Stables

Horses and cycling have so much in common it's eerie. You sit in a saddle. Both objects are ridden. Balance is key, as is leg strength. There are different models/breeds for different disciplines within the sport. yada yada yada. My favorite parallel, by far?

Stables.

When you have a lot of horses, you keep them in one. When you have a lot of bikes, you have one.

The best part? You don't have to muck out a stall with a bike. You don't have to feed it everyday. You don't have to turn it out and let it in, or pull its mane, or pay for it to get shod. You buy the bike, you have the bike. Yes, you need to oil it and keep it clean, but degreaser and lube set you back maybe 20$, where-as you can't even buy one bag of grain for that amount.

Why, you may ask, why would a person ever need to have multiple bikes?

Why indeed.

First off, you have your first bike. Be it road or mountain, this bike is going to be entry level, solid, dependable, and if you fall in love with the sport like I did, quickly outgrown in terms of performance. Not that this bike has outlived its usefulness in any way. Starter bikes turn into commuters, rain bikes, trainer bikes, extra bikes, or guest bikes. Not only does it hold a special place in your heart, but you will always, in some way, love to ride it.

Then, you need your upgrade bike. This speaks for itself. For roadies, this usually means carbon. For mountain bikers, it's usually an upgrade in terms of components/shock quality. Sometimes it's a 29er or a full suspension rig for trickier trails or trail cred.

Then, you need your branch out bike. The mountain biker who wants to try out the road. The roadie who wants to dabble on the trails. Or, as in my case, the curious cyclocross devote. This bike is, again, an entry level bike bought with a touch more savvy than the initial beginner bike. Now, you know at least a little bit about components, durability, groups, how to pronounce Shimano (Shim-ah-no), etc. This bike is usually used but with nicer stuff. This bike also usually suffices as the only bike for this particular discipline; you don't upgrade it unless you truly fall head over heals in love.

Or you just want to buy more bikes.

Which leads us to the bikes bought not so much because of need, but because of reasoning. Maybe a steel vintage bike because you're thinking about touring. Maybe a super tricked out aluminum bike because you want to crit race, but don't want to crash your carbon. Maybe a

"funny bike." or a moulton (which holds the land speed record, so don't knock it), or a recumbent (why not?).

Slowly but surely, you develop your stable. Your own, unique collection of bikes to suit every whim you may have.

Yes, I acknowledge it's overkill, and that in a completely The Road type of viewpoint, having more than one bike is 100% ridiculous, just another example of materialism running rampant and slowly draining us of our ability to appreciate the simple things in life.

So let me introduce you to my stable.

This is Vincent. He is my started bike. I love him probably more than I should. He has put up with lots of falling over, dechaining, and general abuse with the aplomb of a true gentleman. He is dead sexy. He has become my second bike, my rain bike, will be my winter bike, and my trainer bike, but he is by no means a forgotten bike.

This is Amy. She is my carbon bike. She is hot. She is fast. I like to go fast on her. I still don't go as fast as I will someday go, but I'm excited to see just how fast that will be. Going fast is fun. Amy also thinks going fast is fun. Therefor, we are destined to do great things together.

This is my Cyclocross bike. He and I are still getting to know one another, and so he doesn't have a name yet. But he will soon. I do know that he loves to get muddy, and won't mind getting banged up, fallen down on, and generally ridden balls to the wall style. He also likes to drink beer.

This is my stable.

So wait, who is this?

This means that I'm really getting serious. This is my commitment to training and racing and all of that. This is my future. This is my crit bike. Nameless as of now, still in a box, slowly being paid for, and ready to bust out.

But wait, you say. What about your responsibilities? Your bills? Your cats? Your house?

