Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Knocking the Rust Off.


Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 7:31 PM
Late April means triathlon season is upon us.  I generally race a low key event about now to knock the rust off and see where my fitness stands after an off season that spans seven months. Predictably for someone who swims masters and rides the trainer all winter, the answer is usually:  reasonably fit; not fast.  Also: hairy, as I find a man's shaving his legs or wearing white slacks before Memorial Day to be gauche. 

And so hairy and slow, but wearing season-appropriate pants,  I dutifully went online to register for Lake West Point, for my annual triathlon kickoff.  I've raced this every year but one since Jim Rainey founded it over ten years ago, know the course by heart, and can reliably finish in the top ten on off-season base mileage. Also, I can stay with my Dad, because my family is from Columbus, about 40 miles South of West Point.  
Free bed, catching up with family, and dinner the night before at Deorio's:  I am a creature of habit.



Been going there with my family and friends since I had to be carried.  Columbus, GA's best restaurant.

Actually, my athletic ties to West Point, Georgia, go back to high school.  Not that you'd know it to look at my gangly, triathletic frame now, but when I was sixteen I played offensive and defensive tackle on my high school team.  My frame was not really any more impressive.  We really sucked.  

West Point High School did not suck.  In 1985, they had a man-mountain offensive/defensive tackle named George Brewer, who went on to start as a freshman at UGA.  

Three-hundred pounds before it was commonplace, Brewer lined up and self-fulfilled this prophecy --  "back to the creek you GO, boy!" -- first saying it and then doing it.  See, there was this creek behind one end zone, and when the ball was snapped, his forearm to my chest lifted me up, and then George's dump truck body drove me backward until the whistle blew, when he deposited me about fifteen yards back from scrimmage.  I was well on my way to the creek.  After that, I stayed low.




George Brewer reacts.
George Brewer's legacy notwithstanding, I went online to register for Lake West Point Olympic Distance, which was on a Sunday, and noticed there was a competing race in Carrollton the day before, Tri-The-Parks/John Tanner State Park Sprint.  

I reasoned that if one early season race knocks the rust off, then two would do it better.  More is more: triathlete logic.   Signed up for both races and drove to Carrollton Friday afternoon with two bikes, five wheels, an array of mix and match race outfits, and -- let's not kid ourselves -- about 12 pounds of off-season burrito weight that wasn't gonna win me any USAT points.

RACE # 1.  JOHN TANNER STATE PARK SPRINT.  TRI THE PARKS SERIES.
Saturday's race in Carrollton was hilly. I drove the course Friday night and decided on my pink Planet X, by far the lighter of my two bikes, for all the climbing:
This baby:  only with a shallower rear wheel, and an extra couple cogs in the rear cassette for cresting the hills.  This bike, like all my bikes, has a name.  Its name is The Pink Torpedo.

Race day arrived, and I christened the season in the appropriate manner:
 
Waffle House at 4:30 AM.

This is a race day mandate for me now.   A few years ago,it occurred to me that peanut butter and banana sandwiches on Ezekiel bread, sprinkled with wheat germ, and two cups of the fair trade coffee I packed with me and brewed myself in the room --  that was all a pain in the ass.  I'm always up three hours before the swim start, around 4AM --  which means I had to get all this shit ready the night before so I wasn't comatose in the AM.  

Then I noticed that since I race in the Southeast, there is a Waffle House near any race.  Often two Waffle Houses, and maybe a bonus Huddle House if I stay someplace dangerous. If eggs and coffee were good enough for Lance Armstrong back in the tour, I'd manage too. Now Lance had a personal chef,  whereas on Saturday I had a guy with unraveling cornrows named Lennell, but the principle is the same.  Pay someone else to do the menial shit and keep your eyes on the prize.  Lennell cooked the hell out of my 3 scrambled, grits, and dry wheat toast, and kept the coffee coming.

By the time I left, I was alert and ready to race, plus I had overheard the story of how the bearded guy at the next booth got the bleeding forehead and attendant goose egg lump.  Police baton!  He took one to the skull from a cop, but managed to stagger away while the cop was busy detaining another hooligan.  This dude was George Brewer sized, if Brewer had really let himself go, so I know he didn't run fast, but he still escaped and was plenty relieved.  The conversation at his table -- tired, woozy, happy iterations of the word fuuuuuck --  confirmed why I love Waffle House early on race day.  It's the social shift change of America.  I was clocking in, his crew were clocking out, and eyeing me not exactly disrespectfully, but distantly and dismissively and with an air that suggested getting up early to go play -- given a choice not to -- is profligate.  Wasteful.  Indeed irresponsible.  Fight for your right to party and all.  Lennell and I quietly reflected on how the big man's head was going to feel when he woke up.  Assuming he ever did wake up.       

