I joined up for the GW Sunday Sprints ride on sunday, which turned out to be a 3-man time trial through the route. Zach has an injured food, so he didn't want to put pressure on the possible stress fracture. Mike, who joined us in his UMD kit, hadn't been on the route before so he was tagging along the 6-sprint, 35 mile ride for the first time.
Perfect. The ex-pro was injured and the new guy has no clue which backwards-road-signs, street lamps, and speed humps we're sprinting for. I could win all of the sprints.
Nah, just kidding. The first week was enough, winning 3 of the sprints and going head-to-head against Mark for the last one, before an SUV nearly took him out and we called it off with 10 meters to go. Sunday was pointless for sprints, so Zach, Mike and I tore up the course as quick as we could. It was a blast riding with these guys quickly on a dry morning with soaked, steamy roads.
Zach and Mike - both of whom I met this year - have become great guys to ride with. They both like talking while riding, even if it's a spurt of words through hard breathing. Zach's got thousands more miles than I do under his legs, and like myself, Mike just wants to ride as much as his schedule allows and dabble in some low-category racing to see where he can go with this crazy sport.
Catherine didn't want to wake up for a sprints ride with the boys on Sunday, so she took her time and met me out on MacArthur as we were headed back. It really was perfect timing. As the boys turned back on Oaklyn for the final sprint, I kept straight on falls, descended the hill down MacArthur towards the kayakers' parking lot, and found Catherine. We promptly turned around and headed back up the hill on MacArthur for a "new route."
Little did I know what Catherine was talking about. She said she wanted to try a new route, and man-oh-man did we cover more miles than I was expecting. Basically, after 30 miles at a good tempo with the boys, I followed Catherine for 10-15 knowing we weren't getting any closer to DC. "Where the hell are we?"
Somehow, we ended up in Rockville, Maryland.
Song of the Night: Destination Rockville by O.A.R. It's just a version of Destination but a live version that is actually sung in - you guessed it - Rockville, MD. That's the town the band is from.
Hell, from DC, I could've ridden home to Dumfries for lunch and back had I known I was going out for that many miles. I had only brought a pack of clif blocks, one pack of gu, and a granola bar, so we stopped for food. I bought Clif Bars, and, before I left, I felt a sudden urge for something sugary and chewy. I wanted gummy bears. For 99 cents, I got a few ounces of gummy bears and happily overpaid for the other few things I picked up.
Catherine took her time in CVS so it gave my legs the rest they needed, and we took a few extra minutes to let some rain subside. Luckily, the rain started just as we had perched at a table outside of a cafe next to CVS. Not so luckily, after we had started riding back towards Seneca enroute to DC, the rain started pouring down on us.
For some reason, I love riding in the rain. I think it's the boy scout in me, or maybe the rower. Either way, it's an attitude of respect for nature, and just being forced with the cards that mother nature deals you. It's never really bothered me much when I've been outside when the rain pours down since I'm that gore-tex sort of guy. I would rather put on a jacket and smile under the hood than haul around an umbrella and hope for the best. It's just more fun that way. Riding in the rain makes me feel giddy and energized, and it did just that on Sunday, after 45 miles.
I think the gummy bears gave me a boost, too, though. The rain just made me happy, and so did the sugar rush. I remember laughing to myself when I saw a pick-up truck pass by us with a mountain bike in the bed. What a wimp, this is a beautiful day to ride. It's a beautiful day to be on the bike, any day.
The rain subsided after we turned from Seneca Road onto river and pedaled a few miles. Whistling up a hill behind Catherine, she chased down a group of 4 or 5 middle aged men going up a hilland I was just ecstatic. I had zipped up the hill up to the members of that particular group that weren't as proned to gravity, and chatted with them. They concurred on the decency of the day for a bike ride, and then they saw that Catherine was catching up with them.
"Ohh, you've got women on your club?"
I responded pretty forwardly: Be careful, she'll drop you. And then we left 'em. At least until the next hill...
After some significantly slower miles than in the morning, we got back to Catherine's place downtown. It suffices to say (again), after another ride longer than I'm used to, that my legs hurt. But I needed that. I needed to be forced into an accidental 72 mile ride.
Deep down, that's what I wanted, too. I always love riding, but disciplining yourself to ride long, steady miles isn't easy. Especially at those awkward times of year when most cyclists are burnt out from racing. To me, this is prime-time, though. The temperatures are perfect and the leaves haven't fallen yet. To me, this is game-time. It's time to get the miles in before I fight the freeze of lonely and cold December, January, and February miles.
Thanks to Catherine and her detour, I put about 35 more miles in on Sunday that I expected to. It's not that I couldn't have ridden those miles by myself, but I never would have planned on it and I never would have stayed out on the bike for 3 more hours.
We'll see if I get out on the bike at all this week. I've just about guaranteed myself that I'll break 3,000 miles for the year (knock on wood). I'm heading to back to the Raw Talent Ranch (aka Lost River Barn) in West Virginia with my main man Drew-Wis and his NCVC teammates. That should be a good bike riding, beer drinking weekend - and I expect nothing less than to come home with tired legs and a bruised ego.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Bicycle Over-Protectiveness and Egotism
I had an unusual moment of bike-snob modesty today.
