By Kevin Kolodziejski
Want to know if you’re truly the real deal? An authentic-as-they-come, dyed-in-merino-wool cyclist?
Then take the following test. It will not measure functional threshold power, power-to-weight ratio, maximal oxygen capacity, maximal heart rate, or even rate of perceived exertion, however.
Just the limits of your imagination. To begin the test, you need to imagine this.
Can You Imagine This?
That you bought yourself an inexpensive cruiser bike and a rack for the back a few years ago with the intent of riding it instead of driving your car to the local stores you frequent downtown. But because you’re always so damn time-crunched (even on weekends), that’s happened as often as you’ve ridden that five-figure road bike you baby like a Bentley in bad weather. That is to say, never. You’ve now taken the front wheel off the cruiser, lifted the rest of that heavy sucker overhead, attached it to your car’s roof rack, placed the front wheel in the trunk, and are backing out of the driveway.
You’re decked out in your good-luck cycling kit because in 20 minutes’ time and for the three or so hours after, you’re going to need it. For once you park the car and put the front wheel back on the bike — yes, that bike, not the Bentley — you’re doing a rather hilly 50-miler with five competitive cycling buddies.
Can You Imagine That?
If you can’t comprehend the very end of that scenario, congratulations are at hand. You’ve passed the test. You’ve established yourself, at least in my eyes, as a true cyclist. As true a cyclist as Allen Ginsberg was a poet.
Now if this strikes you as a strange test to take and a rather odd analogy to make, I won’t fight you on that. I’ll just ask you to withhold final judgment on both until you hear a story about the preeminent poet of the Beat Generation and why it recently came to my mind.
The Allen Ginsberg Story
I was reviewing my log of last winter’s rides in order to create a general plan for this one, and I found myself far more interested — fixated, in fact — in the worst rather than the best of them. While obsessing over multiple moronic attempts to go hard when recovery was clearly called for, as well as the occasional long group ride gone wrong, I remembered driving in my 1996 VW Jetta to a hilly road race while listening to a book on tape. One written and read by author and writing teacher Natalie Goldberg.
She was recounting a time when Ginsberg and a number of other poets read their work at some sort of literary symposium. Ginsberg was the main draw, so he read last.
All who came before him had read their best stuff. But this gathering did not end with a recitation of “Howl,” “America,” or “A Supermarket in California.” Instead, Ginsberg indiscriminately opened what looked to be an old journal and started reading from that.
Not full poems, mind you, just bits and pieces of ones not good enough to make the grade. As well as a few ideas, a couple questions, and a number of observations. None of what he read was suitable for publication or noteworthy in any way. Many in attendance were taken aback, but Goldberg believes she knows what Ginsberg was attempting to do. It’s a good thing, but — surprise, surprise — a hard thing for a true cyclist to do.
Give Yourself Permission to Have Bad Rides
These are not Goldberg’s actual words of course but mine. So are the ones in an article that appeared here not so long ago where I admitted to no longer doing the race segment of a Sunday training ride. The reason being that the combination of being 64 and riding long and hard on a Saturday keeps me from staying with the fastest guys. If you managed to remember that while reading this, you could accuse me of being a hypocrite, so I need to be very clear here or you might never use the holiday gift I’m about to bestow upon you.
My Holiday Gift to You
Telling you to cut yourself some cycling slack is my attempt to give you the same holiday gift I’m giving myself this year. I can only hope we both use it again and again and well past the holidays.
The gift is an understanding, an understanding about cycling. That bad rides are more than inevitable. They’re essential. Without them, good rides get taken for granted. Without them, great rides never occur.
So if you’re the type who imbibes a bit on the holidays, and you do so when your cycling buddies are about, why not offer up a toast to bad rides?
Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.
A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.
Here in Wisconsin we have the (privelege? chore?) of plenty of snow and ice and salt and sand on the roads. Since a big part of cycling for me is getting outside, I switch in winter to my touring bike outfitted with studded tires, rack for panniers, lights (for the short days) and bar mitts over gloves for hand protection. 20 mile fairly flat rides are epically hard. Normal riding is 2-8 miles of errands and getting around town. Admittedly I’m mostly retired so have the time to do it, and admittedly I count on nordic skiing, snowshoeing, running, and a fitness center for workouts. But the cycling keeps the base present and the enjoyment of getting around town on my quiet, non-polluting two-wheeler.
Kevin, I suggest that you buy a fat bike and ride it a lot. Every ride will be slow – thought not “bad” per se, and every time you get on your road bike you’ll feel like you’re flying.