At the race I was met by my friend Larry, a new training partner.  Larry is younger and faster than I am, and lacking in body fat.  It was dark and about 50F in transition, and when the announcement came over the PA that the lake water was 65F, I shuddered.  We'd be cold all race.  Wearing a wool kilt until moments before the gun sounded, Larry averred he was either going to keep his wetsuit on for the bike, or bundle up in the kilt.

Larry blitzed the swim, beating me by a good minute.  I sprinted for the first buoy and got there with the leaders, but tied up quickly in the cold water, and swam slowly and noodle-armed for the remaining 500 meters.  I was pleased to have a wetsuit, not just because of the added warmth, but because they float so well.  Air-bubble injected neoprene helps out when your arms go all noodle early in the swim.  Early season lesson re-learned:  warm up abundantly for the swim.  I had taken my bike for a spin and run it through all the gears, but didn't leave enough time to swim and get accustomed to the cold water. 

My hands were stiff and I had trouble unzipping the wetsuit, but I got out of it.

The bike went okay, after the requisite first-race pratfall.  I left the Pink Torpedo in too big a gear, downshifted  on the nasty little hill out of transition, and dropped the chain.  Trouble is, my hands don't function when cold. Putting the chain back was like mittened origami.  I eventually got the chain back on, but it took a minute, as cyclists pedaled away from T1, and I stood and cussed and dropped the chain again.  Eventually I roped it back in and grinded my way out of there.

The hills go long and gradual there, and I worked into a decent rhythm halfway through the 14 mile bike, but was chasing too many people after the lackluster swim and chain SNAFU.  In these short races, the briefest mistakes cost you.

I worked my way into the top twenty.  The sun was up and warming the roads though, and by mile 7 I was feeling good.  Pretty rural course, good roads, and temps climbing  -- the rust was coming off me.  By transition two, I was top fifteen.  

That didn't last. I  ran a clompy-stompy 21:38 for the not-quite-5K, which is terrible for me.

Didn't care. By now there was nothing to be done but enjoy the day.  A bad day at the races is still, after all, a day at play.  There are worse ways you could spend your Saturday morning than biking and running with 455 similarly driven souls.  Few better, really.

I went through mile 1 in 7:03 and knew I just don't  have any spring in my legs yet.  That's the deal when I sign up to race this early in the year -- some guys are going to kick my ass. And two females, actually.  Getting chicked in a sprint distance race is how I know it's time to buckle down.

Two men my age passed me immediately on the run.   Miles two and three were roller-coastery and I saw Larry cruising back down the biggest hill as I was climbed it.  I ran myself from top fifteen back down the standings ultimately to a decidely mediocre 21st overall finish.   

But the sun was out and I felt good on the run.  My problematic hamstrings and calves of 2013 were quiet in 2014.  My sporadic knee issues didn't make the trip either.  Physically all systems go.  The chassis was fine, the motor just needs work.   No race gear to shift into yet.

Ran a warm down with Larry, whose race experience mirrored my own -- fun but slower than he'd like -- and chalked the day up to early season.  Wait 'til July, bitches, we agreed.

Both of us placed in our age groups.  Neither cared enough to stick around for the awards.

And so we went to Waffle House again, after we met a goat named Baby:

Displaying photo.JPGWearing an old race Jersey because this year's Go Tri Sports top wouldn't zip up around my thick self.


Because I could, I took a coma-nap at the hotel, which gave me a 2pm checkout.  Then I drove to Race #2, picked up my packet for Sunday morning, and continued on to my dad's place in Columbus, Georgia for the night.

I was excited about Deorio's Pizza, but the place was packed and I was starving by dinner time.  It had been a while since Waffle House.  I was in no mood to wait for a table.

Recently, however, above Deorio's, someone opened a massive everything-that's-wrong-with-America restaurant called Hibachi Grill.   When I went to its website just now to include a link so you would not think I was exaggerating, it incongruously started playing Imagine by John Lennon.  Love the song, always have, but John Lennon is rolling over in his grave and tellin' Tchaikovsky  the news right now.  The sheer tacky commercial excess of this restaurant -- a twenty foot faux chandelier flashes different colors -- pretty well stands against everything that the Yoko-era Lennon was against.  $9.99 all you can eat sushi!  And hibachi grilled Japanese!  Or -- why not --  fried catfish, fried chicken, and an ice cream buffet.  And pizza.

http://www.hibachicolumbus.com/default.asp.

Look, I understand the place is a gross embarrassment.  Thing is, I don't care.  These last couple of years I have been steadily rethinking every life decision I ever made, ever, and have jettisoned some key ones that you'd think define me. 


An example would be my strident vegetarianism of the last 9 years. 