Pulling into the parking lot at work with my S-Works Tarmac SL on the roof rack of my Mazda3 hatchback, I parked next to a ford focus wagon with a ~2003 Fuji Roubaix on the roof.
Every day, I take my bike off my locking Thule roof rack and drag it into my office. I don't trust anyone - anyone - to touch, take, fidget with or even look at my bike while I'm not around. This is part bike snob and part security paranoia.
So I take the S-Works in, where all visitors must pass through the Marilyn Security System. Marilyn is our receptionist. She's a bold woman - former Army and recently beating cancer - that takes crap from nobody. She even once caught a government auditor trying to sneak in. Marilyn recently asked me if I was commuting to work on my bike. Nope... just protecting my bike. She understood. We have sketchy building neighbors, and of course, we can't trust those hippies working for the EPA on the 6th floor. (Probably the guy with the Fuji.)
So then I go through doors with restricted access. Then my bike leans on a bookshelf in my office as I work; it's nice eye candy. If I leave my office for a while, the door to my office gets locked. I don't want anyone messing with my bicycle. (Except Catherine, who adjusts my rear derailleur all the time. And cleans it when it's the dirtiest object in her apartment.)
Today, I almost left my bike on my car.
I almost left my bike on my car so that if that idiot that left his Fuji on his car took a trip to the parking lot, he'd feel envious. Oh yeah, Siggy - who until May rode a 2003 Fuji himself - has definitely caught the top-shelf bike egotism that so many other cyclists have. I was always a bike snob in personality, but now I am just as much a bike snob in materialism. I've caught the S-Works bug, I guess. What I once considered the most overrated steed in the industry, I now take too much pride in. I now feel urged to flaunt my bike, over-branded with logos and of course, a sticker from Victory Circle Graphix with my name on the seat stays. Hell yes.
But I didn't leave my bike on my car. Of course not. I'm not sure if I should attribute this to humility or over-protectiveness, but I was slightly proud of myself for my restraint.
So I get to Catherine's and she showed me the link to the new and much anticipated Cervelo P4 - hands down the most aerodynamic bicycle around.
There goes all of my bike-egotism.
Pulling into the parking lot at work with my S-Works Tarmac SL on the roof rack of my Mazda3 hatchback, I parked next to a ford focus wagon with a ~2003 Fuji Roubaix on the roof.
Every day, I take my bike off my locking Thule roof rack and drag it into my office. I don't trust anyone - anyone - to touch, take, fidget with or even look at my bike while I'm not around. This is part bike snob and part security paranoia.
So I take the S-Works in, where all visitors must pass through the Marilyn Security System. Marilyn is our receptionist. She's a bold woman - former Army and recently beating cancer - that takes crap from nobody. She even once caught a government auditor trying to sneak in. Marilyn recently asked me if I was commuting to work on my bike. Nope... just protecting my bike. She understood. We have sketchy building neighbors, and of course, we can't trust those hippies working for the EPA on the 6th floor. (Probably the guy with the Fuji.)
So then I go through doors with restricted access. Then my bike leans on a bookshelf in my office as I work; it's nice eye candy. If I leave my office for a while, the door to my office gets locked. I don't want anyone messing with my bicycle. (Except Catherine, who adjusts my rear derailleur all the time. And cleans it when it's the dirtiest object in her apartment.)
Today, I almost left my bike on my car.
I almost left my bike on my car so that if that idiot that left his Fuji on his car took a trip to the parking lot, he'd feel envious. Oh yeah, Siggy - who until May rode a 2003 Fuji himself - has definitely caught the top-shelf bike egotism that so many other cyclists have. I was always a bike snob in personality, but now I am just as much a bike snob in materialism. I've caught the S-Works bug, I guess. What I once considered the most overrated steed in the industry, I now take too much pride in. I now feel urged to flaunt my bike, over-branded with logos and of course, a sticker from Victory Circle Graphix with my name on the seat stays. Hell yes.
But I didn't leave my bike on my car. Of course not. I'm not sure if I should attribute this to humility or over-protectiveness, but I was slightly proud of myself for my restraint.
So I get to Catherine's and she showed me the link to the new and much anticipated Cervelo P4 - hands down the most aerodynamic bicycle around.
There goes all of my bike-egotism.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Rowing vs. Cycling: The solution. NOT.
Sometimes, it's tough to stop enjoying a bit of what you love. I just love riding my bicycle, so I ride lots, and sometimes I just don't want to stop pedaling even though I know it's good for me. I'm like a kid that wants to stay out and play a bit longer.
That happened to me last night, when I ended up riding 67.2 miles on my bike (total of 3 hours, 7 minutes at an average of 21.6 mph). I started in the late afternoon following Catherine as she did a short TT interval. She left when the sprints group started up, so I tagged along with the group (really quick yesterday) and logged a bunch more laps at race-pace. I probably logged too many laps... My legs are hurting today, so I'm looking forward to another late-afternoon ride with Catherine and some other new GW teammates as company.
