Stupid Hurts

The weather was perfect so and I attended the Birmingham Bicycle club group ride. I have been looking forward to riding with them for several weeks partially because I rode with them most of the winter and I miss some of those guys.

When I got there, there was about 50 people in attendance. Several familiar faces, but lots of people I didn’t know. I was still stoked about getting to ride to ride with new people but there is always an inherent risk. Eventually we took off and kept a fairly healthy pace through several tight neighborhoods. Considering the size of the crowd and the width of the turns I was hoping everyone was paying attention and ended up riding a bit more cautiously than normally. There is another group ride I have heard of on Tuesday night that leaves from somewhere else that apparently has a surprisingly high incident of crashes.

Well about 17 miles or so in I was passing a guy on the left when he stands up to sprint. When he does he loses his back tire and the bike gets wiggly underneath him. I dropped my shoulder sat on my seat and pulled up close next to him and he just leaned on me for a few seconds until he got steady.

Unfortunately that was just enough stress to put me over my seizure threshold. So I quickly pulled my bike over into the grass and had a seizure and passed out. I woke up thirty minutes or so later in the back of an ambulance without my bicycle and an I.V. in my arm…..again.

So I am riding my bike home after doing some more volunteer work at the bicycle co-op and I decide to ride a more relaxed pace that normal. Mostly because I felt like crap anyway. While ascending from the bottom of the hill I saw a person slam their bicycle into the triangular median and take a head first dive onto the pavement. No bracing with his hands or anything, just a head first dive onto the pavement. I then sprint up to him thinking this could be bad. Once I get my own bike situated I helped him up and proceed to check him for a concussion in the most unobtrusive way possible.

Since no good deed goes ever unpunished, and I had been trying not to laugh the entire time, since the guy had basically face planted right in front of me. While I was wrapping up our conversation, I had a petite seizure. I can’t talk while having these and I only have limited motor function. At this point my new best friend decided he wanted a hug and thank me for stopping to help him. At that point I really just wanted to stand there for a second wait for my head to clear, and then go home.

My bike is a cold steel bitch.

It pushes me to go harder, to go faster. to want more. It makes me wants to spin until my legs melt, to sprint until my I can taste my lungs, and to climb until I see only God.

Earlier this week I changed the seat position on my fixed gear bike into a much more aggressive stance, since I know I have gotten stronger since I started riding it. At first I thought I ruined the ride quality and felt like I would be changing it back shortly. But then I adopted a low fighters crouch. My hands out in front of me, head tucked down eyes raised up. And everything changed.

This was no longer dancing. This was a fight.

I made is across town in a record time. I think I may have set a pace that rivals the times I usually go for on my geared bike.

I was standing next to my front door, grinning from ear to ear and I realized the only things I remembered from the entire ride home were the streaks of light as they shot past the corners of my eyes. And the words harder, faster. more, coming from the cold steel bitch between my legs.

With my planned trip north now looming only a few days off. I find my level of anticipation rising steadily. The finally preparations are falling in quickly falling into place, and I have been tapering off my daily mileage so I will be reasonably fresh for the two weeks of torture ahead of me. My intended route is around six hundred miles of back roads and small towns. I want to average 60 plus miles a day with at least 1 one hundred mile day. The goal of making the trip in 8-10 days doesn’t seem really unreasonable. Sixty miles takes me about 4-5 hours to cover, so intervals of 2 hours on the bike with 2 hours off sound fair.

Unrelatedly, while leaving on of my favorite bike shops in town I saw a [tag]bicycle[/tag] tail light up ahead of me. I decided I was going to chase it down and pass it like I have done so many others lately. Unfortunately it wasn’t happening as I poured on the power the tail light up ahead of me seemed to continue getting smaller. Till it got to the point I was in a full on sprint. Finally on a down hill I managed to catch up with the rider. While trying to slow my breathing I huffed over to him. “Man you are fast.” He lazily looks over at me and mutters, “huh, oh I was half sleep.” So we talk for a bit, and decide to ride together since we were headed in a somewhat similar direction. We take off together and talk about our various injuries. Eventually we reach another incline and this time he stands up. I don’t know if at that point he began channeling the soul of [tag]Lance Armstrong[/tag] or what, but he shot away for me like my feet were on the ground. So I down shift and pursue him. This was my fastest ascent ever of that particular hill, but I still didn’t catch him. Only when he looked back to see me lagging back and coasting while waiting for me was I able to close the gap that suddenly appeared.

But in the end it felt really good, that fleeting moment, that spirit of [tag]competition[/tag], and pushing myself till it hurt in an attempt to catch someone. Gives me a goal to shoot for. Average is no longer good enough.

And now we wait.