Going to Uranus? Hire a Coach

I'm Drunk and I'm Skinny!

He knows bourbon.  Like the Southern Comfort on a canoe trip in my youth where I never actually paddled the boat, I will never drink it again.  While Southern Comfort made me spend a beautiful blue sky Wisconsin summer day lying in a gravel parking lot along the Crystal River, Bourbon made me shout at Sven Nys, “I’m drunk and I’m skinny!”  Then it made me spend the night laying on the bathroom tile after the Cyclocross World Championships in Louisville.  Bourbon is out of my league.  I don’t get it.

While he’s a virtual genius at select Kentucky beverages and can make anyone faster on a bike, he is not a Marvel super hero.  The guy I’m talking about is a lot like you or me, a person who is passionately involved in the things he loves, maybe a chromosome or two from being a full on savant.  While I’m into writing and music, can expound on the beauty of a worn sunburst Strat and tell you exactly why the new Fitz and the Tantrum’s song “Out of My League” sounds like the Cure’s “A Forest” from 1980, he is one of a handful of people that doesn’t get an itchy heat rash and headache trying to decipher a pro’s power meter graph posted on Velonews.  He knows bourbon and bike racing.  He’s my coach. 

Do I need a coach?  Yes.  Yes I do.  Take these awesome blue suede pointy shoes I got from Banana Republic.  You want to touch them don’t you?  Don’t get your oily fingers on them.  Just know they feel like the silky top of a cat’s head.  Purrr.  For you, maybe they’re not your bag, hipster dufus material.  They’ll likely be at the outlet store in November.  I need them.  For me, working in an industry like pop radio, where the feeling of youth and cool is part of the product, these shoes help me, a middle aged creative, stay in touch with fashion and trends, the same qualities that our listeners hold dear.  Your frugal cycling side may see an unwarranted expense.  I admit.  I do feel a bit out of my skin as I wrestle them on with a shoe horn in the morning, but I see it sort of as an investment.  The second I lose sight of or fail to be directly involved in what our listeners hold dear, like (egads!) an appreciation for Miley Cyrus, I may be looking for a job at the oldies station.

It makes me want to get a fake ID to actually lower my age, but I’ve been racing and ridiculously involved in cycling for longer than most juniors have been alive.  For God’s sake, there’s a 1991 Breezer Thunder in our bike stable, and that’s not even the vintage one in my book.  Every one of those juniors should know who Joe Breeze is.  I own a truing stand.  In my junior aged days, I circumnavigated Waukesha County on a bike with down-tube shifters and a boombox strapped to my front rack blaring “The Who.”  I’ve come back from ACL reconstruction surgery where my wife had to help me as I grunted attempting a single leg lift.  You’d think I’d know it all by now: training, mechanics, skills, speed, and history.  Yet, I have a coach. 

I look at having a coach like a trip to Uranus.  You might troll the boneyard next to the airport for parts, camp out in the science section of the library and actually build a rockin’ 1978 VW shaped spaceship, but you’re not going to feel the soft pale Uranus dirt between your toes without a little input from say perhaps…an actual rocket scientist.  The main reason I have a coach is so someone, a certified cycling dork, is vested as a shareholder in team Joe.  It’s no different than having a personal mentor or work consultant.  I could go pretty far on my own, perhaps land that VW mothership in a swimming pool the next county over and be on TMZ.  But, like those swanky blue shoes, my coach will take me where I’ve never been before...to Uranus.  

His name is Chris Mayhew.  Learn more about him at the JBV Coaching Website.

#NoOpportunityWasted: Peloton Drowning

Me in 1/2/3's courtesy Jeffrey B. Jakucyk

It reminded me of an Outside Magazine article about Free Diving, “Open Your Mouth and You’re Dead.”  On the cusp of death via drowning, free divers report a soft transition from swimming into an almost blissful dreamlike state (see inset).  I’m not going to romanticize death and it would be preposterous to think one could drift off into dreamland while riding a bicycle and stay upright, but with my heart rate pegged at 184bpm the third time up the Cliff Road climb in the OSRS Race #3 at Harrison's Tomb in Cleves, OH I didn’t feel panic but instead a letting go of sorts.  Someone at the front surged and I sunk through and below the surface of the peloton. 

