Why we ride

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to why I drag myself out of bed at some ungodly hour almost every morning to ride this ridiculously expensive and uncomfortable piece of machinery that I call my bike. I mean, there are less mind numbing, less tedious ways to stay in shape. I could take a kickboxing class, play hoop or do any number of other things which wouldn't require me to wake up at 5:30am, dress in layers and layers of polyester, fleece or whatever is the latest, high tech wicking fabric and go out into the blistering cold before sun up. Sure, I get a kick out of slowly but surely becoming a better stronger, more competitive cyclist. I'm looking forward to racing the first half of the season. If you don't cycle or race, you couldn't possibly appreciate how difficult it is and how much effort it takes to be a truly competitive bike racer. In the beginning, you improve quickly, but at some point, it takes so much work to make small incremental improvements that you begin to wonder whether it's time to move on to anther sport. Luckily, I'm still in the "beginning" stage. But that's not it.

I definitely enjoy being able to eat pretty much what I want,when I want and not really gain weight - Although I will admit, spending 3, 4, 5 hours on the bike doesn't leave much time (or energy) for the weight room. In the words of that old comedian that played the homeless guy in The Wedding Singer, "I used to be much stronger!"

While those are certainly valid reasons to bite the bullet and keep riding, the real reason I ride evident from the shot above, a spectacular view of New Jersey taken Saturday morning at about 8:00am from the south bike/walkway on the upper level of the George Washington Bridge. I got an early start on my 5 hour endurance ride up 9W. The morning started off overcast, but as I started to make my way up Riverside Drive toward the bridge, the sun started to fight its way from behind the clouds and you could just feel the temperature start to rise. It may not seem like it when you're walking down 2nd Avenue wearing a big wool coat, but when you're on a road bike doing about 20mph wearing Hind artic tights and a Hincapie team issued winter jacket (made of the latest polyester/fleece wicking fabric of course) a temperature increase to 37 degrees, up from 32 seems like a heat wave. I know there's some guy in Wisconsin that may come across my rantings and say "these New Yorkers are real punks," but hey, that guy should get a life.

Anyway, as I started to make my way across the bikeway, I looked to my left and was just compelled to stop and take in the view. I ride across the bridge all the time, but in typical New Yorker fashion, I'm usually so preoccupied with one thing or another - engaged in conversation with my riding partners, thinking about family, work, money, career, getting back to the city - that I rarely take a moment to "see the sights, smell the smells" (an inside joke). But last Saturday was one of those rare times when I got out early enough to, at least for a few minutes, be alone and have the bridge and the scenery all to myself. I felt like I needed to pull out the trusty Nikon P2 point and shoot camera and capture this moment. I could just tell people how great the world looks from the south side of the George Washington Bridge at 8:00am on a Saturday morning in January, but they probably wouldn't believe it.

We ride because the world just looks better on a bike. (That's hot - That should be like some Lance Armstrong Nike commercial)

Hey, I can't make this up. I'm out early Saturday morning and I almost get run over by two deer just off 9W before Piermont.

It's gets better - can you say chickens in the road?

You gotta love cycling. I'll be back later in the week with more updates.

The Bike Station

You never know what you're going to find in New York City. I'm walking from Park Ave West on Union Square South (17th Street) toward Broadway and I see something that resembles one of the new city bus stops. I'm thinking to myself, no bus runs along this street, and if it did, it would create a heck of a lot of traffic when it stopped on this narrow two stretch that connects Broadway to Union Square South. As I get closer and look, I realize that it's some sort of fancy, high tech, high end bicycling parking station. Who knew? How contradictory – just across the street in Union Square Park, on the first Friday of every month (I think) they hold one of those critical mass rides where cyclists from all over the city gather, exchange pleasantries and embark on a monthly sojourn to some far off part of the city, perhaps midtown or the lower east side. In anticipation of all the "chaos" that the "man" believes will ensue, the city floods the park and the surrounding neighborhood with police. You'd think President Bush was planning on riding his track bike down Broadway. On one hand, you seem to have police looking to "shut down" these folks who only want to advocate the use of bicycle transportation in the city, and just across the street you have the city actually making an effort to encourage cycling by creating this. I guess that's why I love New York, it's just layered, rife with inconsistency and nothing really is as it seems.

In any event, the station is pretty cool, there is ample room to park multiple bikes, the signage is nice and it has a detailed map of the city's current and proposed cycling routes. I guess pretty soon we'll be like some Scandinavian country – all we need now is more vacation, better health care, less crime and cleaner streets. We're almost there.