What a pain in the ass that was.  


Yeah I was healthy, but I was pretty damn healthy before I became an ovo-lacto-judgemental-vegetarian. I suspect that many formerly religious people, or people who have that natural inclination toward religiosity, still have this space in them hollowed out where they crave order and rules,and dogma.   A lot of vegetarians, especially the don't-kill-that-hornet-because-it's-alive-too variety, treat their simple dietary choices as an ersatz religion.  It ain't.  It's what you decide to put in your mouth. Period.   


I was never comfortable around other vegetarians, incidentally. Even ones I dated.Give me Pentecostal crackers any day. They can judge me without being hipster-smarmy.


Anyway, I added fish back last summer for boring health reasons, and didn't wake up the next day any more selfish than ever.   And didn't wake up tofind myself a chain-smoking obese tire re-treader.  Then, I cautiously added chicken and, fuck it, beef.  Drew the line at pork for the solid reason that I don't like it, and the God of my people apparently ordered us not to eat it a couple thousand years back.


Adding red meat back to my diet, with its attendant animal fat, along with the other meat I began eating again, drove my own body fat down to the leanest I have been in years last summer, and blood work showed my already stellar cholesterol numbers managed to improve.


And before you say it, the 12 pounds I gained this last off season is identical to the same weight gain I get every off season. Same weight gain as forever, when I was sworn off meat for health-moral-enviro-judgment reasons. 


My off seasons are the low mileage, weight-lifting, take care of the rest of my life interstices between race seasons.  Triathletes don't have four seasons, only two:  on and off. 

I digress.


So my dad and I went to Hibachi Grill, and it was awesome.  The sushi was at least as good as supermarket sushi, and at 10 bucks for unlimited plates, it felt like theft.  Not as good as an actual sushi bar, but about forty bucks cheaper for what I ate.  


Catching up with my dad was worth the trip.  My 75 year old father and I sat in this garish, neon-bright cavern of a room, and we didn't have anywhere else to be.  It was about 6:30 PM, senior citizen's dinner time. No dinner rush here.   No kids to chase this trip.  Cell phones put away. Nothing pressing.


Dad is worth his own blog entry, or probably  his own blog, so I won't divulge our discussions beyond remarking that unrepentant people are my heroes. My dad is immutable.  The older I get the better that seems to me.  It's refreshing to be around someone who gives less of a fuck what people think than I do, and whose concern for how others view him is diminishing further each year.  I looked and suddenly dad was back behind the hibachi area, making the "chef" show him how he did something or other with an egg and a spatula, and turning the heater knobs.


After dinner I hung out in our kitchen visiting with Dad, his third and final wife, their spirit-calming cat.My brother made a cameo, between social engagements. Then I called it a night and slept the sleep of the righteous slept like the dead.  The cat stood watch


Meet Max.


RACE # 2.  LAKE WEST POINT (SPRINT)


Woke up before the alarm feeling better than yesterday, alert and spry, and looking forward to a better effort on a course I know. I'd opted to downgrade my race distance to the sprint from the intermediate distance because I did not relish 24 minutes (my standard 1500 meter swim) in the cold water, and because I wanted to compare my time over roughly the same distance to the day before.

Comparing races is inexact, because Saturday's race was far hillier, although Lake West Point isn't flat either.

Today I warmed up better, if a man can be said to warm up in fifty-nine degree water.  Thank God, again, for my wetsuit.   I got in early enough to swim the entire 600 yards languidly and then some, before the gun sounded.  It helped. It also helped that the air temps were in the upper sixties, and would climb into the seventies on the bike.  No more frigid hands today, and perhaps, I hoped, that dictated a more efficient transition.

I swam a 9:31 for 600 yards.  Not blazing, really, but at the front of the field.  Those who wore Garmins in the water later reported that the course was long.  Whatever-- I felt great and was at the pointy end of the swim pack.  I exited the water just ahead of the eventual winner, but he sprinted by me over the timing mat into transition. He and a couple other guys were gone in a flash and biking.

I wasn't too far behind out of transition, but then transitions are the bane of my existence, so exiting transition behind, but not too far behind,  is a win.  Even with practice, I consider a good swim-to-bike transition in a small race this to be about a minute.

Then there are the transition wiz kids -- guys who seem to slide down a Bat Pole and arrive fully costumed in the Bat Cave, ready to fight, while I am still getting my goggles off. These are the guys who are gone in 35 seconds.

To cut into their advantage, I  grudgingly decided to try the gimmick of having my shoes pre-clipped into the pedals, taking off on the bike, and shimmying my toes into the shoes as I biked.  It's tricky.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCOSxZuSSQs.