A few months ago, while on vacation in St. Maarten, the diving instructor at the reef pulled me aside and said, “You look like a good swimmer, confident and comfortable with the snorkel and fins.”  I nodded.  “If you want to see some of the better reef,” she added, “go to the other side of the peninsula and swim through the chop about 75 meters to where the buoys start the curve.”  She pointed.  “Just stay to the right of the buoys to avoid the red stinger coral.”  I hesitated at first.  Stinger coral?  My wife and I walked the dirt path and stood on the rocky beach as the waved thunderously crashed on the shallow reef.  Ka-whoosh!  It was intimidating as hell.  She wasn’t going.  I stood there for 10 minutes wondering where the stinger coral exactly was.  This is how tourists drown. 

Back on the climb with riders cresting the top, I got this, I thought.  I’ve been dropped before.  I’ve been dropped and clawed my way back to the surface before.  You gather your wits, tell yourself the group will let up, take a drink, hit a GU, put your head down and drive it smooth and steady until you make contact with the main group or a few others in a row boat.  You think of getting dropped as a violent abrupt end, but it’s really not.  It’s sort of like drowning.  The lights sort of dim in your mind with lack of oxygen and you never feel the water rush in.  Seeing the riders flood around me at the last little punch the third time up the climb, I was at ease.  I wasn’t dead.

Maybe the calm comes with knowing that you’re giving it your all.  Isn’t that what death is sort of like anyway?  As I look back, like we all do on races, and look for some blame, I realize I did do everything I could have to save myself.  I’ve done long and hilly training rides with the fastest guys in town.  I ate a good breakfast.  I arrived with fresh legs.  I was eating and drinking.  I never hit the wind and always had a wheel.  Judging from the size of the group cresting the climb in front of me, I wasn’t the first to let go.  At least a third of the original peloton was already below me.  I simply wasn’t strong enough to keep treading water and that’s okay with me.  I gave it my all as a 44 year old Cat 3 in his first 1/2/3 road race.  Like my decision on the beach in St. Maarten, I didn’t waste my opportunity.

I was in tropical paradise, a good swimmer, incredibly fit from racing the Cyclocross Masters World Championships, with good gear and the one and only chance I may every have in my life to see the coral reef in St. Maarten.  My thoughts turned positive to “No Opportunity Wasted,” the mantra of Phil Keoghan of the Amazing Race, his ride across America, the book and resulting NOW website.  I kicked off my shoes, geared up and waded in.  With waves crashing over head, I went under.  I held my breath and ducked my snorkel underwater and swam through a 4 foot gap between some red coral.  I surfaced, blew out my snorkel, ducked under the choppy 3-4 foot waves and kept swimming along the right of the buoys and out to an incredible little reef.  It was nearly euphoric.

Me At Masters Worlds CX Jan 2012

You see, I didn’t enter this hilly 1/2/3 race to do well.  I did it because I had the chance, an opportunity to better myself, to test myself.  I didn’t enter it blindly.  Like in St. Maarten, I considered my abilities and the risk.  My first 1/2/3 road race as a 44 year old Cat 3 rider, what am I stupid?  But, it’s that sort of thinking that holds people back.  Why pass up an opportunity to do well in a Cat 3 race for a chance only to hang in a 1/2/3 race?  For me, every cyclocross season I struggle staying in contact with the Cat 1 level masters aged racers.  Every year I feel like I’m just a pinch too slow.  So this year, I’m making a concerted effort to put on my big boy pants and ride with the fastest guys in town in hopes of being on par in the fall.  I didn’t want to waste the opportunity to learn that I can average 23.5 mph in a 1/2/3 road race and the guys who finished with what was left of "the pack" averaged 24 even.  It was worth the risk.  Getting dropped is nothing but riding alone.  It sure the hell isn’t drowning.  

There Must Be 50 Ways to Lose Mohican

On The Mohican 100k Start Line Courtesy Jen & Mark Farmer

You can have your frame crack, Jack…have your stem hammer your boys, Roy…get bit by a bee, Lee…are you listening to me?  Nearly 48 hours have passed since my stellar Mohican 100k turned into what can best be described by internet videos of would-be marathon winners hilariously crumpling and falling to the ground at mile 18.  I’ve bonked, crashed, mechanicaled, overheated, even had my foot caught in a teammate spokes while we were still moving.  This was the first time I’ve ever met pure fatigue and exhaustion.  At the moment of submission, I apologized to a teammate’s wife for not wearing any clothes.

