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cycling / Thursday / triathlon — Comments Off
5
Nov 15

Where would you like to be right now?

All things being equal, I’d rather be doing this right about now:

Alas, my riding season is probably pretty much done. There are no more races and real life gets in the way. I’m actually struggling with how much I want to do on the bike or in the pool or running. You’re supposed to have an off season, they say. But I am not one for whom fitness is a linear thing.

Feels more Sisyphean than anything. Make a bit of progress, find a new best or improve on a new technique or hit a longer distance and then get bogged down by the other parts of life.

Except Sisyphus was doomed to his fate as a punishment. So probably most of us are using the expression wrong. On the other hand, Lucretius said the myth personified politicians who always looked for office but were also always defeated. The quest for power, he said, being an “empty thing.”

When I’m going up a hill — on my bike, not pushing boulders, which is not something I am never really tasked with doing, fortunately — I could also use some more power, my legs being empty things.

Kierkegaard and Camus and all sorts of writers and philosophers have expounded on the Sisyphus tale. But I want to know what first century B.C. writer Publilius Syrus, of Syria would have to say. You know Syrus, he’s the person credited with the old saw about a rolling stone gathering no moss.

People have apparently tried to tie the two together, but according to the text from a 1912 book I just found online, that’s just a clever reimagining. Which is an odd thing if you go back to the myth. Part of Sisyphus’ problem was that he thought he was more clever than Zeus. The story goes that the big Z, showing how clever he was, put the weeby jeeby on that stone and that’s why it kept rolling back down that hill.

So maybe you downplay the wit and whatnot around that particular deity. Gravity is tough enough all by itself. Which is pretty heavy for a Thursday, if you really think about it.

cycling / Monday / photo / weekend — Comments Off
26
Oct 15

James Bros Bikes Breast Cancer Awareness ride

Thirty miles in pink jerseys. Mine came direct from Poland. This event was hosted by our local bike shop and started and ended at the state park near home. So naturally we were going to ride. Here’s Ren before the start:

The course took us over a lot of familiar roads. That’s one of the things that happens when you’re riding a local event. It also took us on a few roads we don’t ride enough. That’s also one of the things that happens when you’re riding a local event.

Striking a pose:

Not to worry. That’s on a long, straight flat road with high quality asphalt that we ride all of the time. Excellent sight lines and no one was coming either direction. Also, she’s a graceful artist.

Here we are posing after the ride. Lot of fun with some familiar faces and around some great roads and scenery for such a fine cause.

At the end I rode up the big hill in the park and then we pedaled home. It was a fine ride.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
19
Oct 15

Just some riding shots

Got out and rode a bit this weekend, putting in 40 easy miles and still trying to figure out where I left my legs. Maybe everything will come back this week, I figure. If not I’ll have to drive over to Georgia and see if I dropped them somewhere.

This is one of the big sprints in town.

My app says I only got up to 27.4 miles per hour. So I’m still tired and sore and slow. Or, normal.

I found a new piece of scenery. Turns out there is a pond at town creek. You have to go behind the park and down some paths to find it. But the view is worth it, even as the sun was going down. This was just to add a few turns to the crankset while running an errand.

You go down this hill, it bends a little to the left and then straightens out and turns back to the right and then you take the hard right into another hill. When there’s a car behind you you can actually handle this little stretch and create some distance between you, which is pretty neat.

The same hill, just looking up the other way.

I got to run an errand on my bike. I never get to do that, because I’m never here for it. Doing it felt good, comforting, somehow. Of course it was up the big hill.

Alabama / cycling / Friday / history / photo — Comments Off
16
Oct 15

Remembering the Comers

At lunch today I was reading a forum about race recovery. (And, I promise, I’ll stop talking about this just as soon as the novelty of something I did last Saturday still leaves me feeling wiped out wears off.) The general consensus was that we don’t always know why recovery can take this long or that long. There are things you can do to help speed the process along.

Of course I’m doing very few of those things, it turns out. Maybe next time.

The other consensus was that the duration of your recovery has to do with your overall general fitness. When you think about it, that seems both logically true and annoyingly insulting. I just swam a mile and rode 56 and ran 13. Let’s say I’m in pretty decent shape. Except it is going to take me more days than the average bear to recover.

I did ride for a bit this evening, just plodding along at a slow speed. I think I managed to get into the 20s about four times. So it was a nice, easy 20-mile ride through town. I went up one of the parking decks, just for the view:

That’s Comer Hall, where I spent a lot of my time in undergrad. It is named after Braxton Bragg Comer, the 33rd governor of Alabama, and, later, an appointed senator. Serving in the first quarter of the 20th century he would be considered a progressive. He lowered railroad rates, came out for child labor laws, was a prohibitionist and, also was a big proponent of education, health improvements and conservation. Of course he also served in a time of poll taxes and other segregationist strategies. He went into the governor’s office just six years after blacks were disenfranchised and the Republican party was effectively tamped out in Alabama, something which would take roughly 80 years for the GOP to overcome. Like so many other people and things in the south, the industrialist Comer’s is a tricky legacy.

