"I just don't have the power Captain!!" Scottie would say.

Wanting to take it easy and actually following that desire is difficult when you're a cyclists. Monday night rides at Thomson Trails can be easy or the extreme and there's not much in between. If you take it "easy", you might as well be sweating in the parking lot drinking a cold beer for all the easy riding you're actually doing. Having lost a significant amount of my aerobic capacity since knee surgery, I really need to be pushing it hard on mtb and road rides if I stand a snowball's chance in hell of actually doing well at Santos Labor Day weekend. Lacking some self discipline for sure...........

Jesse, aka Flipper, said he was going to do an easy lap since no-one wanted to ride hard and I agreed that it would be cool with me. Did I mention how fast Jesse has gotten of late? The dude can haul ass!! I'm sure he's not punishing me on purpose, well..........maybe, but it was difficult to stay on his wheel last night. Couple that with a front deraileur that I adjusted the wrong way and it makes for some real pain on the trail. After having my chain drop twice, having to chase back on even harder to catch Jesse, and then having the chain come off a third time really had my blood pressure and temper off the chain. I was suffering, which makes you pissed about everything including the atmosphere not having enough oxygen to make the pain go away, and the chain problem was the straw I could no longer bear. Cussing was hear across the valley. I nearly threw my bike against a tree. Two year olds have nothing on a man touching 40 years when it comes to tantrums.
But...................I have no-one to blame but me and the truck was only a short 5 minute ride out of the woods. Excuses, excuses, etc. etc. Suck it up, and toughen the F%#K up!!!

Hello. My name is Shane, and I'm a whiner.

We all gathered after the ride for pizza, a cold brew, and great conversation as usual. We also decided on our team name for the 13 Hours of Santos: in honor of Jesse, our good friend, fellow rider, cancer survivor, and cycling aerobatic extraordinaire ~ TEAM FLIPPER.

Speed Racer

Just how fast can you drive a car on a course nearly .6 of a mile without hitting the route marker cones, without spinning out, and without deviating from the course? That's what Diana and I and several friends from the Warner Robins area found out yesterday at an Auto-Cross event held at Cecil, Ga.



It was my 3rd time racing an auto-x event, but it was the wife's first. Reluctant was the key word for Diana as she drove Miss Daisy around the course the first time out. I feared she would be caught by the car behind her and she nearly was. But, she improved as the day went on and began to get a tad more relaxed but agressive behind the wheel. For someone who has never been to an event it is simple: a specific route is laid out with orange cones on a closed course like a parking lot; you drive around the course without deviating from the course and without knocking down any cones; and you're timed. If you go off course or miss a gate, you get a DNF. If you knock down a cone or hit it hard enough to move it from its chalked spot, your time gets 2 seconds per cone added to your overall time. Simple, yes?

There are a multitude of cars, some are distant (very distant) relatives to "cars" and the goal is to do the best time you can in your class. There's no better way I know of aside from spending thousands of dollars to attend an accrediated, professional race driving school to gain experience driving at the limits of you and your vehicle. Since Diana wanted and got a Miata MazdaSpeed, I wanted her to either attend a school or race auto-x events. Yesterday was her first time pushing the limits, and I can't explain how happy it makes me to see she enjoyed herself immensely and is looking forward to the next event. The great thing was that several women were also there driving the same vehicle as their husbands, and actually beating them, so Diana was able to get to know them and get encouragement from them.

The only people in my class were Diana and BK. BK is one helluva driver and we also bike together. His Miata doesn't have a turbo like Diana's, but he more than makes up for it with skill. He did push a little too hard yesterday and came through the timing lights ass first, knocking a few cones into the air as well as the timing light reflector, on one pass but it made for a great battle between he and I the entire day. BK posted a faster time than me each time out and I had to push extremely hard to match or beat him by a hundreth of a second each time. I had to go all out and put down a good time or BK would win the day. It also took me the entire day to figure out the course so I could shift correctly for max speed. My final run of the day felt good and I took a second off my best time. BK pushed very hard trying to match my time but fell short by a few hundreths of a second. He was disappointed, but I would have enjoyed the day either way, win or lose, because we were there with friends enjoying the day. Yeah, we were competing, but we were also spending the day enjoying a common interest.