Maybe it's appropriate that I rode a good amount yesterday. It was, in fact, the Boss's birthday. Lance, who requires no last name, just announced his come-back to professional cycling at the age of 37.
After my ride, Catherine sent me an interesting email that relates in some gross way to my previous post about the similarities between rowing and cycling. In many ways this was a sort of redemption for the fatigue I was feeling in my legs. Some freak rower just couldn't torture themselves enough, so they decided to invent the rowbike. (Please, out of morbid curiosity, just click the link.)
What a hunk of metal.
If there's anything that makes me love my bike and the time I spend riding it, it's this thing. This interesting piece of machinery is being marketed mostly towards rowers, but as both a rower and a cyclist I can't help but be intrigued. I should mention that while I would never buy such a stupid toy, I would not hesitate to try it (or, apparently, give them free advertising on my blog).
Now, the product bashing:
I believe that sports are best at their purest forms, so I'm not one to mix sports and create a freakish athletic hobbie (re: triathlon) that makes excellence in multiple unique sports mediocrity in one. While kickball is probably the only exception I'll allow, I can't mix rowing and cycling. Both sports were created as modes of transportation, and there is nothing in the world like egotism that can turn getting from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time into a sport.
Why create a bike that you propel by using a rowing stroke? The owner says that it's an alternative to the torture device that we call the erg. I don't buy it. If the weather warrants me to be on the erg instead of the water, I probably don't want to be on any sort of bike, either. Maybe the rowbike is simply an alternative form of transportation, then.
I don't buy that either. If transportation were your motive, then efficiency should be a top concern. And it's pretty simple to figure that cycling, a constant motion, is more efficient than rowing - a technique in which the body fully changes direction twice for each stroke. That's why rowing is such an efficient workout, because it's an inefficient motion and uses a lot of energy. So if you're just trying to get to the store, skip the $775 rowbike and fill up your bike's tires.
The sheer mechanics and positioning on the rowbike baffle me, too. First of all, you're on a sliding seat, so what happens if you hit the brakes? Probably the same thing that happens when you hit the brakes in your car: you fling forwad. I hope a few rowbikers haven't found this out the hard way, slamming their seat into the front of the slide, and having their crotch land rudely on the slides. Hey, if it can happen in a boat or on an erg, it can happen on a rowbike, right? Don't hit any bumps, because that sliding seat may not be to secure under your taint.
Then we get to turning. I guess turning a rowbike is similar to turning a bike - you mostly just lean. Okay, fine. But I know that when I lean into a corner on my bike, my body weight is balanced over both wheels. Granted, the rowbike has a much lower center of gravity than a bicycle, your body weight's distribution varies over both wheels. I've never ridden a rowbike, but I wouldn't want to imagine what happens when you take a quick turn at speed and all of your weight is at the front of the [row]bike. Fishtail, perhaps? Who knows.
Lastly, the lever or fulcrum that propels the rowbike just pisses me off. The bottom of the lever is scarily close to the ground, so I hope you're not on any rough trails (no way, I never see uprooted paved trails around here!).
Most good rowers would know, too, that when you pull the oar handle into your body, it should be a fairly straight plane of motion. It's quickest way to get the oar from one point to the other - in a straight line. Because of the fixed fulcrum on the rowbike, it forces you to pull the handles towards your body in an arc. Ohhh, perfect, I can't wait for my crew teammates riding rowbikes all winter to come back on the water with horrible hand levels, and screw up the set of the boat.
So I guess I've bashed this stupid product enough. Hopefully, the rowers using the rowbike will take the words of pro cyclist Stuart O'Grady to heart and just Harden the F*ck Up. It'll be winter soon enough, and if you're feeling frisky to work out and need to avoid the icebergs, torture yourself the old fashioned way - on an erg.
...or a bicycle. B-)
That happened to me last night, when I ended up riding 67.2 miles on my bike (total of 3 hours, 7 minutes at an average of 21.6 mph). I started in the late afternoon following Catherine as she did a short TT interval. She left when the sprints group started up, so I tagged along with the group (really quick yesterday) and logged a bunch more laps at race-pace. I probably logged too many laps... My legs are hurting today, so I'm looking forward to another late-afternoon ride with Catherine and some other new GW teammates as company.
Maybe it's appropriate that I rode a good amount yesterday. It was, in fact, the Boss's birthday. Lance, who requires no last name, just announced his come-back to professional cycling at the age of 37.
After my ride, Catherine sent me an interesting email that relates in some gross way to my previous post about the similarities between rowing and cycling. In many ways this was a sort of redemption for the fatigue I was feeling in my legs. Some freak rower just couldn't torture themselves enough, so they decided to invent the rowbike. (Please, out of morbid curiosity, just click the link.)
What a hunk of metal.
If there's anything that makes me love my bike and the time I spend riding it, it's this thing. This interesting piece of machinery is being marketed mostly towards rowers, but as both a rower and a cyclist I can't help but be intrigued. I should mention that while I would never buy such a stupid toy, I would not hesitate to try it (or, apparently, give them free advertising on my blog).