Wearing only shorts and socks, I could barely lift my bike on the hitch rack.  Nicole was a sweetheart, considering this was only our 2^nd meeting and here I am shirtless and spaced out in the front seat of their Subaru.  An hour earlier, I was on pace to a sub 6 hour Mohican 100k flirting with 15-18^th place.  It was to be my best Mohican ever, my 4^th in a row.  I can hear you now, “Quit being a baby.  I was out there for (enter any double digit number under 14 here) hours.”  At prior races, I’ve wondered why some racers would throw in the towel at 11:30am.  Stuck up baby pro’s can’t even finish their race if they can’t get a good time.  As long as I got in before dark, I could still finish.  I hadn’t told officials I had DNF’d.  At the cabin, trying to get my wits and emotions back together with a phone call to my wife, it crossed my mind to get a ride back out to checkpoint 3 and finish the course for my own dignity.  I even threw a leg over the bike.  Nuh uh.  Mohican isn’t about finishing at all costs any more.  After I hung up the phone, I smiled and walked to the finish to turn in my number.  She’s awesome.

Mohican #3 Chain-Suck

I’M NO QUITTER 

My first Mohican, I melted in mid 90’s heat and humidity for 8 ½ hours over the 100k course.  I blew my radiator cap, suffered for 5 miles, took off my shirt and shoes, topped off with coolant, rode another 5 miles and spectacularly blew again and again and again till I crossed the finish line in 8 ½ hours.  It was like a legless dog dragging its way home on its front paws.  The next year, better prepared for doom, I shined, finishing 18^th in the open class with a time of 6 hours and 8 minutes!  The third year, last year, I wanted to best myself and went into the race in incredible shape.  With a great start, I rode clean, slipping and sliding through the wet roots and mossy rocks of the singletrack.  On a mud choked course, back pedaling to un-due the chain suck for the 10^th time, I twisted an 8 inch section of my chain at a 45 degree angle.  It completely disabled my drivetrain and sawed my Niner’s scandium chainstay nearly in half before I even got to the covered bridge.  Game over.  Drenched to the bone, I limped back to the cabin 10 miles with my bike skipping up and down through the gears with every pedal stroke.

Mohican now is no longer about poetically overcoming obstacles.  You want to talk about determination?  I’ve been trying to drag my carcass across that finish line in under 6:08 for two years now.  I trained to ride hard, ride long and not whither with back pain and overcome adverse weather conditions.  I changed my race day diet and purchased a new frame and drivetrain.  I’m no quitter.  

Coming Into Check Point 1 Courtesy Jen & Mark Farmer

FAST FELT EASY

This year I towed the front of the start line in my best shape ever.  I crested the top of the road climb close enough to say I was in the mix for the $100 KOM prime.  My heart rate monitor, set at 100% for my lactate threshold, floated between 96 and 103 as I graced the top 20.  I flowed.  I felt recovery at 96, steady climbing at 103. Forward progress, I drank and ate at the right moments, well aware that I should drink a bottle and consume the right amount of calories each hour.  I was making calm sense of the chaos of racing fast.  I lead the train.  No one asked to pass.  At my nemesis, the climb after the covered bridge, I kept it steady all the way to the top.  In my first two Mohican’s I suffered here, going backwards.  It was always my first “bad patch” of the race.  I had prepared for this with 10 weeks of threshold hill repeats and changing my race day breakfast.  I was elated.  In and out of the first check point in maybe 45 seconds with two fresh bottles and some oranges, the mile markers ticked by, 18, 21.  I never felt so good riding so hard for so long.  The hike a bike in the single track felt 200 yards shorter than previous years.  I pacelined through the fragrant pine needle fireroads leading to the horse trail descent.  It was beautiful.  Fast felt easy.

Maybe it was the first sign of my demise, but on a long climb leading up to the 2^nd checkpoint I lost contact with the riders I was with.  I still felt okay, got my 5^th and 6^th bottles, a swig of a Redbull and was in and out of the 2^nd check just as quick as the first.  Descending though some brush-hog cut “trail”, I hit what I call the trailer park road and felt home free.  My computer read 36 miles or so.  I was 3 hours and 40 minutes into the race.  My heart rate remained just below my LT and I kept motoring.  I did math in my head.  With 20 miles of road and maybe 5 of singletrack, I was well on pace to a sub 6 hour Mohican.  8-10 miles of gravel and paved road would lead to 2 miles of technical singletrack and check point 3 at the 50 mile mark.  Then I started losing power.

