truth

I've stayed away from sensitive (to me) subject matter lately, most likely as much in self-protection as with the understanding that the world wide web doesn't need to hear me whine.

a hundred little things stab at me, open up that bubble of grief and sorrow that lives inside. simple things, like kindnesses and hugs. pictures. stuffed animals he held, blankets that covered him. his pillow is still here; I cannot yet deal with it. I cannot even imagine the day when I will be able to take that pillowcase off and wash it.
every time I see a paratransit bus I feel a stab, as this is the system jake used when he came to visit me.
almost every time I drive past primary children's hospital, stab.
whenever I slow down enough and the distractions creep away and leave an opening, stab.

at times I sit and try to let it all sink in.
but most of the time I try to occupy myself with something that doesn't allow for thought, or at least not that kind of thought.

then there's biking.
most of the time while I'm spinning away either in class or on my real bike I can hold it at bay. I am occupied with something either so challenging that there's not oxygen enough to think, or I am absorbed in the pleasure so that sadness drifts aside and fades into the periphery.

at times, I can outrun it if I pedal hard enough.

six

six. that's my new biking number.
it's not about categories (though that might be where I belong) or bib numbers or even the number of treats I carry with me on an event ride.
nope. it's about states:
thanks to yesterday's excursion I have now ridden my bike in six of our fifty glorious states. if I had a goal of someday riding my bike in every state within our nation (hmm....) I'd be twelve percent of the way to reaching that mark.

but I'm not going there.

I'm happy to have just added nevada to my list of States I've Ridden My Bike In. I'm also happy to have discovered a beautiful ride a short drive away from the las vegas strip: not everything that happens in vegas needs to stay there.
john, before we left salt lake, had researched rides near the lacrosse fields where my son was playing, visiting Map My Ride to do so. he found a 37 mile ride for us that took us out of the suburbs and up into a different world.
we rode to red rock canyon, which has a 13-mile scenic loop up to a lookout where we stared at snow-frosted sharp-edged cliffs and felt the cold breeze brush against our skin. cacti and sandy soil prevailed, but beautiful red rocks and sweeping vistas were there as well.
as with all of our salt lake canyons, I suppose, beauty and splendor exist ~ we just have to learn to discover it.
flat, barren, desolate nevada is available to all.
stunning, refreshing, varied and breathtaking nevada is available to all who are willing to seek it out.

the event horizon

(yes, I am a day late: I started this yesterday and then hopped in a car and drove to vegas for my son's lacrosse tournament. somehow---can you imagine?---I was distracted and neglected to finish and post this last night. so here I am, up bright and early, typing. have yet to drink myself into oblivion or lose any money at the tables. even planning to hop on my bike later between lacrosse games . . . )

the cycling-event-pre-season-sign-up phase is upon us.
you can sign up for this event, that event, oops, not this one because it's full, and you can start counting the days until you'll be able to throw your name in the ring for this other event, or that one.
some fill up quickly,
some never fill.
here's one that I really wonder about:
a relay race, two-to-four-person teams, riding from salt lake city to st. george.
lifted directly from their facebook page, here's the info:


385 miles, 13,500 feet, 30 towns, 1 Question . . . You in?

Salt to Saint Bike Relay: Ride from Salt Lake City over Suncrest and Nebo Loop to highway 89. Ride through the night and enjoy the sunrise as you go through Zions National Park. Then Cruise the last 50 miles downhill into St. George. The best, longest, fastest race of the year with your best friends.

uh-huh. right. I'm all over this one . . .

now here's the thing: there are people out there who are going to do this. I constantly speak of my biking-life as a bit sick and twisted, but I can only imagine the people who will participate in this event. first, they will be fit. second, they will be driven. third, they will be predominantly male. fourth, they will have already chewed up every other challenge out there, and be in need of new ways to suffer.

I don't think I know any people like this, and that's okay with me.

but it is entry time, commitment time, pressure time. our instructor in class the other day said the event horizon is here. which brought a chuckle to andy, sitting next to me, who explained to me that an event horizon is a term associated with quantum physics and, specifically, black holes. I'll let you do your own research there, as I can only begin to grasp the concept and am completely unable to explain it in a layman's terms. it has to do with boundaries and affects (or more precisely, the lack thereof) on observers outside such boundaries.

I like this term.

so here I hover on the event horizon, knowing that each decision I make will impact my future. to enter event A changes my training, my schedule, my anxiety level. to choose not to enter event B might relax me in the immediate, but cause disappointment and regret as it approaches. each event surrounds itself with boundaries that I choose to cross, or not. and each such decision changes me, minutely or in greater ways.

march 5, poised for travel into the great beyond, where my minute knowledge of quantum physics and repercussions will guide me through another overfilled season of Cycling Events.

just know, you won't see me on the road from salt to saint.

today's task

march forth!

fit and fitter

in class this morning I overheard mimi telling another camper, it's a sign of improved fitness when you have to work harder to get your heart rate up, so good job! it's good that you're having to work so hard!
we were doing a zone 3 thing, one of those supposed recovery workouts. you know, the ones I always complain about being anything but recovery for me. spin fast, but keep your heart rate low enough to stay under your lactate threshold.
and I was sweating like crazy, my legs were upset with me, and my darn heart rate just kept wanting to drop.
and my legs wanted to slow down.
and I wanted to back off and just be in zone 1.