I consider myself to be blessed to have such a wonderful wife, companion, and dearest friend accompanying me through life. I've had many hobbies and took up many different sports in the last 16 years we've been together, and she has not only supported me throughout the years but also joined me by participating. At first I thought it was my passion for whatever I was doing that helped her jump in to join me, but it is much bigger than that. Along with whatever I got into, there has always been a group of people that made it fun to be part of and it makes life richer to pass time with them all. Diana and I enjoy our time spent on common interests, but it is the friends we make and have with us throughout our lives that make it worth doing.

Sufferin', sufferin', sufferin'.....keep them legs-a-sufferin'

Our Thursday Central Georgia Cyclists club rides are anything but club rides in the Hammer-Head group. Yeah, our club members make up the majority of the riders, but the effort required to keep up with the fast group is anything but what you'd expect to be considered part of a club event. It's a sufferfest. And, I love it!

Last night was the first night since knee surgery that I was able to really push my legs into that glowing hot-poker zone of suffering I've craved for months. 5 weeks and 1 day after going under the knife I didn't really know what to expect from my fitness, but I needed to test my knee to see if all the easy riding I've been doing has helped the healing process. It didn't take long to find out my lungs just couldn't deliver enough oxygen to put out the fires that burned in every fiber of muscle and all I wanted to do was keep stoking the flames. Hello. My name is Shane, and I'm a cycle-holic. I got dropped a couple times early on and was able to fight my way back to the end of the group. At one point, through the blur of stinging sweat and narrowed vision I realized that I was wheel-sucking one of the women in our group and I could only laugh as body and ego skirmished to sort out the situation.

Ego: Get your ass back to the front and pull damn you!! You're starting to blend-in back here, so either get a purse to match your pansy-ass efforts or show them you've got a set!

Body: Screw this! There's cold beer in the truck, and it's DOWNHILL gettin' there!

Halfway through this lovely session of pain and agony the realization set in that there were two choices: 1) sit-up 2) dig deeper. I chose #2. The Wolf Pack, BK, Colin, Eddie, and the two Chips, waited on me several times but even then I felt that it was all I had in me to catch up to them. There was more than one surprised look when they saw a frothing-at-the-mouth, sweat bursting from every pore, oxygen starved rider that no longer resembled the cyclist they once knew come up to the back of the pack. Death was upon me for sure, squeezing my lungs, shoving hot needles into my calf and thigh muscles, telling me to just give up, just give in.......... the crossroads.

To say that camaraderie among those that share an experience can lift you up and give you strength to carry on might be cliche, but unless you feel it you'll never know or have the right to judge. I had nothing left in me, an empty shell, left wanting.... But, being back in "the pack" gave me energy to keep trying. The looks I saw told me that each knew I was going through my own personal hell, and it wasn't going to get any easier. This is what we do. What we live for. What we love so much.

The ride ended last night at just under 40 miles and I averaged around 20.8mph, but my HR average was close to 168. At 37, my anaerobic threshold is 184 with a max HR of 202, so I was in the red for a while last night. This morning, I'm quite surprised to find that my legs feel great with very little stiffness in my knee, but my lungs are a tad achy as expected.

Compared to the best I've done solo on this same route before my knee injury this past March, last night is nearly disgraceful. I wanted to see how far I'd come since training with the guys in Macon and managed 25.7 for 38.4 miles with no serious winds to push me either way earlier this year on a March morning. The winter training rides had pushed my ability way beyond what I thought capable since most of those rides were averaging 20+ at 60-100 miles with LOTS of climbing. Can't wait 'til November..............

The other side of life....

Yesterday was our monthly "Social at Thomson Trails" and it was a great time with some awesome people once again. We did have to help one of our members, Kat, get up from the trail when she went over the bar on a downhill. She'll be very stiff this morning, Kat was already that way immediately after her fall, but I'm sure she'll be blazing the trails again in a few days. Kat did earn her inclusion into the "Team Flipper" club and got the official stem sticker from Flipper himself ~ Jesse. Jesse tends to perform gravity checks at various times on the local trails and has earned that nickname for his efforts. Through Flipper's scientific analysis, we are assured gravity is still functioning at normal parameters in our geographic area. Hooray!!

I remember Don Bill, aka GoFastPops http://gofastpops.blogspot.com/, inviting my wife and I to come out to the trails to check out mountain biking. Don affectionately referred to MTB as "The Dark Side" since it is the difference of night and day compared to road biking. I agree. I'm guilty of the same mentality of clipping in to my Madone, looking around at the other cyclists to see who is gonna be my "wind-bitch" to draft behind, and also calculate how and when I want to attack during the ride. If I were discussing an actual race here, it would be acceptable somewhat. But, for club rides it is a testosterone/pissing contest that ends when we un-clip from our bikes and there is no so called social aspect to hammering all the time. At the trails, it is a much different story. Very social people before, during, and after the rides. After the ride, we compare our battle wounds from the ride that day and usually toast our survival with various adult beverages consisting of malt, barely, hops which are not associated with the Southern standard of Budweiser and its horse piss siblings. Great people, great brew, and great food can only result in great times had by all.