ALONE AND STRANDED

It started with a hitch in my left hip flexor.  A hotspot flared on the outside of my left foot.  My HRM number dropped to the low 80’s my speed to 12mph on a relatively flat paved section.  My body dialed itself back to the endurance zone.  This was my 4^th Mohican.  I call them “bad patches.”  You give yourself 20 minutes, chill out, ride within yourself and they pass.  I grabbed the wheel of and traded pulls with a Texas Roadhouse jersey.  I thought, in the next 30 minutes I’d refuel at the 50 mile rest stop.  After that, only one real obstacle remained, a long steep fire road climb.  I lost his wheel and then mine.

I started to feel far away.  My clock read 4:25.  Chubbier people and bigger bikes began to pass.  My arms ached.  I felt too hot.  Rolling climbs became granny gear walls.  My open jersey flapped at my sides.  My spin turned to a churn.  My stomach twisted.  I told myself, “Joe, get your shit together, the rock garden singletrack is coming up.”  Breathe.  I gathered enough wits to clean the rock garden, but parked it next to a barn.  I stripped off my shirt, helmet and gloves and sat down.  It’s just a bad patch.  You can do it. 

I felt light headed, not quite dizzy.  Cleanly through the singletrack, I crawled a half mile through the cornfield.  8mph.  6mph.  I felt embarrassed rolling in to the check.  I didn’t want anyone to see me, now shirtless, gloveless, helmetless, glassy-eyed with wet paper towels draped on my head and back.  I drank 2, 3, 4 cups of water.  I downed a Gu and an orange.  Like a vampire, I couldn’t handle being in the sun long enough to even attempt to fill my bottles.  At that moment, the 15 or so miles to the finish became insurmountable.  If I could only shake one of my issues I could ride, but my stomach remained a fist, my muscles drained, my foot burned, my hip throbbed and radiator cap still hissed.  Complicating the situation, it was still a 45 minute road ride home even if I were to DNF.  If I quit I had to still walk a 10 mile plank.  I felt alone, stranded.  Looking like a horror movie victim knocking on a neighbor’s door for help, my teammate’s wife offered a ride home. 

My Best Mohican Finish Ever

SIMMER DOWN

Having showered and changed in the cabin, my head hung and I welled up when I picked up my phone to call my wife.  A teammate came in and I distanced myself from the box of tissues.  I’m sure Brian put Kleenex and me together.  I walked outside to dial.  No one wants to hear you complain, let alone cry about your bad race.  I wanted to feel her arms wrap around me and her words make me strong again.  We talked for a long time about her Dad, her dinner with some girlfriends, and things that have nothing to do with bikes.  I laughed and smiled.  She’s beautiful.

She reminded me that I rode 3 hours and 40 minutes at my absolute physical limit, an impressive feat for any other race, road, mountain bike or whatever.  My training did pay off.  I rode all that singletrack incredibly clean and efficient.  I’ll never forget how wonderful those 36 miles felt.  I tamed the demons from previous races, only my good fitness opened the door to an unknown factor, complete fatigue.  My only mistake, a miscalculation on the race recipe.  I went out too hard too early, averaging nearly 98 percent of my lactate threshold for three hours and forty minutes.  When I only needed to cook at 400 degres for 6 hours, I set the oven at 475 and periodically checked for doneness.  Afterward at dinner a friend offered some great advice.  Ride within yourself, not out of your mind.


Hit play and enjoy the encore.

CX: It All Ends Tonight…For Realzies

She’s tolerating it.  For ten, twelve, weeks I’ve rode up alongside her, put a hand on her back and said, “See ya at home Honey.”  Then I drop it into the small ring, put the left bud in my ear and noodle the 45 minutes back home.  With OVCX races on Sunday, I always cut the Saturday ride short.  She’d smile and maybe say something sassy like, “smell ya later.”  I can’t imagine what cyclocross is like for those who race and have spouses that don’t ride.  You gotta have a real angel in your life.