For years I resisted this method, and just pulled my bike shoes on one at a time in transition, then kind of waddled to the road in my stiff, carbon soled bike shoes, pushing my bike.  Then, straddling the bike, I clipped my feet in and began to pedal.  It's slow and methodical, but dependable.  You won't fall, but by the time you are moving, the Batmen are 200 meters down the road.

So today I tried the shoes pre-clipped in method.

It's a work in progress.  Damn near fell over.  Had to stop after about thirty seconds of coasting and fooling with one shoe and pull my shoe on the traditional way.  A net loss of time, but not as bad as the chain dropping of yesterday,so there's that.


Leaving transition before me were, it turned out, five or six guys in Team USA kits. A surprisingly talented field for this little race.

I set about pedaling the Pink Torpedo after them, with decent success.  I reeled in a lot of cyclists.  Many were teenage boys on road bikes, not tri bikes. That's because they were  junior development USAT athletes who race a lot of draft legal, ITU-style races.  This means they can ride together in packs and do not need the aerobars that non-drafting triathletes consider indispensable.  They are allowed to draft in their sub-species of triathlon, and ride together as teammates.

This idea is anathema to traditional adult triathletes like me.  The one great sin in triathlon, for us, is drafting:  riding within seven meters (two bike lengths) behind another rider to gain an aerodynamic advantage. Riding in another athlete's slipstream.  Letting someone else do the work for you.  It is illegal in our races and always has been, and you can get DQ'd  if caught.

Moreover it flies in the face of what appeals to most of us about the sport:  individual, independent, emersonian accomplishment.

I digress.

I caught a couple of these kids drafting today in our non-drafting race, and scolded them for it.

ME:          DRAFT LEGAL RACE WAS YESTERDAY, BOYS!

THEM:      WE RACED YESTERDAY!  WHATEVER!

ME:           VAGINAS!

See, West Point hosted a juniors draft legal race the day before, and all these teens had competed, then stuck around an extra day for our adult, non-drafting affair. What our exchange translated to was:

ME:       YOU ARE CHEATING.

THEM:  SO WHAT?  THIS RACE DOESN'T MATTER;  THE IMPORTANT RACE, FOR THOSE OF US WITH A              FUTURE, WAS YESTERDAY. WHY DO YOU CARE?

ME:  PUSSIES!  [rides steadily away from the misguided youth]

I pedaled my way into the top three overall starting the run.  Managed a 20:14 on an honest 5K course, which is a good 84 seconds  faster than yesterday's run.  While I am pleased with that improvement,  I needed one more second.  Late in the race, I did the math and figured I had an outside shot at breaking 20 minutes.  Once, breaking 18 was commonplace, but I am 46  now, with knees more aged than that.  So I got after it hard, but my watch turned over 20:00 in sight of the finish line, and I eased up. No one to catch,and it wasn't worth pulling a hamstring to sprint down the chute for nothing.

Or so I thought.

I was unaware of a diminutive runner clocking a 16:20 run split off the bike, which is sick.   Had I known, I wouldn't have mailed it in once I reached the chute. The race announcer didn't say anything and the sparse crowd was not cheering,so  I was alarmed when this guy materialized at the tape, in the chute, out of nowhere. It's not so much that I got out-sprinted, as I was oblivious.  Had I known, even at the last second, I would have leaned across and blocked his ass. If you've been chasing me the entire race, but cannot make your move until the finisher's chute, fuck you, I am getting in your way. Well, assuming I know you are there.

He and I were credited the same finishing time to the second, but he definitely beat me. Hats off to him. I shook his hand and told him so and meant it.  Shame on me.  But I'd rather make all these mistakes in April, re-acclimating myself to racing, than to have it happen in the thick of summer.

And It won't.

I finished 8th overall, ran a faster 5K than the overall winner, and was actually in the hunt for the podium off the bike. I need to get my run down to 19 flat, get my bike speed back to scratch, and squander less time in transition. Same things I need to address every spring.  And always do.

Knocking the rust off.



Friday, June 7, 2013

GYNOMERICA

When did we become a nation of vaginas?

I don't mean that in the literal sense, of course -- nearly fifty percent of us sport penises and generally the attendant scrotums --  I mean it figuratively and I hope offensively. That is:  when did we become a nation populated by people without any balls?

Before you have an estrogen hissy, yep, I am aware that when we speak of balls as a metaphor for courage, or toughness, or tenacity, or even simply balls as the inclination to stand one's ground, that women can have balls commensurate with men's.  Or bigger.

But the thing is, generally women don't.  Which puts them in a dead heat with men, who don't have any either.  It's a tie.  I can't diagnose the causes, with so many to choose from.  Suspects include our national panic over liability, which is the flip side of our national zeal to sue when our feelings get hurt.  Couple that problem with this other likely perp:  we are, excepting you and a few of your friends, lazy,  apathetic nerf herders.