Now, the product bashing:
I believe that sports are best at their purest forms, so I'm not one to mix sports and create a freakish athletic hobbie (re: triathlon) that makes excellence in multiple unique sports mediocrity in one. While kickball is probably the only exception I'll allow, I can't mix rowing and cycling. Both sports were created as modes of transportation, and there is nothing in the world like egotism that can turn getting from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time into a sport.
Why create a bike that you propel by using a rowing stroke? The owner says that it's an alternative to the torture device that we call the erg. I don't buy it. If the weather warrants me to be on the erg instead of the water, I probably don't want to be on any sort of bike, either. Maybe the rowbike is simply an alternative form of transportation, then.
I don't buy that either. If transportation were your motive, then efficiency should be a top concern. And it's pretty simple to figure that cycling, a constant motion, is more efficient than rowing - a technique in which the body fully changes direction twice for each stroke. That's why rowing is such an efficient workout, because it's an inefficient motion and uses a lot of energy. So if you're just trying to get to the store, skip the $775 rowbike and fill up your bike's tires.
The sheer mechanics and positioning on the rowbike baffle me, too. First of all, you're on a sliding seat, so what happens if you hit the brakes? Probably the same thing that happens when you hit the brakes in your car: you fling forwad. I hope a few rowbikers haven't found this out the hard way, slamming their seat into the front of the slide, and having their crotch land rudely on the slides. Hey, if it can happen in a boat or on an erg, it can happen on a rowbike, right? Don't hit any bumps, because that sliding seat may not be to secure under your taint.
Then we get to turning. I guess turning a rowbike is similar to turning a bike - you mostly just lean. Okay, fine. But I know that when I lean into a corner on my bike, my body weight is balanced over both wheels. Granted, the rowbike has a much lower center of gravity than a bicycle, your body weight's distribution varies over both wheels. I've never ridden a rowbike, but I wouldn't want to imagine what happens when you take a quick turn at speed and all of your weight is at the front of the [row]bike. Fishtail, perhaps? Who knows.
Lastly, the lever or fulcrum that propels the rowbike just pisses me off. The bottom of the lever is scarily close to the ground, so I hope you're not on any rough trails (no way, I never see uprooted paved trails around here!).
Most good rowers would know, too, that when you pull the oar handle into your body, it should be a fairly straight plane of motion. It's quickest way to get the oar from one point to the other - in a straight line. Because of the fixed fulcrum on the rowbike, it forces you to pull the handles towards your body in an arc. Ohhh, perfect, I can't wait for my crew teammates riding rowbikes all winter to come back on the water with horrible hand levels, and screw up the set of the boat.
So I guess I've bashed this stupid product enough. Hopefully, the rowers using the rowbike will take the words of pro cyclist Stuart O'Grady to heart and just Harden the F*ck Up. It'll be winter soon enough, and if you're feeling frisky to work out and need to avoid the icebergs, torture yourself the old fashioned way - on an erg.
...or a bicycle. B-)
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
My Cycling Roots: On the Water
I recently was posting on bike forums (yep, I’m obviously a nerd) in response to a cyclist who was considering rowing for a semester. That's interesting. I had never once come across a cyclist who converted to rowing; usually it's the other way around. In fact, just about half of the cyclists that have raced for GW cycling have been on the GW crew team at one point or another, including two of our guys that competed at the collegiate Nationals. So I started thinking about this a bit way too much, and put together a small story about how changing sports was a bit more than just a different athletic hobbie. I hope that any one of my buddies that has been in both of these unique worlds of athleticism find this interesting, and I welcome your thoughts on it. Thanks.
First and foremost, if you’re already an avid cyclist, don't ebay the bike. Rowing will only make you a tougher cyclist. And there will always be cold, dark winter mornings that you’ll wish for an alternative to pulling the frozen handle of a carbon-fiber stick through water.
I rowed for nearly 6 years in high school and college. If I had the time and my own scull, I'd still be rowing. I've always said to myself that I was just taking a sabbatical from the sport. I still have some goals I want to accomplish - racing in the Head of the Charles, the world's biggest regatta, is one of them. Mostly, I stopped rowing cold-turkey because I had given a lot of myself to the sport. I gave all that I could give, and had taken just about as much as I could take from the sport.
…At least for now.
After my last spring season of rowing, I knew I had no intention to row with a team of lazy lushes that summer or upcoming semester, and I couldn’t afford my own rowing shell. I needed an escape. Concurrently, a few things happened that got me into this sport: I landed a job at a company that sponsored the best ProTour cycling team and became a bona fide fan of the sport; I cracked the cogs on my mountain bike and started riding my dad’s 25 year old huffy road bike for fitness; and I was watching Lance Armstrong dominate his fifth Tour de France. Quite simply, I fell in love with the speed and culture of this beautiful sport. Cycling was the answer.