The end is near.  Thank you Oprah.  Thank you Tom Cruise.  Thank you little baby Jesus, she’s saying in her best Ricky Bobby impersonation.  I thank her.  Since August I HAD to buy two new tires and a seatpost.  I'm still afraid to calculate how much I’ve spent on gas, entry fees and Combos at Speedway.  No doubt the cost of Combos alone is nearing the cost of the six month property tax bill.  Still I got excited to open the 8^th place payout envelope last weekend.  I gave it to her when I got home. The real prize to me was the words "8th Place Elite Masters" written on the envelope itself.

She rides and races too, just not cross.  So in the fall, she has no interest in intervals, hill repeats or riding circles in the grass drooling and wheezing like a donkey.  The only thing that’s kept us working out together is the 45 minutes on Saturday mornings, the occasional  recovery ride and yoga.  Namaste to that.   

The season essentially ends tonight.  At least that’s the way I’m thinking about it.  I don’t know if she sees it yet, that there’s a Sunday in the future with our name on it.  There’s 4 races left, in three weekends.  Really, today being Thursday, November 18^th, I’ll line up in the grid for the last time in about 2 weeks.  Less if I decide against racing Indy.  I can count the number of interval workouts I have left.  Three.  The number of really hard gut busting donkey wheezing interval workouts is exactly one.

This is precisely why you set goals.  Not only do they justify the work and sacrifice to yourself, but those around you.  I heard her on the phone the other day telling a relative about some of my bad race luck with the tires and broken seatpost.  Then in a warmer tone she added, “The last two races were great for him.  He reached his top-ten goal.”  She cares.  She called me Number Eight Sunday night after my 8^th place finish.  When I think about it, the number eight is an infinite as a wedding ring.  That stuff makes a man feel all warm and gushy.

I’ve got my crampons dug in and I’m on the peak.  Endurance doesn’t matter anymore.  I’m not going to get any stronger than I am right now.  Speed and technique is all that’s left to tweak.  I’ll do my last real hill repeats tonight, race Sunday in Lexington, do some speed work mid next week, toss in a yoga class, eat some Turkey and mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie and green bean casserole and more mashed potatoes and race the State Championships at John Bryan. 

Tonight’s Biiiiiilly Goat ride is it.  Fin.  After that it’s a matter of making the most of the fitness I’ve built up since I started cutting the Saturday ride short, since I was home on Sunday afternoon, since I last spent an entire weekend riding with my wife.  It all ends tonight Honey.  For realzies.

158 Yo!

Out of frustration for weighing 170, I wrote a blog entry titled “Don’t Stop Riding The Elevator” on Friday, January 25th of this year. We had spent the previous fall moving from KY to OH and the cycling had definitely suffered. That day, I set a goal to be 158, the lightest weight I can remember as a competitive cyclist, the weight where my Grandma says “Joseph, you’re too thin,” the weight where my wife says, “ooh baby you feel skinny,” by the Mohican 100 MTB race in May. Things didn’t go as planned.

Shortly after that entry, I tweaked my knee in a freak push broom incident and went in for meniscus surgery on my knee. As quick as my recovery went, the goal shifted to the beginning of CX training season in August. Again, a setback. I nearly bent my thumb back to my elbow when I clipped a tree in a mountain bike race in late June/early July, which made gripping a handlebar quite painful for 4-6 weeks. So, I started running and doing more old school core stuff including jumping jacks.

I recently had a birthday, got some good stuff like this adventure book "Roads To Quoz" and two new Yakima rails for the roof top bike rack. As it turns out, the best birthday gift, I gave to myself. Today, after my Monday morning ritual, I set down the copy of Outside Magazine, looked at my another-year-older carcass in the mirror and thought, “Huh, I look kind of skinny.” My bod had sort of a “V” shape, sort of, as if the bottom of the “V” was slightly melted. Setting myself up for disappointment, I told myself, “Uh, you look about 160-161.” I stepped on the scale and there it was…158.

If I had any left in me, I would’ve crapped my shorts.

There’s some entertaining, marginally motivational and possibly useful cycling oriented weight loss stuff in the previous articles from the old blog on AOL, “161st Street,” “Snackin’ With The Biggest Loser” and “Don’t Stop Riding The Elevator.” One thing is for sure, you won’t lose any weight sitting on your arse and reading it. Put down those Cheetos, go do something that makes you feel good about yourself, and come back to read ‘em later.