To all of that, I say that I'm an adult, and I do what needs to be done. I have a part time job in addition to my day job. I'm selling off things (Prada bag anyone? Custom vogel field boots?) that no longer have a use in my life, or are reminders of when I was another person. I may not be able to go out to eat as much (ever) in the future, and new clothes...well...it's a good thing that the bike will let me stay the same size I am now. Travel is restricted to weddings and birth-ings. And in the future, if I need to, I will sell one of the bikes before I start spiraling into debt. Everyone who is itching to ask all of those above questions, please don't. My life.

Also, while cycling may be addicting and lead to bike lust and stables and a general spending of money in ways you wouldn't have predicted, it also comes with friends, a healthy lifestyle, and a community of awesome, fabulous people who are just as interested in bikes as you are, while also having interesting, full, fabulous lives outside of bikes. And each bike is a gateway to a new group of people. Mountain bikeRS, road bikeRS, cyclocrossERS. I'm not just accumulating bikes, I'm deepening relationships and a way of life.

So for all of those people who say stables are silly, I say yes, they are silly, but at least cyclists are all silly together.

Train by numbers

Back in my running days (ah...my running days...), I remember being surrounded by beeps. Literally. Whenever I ran with my friends, at least one of them invariably had a heartrate monitor. Reach endurance threshold, beep! Reach high endurance threshold, beep! Reach lactic threshold, beep beep beep!, followed by a, "wait a second guys, take it back a bit, I have to come down a little."

My heart's status? Beating. Steadily.

That pretty much summed up my knowledge of HRs.

Now I've got a coach, and am actually in training for bad-assness, as opposed to my old gameplan: overtraining for overuse injuries. As part of this new regimen, I am employing the aid of a heart rate monitor. My very own beeping aerobic monitoring pal.

Now one would think that having a HR monitor would make riding the bike easier. For a normal person, this may be true, but for me, one would be wrong. I've always like to have perceived exertion as my guide. This wasn't the best approach, as I always wanted to FEEL the exertion on the bike. Not feeling it meant, in my mind, not working. Thus, I never really had any true recovery days; I couldn't help myself.

I'm feeling a whole lot of not working lately.

I know that this is not the case. I know that I am rebuilding my base, which is perhaps the most important part of cycling training; without a solid mileage foundation, intervals, hill repeats, and other such workouts are pretty much useless. Keeping my heart-rate in the magic endurance range means that I'm SAFELY preparing myself for some serious self butt kicking down the line.

But I'm getting sick of the beeps. Beep! Slow down! Beep! Watch out! Beep! I know you want to cruise at 20 but you need to drop it back to 16! Beep! I know you're getting passed by every other cyclist out there but you need to let it go!

The most recent example? This morning I went on a fabulous ride with two of my amazing girlfriends. It was the first time riding with either of them since the Big Blowout. I was psyched. I was also psyched because I was allowed to do two 2x10 intervals where I could get my heartrate up into my current "Sweet Spot": 160-165. High endurance.

First interval? Awesome. I'm riding my new carbon sexy speed demon bike, sporting the Garmin, and flying down Air Harbor at 24mph. Heart rate? 164ish all the way.

We come to Church right at interval's end, turn down Spencer Dixon, and chit chat as recovery. HR goes down to 135-145.

At the end of Spencer Dixon, we wait at the stop light and see a group of Tri Geeks (term of affection people, hackles down) race past. Time for interval number two.

Mary to me and Genisis: Want to catch them?

Me and Genisis: Sure.

And we're off.

HR monitor creeps up. 150, 155, 160. 165. That's it for me. I top out at 20mph on the slight uphill of 150 towards Lake Brandt.

And watch Mary go racing past, still in hot pursuit.

I wanted with every muscle to jump on her wheel and max out, push it, catch those guys and fly by them.

Beep beep beep! 169. I can feel that I am no longer in endurance mode; I couldn't keep this pace up for any great length of time. Downshift to a spinnier gear goes I. Away goes Mary. Down goes HR.

Mary, always a gentlewoman, sees that I'm not with her, and starts to soft peddle as I catch up. She finishes the interval with us, and we all slow way down for recovery.

