Nowhere Fast
The agony (and ecstasy?) of stationary cycling.
With the onslaught of chaos that is the lifeblood of Trumpmusklandia, everything on the cusp of illegality, if not all out illegal but what the hell do it and then see how much of it we can sneak in as it gets fought out in the courts—with a deep sadness falling over me during these short-cold-dark winter days, writing ideas continually upended by yet another newsflash, the Heritage Foundation coup well underway…and writing senators and spamming ICE report-an-illegal email hotlines and hoping I’ll wake up to realize this was just a crazy fucked up dream brought on by an old, old episode of the animated television show “Duckman,” in which everyone suddenly loves arch-enemy of the people, the terrible, no good, very rotten and Duckman’s nemesis, “King Chicken”—only to find that he has been lacing the water with a drug designed to make people love him no matter what he says or does…. I have, at the very least, been riding my bike regularly and sometimes ferociously in the not-quite-as-cold-as-outdoors basement, bike clipped to a “smart” trainer, my avatar-me zipping forward faster and faster whilst I spin in place through make-believe places or high-def videos of real places, my avatar-self just yesterday superimposed on the white rolling steep pitches of the gravel roads near Sienna, Italy.
My sanity hasn’t (quite) left me yet thanks to this ritual—strange to anyone not committed to staying in “biking shape,” and not to me, especially, one who can never manage to stay warm on outdoor “actual” bike rides in the winter in New England—this despite the battery-powered toe warmers, shoe covers, lobster gloves, balaclavas, all manner of “wind-stopper” high-tech fabric... Then there are my “fat bike” friends who look disdainfully down their noses my way. They have purchased specially outfitted winter bikes with enormously wide, beefy-treaded tires, handlebar grips covered with special warming pouches, and they don astronomically expensive, space-aged layers of clothing meant to all-at-once reflect body heat back where it belongs and reject wind and cold and moisture. My fear is the investment in all that extra gear might well still find me shivering through rides, feet and fingers frozen, my bike a muddy icy mess in need of deep cleaning….
Besides, there is something nice about quickly slipping into a well-worn bib chamois (cycling pants), pulling on a torn jersey and a second t-shirt layer to keep me warm before I warm up then to sop up the sweat when I peel off my sweat-soaked jersey at the end of the “ride,” filling water bottles, slipping on my clunky riding shoes, tucking laptop under my arm, and clomping down into the damp cold dark of my basement.
I’ll plug my computer into an old flat screen TV that was brought down here when it developed strange lines all through the center that don’t bother me much for my purposes, push my water bottles into their cages, mount my smart phone onto the handle bars (so I can communicate with the computer program, which then communicates with my “smart” bike trainer), choose a “route” or a “workout” on either Zwift or my latest free trial program, Rouvy, and set off.
Lately, I’ve preferred the “workout” features both programs offer. If the workout wants you to produce a certain number of watts for a certain amount of time, computer and bike trainer will work in consort to guarantee you are producing exactly that many watts, no matter what speed you pedal. Pedal faster, and just as you start to gain in wattage, the smart trainer sets its flywheel to a lighter resistance, and you fall back to the target wattage, now at a faster RPM, my avatar on the TV screen in front of me, legs spinning along at the same, steady pace as actual me. With this feature you don’t have to bother shifting gears, the trainer and computer doing all the work for you as you find a manageable pedaling pace. Meanwhile, on screen, the computer/TV is sending you messages. “Good job!” “Pedal faster!” “You’re halfway there!”
Perhaps most unlike “real” cycling is the remarkable amount of sweat. I start cold and stiff, and even low wattages are too hard, as if something isn’t quite working right with this computerized beast I have mounted. But soon I’m stripping off one sweat-soaked cycling cap and replacing it with another, pulling off glasses, sopping up sweat from my eye sockets with the towel I keep draped over the top tube. As soon as I dry off, I’m soaked again. A fan can help, but that also tends to bring a chill—and this is all about not getting cold. And the sweating feels good, as if all the bad things I’ve been feeling are exiting my body—as if I’m purging myself, for a moment at least, of the bile inhabiting me brought on by the blatant politics of hate and division.
In normal, “just ride” mode, I will often find myself surrounded by other avatars of other people whose real selves sit atop stationary bicycles across the globe. Sometimes we will coalesce into a friendly pack, where a big blue thumb might appear overhead if someone gives me a “ride on.” Invariably, however, someone appears behind me, drafting off of me (yes, the computer and trainer account for riding close behind someone, your avatar requiring much less muscle to keep up), refusing to “take a pull,” even when I slow down, then suddenly blasting by me on a hill to beat me to the top, then slowing down and drafting again, recouping on a long flat or slight incline. Try as I may to ignore my competitive side—(this is not about competition; it’s about sweating out all of the craziness that has left me in a dark, dark place, I try to remind myself)—I notice my watts begin to increase as I push a little, then a little more. I sometimes find myself hitting up against numbers I know I can’t sustain, numbers I know will only leave me hurting and wiped out for the remainder of the day, 250, 275, 325…watts.
And sometimes I “win” these silly, small, testosterone-fueled battles, though usually I don’t. I will even race occasionally, choosing a category that seems within my ability (the lowest, “D” level race), only to find that others there are clearly a level or two above me. In these events, I generally stay with the peloton for a few miles, drop back into a smaller grupetto when the pace gets too fierce, drop back from that group, to another, still slower group, to finally cross the finish line alone far behind the majority of participants.
The next day, I’m back, though, spinning through a recovery workout, watching the strange, virtual world float by virtual me on my old, faulty flat screen television, in the cold, still-disheveled-after-several-floods-last-winter basement.
My near daily, virtual cycling sessions have done a lot of good in the end. I can feel myself getting stronger, and I’ve just booked an AirBnb in Brevard North Carolina, where my eldest son (who was once a very serious cyclist) and I will go in April to bike actual, very real and very steep Pisgah forest gravel roads—which, hopefully, thanks to these sessions, I’ll be ready for.
When I finish and down a protein shake and shower and pull on sweats and a hoody, I do feel as if something has been purged that needed purging, that I am getting stronger, fitter, shoring up my physical body to help me contend with the mental and emotional strife these next 4 years (and god help us not any more than that) will bring.
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Impressive. I decided a while back that I am a three-season cyclist (and an e-bike at that but still a major workout) and a winter walker. Haven’t got a trainer set up, nor the space to do it. I can see the light increasing and one day soon the bike will call me.