supergirl could just keep going; I can't.
and when I hit the wall, I fall into the despairing self-talk that tells me I'll never be able to do it again. I'll never be that strong, I'll never feel that good, I'll never have the energy to tackle everything I've tackled in the past.
thankfully I have finally learned that this phase doesn't last: the energy, vitality, and desire always return.

after some recovery.

this isn't just about biking.
all things that we devote ourselves to have the tendency to eat up more of us than we planned. and often the best way to rediscover the fire is to have a bit of respite, a taste or two of recovery.
my yoga classes end with a few minutes of shavasana: corpse pose. we are asked to still the body but more importantly, still the mind. the purpose is to harmonize our energy, to rejuvenate the body, mind, and spirit. it is a time when the intense practice of the prior 55 minutes is allowed to sink within and become a deeper part of our experience.

it's time for some tao of cycling shavasana.

for the past few months I've toyed with posting less often. if I cut back, would it be to 5 days a week? every other day? odd days? even days? every third day?
I've awaited inspiration, and it has yet to come.
but as of today, what I know is that I need some recovery.
my desire is to structure this, but since that concept hasn't yet revealed itself to me, I am letting myself flow into a recovery phase.
during the next week I will post when inspired, and not commit to posting at all.
so . . .
if you don't see anything new for a bit, know that I am in recovery, that I am resting in shavasana so that I can return fully awake, alive, energized, and in harmony.

namaste.