I know that it was a good thing I let Mary drop the hammer (she would have caught them had she not stopped for me) without joining in the festivities. My recovery schedule also thanks me. My coach and my physical therapist both thank me. But heartrate training is not as easy as one would think. It actually requires MORE discipline and self control than going by feel, because there are concrete numbers to pay attention to rather than perceived exertion levels (which I always ignored for the most part anyways).

Athletes like myself, who are all about GOGOGO, have a hard time saying STOP. That's where the beep comes in. Beep! Stop!

As my heart gets stronger again, my HR will naturally drop, and I'll be able to be back at the smithy with Mary once more.

In the meantime, though, I'm chained to a monitor.

Son of a beep.

Size Matters

If I had one advantage while working with horses, it was my height and build. Being slight and small-ish, I could easily ride the ponies (easier to fall off of, but shorter distance to the ground). Being skilled and strong-ish, I could also ride the horses. When it comes to riding, experience trumps measurement everytime.

Take Margie Goldstein, who probably stands around 4'11'' and rides horses who are...well...big:

Then there was my first boss, Chris Kappler, who is very very tall. He makes any horse under him look teeny tiny:

Long story short: size doesn't matter.

In cycling, size is (almost) everything.

If your bike fit is off by even millimeters, fugehtaboudit. Standover height, seat height, and top tube length all work together to form YOUR bike fit, which is yours alone. Even the various sizes are differ only by centimeters. A 49 is and never will be a 52, and you can't finagle or fudge something that simply won't fit.

Case In Point #1:

Before my store's Super Sale, I had been lusting over an 09 Tarmac Elite that for some reason has never sold. It's a gorgeous blue/carbon color scheme, equipped with 105, and just looks freaking sexy. In a fit of impulsiveness (me? Impuslive?), I decided to buy it. A 52, it would fit! I knew it would! So what if the top tube was 53.75 cms? That was only, what, 2 cms longer than my current bikes. No problem!

I snuck to the back (shhh!) and swapped out my seats, computers, pedals, etc, and imagined my first amazing ride on it.

That's when Charles, the expert who did my bike fit and has forgotten more about bike fitting than I will ever learn, takes one look and says, "You can't ride that bike. It's too big for you."

Damn. I finagled and moaned and ultimately caved. Swapping everything back, I placed the Blue Tarmac back in its slot on the carousel, and said goodbye.

Case In Point #2:

My blown out knee, literally done in by wrong measurements.

Case In Point #3:

Any adjustment made to your bike fit is best done in mms. That's right, not even cms. MILLI-meters. And even then your body is going to be whacked out after the first ride or two with the new position.

Case In Point #4:

The correct seat height means that your feet, on a road bike, shouldn't really be able to touch the ground. If it's even a smidge too low...well...read Case In Point # 2

That's one of the awesome things about cycling: the precision that goes into everything. That's why good bike fittings cost about 200$, and are WORTH 200$ also. Yes, you can get on and futz with it yourself, but just be prepared to face the consequences.

::hand raise:: Case In Point

Learning to Trust

As an athlete, I see my body not as "me," but as a means to an end. For example. I want to run 7 miles. My body is the tool which allows this to happen. In this dual perspective, I envision my body as the "other." Like my car, or my vacuum. "Sophie" is not running, so much as Sophie's Body is running, and Sophie is just along for the ride.

For my whole life, I have been able to trust my body. It hasn't let me down. Even when injured, even when injured through my own stupidity, it has picked itself up, dusted itself off, and kept going. Grade 3 ankle sprain in the middle of marathon training? No problem, bump that date back a few weeks and lets rock n roll. Broken toe and 8 horses to ride? Let's drop that stirrup and giddy up.

Now, though, after taking time off and getting a professional bike fit and enlisting the help/support of friends, family, and a coach, I'm still not ready to trust my body. I don't feel like it's going to be there for me. I still feel every twinge or tweak in my knee as a prelude to relapse. I"m still hyperaware and sensitive. My brain practically lives in my right knee, poised on edge for the other shoe to fall.