Buying a bike was supposed to be a thrifty way to stay fit without having to pay uber-pricey dues to a rowing club. That was a [good] mistake. It was supposed to be an individual escape: I wanted a way to find my own speed, and depend only on myself. That, too, was a [good] mistake.
It’s been almost five years since I stopped rowing. Among my most valued possessions is a collection of bicycles, an autographed Team CSC jersey, a few autographed prints, and a commemorative jersey celebrating Lance’s 5th Tour victory. Heck, this far into the obsession with the sport, I could have bought my own shell. At some point, I realized, it’s not just the hobbie that has changed, but the lifestyle. My legs are shaved and I've doubled my spandex wardrobe.
There were a few reasons I stopped including a back injury, a coach that knew much less about the sport than the average NCAA rower, and simple athletic burn-out. I'm a 5-7 guy that was holding his ownfor five years against the rowers with a rower’s physique. That, along with the intense time commitment of a crew team, can burn anyone out. I was spent.
I started riding my bicycle a lot, nearly every afternoon that I had free. I distinctly remember the first time that I broke 40 miles on a solo ride; at the time I thought it was a huge accomplishment. Then, with a few of my buddies who had also picked up the sport recently, we started riding in small groups and other organized rides. Like a racer in any sport, you can’t help but want to push yourself and your friends’ limits, and see just how fast you can go.
I remember my first “unofficial” race, on Route 619 near Dumfries, Virginia. I chased down one of my best friends still, Mark Pro. Mark has been a best friend and mentor of mine for years now, since we rowed together in high school and at GW, and rode together on GW cycling. Well that day - well before either of us were categorized racers - he attacked myself and our other rowing buddy Jim after 20 miles in a Thunderstorm. For some reason, it sparked a fire under my ass, and I chased him down.
I never originally considered racing my bicycle. I simply just liked going fast. In fact, it was partially the work of a female that convinced me that I should race, but that’s another story all together. The other influence came from the rower deep inside of me: I wanted the feeling of crossing a finish line again. Deep inside, I wanted some sort of redemption for the indifference I showed to the sport of rowing a pair of years prior. So I bought a Category 5 USA cycling license and jumped into a local training race in Greenbelt, Maryland.
In my first ever bike race, I took second place.
It was easy. Too easy. But I didn’t win. When I look back on that race now, I’m really happy about losing. Winning that first race would have been too easy – it would have proven to me that I could do it, and I might never have come back. Taking second place convinced me that I had to keep coming back for more, and see just how much I could push myself, and see if I could win. My relatively new obsession was given a violent shove into seriousness.
Quickly, I realized, I wasn’t very fast at all. This sport is just like rowing. I could hang in there with guys faster than me as if my life depended on it. I could keep up, and I could contend.
Cycling and rowing are both endurance sports, so they’re just as much about mental toughness as they are about physique, strength, and fitness. The cycling niche has made trite the words of Tour champ Greg Lemond: “It never gets easier, you just go faster.”
Like any endurance sport, rowing is tough. The more effort you put into it, the more you take out of it. If you think cycling is a sport of suffering, you ain't seen nothing yet. Cycling, although a team sport, is still a very individual effort. You alone pedal your bike, and you alone get dropped from a quick race. In rowing, you're stuck with 4 or 8 guys. Each man depends on the other men in the boat to get to the finish line first. There are no sacrificial teammates or lead-out men. There are no waterboys or domestiques; and no drafting. Every single rower is needs to literally pull his own weight – and that of his teammates – all the time.
A cycling team can ride with any number of guys, but to sign up for a race you have to be fast enough and qualified for each category. In rowing, almost the opposite is true. A crew must put a boat in each category, and of course, there are only so many slots in the top boat – the 1st Eight (aka Varsity or V8 in most places). Even in practice, a cycling team can go for a training ride with any number of guys, but you can’t row a boat with anything less than 8 oars. If you don't show up to crew practice, you lose your spot.
On a crew, there are always plenty of guys that are willing to pull on your oar when you don’t show up. This makes for a finicky balance between becoming best friends with your teammates in the fall, to seat-racing them to make a top boat in the winter, and again bonding with them to win some races in the spring. On a cycling team, the seriousness intra-team egos usually fade away after your buddy kicks your ass in a race to the town-line.
That’s not to say that cyclists aren’t cocky bastards. Cyclists are arrogant and picky about inches and millimeters and equipment and numbers. Each of us has our own bicycle that we [hopefully] meticulously maintain and are obsessed with upgrading, just like street-racers tricking our their cars. But we take pride in our ride, and it would be a lie to say that we don’t judge fellow cyclists by the cost of their bicycle(s), wheels, and components. A slow Fred on an expensive bike is a faux pas; a guy crossing the town sprint on a steel bike with down-tube shifters wins respect of the racers on a sponsor’s bike. (Most of us – the Cat 4s – fall in the middle, obsequious but overly proud with our rides and. Saying we’re slightly egotistic would probably be an understatement.)