But it is our fear of getting into trouble, and of being held accountable, that I speak of here.

Our collective pussification comes to mind because of a local 15K race.  The race either is or isn't tomorrow, depending on the sponsor's stomach for risk.  See, this race, the Crimestoppers Azalea Run, was scheduled for May 4th, 2013 but was rained out. Yep.  Called for rain.  Not lightning, not the thunder that forebodes it;  not a tornado watch;  not impassible roads or even power outage. 

Cancelled for rain.  And not even actual rain during the actual race.  Yep, they called it for puddles. Certainly, lawns were soaked from the night before, and indeed there was standing water around the course.  But you've run in way worse.  And will again.

When we showed up at the starting line, we noticed dozens of entrants collecting their t-shirts and walking back to their cars.  The lady from Crimestoppers explained with a straight face that the race had been called off.  We scoffed.  She became  defensive and averred "the course is underwater!"

Acceptable retorts included:

A.  Awesome!
B.  So what?
C.  Not so.

But she had made up her mind.  And so the race that benefits crime victims, sponsored by an organization who exhorts them to be resolute and not retreat from evil --  that race was cancelled because no one should be expected to get wet for the cause.

I read recently where some health expert conjectured that only three percent of Americans can run three miles without stopping.  I hope this isn't true, because if it is we really are a nation of pussies.  But if it is, then the people showing up at a local 15K are arguably among the toughest 3 percent of Americans.  Yet we can't expect them to run in rain?

There is blame to share all around.  I also take to task we entrants, who paid 30 to 45 dollars to race, depending on when we signed up.  We got ourselves down to the north end of Forsyth Park, learned the race was arbitrarily cancelled -- and then for the most part accepted our t-shirts without remonstrating,  and said things like "hey, let's go get pancakes."  Indeed, that is a direct quote.  From a friend who, as she uttered it, was pulling on the t-shirt from the race she had just finished not running.

Me:  Well, you're here, ready to run.  Why not run anyway, then get breakfast?

Her: They called the race.

Me:  Yes.  Absurd.  Still, you're here to run, so run.

Her:  T-shirt! (she was pointing to it).  They cancelled the race.  Breakfast time.

Me:  Stay dry.

As an aside, this supports my suspicion that the t-shirt is a lot of why people show up for these things.  But this woman runs three or four times a week with a running group.  I see her in the park when I'm running.  I don't do organized group runs, but I am pretty sure you don't get a t-shirt every day.

So, some friends and I ran the course anyway, since we had paid, bothered to show up and  -- this was a bunch of triathletes -- we would have been training on any Saturday, race or no race.  We didn't push it really, just ran the course and enjoyed the morning.   For the hour and change we were running the race course, what there wasn't was any rain. There were clouds and a breeze, but we survived.

And so we received an email that the race had been rescheduled for tomorrow, June 8th.  I am out, as I have a triathlon this weekend, as does everyone I was running with back on the original date.  The irony is Tropical Storm Andrea has been pounding us for the last two days and now Savannah really is saturated, and I suspect parts of the course really are underwater. 

See we live on the Atlantic Coast in the Southeastern United States.  It is officially hurricane season in June, and we are all on notice of that every year.  The storm has blown through by the look of it, and I think it would be hard to postpone for puddles again.  Perhaps they will cancel it altogether, rather than subject athletes to 15K on wet streets.  But at least IHOP is dry, for after you get your T-shirt.

State's exhibit 1 (May 4th, 2013):


We regret to say that the Azalea Run is not happening today. The race director has been forced to postpone the race due to the inclement weather. Again, the race WILL happen on a later date, this is for everyone's safety and we will post updates as future plans become finalized.

And while we are at it, see  State's exhibit 2:



Some of the course is under water - keep checking back with us for updates on the race's new date. Sorry about this guys.





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Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Insomnia

If you can swing it, I recommend life as a functioning insomniac.  Contrary to its reputation as the destroyer of souls, a constant, predictable insomnia  is freeing.  I was designed to require little sleep, but it wouldn't matter if I did require it.  I'm just not very good at it.  And so when the rest of  the world is sleeping, folks like me get work done at odd hours, finish the three books we've been reading, and have ideas worth having.


This is not tough guy talk.  There is nothing commendable about getting by with less where sleep is concerned, any more than it would be admirable to require less air.  It's just how you are riveted together.  I've never been one of these Spartans who assure you sleep is overrated, or they'll sleep when they're dead, or any such platitude.  These folks are nothing like me. They are tacitly conceding that sleep is important and feels good, but showing off their tough guy behavior.  It's pride in self-denial, in endurance, the idea of hanging in there to git 'er done, when most couldn't.

