bikeout
Okay, the Lance Armstrong ride is just around the corner. The regular readers of this blog (both of you) haven’t seen too much here about my training for the big day. Spit out those fingernails, folks, and worry not: the good folks over at Nike have been workin’ us riders over, big time.
training rides 3 and 4: 30 miles each
The event planners have really gone all out this year, training-wise. They’ve assigned us each a personal coach (don’t get too excited - it’s not, like, a different dude for each of us - but still…), and have set up weekly rides and runs open to anyone who wants to participate. They call it “10//2” training. 10/2 is the date Lance was originally diagnosed with cancer. The extra slash probably symbolizes something, too, but I dunno what. Anyway, the 10//2 events involve free training, free energy bars, and free nasty artificial blue sports drink.
The rides have been offered for several weeks. I’ve attended the previous two, plagued both times by technical difficulties: a slipped chain, a pair of loose pump straps, and an exploding tire. Murphy should’ve known better. Neither engineers nor Scorpios quit when technology falls apart on them—and I’m both.
The trainers are a kick-ass bunch. Many of ‘em are either spinning instructors or the super-teachers who teach other spinning instructors. It was like being at Top Gun. I was delighted to discover that we had mutual friends, such as my co-worker of Team Bag Balm “fame.”
These folks don’t waste any time. We tore off at 18-20 MPH up the Willamette Greenway Trail, crossed the Hawthorne bridge, and dropped diagonally through Ladd’s Division. From there, it was a long, slow uphill on Harrison (“Drop your heels, sit back in your saddles, and just hang out,” instructor Mike gleefully shouts every time), and then a quick jump up Mount Tabor. These hardcore hellions can smoke my arse on the flats, but it just so happens that my bike Shiki loves to climb, so I was among the first at the top of the hill.
From there, we headed down the Springwater Corridor back into town, working on our group-riding skills—which means calling out to each other every time we saw so much as a molecule in our way on the bike path: “Microscopic dot on the left! Microscopic dot on the left!” It also meant riding nose-to-tailbone, much closer than my comfort zone. Aerodynamic, yes, but scary as hell when you’re going 22 MPH, and are just a few inches from making a biker sandwich with a side of wheel rim tacos.
From the Springwater Corridor to the Springwater Trail, we turned into the wind and labored our way north towards downtown Portland. The first time I did this ride, I was suffering on this segment. I had had to slow down to fix a loose pump strap, and had lost the pack. I had to work twice as hard and draft one of the trainers to catch back up. I actually started to get that tunnel vision thing, where bits of the world go all ripply. I don’t remember much from that part of the trip; when I “came to,” I was biking up the ramp onto the Hawthorne bridge. Kind of a short-term “bikeout,” if you will.
We cakewalked it back to Willamette Park for solo bagel-scarfing and mutual back-slapping. Yeah, I think we’re ready for the real thing.