At home, he and his wife had nine children. They’re all buried in Elmwood, near their parents. One of the sons, Donald, also became an industrialist in his father’s footsteps and would run Avondale Mills while Braxton was in public service. To be of a certain age and from a certain swath of the south and to hear Avondale Mills is to understand the impact of the Comer family on the region. But, then, history is funny like that. When textiles moved away and the economy shifted and commercial impact took on another face, who would know of the legacy of the Comers or their mills or mines? Ans when you think of that you have to wonder, what have we unknowingly forgotten?

Allie, by the way, is very interested in reading some of Comer’s speeches:

cycling / maps / Monday / photo / running / swimming / triathlon — Comments Off
12
Oct 15

We did a half Ironman this weekend

In Macon, Georgia it rained. We’d traveled over Friday night, stayed in a hotel and woke up early to get rained on. That wouldn’t be a problem. There was to be a fair amount of swimming on Saturday. Then there was lightning and big shuddering clumps of thunder. It rained and rained, everything was cold and wet and the lightning stayed around long enough to drive away the darkness.

For a time it seemed there would be no race. I talked to the race director who spelled out his options. The best option was that we’d have the full race. The longer the storm hovered over us, the less of the race we’d have. And it all came down to the formal start time. So I went back to the car and shivered from the cold rain and waited. I shivered and waited long enough that I started to hope the storm canceled the swim. The swim is my weakest segment of the triathlon. The rest of them aren’t particularly strong, mind you.

The storm pushed on through. And the race started just a few minutes late, which seemed an impressive feat while standing on the beach. Nothing else seemed impressive at the moment, though. I didn’t have enough time to finish my setup in transition, I was tripping over myself trying to put my wetsuit on while hustling down to the beach. I hadn’t had enough time to fill up the water bottles for my bike. It was a bad way to start.

But then the race itself started. It was a wave start. You go in with others in your age group. My age group launched second, so I didn’t have to wait around and get more anxious about it at least. I spent my time trying to count the buoys, make sure the wetsuit was fitting right and was in the water before I knew it.

There are two things about the swim everyone must consider. First, the cliche is that the race isn’t won in the swim, but it can be lost there. Well. I am no danger to the guys who were going to win the race. The second thing is that you have to try to not get your heart rate too elevated in the swim. It is a marathon, not a sprint. Well, a half marathon, but that’s a few hours away.

I’m swimming about 3,000 yards per workout in the pool right now. So I know I can cover the distance, which is 2,100 yards, or 1.2 miles. I know from experience that the first 300 yards of my swim are the worst. It takes that long to get my arms warmed up. I just wanted to keep my group in site for that long. I was pleased when my arms came around early in the swim and I was still surrounded by swim caps. And then I managed to hang on to the back of the pack throughout the rest of the swim, despite getting completely turned around in the lake twice. And by completely, I mean, facing the wrong direction.

Out of the water, off the beach, up the hill and into transition. I finished my prep, because I missed out early in the rainy setup period. Ran my bike over to the nearest barely-working water fountain and then started pedaling out of Macon’s Sandy Beach Park.

For 56 miles I pedaled. The course was described in such a way that led you to believe it was moderately flat. It was a little more hilly than that. More problematic was that the hills are a different kind of climb than what we’re accustomed to at home. That probably makes more sense if you spend a lot of time struggling to get up a hill. But it was a nice course; the roads were quiet, the route was pretty. The only real civilization was Roberta, a town of about 1,000 people, that served as the turnaround point.

I had to stop a few times, once for an apparel problem, once to refill water bottles and so on, and I was rather disappointed in my overall ride. I blame the hills. Around mile 53 I was ready to be done. Around mile 40 was when I let out my first harsh exclamation of the day. We drove the course the night before and I predicted when that would happen and I was right.

Before that I saw the cool Georgia Post building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

I also saw a really great old store sign that I wanted to go back and snap a picture. I didn’t stop on my ride, though, and we didn’t go back. This was about 17 miles into the course:

Which brings us to the run. After swimming 1.2 miles and riding 56 miles up and down the hills of central Georgia, I had to run 13.1 miles through the shadeless subdivisions of a few neighborhoods.

Remember, I said at mile 53 I was done? I found I was done again after the first mile of the run. And then at the fourth mile. This problem recurred pretty much on cue between miles eight through 12. But I got that emotional, finisher’s bit of steam after that.

I finished within four minutes of my worst-case scenario time. (Which was very slow, because I am quite slow.) We got our pictures taken at the finish line and, what do you know, we got the car loaded up just as another round of rain came through.

Saturday, we conquered 70.3.

I do not know what is happening.