The current situation in the Tour-DAY-France makes my stomach turn seeing the cheats and dopers get sent home due to positive tests or the simple insinuation from sour grapes. Life is such, but it won't make me love my sport any less. It makes it hard to get motorists to respect our position on the highways, however, and I hope the future is much brighter for cycling.

Training, Trek'ing, and Tracking

What a long strange trip its been........

August 15 will be the 3 year mark since I got off my rear and started cycling again. I can say it was part Tour-DAY-France (thanks Bobke) inspired and part 225+ pounds of couch crushing ass that motivated me to do something besides increase my territory of our king-sized bed. No, I had no visions of grandeur about how far cycling would take me but I needed activity to keep the Jenny Craig commercials from looking better and better. The wife agreed that cycling would be good for me (just how fat have I gotten? I'm thinking) and we headed off to The Bike Store to find out what the cycling world had to offer. That is where we met Bill Staudt, owner of The Bike Store in the Centerville/Warner Robins area as well as Macon.

Bill helped me find a bike, the proper clothing, safety gear, and shoes to make future cycling adventures a true depletion of my checking account. Bill told me about a few local "rides", yeah ~ I now know them as sufferfest, and invited me to join the group that week. Saying "sure, I'll join you" and seeing the glint of a wolf in sheep's clothing in Bill's eyes should have been the first warning to stay away, far away. Needless to say, my first ride was 36.5 miles in the middle of August with a group that was in peak form that late in the year. It hurt so bad that the lingering pain just went away a few days ago!

There were two things that happened on this first ride that inspire my riding to this day: 1) as much as it hurt me, I felt the addictive grip of cycling that I last experienced 15 years before when I gave up riding. If you're an avid cyclists, you know that euphoria of pain and pleasure, suffering and exhiliration, deep running pangs of exhaustion but the desire to push harder even when every fiber in you body and soul scream for relief......... that addictive feeling that only cycling gives. Sick? Not at all; 2) the group waited on me. Patiently, encouragingly, attentively they waited. Did they get pleasure from seeing my ashen face, the sweat burning my eyes, hearing my lungs scream for oxygen, watching the swimming head and swaying body of someone nauseated beyond the help of Dramamine and not able to drink liquids and perhaps stave off the feeling of death that consumed my body and mind? You bet your ass they did!! And, I thanked them at the top of every hill when I caught up and at the end of the ride. Afterall, each was sacrificing his/her own training to make me feel welcome. Or, was it entertaining for them?

Bill and the others kept pushing me, encouraging me on every ride after that. I watched the fast guys, aka HammerHeads, scream by and away from me each ride. But, I kept riding as hard as I could. Every ride I was able to hang on a little longer before getting dropped. Along the way, I also got to know the other riders in our group, and yes, I was a wheel-sucking whore and still am some days.

A cyclist once said that "the suffering never ends, you only get faster." Yep. It only gets easier when you give in and no longer want to suffer on climbs, sprints, and those long solo days that build self discipline. I've gotten faster, but the suffering is the same. I've moved up to the HammerHead group in the last 3 years and have lost some weight along the way: down to 178 lbs from 225 lbs but the suffering is the same. The addictive feeling that cycling gives me is stronger than ever as well.

Sitting here watching the Tour-DAY-France has me reflecting on these last 3 years, the thousands of miles I've ridden on the road and on the trails, and especially the friends I've made along the way. I've destroyed and replaced my Madone road bike and sacrificed a lot of flesh when I crashed on the descent off of Woody Gap.

"FORKED"

I've knocked the bark off of trees and wiped trails clean with my body. I've made friends with others who have done the same and they all inspire me to ride every chance I get. After all, its no fun suffering alone and it makes the pain of wrecking a little more tolerable when you've got friends to point and laugh, or perhaps hold pressure to stop the bloodflow!

This last year was the year I wanted to start racing and move up to CAT4 so I can team up with a few friends to be more competitive. But, after a knee injury and resulting surgery I'm looking at getting my fitness back before the winter training rides with the group in Macon and compete next year. We'll see how it goes..............