This week has been my first real week back on the bike with any sort of meaning. I'm wearing a heart rate monitor (super strange but super cool) now, and I'm tracking my progress through time, not distance. The progression looked thusly:

Tuesday: 60 minutes with hills
Wednesday: 90 minutes no hills
Thursday: Rest
Friday: 60 minutes hills
Sat: Rest
Sunday: 90 minutes hills
Heart Rate: Between 135-145

This was the run down. But the low down, what I was feeling, was more like this:

Tuesday: Did my knee hurt? What about now? Does my knee hurt now? What was that?
Wednesday: Hmm, ok, it seems to be ok. It seems to be fine. Maybe it's fine. I don't feel anything, but maybe I'm just getting lucky.
Thursday: I think I'll rest today instead of ride, it's going to rain anyways and I just felt my knee hurt for a second.
Friday: Oh god, what is that feeling? Why isn't it going away? It's not getting worse, but it feels weird. Why is my knee feeling weird? Is it going to hurt?
Saturday: My knee has felt fine all day, but I know it's going to start hurting any second.

Today was perhaps the worst of it. After arriving at my start location, not more than two minutes into the ride I started to panic that my knee was hurting again, leaked a few tears, and turned around to get my brace. After strapping my patella into place, another two minutes into "take two" of my ride, I decided that the brace would just make things worse, and that I should ride without it and just see what happened.

What happened?

My knee never hurt. Not once. I never felt my knee hurt once on the entire ride. In fact, where my knee SHOULD have hurt the most (i.e. climbs, once or twice when I put the pressure down and sprinted), it felt the BEST. Also, my knee never hurt AFTER the ride either. I've been on my feet literally all weekend at work, 11 hour days, moving bikes, walking around, carrying things up and down stairs, and I"m fine with zero aspirin or ice. Plus, my knee never actually hurt ONCE all week on ANY ride. Clearly, I am ALL BETTER.

But.

I didn't feel "normal" either during my ride. There was always a slight pressure above my kneecap, a feeling that had never been there pre injury. A feeling of a bump or a hard spot in my tendon. It's not a knee that I know.

And I don't trust this new knee. I don't trust it to hold up and not start hurting again.

Most likely, this is the knee I will have to learn to live with. Most likely, all my years of running and dancing and riding have finally caught up with me, and whatever I DID do a month ago (still a mystery) resulted in some scar tissue, or a decrease in elasticity, that now results in a feeling of pressure above my kneecap.

Hopefully, over the next week, I will pry Sophie's brain out of Sophie's Body's right knee, and back into Sophie's head where it belongs, actually ENJOYING Sophie's ride. NOT waiting for pain, or relapse, or injury. But just reveling in moving my feet in circles in Greensboro along the open road.

Hopefully, I will once again trust my body.

Nostalgia Kicks In

It's no secret. I'm a total beginner when it comes to riding a bike. While I cruised around the neighborhood as a kid, banging up and down curbs, jumping obstacles, and being generally fearless (see "stupid") on my hot pink and teal Giant Awesome, it unfortunately doesn't translate today into being bike handling savvy.

At the store, I see the mechanics wizz by me all day on their way out to the parking lot to test ride. They are on every sort of bike you can imagine, literally, and always appear to naturally be a part of them. They don't have to touch their feet to the ground as they open and close doors, or maneuver around bikes on the floor on rainy days. They are all experts.

I know exactly how they feel.

Last night, as I was lying in bed trying to imagine muscle memory wise what it would feel like to jump on and off my cyclocross bike, knowing that no matter how often I imagined I would still crash and burn during my first few (fifty) attempts, I allowed myself to remember what it's like to ride a horse.