The one funny thing is that in New York, anything new, even something as benign as a bike station, will manage to really excite some people but piss other people off. The woman pictured below just unchained her bike (as side note, while it's great to have this bike station, it might be better if you didn't have to buy a 200 lb chain to lock your bike up – they will steal anything that isn't nailed down in Union Square) and was impressed by the city's efforts to encourage cycling. Another woman standing nearby, a vendor selling I don't know what, thought that the creation of the bike station was part of a larger conspiracy to take away space from and ultimately get rid of all local street vendors. It was an interesting perspective, and one I couldn't dismiss – I mean, this IS New York after all.

The misery of the winter has begun - the pain of an indoor time trial, after work no less. So I had a 20 minute field test/time trial to get threshold wattage. You need that number in order to get your training zones. I planned on doing this outside, but it rained in the morning, so I got on the trainer after work. Nothing to say but this sucked, although not as bad in the past. Even after a good warm up the first 5 or so minutes just makes you want to quit, it's just uncomfortable, needless suffering. After the first 5, it's still hard, but you've accepted that you got through the first few minutes and there's only 15 more minutes to go. At this point, you just set little milestones for yourself, 7 minutes, 10 minutes, 12 minutes... I'm almost there. By now, you start to get a little confidence and actually start thinking, "damn, I probably started off too easy, maybe I can step it up. " At minute 15, I knew I had more in me and really started to work to keep my wattage on the high side. I was still at least 10 beats below my max heart rate, so I know I may have started off too easy and that I still had more in the tank. By the last minute, I work really hard to finish strong. Before you know it, it's over and while you warm down, you're thinking, "that wasn't SO bad. I know I can beat that performance." There's always next month.

9W

Long, long weekend of riding. 75 miles on Saturday and 50 miles on Sunday, all endurance. Is it really worth it? We'll see in April once we start racing again.

On Saturday, I started out at about 8:30am with a few people from NY Velocity, but we stopped several times, and when it's that cold, the side of the road is no place to be. I broke off just before Piermont and continued up 9W and rode the hills behind Nyack College. I struggled with keeping my hands warm. When I wear big gloves or "lobster claws," my hands sweat and the moisture stays in the gloves eventually making my hands cold. There's nothing worse than having wet clothes stuck to you in 30 degree weather... except maybe being wet and then getting a flat, crashing or having a mechanical. On the other hand (no pun intended), when I wear lighter gloves, the wind kills my hands. I need solutions. I refuse to go indoors unless it's below say 28 degrees.

After hitting the hills, I felt so good, I decided to hop back onto 9W and continue on up to Congers, just past Rockland Lake State Park. By now, the temperature had gone up to close to 40, up from about 32, a heat wave, so the ride was infinitely more tolerable. On the way back, I ran into some teammates and Reed from Avenue A Razorfish and enjoyed comfortable group pace back to the GW Bridge.

I was feeling ambitious after the ride (it's the Ironman in me) so I went over to CP to do a 45 minute slow run on the trails. Slow pace, high heart rate and probably too early in the year for that kind of work, but it was nice outside. My freakin knee is still bothering me, not as much as previously, but enough for me to think I should make a doctor's appointment. I'm hoping it's just a strain. I can't do another serious injury.

Anyway, I paid for that run the next day on the bike. I got a late start, the weather was still kind of miserable and I wanted to get back in time for the Giant game. Right from the start, my legs were completely dead. There would be no tempo, no fast pace, just strictly endurance. I made a conscious decision to not wear use my iPod and to stay focused on the training. I could've used the distraction. Finally, on the way back going south on 9W, just past the NY/NJ state line, a guy from Princeton Review zoomed past me and I decided to have a little pride and stay close to him back to the G dub. It's not that he was riding all that fast, it's just that I needed something to distract me from the burning in my legs. For the most part it worked - I was able to keep pace and get my ass back to the bridge within a reasonable amount of time. Got home, Giants were up and Eli was marching the troops down the field for an 8+ minute scoring drive. Nice way to cap off a day of riding.

The Bus Driver

On Monday, I had a New York moment with a bus driver. I typically worry when I’m riding near New York City buses. In general, I would say that bus drivers are worse drivers and more dangerous than New York City cabbies (now watch me get side swiped by a cab tomorrow) for cyclist, but today was different. I was riding back home from Central Park down the center lane on 5th Avenue (somewhere around 47th Street) at about 20mph and there’s a bus to my right. The bus driver (a women) sort of smiles, then she speeds up a bit, she looks over and then starts to wave me on - she’s challenging me to pick up the pace. Hah! Of course, being the competitive jerk that I am, I feel compelled to oblige. In response, she speeds up the bus even more… at this point, I just laugh; we were already at 42nd Street, I was about to make the left turn onto 40th, and why the heck was I in the middle of street racing a bus? It’s the little things that make your day.