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08/02/2009: "Bicycling High"

I Found a New Drug
Brian McNeece

I was in a criterium race once in San Juan Capistrano that really opened my eyes to the extreme efforts of bike racing. Each lap included four right turns around a couple of long blocks on an incline. I was (and still am) fairly novice in racing, and because I was old (52), I was having a hard time figuring out what category to enter. I chose the 40+ Cat 4 race for the simple reason that Cat 5s (raw rookies) are out of control and I had already been ground up by the 45+ riders. I thought the Cat 4 40+ group might be a little less voracious. Wrong.

The race started at the bottom of the course, went slightly downhill into the first turn, then gently uphill for a quarter of a mile, then kicked up again after turn two. Turn three was the top of the course. The pace was furious right from the start. Looking back, given my lack of racing experience and only two years of riding a bicycle in “training” mode, I’m surprised I did as well as I did. I stayed with the pack for the first few laps. Then I slowly began to become untethered from the bunch--but not without a fight.

I attacked like a madman on the downhill and then scratched and clawed on the more gradual part of the uphill. But by the time I got to turn three, the pressure behind my eyes was setting off alarms and my lungs were begging me to give them a break. By the end of the race I was about half a lap behind, which was far enough that when I crossed the finish line, nobody gave me a look. I think I even raised my hand at the judges as I passed them. But the next race was already being staged, so I was officially invisible.

That was discouraging, demoralizing, downright humiliating. Some time after the race, I got an email with a link to race photos so I could buy a photo of myself. Despite my feelings of inadequacy, I was still interested enough to take a look. For some perverted reason, the photographer had placed himself at the top of the course to capture the expressions of the rider at the peak of their effort. In other words, all the photos showed human beings in the throes of excruciating agony. Brows were not furrowed, they were twisted. Teeth were not clenched, they were lock-jaw tight. And the eyes, that’s where pain really shows. The eyes were not looking at anything, they were staring at nothing. They were simply open and aimed at a spot on the road a few feet in front of the rider. The eyes saw nothing but show terror, a total physical rebellion against a condition that the body can’t compute. This is what I saw when I looked at photos of all those guys who were way in front of me.

In the end, I was happy to learn that I wasn’t in any of the photos, so I was spared the additional shame of being in pain and way behind. But at the same time, I felt the satisfaction of knowing how much those riders had to suffer to stay ahead of me.

Thinking about races, one always returns to the question of why. What’s the attraction of that kind of pain? The constant intensity of these short races squeezes the element of strategy down to almost nil. Only the few guys with superior conditioning and talent aren’t working at their limit. The rest of us are keeping the gas totally floored for most of the race. And that means pain. We’re middle-aged guys; a lot of our contemporaries are done with exercise. Done. And if we do, it’s a jog or a swim, not a pell-mell revving up of the heart rate into the red zone.

Now that I’ve been riding and racing for several more years, I’ve been able to answer that question, at least for myself. Of course, there’s the basic challenge of comparing oneself to others, and the challenge of achieving a goal and stretching one’s limits. In some ways, one might call those factors some sort of neurosis signaling a lack of enjoyment in oneself. Plus, athletics is actually a crude measure of excellence compared to other pursuits like music and art. Getting good at riding a bike is no more complicated than being willing to crank the pedals around and around 40-80 thousand times a week, sometimes as hard as you can, but mostly at a moderate pace.

The main attraction, maybe, in the end, is something even more primitive. It’s just the endorphins. It’s just us humans in search of a better high. Racing to the limit like that pumps the heart, pumps the blood, pumps the brain to secrete that good stuff that makes it all worthwhile. But the blind terror of racing seems to be balanced by the unconscious sense of well-being afterward. The zombie in pain during the race is followed up by the zombie feeling good afterward. He’s so tired that he can’t quite focus on why he feels good, and that’s why he signs up again for the next race, in a puzzled search for the origin of the good feelings mixed with the memories of extreme effort.

In other words, I’ve decided that racing isn’t the way to maximize the loveliness of turning pedals.

Every Friday we have a group that rides 46 miles across the farmland and up an undulating road into the desert. Every training ride has its rhythms that every group develops, moments of chatting and moments of pace line reverie and moments of competitive sprints up a hill or to a sign or across a line on the pavement.