this is the terrible realization that comes along with all of this training: it is never going to get easier.
it is always going to be difficult.
I am always going to sweat and moan to myself and wish it were over.
because training, no matter what your fitness, is all about the next level. it will always be hard.

this is decidedly unfair.

so I'm thinking I have two options: keep going, or just give it up.
this crooked smile is spreading across my face: which do you think I will choose?

some days I want to choose the latter. but I know I won't. at least for now, I will keep going. I will be the swoosh girl and just do it.
I've acknowledged my mental progress, how very far I've come and the breakthroughs I've experienced. I've made physical progress as well, and I truly don't want to give that all up.
thus, I just get to keep going.
because somehow, someway, in some manner, this must be the right thing for me to do.

how it felt

108 miles is a long way to ride a bicycle during the month of february.

they (the infamous "they") say that to prepare for an event, you should ride approximately 2/3 of the distance you'll be riding during that event. rule of thumb, just in general, you know.
for lotoja, 2/3 would be 138 miles. in preparation for lotoja, I've usually ridden somewhere between 125-135 as my longest effort.
so it follows that for last saturday's event I should have had a training ride of about 72 miles.
as that didn't happen ~ I'd ridden once for only about 16 miles during the month of february ~ and my longest time on a spin bike in the past few months has been about 90 minutes, one could say that I wasn't prepared for this ride.

one could say that.
and I could respond that I did darn well in spite of it.

but oh did my legs ache.
it was bitterly cold when we started (cloudy and 39 degrees), and for the first mile or two I wanted to call the whole thing off. go back to the hotel, sit in the hot tub, sip coffee, watch a movie, be warm and lazy . . . I truly thought I was an idiot to be riding.
then it warmed up to a decent riding temperature (that would be mid-to-upper 40's) for the rest of the ride. well, until the rain started and then it seemed to drop a bit. or maybe it was just the air moving through my wet clothes that made it feel that way.
I avoided rain until the last 90 minutes or so of the ride, at which time I started thinking about garth stein.
because I so wanted to be finished, yet conditions (and my weary legs) screamed at me to slow my pace a bit.
so I thought like the race car driver in garth's book, and rode with cautious confidence through puddles and curves and turns, watching the water kick up off my front tire while feeling the water from my back tire spray up my backside.
raindrops hit my eyes and covered my glasses and cyclometer face. I sniffled, I wiped clean (hah) my glasses, I relaxed my shoulders and I just kept going.

the sight of our starting point made my heart leap with joy, and I slowly (and noisily) braked to a stop in front of john's big grin. (which was partly about my safe return and partly about his own awesome 65 mile ride), then I tried to swing my leg over the bike seat to dismount. the first time was not a success. but the second time was, and I let john hold the bike as I tried to straighten out my body, gingerly stretching each muscle back into that normal homo sapien upright position. I pealed off sopping gloves and hobbled over to the restrooms to change my clothes, laughing at my stiff movements and giddy with relief that the darn thing was over.

108 miles is a long way to ride a bicycle in the month of february.

the art of racing in the rain

this is the title of a book my mom and her husband lent me to read a while back.
this may also be an appropriate label for my activities today.
and I want to talk about both of these, beginning with the latter.

I've ridden in the rain many times, and lived to write about it here. there is some perverse pleasure in it: the discomfort, the ridiculousness of it, and at times, the irony of the fact that had I scheduled things just a little bit differently, I wouldn't be doing it.
I know to go slower, I know how helpful fenders are, and I know that a breathable rain jacket is a necessity. I know that wet feet make for a miserable me, and that the drops that make their way through the helmet to my scalp are only pleasurable if the rest of me is warm.
today's century ride in southern utah may necessitate a bit of riding in the rain.
weathermen are often wrong, so I am hopeful that the entire ride will be dry. and to be completely truthful, I wouldn't be racing in the rain anyway, as I don't race as the word is used in the competitive sense.
but the word race may also be used in another sense, that of just moving quickly or rushing.
and this I plan to do, so that I might possibly beat the incoming rain.
regardless, there is definitely an art to it, and I hope that I will be artful in my riding whether the pavement is wet or dry.

now on to the book.
this book, by garth stein, is a beautiful book.
it is a book about love, about life, about triumph and commitment and achievement. about hopes and dreams and goals and loss and karma.
written from the perspective of a dog. a clever, loyal, witty canine gifted with human understanding, of course, but nonetheless, a dog.
I cried when I read it, at the beginning, at spots along the way, and wholly and fully at the end. I cried because it reached into my heart and touched all those places that connect with others, those places full of empathy, humanity, divinity.
I love a good, quick, no-brainer read---I need this kind of book for escapism---and I love a good literary novel that takes me somewhere I've never been. this is neither, yet it's another kind of book I love, a book that points out with startling clarity that one of the greatest gifts we humans have is the trait of resilience. and another of these greatest gifts is the ability to love, and this theme leaps and bounds through the book as well.
the art of racing in the rain hit me hard, possibly because I've just experienced a loss of my own coupled with the fact that I am a dog person. perhaps a cat lover who has a neat and tidy life wouldn't care quite so much for this book.
what I know, though, is that I will carry a bit of this book with me as I ride today, remembering that riding in the rain is an art, that love abounds, and that we all have the resilience inside to carry us through whatever comes our way.