As a practical matter, I suspect a lot of these no sleep tough guys are lying.  Everyone I ever  knew who offered that he could go for days without sleep is someone I eventually caught napping.


Thing is, something's up.

I'm sleeping.

Heavily, and well, and a lot.  I fall asleep early and end up uncharacteristically sleeping through alarms.  and I don't wake up during the night.  This, after a lifetime of waking up every other hour, nonsense dreams, and routinely throwing up my hands, saying screw it, I'm up now, and getting dressed at 3:30 AM.  Triathlon season is over, so skipping morning swim practice for Zs is fine -- for now.  I am not troubled, during my off season, to be a single workout per day guy.  And it wouldn't matter of  I were -- this is like a virus I can't shake.  I leave work, go to my kids' practices, ride my trainer for an hour, and pass out.  Often without showering.  Then it's 7 AM and I am waking up and considering rolling over for another 15 minutes.  As opposed to sitting bolt upright at 4:30, and 25 minutes later using a pull buoy and paddles.

I suppose it's possible my body is telling me I need the sleep, but I don't buy it, at age 44, for the first time.

And you normal sleepers -- is this how you feel? Do you wake up after 8 hours feeling sleepier than when you went to bed?  What the hell is that?  I wake up at 7 and am paralyzed.

This better be a phase.  There's a reason this blog has gone unattended like an overgrown garden.  Insomniacs get stuff done.  Just maybe at odd hours.

Insomnia per Ed Norton's nameless character/Tyler Durden..
Love the book, love the movie, love this scene -- but this is the conventional view of insominia.  Well, I dissent.  I hope not to sleep though the night again, and soon.

Monday, October 22, 2012

What Have I Become

    Three seasons ago, I broke down and procured a time trial helmet.   Now, you might reasonably see this as a throwaway moment in a fungible life:  an instantly forgettable economic choice.  Not so. I gave it at least as much thought as which lever to pull in the voting booth,  because it underscored a larger, ugly truth:  life is a series of compromises.

    See, I deplored the sight of these helmets the moment the first one showed up at a sprint triathlon somewhere.  I despised the absurd stinger jutting out impractically behind the rider's skull.  I hated the ostentatious, frivolous expense, and the notion that the wearer intended to buy himself some extra speed.  Of course every race I went to, there were more. These helmets spread through the elite triathlon ranks like cold sores among strippers. I scoffed.

     Soon,  setting up my bike pre-race, I'd find myself the last holdout with an old-fashioned bike helmet, that didn't  look like what you'd wear to work on the Death Star.  

Kona?  Check.  Alcatraz?  Check.  Alderaan? Check. Check.


    Well, TT helmets were my line in the sand.  Bucking the trend was not just a matter of sports and fashion, but a moral imperative not to join the aerodynamic herd. 

    Triathletes are like competitive sheep, if sheep could compete at something.   When the newest pricey gewgaw comes out -- provided it is rumored to confer some athletic advantage -- everyone gets one.  Which is why everyone I know has a Quark Power Meter that costs more than his first bike, and a Garmin 310XT, two sets of race wheels, and the ubiquitous time trial helmet.*

     Part of my pit-of-stomach revulsion at TT helmets was the poseur factor.  Triathlon is saturated with athletes who crash the gates and immediately try to buy their way to the top.  I speak of the mid-life crisis surgeon, who attends his first sprint triathlon on a $7500 tri bike with top-end race wheels, but leaves the toe bucket pedals on, because he hasn't actually ridden the thing yet, and doesn't know how to clip in.   Or the low country cyclists who ride exclusively where there are no hills to climb, but obsess over bike weight -- this new crankset will save me 75 grams! -- as opposed to riding what they've got, and losing the 29 pounds that have a accrued around their middles.

     And so all haughty and superior, I clung to my old, round, plastic yarmulke of a bike helmet, and snubbed the TT helmet crowd as if they were sneetches without stars.   I mocked them.  Called them cone heads. There was only one problem.  Time trial helmets work.  I mean, really  work.  The science is in.   Depending on whose study you buy into, they may matter as much as your 1500 dollar rear disc wheel, more than what anything on your bike weighs, and may tie for second behind the body positioning you spent a year trying to dial in, tinkering with seat yaw or stem pitch or something.

    I view running and cycling industry articles and posts and studies about the "science" of running and cycling with a jaundiced eye.  I don't use the air quotes to suggest that there isn't a ton of real science on endurance sports -- God, is there ever -- but to emphasize that much of what they foist as science is really advocacy.  Or speculative entertainment.  Or just gussied up, generic advertising with graphs.  And some photos of stern men in lab coats observing some skinny specimen on a treadmill, often wearing an air tank.  And electrodes.