Rowers, on the other hand, are taught to be brute and forced into humility. We only care about one number and work our nuts off religiously to lower it: how fast we can row 2,000 meters while staring at a little screen of on an rowing machine – or “erg.” (At 138 pounds, my PR was 6:51.2.) Even the boats cost over $30,000, so on a crew you respect the team’s equipment, and you live with what you’ve got: on each team, the faster crews get the best, new stuff. Since there are 8 guys, everyone’s ego is put in check when the boat loses; everyone gets a rush when their bow crosses the line first.
It's interesting thinking about moving from the bike to the boat; usually it's the other way around. After you realize you'll never make an Olympic boat rowing (there’s no "pro" in the sport of rowing), you pick up a bike to stay in shape. After all, there are tons of similarities: they are endurance sports that focus on leg power to propel a machine. Each sport is as much about power as it is about experience and technique.
Most people can't hack a training regimen for either sport. Training your butt off for a 6-7 minute race of all-out effort is also very different from training your butt off for a 50 mile race or 1-hour crit. The workouts are similar - very similar if you're used to intervals - but the crew race is intentionally draining. It's ripping off the proverbial band-aid, unlike cycling where you try not to burn your matches as fast (love the metaphors, eh?) and save up for the very end.
Half of my collegiate cycling teammates were rowers trying to find a break from the water. None of them has had a problem converting to the world of cycling, although I should say that few of us have taken it as seriously. Personally, I think an athletes’ success in any endurance sport is based on the mental toughness they have acquired in other realms, physique aside.
From rowing, every other sport seems to be a step down in toughness. The culture and traditions of rowing put you through inordinate physical and mental stress in so many ways, and you’re simply taught to deal with it, or “shut up and row.” In cycling, somehow, it’s a new idea to just Harden the F*** Up. Rowing has always required that mentality; anything less and you wouldn’t even survive the fall season. And there’s no complacency of a Cat 4 or 5.
I love the sport of rowing and was - by far - more dedicated to racing on a crew then than I am to racing my bicycle now. I would sacrifice most of my cycling jerseys so long as I can keep the henley t-shirt I earned my first year rowing. And while I love riding my bike with the fast groups, but racing isn’t for me. I simply value my life (re: skin) and my [newest] bicycle a bit too much, and have a hard time getting over that apprehension. More than that, I just don’t have the focus or motivation to really train any more. And that’s the way I like it. When I stopped rowing, that’s why I started cycling, just to ride a bike and stay in shape. No more numbers, except a lot of miles.
First and foremost, if you’re already an avid cyclist, don't ebay the bike. Rowing will only make you a tougher cyclist. And there will always be cold, dark winter mornings that you’ll wish for an alternative to pulling the frozen handle of a carbon-fiber stick through water.
I rowed for nearly 6 years in high school and college. If I had the time and my own scull, I'd still be rowing. I've always said to myself that I was just taking a sabbatical from the sport. I still have some goals I want to accomplish - racing in the Head of the Charles, the world's biggest regatta, is one of them. Mostly, I stopped rowing cold-turkey because I had given a lot of myself to the sport. I gave all that I could give, and had taken just about as much as I could take from the sport.
…At least for now.
After my last spring season of rowing, I knew I had no intention to row with a team of lazy lushes that summer or upcoming semester, and I couldn’t afford my own rowing shell. I needed an escape. Concurrently, a few things happened that got me into this sport: I landed a job at a company that sponsored the best ProTour cycling team and became a bona fide fan of the sport; I cracked the cogs on my mountain bike and started riding my dad’s 25 year old huffy road bike for fitness; and I was watching Lance Armstrong dominate his fifth Tour de France. Quite simply, I fell in love with the speed and culture of this beautiful sport. Cycling was the answer.
Buying a bike was supposed to be a thrifty way to stay fit without having to pay uber-pricey dues to a rowing club. That was a [good] mistake. It was supposed to be an individual escape: I wanted a way to find my own speed, and depend only on myself. That, too, was a [good] mistake.
It’s been almost five years since I stopped rowing. Among my most valued possessions is a collection of bicycles, an autographed Team CSC jersey, a few autographed prints, and a commemorative jersey celebrating Lance’s 5th Tour victory. Heck, this far into the obsession with the sport, I could have bought my own shell. At some point, I realized, it’s not just the hobbie that has changed, but the lifestyle. My legs are shaved and I've doubled my spandex wardrobe.
There were a few reasons I stopped including a back injury, a coach that knew much less about the sport than the average NCAA rower, and simple athletic burn-out. I'm a 5-7 guy that was holding his ownfor five years against the rowers with a rower’s physique. That, along with the intense time commitment of a crew team, can burn anyone out. I was spent.
I started riding my bicycle a lot, nearly every afternoon that I had free. I distinctly remember the first time that I broke 40 miles on a solo ride; at the time I thought it was a huge accomplishment. Then, with a few of my buddies who had also picked up the sport recently, we started riding in small groups and other organized rides. Like a racer in any sport, you can’t help but want to push yourself and your friends’ limits, and see just how fast you can go.