Last Friday, the 31st of July we started at 5:45 a.m. as usual. The sun had not yet hit the horizon, yet the thermometer in the desert of southeast California marked 85 degrees, the usual low for this time of year. Just three of us showed at the meeting place, as Matt was working one of his usual weeklong shifts as a pilot for Fed Ex. Ray had escaped to Lake Tahoe for the summer. Gary was in Michigan visiting his daughter. The other three or four semi-regular riders had their own reasons for finding something else to do at 5:45 am, probably sleeping. This time of year, enthusiasm for cycling in the desert drops off a cliff. We’re the diehard sunrise group; there’s also a small group the rides after work, hitting the pavement at 5:30 p.m. at the summit of the day’s heat. They’re insane. Illegal aliens are dying of heat stroke in the desert while some Imperial Valley cyclists head out in full regalia under a 110 degree sun. Totally nuts.

But even these maniacs are getting the endorphins that training rides more effectively deliver to a thirsty brain. On our ride, we modulate our effort between probably 65-85% of maximum. Each person takes his pull and decides how fast and how long to work at the front. Every transition is smooth; nobody has to jump to stay on a wheel. If you want to go 30 seconds or two minutes at the front, take your pleasure. Smooth smooth smooth. Normally, we sprint to the 23 mile turnaround point. At least I do. Many times I sprint and no one follows me, probably from the same motive that I’m proposing here: nothing to excess leads to a better outcome. Normally I sprint, but today I just hold the pace across the 400 meter marker, across the 200 meter marker, and across the finish line that is spray painted on the pavement. We roll to a stop another couple hundred meters down the road. We all find our spots to pee and then gather to comment on the subdued effort. Subdued and somehow a little sacred.

It’s more or less the same routine going home. The return trip undulates trending downhill but against a slight headwind. We start slow and then build up. The chatting once again dies away, and we pedal in silence for the next half an hour. Silence is golden. Do we think? We do. But we also pay attention to our position to the wheel in front of us and the position of the wheel behind us and the direction of the wind and the condition of the road below and ahead and the possibility of a shit-for-brains driver killing us in a moment of neglect at the wheel. And we daydream. And we pump endorphins.

Last week Fred got dehydrated. We slowed way down to help him get home. Unaware that he wasn’t drinking enough water, Fred felt leg cramps that started as just rumors, then graduated to hints, gave birth in murmurs, and finally shouted out—no more pedaling. Five miles from home, his legs froze up from hip to toe, and he had to attempt an excruciating dismount. Todd demanded that Fred drink down all remaining water. Orlando and I paced Matt back to his house for water, a banana, salt, and a large dose of rest to get him home and back on the road to recovery. This Friday, Fred came equipped with a back full of water to supplement a water bottle on the bike. All went well, and we maintained a respectable 19 miles an hour average.

Three guys working as a team, mostly in silence for 2½ hours on the road, means a full day of a brain bathing in a gentle stream of natural high brought by the body’s own opium called endorphins. Fred was back in good form, shouting his usual "Oh Yeah!" as he attacked us up the slope coming out of Pinto Wash. Todd joked, “When I get home, I’m going to work out at the gym, you know pump some iron. Of course, that’s after I dig a few post holes. Later I’ll take the family to the pool.”

In my early days of cycling (circa six years ago), after a hard 33-mile group ride, I would spend half the day on the couch, totally spent. Todd was joking, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he did exactly what he mentioned. He’s a strong man partial to personal challenges. The body can do much more than we think it can. All of us diehard desert cyclists now have a nice base of conditioning to pump that healthy goodness after a session of cooperative riding.

Along those lines, after the Race Across America, one of the first comments to come out of the Type 1 Diabetes Team member’s mouth was, “I can’t believe my body could do what it just did” which was break the speed record in crossing the United States on a bicycle. His team rode the 3000+ plus route in five days nine hours and three minutes, averaging 23.38 miles per hour. I’ve had that feeling numerous times, though my achievements much more modest. Still, when I can barely get out of car because of stiffness, and when the aches and pains of ordinary living make me feel like an old old man, covering 46 miles at 19 miles an hour makes me feel young and powerful. And unlike being in race mode, I can savor the moments in memory of how it all came about.

All this is why I’m not so discouraged and feel no anxiety about being less than pack-fill when I from time to time enter a race. As Tony Darr says, “Rule number one in cycling is have fun. Rule number two says see rule number one.” And look forward to those pleasant rides and a feeling of well-being that lasts and lasts.