The Team Ride (aka Epicness)
Short version:
First team ride was epic. When we weren’t going down, we were going up. We went fast. I’m tired. It was fricking awesome.
Long version:
Today was the first team ride. I was a bit nervous because Jose mentioned it on Friday. He smiled as he said “dos cientos kilometros” (200km) and that we would be on a few climbs that were in the Vuelta a few years ago; with his right hand, he mimicked a motorcyclist revving the engine. That meant that we were going to go fast.
Sam and I got there and everyone was getting ready… there were about twenty guys milling around, and Jose was preparing the team car – it would be filled with water and food, two mechanics that wouldn’t do anything all day but watch the fun, a masseuse (not sure what for unless someone starts cramping? Again, I think he just didn’t have anything better to do today), and one of the rider’s girlfriends. A few of the guys looked real fast, and one of they guys had a Liberty Seguros uniform, which means he was on their B team last year. (That’s a very legit European pro team.) The Cuban was looking as chill and in charge as always. The clear leader.
I don’t think I’ve climbed so much in my life. The warm up was uphill and a bit harder than expected. When we weren’t descending, we were climbing. When I had a chance to look around, I’d realize how cool the surroundings were: one of the climbs was about 5-10 minutes, straight up the side of a steep green valley, and you could see the white-bordered, one lane road show itself as it snaked its way up and over bumps in the hillside toward the top of the pass. There were no houses, no villages, nothing… just this road sitting there in silence. It was cool to be part of a couple dozen guys rolling quickly around steep corners, “dancing on the pedals” to the top of each pass.
The descents were nuts of course. But I descended so much today, I feel like I’m about 50 times better than at the beginning of the day. For the sake of my mom, I’ll avoid descriptions of tight corners with oncoming traffic and no guardrails. At least I wear a helmet, with all these other nutjobs just chilling with their headbands and sunglasses and soon-to-be-gelled hair. One descent was about 20 minutes long, all with a view of the ocean. I saw a CSC rider climbing the other direction, and we also saw another European pro team rolling around with their huge team van in tow. The top of the climb passed through a row of huge, dry craggy peaks that looked like something from Goat Rocks or Smith Rocks. We stopped at a gas station at the bottom to eat some apples and drink some Coca Cola. I remember noting that we were at hour three, which meant about two hours left. Good God.
Again, these views are what I saw when I looked around, which wasn’t often. I’d love to do this ride again sometime soon by myself, nice and slow. But that wasn’t the case today. We’d go pretty quick up the climbs and always keep it moving on the downhills. There was one section of flat where we started a rotation (at Jose’s bidding). A few of the weaker guys started getting tired, and one of the strong guys pretty much ripped one of their legs off… it was entertaining.
(Explanation: In a rotation, there are two lanes, a slow lane you drift backward in and a fast lane you move forward in. After you move into the slow lane at the front of the pack, it’s the next guy’s job to get just in front of you in a nice way so that you can get the draft right away. But if he takes a while to do it, you’re stuck there working longer than you want. In this way, you can make it harder on someone. But this is usually frowned upon because you’re trying to work together in a pace line. In this case, I don’t think anyone likes this guy, and everyone could tell he was going to get dropped anyway, so why not on the flat?)
The last climb was big, and I was at the disadvantage of not knowing when it would end. But everyone started really picking it up… that is, all of a sudden we were strung out, you could hear people’s heart rates through their throats, and gaps started forming. I said, “F*** it” and just started going hard like everyone else. One pleasant surprise: when you drop off the front group, but you’re still going fast enough to be near the car, Jose will let you draft to try and catch up to the front group. He kept telling me to get closer to the back of the car by holding his hand out the window with his thumb and forefinger an inch apart, meaning that the five inches that separated my front tire from the bumper was far too much. And what’s more, sometimes he’ll call you to the driver side with his window rolled down, hold out his hand, and slingshot you forward at 25 mph uphill. It’s nothing short of frickin’ ridiculous and way fun. A couple times a let out a squeal, yes a squeal, of delight and fear.
We were flying. There was a pack of 3-4 guys in front of me, and about 3 of us were battling to stay in contact, sometimes with the help of the car. The rest were scattered across the mountain. I cracked (bonked) maybe 5 minutes from the top, but kept it going well enough. You can feel the lack of glucose in your quads, and you can feel your lack of blood sugar. You can’t think anything useful because you’re so high on endorphins.
At the top, I knew this was an epic ride… easily one of the biggest, hardest, most beautiful rides of my life. So I tried to keep my legs from shaking in exhaustion, shoved my face full of a tiny bit more food from the car, guzzled water, and rode the 20 km back home with one of the other guys. According to my power meter, I burned far more than 1000 calories in just one hour.
Today I was reminded of the pain and exhaustion and inspired by the thrill of cycling.
We had a team dinner afterward. A monster plate of penne pasta: you could either pour a crappy red sauce on it, or olive oil and salt. There was some salad, and then a plate with a half chicken on it. Then some yogurt. Afterward, a small espresso. We had a team chat about things being fun and games, but when things are serious, they’re serious. That’s about what I got out of it.
Now I’m sitting in our shitty apartment, fully content with spending 5 monster hours on the bike. Tomorrow, we clean the apartment.
First team ride was epic. When we weren’t going down, we were going up. We went fast. I’m tired. It was fricking awesome.
Long version:
Today was the first team ride. I was a bit nervous because Jose mentioned it on Friday. He smiled as he said “dos cientos kilometros” (200km) and that we would be on a few climbs that were in the Vuelta a few years ago; with his right hand, he mimicked a motorcyclist revving the engine. That meant that we were going to go fast.