     Lava and Velo News need you to buy stuff from their advertisers. Runner's World needs you to buy those motion control shoes and built-up orthotics, because without a running industry -- the latest Asics whatevers -- they don't have a magazine. As an aside, I tossed my built up shoes and orthotics in 2011 and started running in glorified slippers. Since then I've been running with impunity, after four years of nagging injuries.  I agree with this man that the shoes and inserts were making me worse.  But with the billions Nike and Asics and the rest pump into advertising, it's hard for the industry to admit that you were better off running in 1975 Nike Waffle Racers -- slippers with waffle soles -- than in the latest Air Max.

    I quit subscribing to anything from, for example,  Rodale Press, partly because they write down to an audience of  giddy initiates, and partly because the same publications contradict themselves like Nathan Thurm.  And it isn't just the newbie fanzines like Runner's World, either.    Granted, science and medicine -- and athletes -- advance.  Carb loading used to require a carb depletion phase, then it didn't.  Until it did and didn't again.

    But some matters are settled.

    Like time trial helmets.  Arguing against their efficacy is like arguing for a flat Earth.  The evidence is in -- they work. They absolutely make you faster, on the identical effort, vs. wearing a conventional helmet. Free time, just by wearing a pointy hat.  But I had my pride.  The mouthy critic would be eating major crow, if he broke down and got one.  And then a friend at the bike shop, knowing that I had USAT Nationals coming up, handed me a new, black and blue Giro TT helmet for free.  Someone had worn it a few times, sweated in it, and brought it back claiming there was something wrong with it.  Bike store guy said here, it's yours.

    A conundrum.

     People who know me and like me almost invariably describe me as "uncompromising," or similar. That, or "you asshole!" Two ways of describing the same phenomenon, I suppose. But so much for that -- these alien helmets forced me to compromise, and I loathed them for it. Two competing values weighed against each other on my internal ethical scales: my strident individuality on the one side vs. athletic advantage on the other.

  As I learned in tenth grade -- but occasionally have to relearn -- Emerson wrote that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.  Truer words never spoken.  Tenth grade is a good time to read Emerson and Thoreau, because that's when a fellow ought to grasp that doing something to be different for the sake of being different allows others to influence your choices just as much as does conforming.   Sheep or anti-sheep, no matter.  Each is equally controlled by the herd.  My innate need to be in the minority, to be different for its own sake had -- yet again -- collided with a more reasoned, mature individuality.  Wear the helmet, don't wear the helmet, whatever.  Just do what you're gonna do, and be who you are. 

  Overthink much?


  And so the man who'd ridden his first two iron length triathlons on a used 400 dollar aluminum road bike, showed up at Nationals in 2009 in a shiny new TT helmet.  I was mildly chagrined -- I still deplore how they look -- but there you go.  Change is glacial with me.

  I ended up biking 57 minutes for the hilly 40K bike leg, at 41 years old.  A credible time.  That helmet bought me 30 to 45 seconds, and helped qualify me for Worlds.  I out biked most men of any age.  Wearing the TT helmet, I had both beaten 'em and joined 'em, simultaneously.

   Whatever.    Time trial helmets still make you look like a douche. Here's a quick primer for the uninitiated, then I'm off to go sell out some more.




One big reason I resisted TT helmets: I didn't want to look like small-time retro super hero, The Rocketeer.  A flying bellhop in the very first time trial helmet  saves an art deco Los Angeles!  At least it's easier to go to the bathroom in his flying suit than in Tony Stark's.

 
 
 
This man at least has the excuse of being European, and also riding in the Tour De France, so I will cut him some slack.  He's still a douche,because his TT helmet has a blast shield, but in mitigation it also has plastic mutton chop sideburns, which are novel.  NOTE the clothing, however. This man is also wearing a bike onesie, a close relative of the tri-onesie.  This means it is harder for him to go to the bathroom than it is for either Tony Stark or the Rocketeer.  This will be addressed in further petty, judgemental  posts about racewear.
 
 
Which settles the debate:  can a woman be a douche?  Why yes, yes she can.



*See also:  Skinsuits and --in the case of wealthy luntatics -- oxygen sleep chambers.


Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Best Food Yet!



   

If you grew up in the South, you are probably familiar with Huddle House. For those unfortunate enough to have grown up where grits are exotic, Huddle House is like a lower rent Waffle House.  Truly.  It's a chain like Waffle House, but more resignedly self aware. Huddle House knows it only gets off the bench late in games, for junk minutes.  Management understands it can't compete, so it erects Huddle Houses in places like Millen, Georgia, where they only have to compete with a tire retreader and the 18-34 year old males openly selling crack in the parking lot, vying for your wages. Crack, not meth!  Quaint.