I mean, REALLY ride a horse. Extension, collection, forward and straight, shoulder in, haunches in, haunches out, circles, serpentines, jumping a combination. Everything. I remembered what it was like to get on a horse I'd never ridden before, and know in a matter of five minutes exactly what I needed to work on with it. Did it pop its' outside shoulder? Was it stiffer to the right or to the left? Was it lazy? Did I need to crack it with the stick once when it ignored my leg aid? Soft mouth? Hard mouth? More bit? Less bit? Draw reins?

There was a time in my life, not so long ago, when I worked for the top levels of the hunter/jumper world. If Lance Armstrong, Fabian Cancellara, Jens Voigt, George Hincapie, and all the rest could be translated into my former employers, it would read Sandy Ferrell, Scott Stewart, Don Stewart, Chris Kappler, etc.

And of course, Eddie Merckx himself: George Morris. Aka God. I worked for God.

All of this, for the first time, made me miss riding horses. It made me want to call Brass Lantern Farm, a very high caliber facility right down the street, and ask if I could exercise the babies while they went to Florida this winter. (Something I will never do again, go down to Florida for the winter circuit). Not for money, I gave up being pro when I bought a house in Greensboro. But just to allow the feeling of expertise once again.

I know this whole post sounds self serving and boastful. Point taken. But in a way, I need these past accolades to remind me that at one point in time, I was a complete beginner on a horse. It was only with time and practice that I became the rider I am today. It didn't happen overnight.

And neither will becoming adept on a bike.

Cyclocross season will be my bike skills bootcamp, in a sense. I'm not in it to win it, but I am in it to gain confidence and know-how when it comes to cycling confidently. Hopefully, my muscle memory will shift from imaginary to concrete.

Things I've Learned

For the past month, as many of you know, I've been off the bike. I've been off the elliptical. I've been off running and riding and everything in between. I've been activity less.

For one. whole. month.

During this time, I grappled with my diagnosis of a long term syndrome of the patella femoral kind. Something that would never go away. Something I would always have to work around and with. The thought of never being able to do anything physical without dealing in some way with pain was horrifying, and my mother got the brunt of my meltdowns. What would life be without riding my bike OR running OR pushing myself in any way? Who would I "be", if not an "active person"?

MOST fortunately, one actual professional fit, done several days ago, lifted the gloomy veil of PFS, and enlightened me to the fact that I had been riding with a poor fit from day one. Thus, my friends' attempts to transfer over my measurements and get me riding safely again were, thanks to me, ineffectual. Thus, the conglomoration of braces that I purchased from various sources and had been attempting to ride with last week are no longer needed.

Thus, I am, finally, 100%, back on the bike pain free. Officially, back offn'riding, though at a slow and steady wins the race clip.

In my month off, I anticipated some sort of earthshattering breakthrough. A divine moment of clarity that would crystalize my philosophy of athletics, if not life in general.

No such luck. In fact, my month off was so mundane as to be a non event. However, not all is completely lost, and to that end, here are a few things I've learned from the whole experience, from the time it occurred on June 29th to now:

1) It's extremely easy to get used to doing nothing.

2) Doing nothing for a short period of time will not cause you to balloon up to a size 25.

3) Don't be a know it all. Get help and listen to people who are more experienced.

4) STOPSTOPSTOP RIDDING OR RUNNING WHEN YOU FEEL A SHARP SUDDEN PAIN.

6) Doctors don't know everything.

7) Few things in life are as awesome as riding a bike.

8) I have a wonderful, supportive group of friends in GSO.

9) Few things in life are as awesome as maple bacon icecream.

10) My mother's endurance for listening to my meltdowns is endless. Thank god.

Hopefully, I won't forget numbers 1-8. #9 is simply a fact. #10 is simply a matter of good fortune.

Next steps?

I've met with my coach, Ashley Powell (www.catup.com), and we're on a gameplan to get me back up2speed. Step 1: Increase my mileage/endurance with the goal of putting the injury in the past in one month. Step 2: Gear up for the Gran Fondo, a century in October with a decent amount of climbing. Step 3: Cyclocross season!

So no huge life lessons learned, accept maybe that life does go on, and things do get better.