Sam and I got there and everyone was getting ready… there were about twenty guys milling around, and Jose was preparing the team car – it would be filled with water and food, two mechanics that wouldn’t do anything all day but watch the fun, a masseuse (not sure what for unless someone starts cramping? Again, I think he just didn’t have anything better to do today), and one of the rider’s girlfriends. A few of the guys looked real fast, and one of they guys had a Liberty Seguros uniform, which means he was on their B team last year. (That’s a very legit European pro team.) The Cuban was looking as chill and in charge as always. The clear leader.
I don’t think I’ve climbed so much in my life. The warm up was uphill and a bit harder than expected. When we weren’t descending, we were climbing. When I had a chance to look around, I’d realize how cool the surroundings were: one of the climbs was about 5-10 minutes, straight up the side of a steep green valley, and you could see the white-bordered, one lane road show itself as it snaked its way up and over bumps in the hillside toward the top of the pass. There were no houses, no villages, nothing… just this road sitting there in silence. It was cool to be part of a couple dozen guys rolling quickly around steep corners, “dancing on the pedals” to the top of each pass.
The descents were nuts of course. But I descended so much today, I feel like I’m about 50 times better than at the beginning of the day. For the sake of my mom, I’ll avoid descriptions of tight corners with oncoming traffic and no guardrails. At least I wear a helmet, with all these other nutjobs just chilling with their headbands and sunglasses and soon-to-be-gelled hair. One descent was about 20 minutes long, all with a view of the ocean. I saw a CSC rider climbing the other direction, and we also saw another European pro team rolling around with their huge team van in tow. The top of the climb passed through a row of huge, dry craggy peaks that looked like something from Goat Rocks or Smith Rocks. We stopped at a gas station at the bottom to eat some apples and drink some Coca Cola. I remember noting that we were at hour three, which meant about two hours left. Good God.
Again, these views are what I saw when I looked around, which wasn’t often. I’d love to do this ride again sometime soon by myself, nice and slow. But that wasn’t the case today. We’d go pretty quick up the climbs and always keep it moving on the downhills. There was one section of flat where we started a rotation (at Jose’s bidding). A few of the weaker guys started getting tired, and one of the strong guys pretty much ripped one of their legs off… it was entertaining.
(Explanation: In a rotation, there are two lanes, a slow lane you drift backward in and a fast lane you move forward in. After you move into the slow lane at the front of the pack, it’s the next guy’s job to get just in front of you in a nice way so that you can get the draft right away. But if he takes a while to do it, you’re stuck there working longer than you want. In this way, you can make it harder on someone. But this is usually frowned upon because you’re trying to work together in a pace line. In this case, I don’t think anyone likes this guy, and everyone could tell he was going to get dropped anyway, so why not on the flat?)
The last climb was big, and I was at the disadvantage of not knowing when it would end. But everyone started really picking it up… that is, all of a sudden we were strung out, you could hear people’s heart rates through their throats, and gaps started forming. I said, “F*** it” and just started going hard like everyone else. One pleasant surprise: when you drop off the front group, but you’re still going fast enough to be near the car, Jose will let you draft to try and catch up to the front group. He kept telling me to get closer to the back of the car by holding his hand out the window with his thumb and forefinger an inch apart, meaning that the five inches that separated my front tire from the bumper was far too much. And what’s more, sometimes he’ll call you to the driver side with his window rolled down, hold out his hand, and slingshot you forward at 25 mph uphill. It’s nothing short of frickin’ ridiculous and way fun. A couple times a let out a squeal, yes a squeal, of delight and fear.
We were flying. There was a pack of 3-4 guys in front of me, and about 3 of us were battling to stay in contact, sometimes with the help of the car. The rest were scattered across the mountain. I cracked (bonked) maybe 5 minutes from the top, but kept it going well enough. You can feel the lack of glucose in your quads, and you can feel your lack of blood sugar. You can’t think anything useful because you’re so high on endorphins.
At the top, I knew this was an epic ride… easily one of the biggest, hardest, most beautiful rides of my life. So I tried to keep my legs from shaking in exhaustion, shoved my face full of a tiny bit more food from the car, guzzled water, and rode the 20 km back home with one of the other guys. According to my power meter, I burned far more than 1000 calories in just one hour.
Today I was reminded of the pain and exhaustion and inspired by the thrill of cycling.
We had a team dinner afterward. A monster plate of penne pasta: you could either pour a crappy red sauce on it, or olive oil and salt. There was some salad, and then a plate with a half chicken on it. Then some yogurt. Afterward, a small espresso. We had a team chat about things being fun and games, but when things are serious, they’re serious. That’s about what I got out of it.
Now I’m sitting in our shitty apartment, fully content with spending 5 monster hours on the bike. Tomorrow, we clean the apartment.
posted by Unknown at 11:16 PM
1 Comments:
chris, so i have successfully wasted/spent an hour going through this blog and lets just say i am quite jealous, despite your rag-tag, shit-hole appartment. the distance guys have discovered some new trails up off of GMR which we have gone to twice now. the first time we went i wore my GPS which has an accopmanying heart rate monitor. in our 14-mile run (which lasted about 100 minutes) i burned over 2250 calories. your comment about caloric usage just reminded me of that. hope shit is going well. the team is going to texas this weekend for a meet. in typical pat style the meet is a junk show but he could care less since we are really going to watch a san antonio spurs game and party together. rock!
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