It's Waffle House minus the waffles, resigned to its fate as a vo-tech dropout.  In that regard, it's like Mr. Pibb, Dr. Pepper's underachieving half-brother who couldn't hack anatomy, but constantly reminds you of it by calling himself "Mr.," even  in casual settings.

For my money, Waffle House has more parking lot fights, but Huddle House has better ones.  And that is just fights between customers.  A friend of mine used to manage a Waffle House, and has managed other places.  Like so many of my friends, he is a skinny triathlete, often at a size disadvantage.  He avers that staff-on-staff violence is a store-to-store thing, irrespective of the company, but that controlling it is more about attitude and how a man carries himself than brute size. He adds that managing a diner chain requires a fellow to be part cook (cooks get arrested a lot, and otherwise no-show), part bouncer, part ref, and -- routinely -- father confessor.  If the priest-penitent privilege doesn't apply to conversations between shift manager and waitress, it should. 

When I was a kid, I associated Huddle House with football games, because we insisted that our dad take us to the one in Newnan, GA, late at night, on the drive home from Athens  We wanted to go because brand identification works: the logo for Huddle House was a cute cartoon kid in a helmet and pads, hugging a football.  At age 7 and 8, that was why we wanted to eat there. 

Also, even then, we knew what most fair minded, reasonable adults eventually learn for themselves:  waffles are ghastly.  Bland, window-pane batter, singed by a good ironing and rendered either brittle and vile, or gooey and tasteless.  You can only stomach the things with syrup.  Waffles are syrup vehicles and then ashtrays, but I'd never call them food.   So  as kids we went Huddle and left Waffle for others.

Years later I would realize that no one eats the waffles at Waffle House:  they go there for the omelets and coffee and -- if they are cops -- to pick up the younger waitresses.  As an adult, I've taken my business to Waffle House and freely admit it is now my favorite chain.  Breakfast is my favorite meal, and I have no compunction about making co-workers join me for lunch at an all day breakfast joint.   If I'm driving, tough darts, boys, expect to return to work smelling like hash browns and No Melt.  I have migrated to Waffle House partly because it's better, but also because Huddle House abandoned the football kid logo.

So I grew up, said so long to the Huddle House Football Kid, and eased into paying taxes, being a parent, and wearing clothes to work that had to be dry cleaned.  I began going to Waffle House once a week, when I wanted to feel like someone who lifted heavy things for a living and didn't wear a tie.  IE, myself until after college.  I didn't so much abandon Huddle House like an old teddy bear, as end up living somewhere civilized.  There aren't any Huddle Houses in my immediate area, because I live in civilization and all.

That's not to say there's nothing I miss.

I find I miss Huddle House's frank, sober self-appraisal as offered in its own slogan.

Best Food Yet.

That's genius.

They were banking on you to reward their honesty with your patronage.

Best food yet.  We mean, sure, there's better food coming, maybe a Waffle House, where the waitresses feign interest -- but we are the best food since exit 119, And it's pouring out there tonight.  We both know you're hungry, and it's late, and hey -- like you'd be ordering waffles anyway?

And so, after years away, I heard the sirens' song and  found myself in a Huddle House last Sunday evening.  It was pouring rain, I was hungry, and I was in fact in Millen, GA. 

Best Food Yet!  Please pay the ransom.
 
That's because I had raced the Augusta, Georgia Ironman 70.3 on Sunday, stuck around for the awards in the rain, and started my drive home wet and famished.  I inhaled  my 4 scrambled, double grits, wheat toast, coffee and tomato juice, stretched my 6-1 frame across the ketchup red and mustard yellow booth, and reflected on my race.  I'd done well and was pleased, and was now nursing my coffee to warm up in the over-air conditioned vault of a diner.  It occurred to me that I was probably the only triathlete in there this week, and certainly the only ovo-lacto vegetarian.  It further occurred to me sitting there pleasantly sore after a race I was happy with, full of greasy spoon breakfast, that Thomas Wolfe be damned, you really can go home again.

Just kidding.  What occurred to me, simultaneously wired and tired, was:

1.  Jesus Christ I am lucky not to live here;
2.  Should I sleep through masters swimming in the morning?;
3.  This coffee is marginally better than police station coffee;
4.  A bunch of abstruse stuff about bike fit, seat position, stem height, and aerodynamics vs. power;
5.  Look!  A shiny thing!  And of course,
6.  I need to get a blog entry done about this race while it is still fresh.

And so I sat down to blog about triathlon, and changed my mind, because I was spent and just wasn't up for it,  and decided to put it off  until midweek.  And Huddle House will let a man feel fatalistic about his underachieving.