I remember my first “unofficial” race, on Route 619 near Dumfries, Virginia. I chased down one of my best friends still, Mark Pro. Mark has been a best friend and mentor of mine for years now, since we rowed together in high school and at GW, and rode together on GW cycling. Well that day - well before either of us were categorized racers - he attacked myself and our other rowing buddy Jim after 20 miles in a Thunderstorm. For some reason, it sparked a fire under my ass, and I chased him down.
I never originally considered racing my bicycle. I simply just liked going fast. In fact, it was partially the work of a female that convinced me that I should race, but that’s another story all together. The other influence came from the rower deep inside of me: I wanted the feeling of crossing a finish line again. Deep inside, I wanted some sort of redemption for the indifference I showed to the sport of rowing a pair of years prior. So I bought a Category 5 USA cycling license and jumped into a local training race in Greenbelt, Maryland.
In my first ever bike race, I took second place.
It was easy. Too easy. But I didn’t win. When I look back on that race now, I’m really happy about losing. Winning that first race would have been too easy – it would have proven to me that I could do it, and I might never have come back. Taking second place convinced me that I had to keep coming back for more, and see just how much I could push myself, and see if I could win. My relatively new obsession was given a violent shove into seriousness.
Quickly, I realized, I wasn’t very fast at all. This sport is just like rowing. I could hang in there with guys faster than me as if my life depended on it. I could keep up, and I could contend.
Cycling and rowing are both endurance sports, so they’re just as much about mental toughness as they are about physique, strength, and fitness. The cycling niche has made trite the words of Tour champ Greg Lemond: “It never gets easier, you just go faster.”
Like any endurance sport, rowing is tough. The more effort you put into it, the more you take out of it. If you think cycling is a sport of suffering, you ain't seen nothing yet. Cycling, although a team sport, is still a very individual effort. You alone pedal your bike, and you alone get dropped from a quick race. In rowing, you're stuck with 4 or 8 guys. Each man depends on the other men in the boat to get to the finish line first. There are no sacrificial teammates or lead-out men. There are no waterboys or domestiques; and no drafting. Every single rower is needs to literally pull his own weight – and that of his teammates – all the time.
A cycling team can ride with any number of guys, but to sign up for a race you have to be fast enough and qualified for each category. In rowing, almost the opposite is true. A crew must put a boat in each category, and of course, there are only so many slots in the top boat – the 1st Eight (aka Varsity or V8 in most places). Even in practice, a cycling team can go for a training ride with any number of guys, but you can’t row a boat with anything less than 8 oars. If you don't show up to crew practice, you lose your spot.
On a crew, there are always plenty of guys that are willing to pull on your oar when you don’t show up. This makes for a finicky balance between becoming best friends with your teammates in the fall, to seat-racing them to make a top boat in the winter, and again bonding with them to win some races in the spring. On a cycling team, the seriousness intra-team egos usually fade away after your buddy kicks your ass in a race to the town-line.
That’s not to say that cyclists aren’t cocky bastards. Cyclists are arrogant and picky about inches and millimeters and equipment and numbers. Each of us has our own bicycle that we [hopefully] meticulously maintain and are obsessed with upgrading, just like street-racers tricking our their cars. But we take pride in our ride, and it would be a lie to say that we don’t judge fellow cyclists by the cost of their bicycle(s), wheels, and components. A slow Fred on an expensive bike is a faux pas; a guy crossing the town sprint on a steel bike with down-tube shifters wins respect of the racers on a sponsor’s bike. (Most of us – the Cat 4s – fall in the middle, obsequious but overly proud with our rides and. Saying we’re slightly egotistic would probably be an understatement.)
Rowers, on the other hand, are taught to be brute and forced into humility. We only care about one number and work our nuts off religiously to lower it: how fast we can row 2,000 meters while staring at a little screen of on an rowing machine – or “erg.” (At 138 pounds, my PR was 6:51.2.) Even the boats cost over $30,000, so on a crew you respect the team’s equipment, and you live with what you’ve got: on each team, the faster crews get the best, new stuff. Since there are 8 guys, everyone’s ego is put in check when the boat loses; everyone gets a rush when their bow crosses the line first.
It's interesting thinking about moving from the bike to the boat; usually it's the other way around. After you realize you'll never make an Olympic boat rowing (there’s no "pro" in the sport of rowing), you pick up a bike to stay in shape. After all, there are tons of similarities: they are endurance sports that focus on leg power to propel a machine. Each sport is as much about power as it is about experience and technique.
Most people can't hack a training regimen for either sport. Training your butt off for a 6-7 minute race of all-out effort is also very different from training your butt off for a 50 mile race or 1-hour crit. The workouts are similar - very similar if you're used to intervals - but the crew race is intentionally draining. It's ripping off the proverbial band-aid, unlike cycling where you try not to burn your matches as fast (love the metaphors, eh?) and save up for the very end.
Half of my collegiate cycling teammates were rowers trying to find a break from the water. None of them has had a problem converting to the world of cycling, although I should say that few of us have taken it as seriously. Personally, I think an athletes’ success in any endurance sport is based on the mental toughness they have acquired in other realms, physique aside.
From rowing, every other sport seems to be a step down in toughness. The culture and traditions of rowing put you through inordinate physical and mental stress in so many ways, and you’re simply taught to deal with it, or “shut up and row.” In cycling, somehow, it’s a new idea to just Harden the F*** Up. Rowing has always required that mentality; anything less and you wouldn’t even survive the fall season. And there’s no complacency of a Cat 4 or 5.
I love the sport of rowing and was - by far - more dedicated to racing on a crew then than I am to racing my bicycle now. I would sacrifice most of my cycling jerseys so long as I can keep the henley t-shirt I earned my first year rowing. And while I love riding my bike with the fast groups, but racing isn’t for me. I simply value my life (re: skin) and my [newest] bicycle a bit too much, and have a hard time getting over that apprehension. More than that, I just don’t have the focus or motivation to really train any more. And that’s the way I like it. When I stopped rowing, that’s why I started cycling, just to ride a bike and stay in shape. No more numbers, except a lot of miles.
Monday, September 8, 2008
How to ruin your new handlebar tape.
Want an easy way of ruining your new handlebar tape and getting your bike all filthy?
Ride your bike in the wet winds of a hurricane.
Before Hurricane Hanna ruined my riding plans for Saturday, I took a short evening bike ride after work on Friday. The weathermen, for once, were dead-on. Right at about sunset, not only did the sun go down, but so did the rain. But it wasn't going to stop me, having just purchased a few bright, flickering LED lights for my bike. If you work until at least 6PM every day, you might as well buy a few lights. Even in early September, the sun sets at 7:30. Which sucks. Rain? Darkness? It's not gonna get in the way of my riding time... at least not until it's a rainy, dark, and cold combo. But we'll get there in due time. For now, it was just wet.
And before you ask, no. I will not ride in the mornings. I am not a morning person. I spent way to many dark and cold, miserable, early mornings rowing on the water to ever want to force myself into that pattern again. I ride for fun. It's just a bit of luck that I'm quick. But back to my Friday night ride.
It seemed like everyone was somewhere else on a rainy friday night, which worked out well for me. I had the city all to myself, riding alone on my usual stomping grounds (Hains Point) and touring the monuments and Capitol a little bit, too. By the time I had stopped riding, it was raining harder. My bike was filthy with grit from the roads and my brand new (albeit cheapo) matching "gerolsteiner blue" bar tape was just as messed up. This morning, there was a green lining on what should have been the silver braking surface of my wheels.
Yesterday, I woke up to see Virginia Avenue had turned into a tributary of the Potomac River. I went back to bed and slept until 1pm. Throughout the day, Catherine and I watched all seven parts of the HBO mini-series Generation Kill. Not a bad lazy Saturday, but what a waste. Stupid hurricane.
Today was redemption against the weather gods. Mid 70s and few clouds. The wind kept things cool, and it was just a great day to log 50-some miles on the usual roads outside of DC. MacArthur. Falls. Glen. Seneca. River. You get the picture.
Bedtime before another 40 hours for The Man. Hopefully I'll fit some rides in before the sun sets this week, but unlikely. Thanks for reading.
Ride your bike in the wet winds of a hurricane.
Before Hurricane Hanna ruined my riding plans for Saturday, I took a short evening bike ride after work on Friday. The weathermen, for once, were dead-on. Right at about sunset, not only did the sun go down, but so did the rain. But it wasn't going to stop me, having just purchased a few bright, flickering LED lights for my bike. If you work until at least 6PM every day, you might as well buy a few lights. Even in early September, the sun sets at 7:30. Which sucks. Rain? Darkness? It's not gonna get in the way of my riding time... at least not until it's a rainy, dark, and cold combo. But we'll get there in due time. For now, it was just wet.
And before you ask, no. I will not ride in the mornings. I am not a morning person. I spent way to many dark and cold, miserable, early mornings rowing on the water to ever want to force myself into that pattern again. I ride for fun. It's just a bit of luck that I'm quick. But back to my Friday night ride.
It seemed like everyone was somewhere else on a rainy friday night, which worked out well for me. I had the city all to myself, riding alone on my usual stomping grounds (Hains Point) and touring the monuments and Capitol a little bit, too. By the time I had stopped riding, it was raining harder. My bike was filthy with grit from the roads and my brand new (albeit cheapo) matching "gerolsteiner blue" bar tape was just as messed up. This morning, there was a green lining on what should have been the silver braking surface of my wheels.
Yesterday, I woke up to see Virginia Avenue had turned into a tributary of the Potomac River. I went back to bed and slept until 1pm. Throughout the day, Catherine and I watched all seven parts of the HBO mini-series Generation Kill. Not a bad lazy Saturday, but what a waste. Stupid hurricane.
Today was redemption against the weather gods. Mid 70s and few clouds. The wind kept things cool, and it was just a great day to log 50-some miles on the usual roads outside of DC. MacArthur. Falls. Glen. Seneca. River. You get the picture.
Bedtime before another 40 hours for The Man. Hopefully I'll fit some rides in before the sun sets this week, but unlikely. Thanks for reading.
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