Another Crashed Helmet

I started this blog while I was on a layoff from biking due to a bad crash at PIR where I landed on my head and suffered a hip hematoma the size of a volleyball. 21 days off the bike and I was playing catchup fitness-wise for the rest of the year.

Now, I write again after crashing at PIR again. This time I landed on my shoulder, not my head, so I actually remember the series of events in full color. Basically, long story short, I was in the Monday PIR 1/2/3 masters field two mondays ago and on the final lap, some guys got excited on the backstretch and all shifted left towards the paralleling concrete wall separating the course from the infield. I happened to be next to the wall; everyone wanted to be where I was, and one guy got a little too excited and came down on me and put me into the wall.

Getting up off the ground, I immediately noticed my left pinky finger was screwed up. Turns out that I must have caught it in the fence topping the wall. I had what is called a boutonniere deformity when a tendon across the top of the middle finger segment is ruptured. Other injuries include a sprained shoulder, several patches of road rash, and what looked like a sever cut in the webbing between my left pinky and ring finger from the fence. A teammate and another rider in the field who happened to be an ER doctor (I found out later that this person was no less than OBRA's very own Mike Murray; thanks!) helped me back to the start/finish to get cleaned up.

Anyway, now I am recovering and back on my bike, but this incident makes me think a bit about risk and why I am in this sport in the first place. It makes no rational sense to keep with a sport where I keep on getting injured. I risk my work and I risk my health. All this BS crap about how I am keeping my weight down and keeping healthy and physically fit is just that: crap. It's a rationalization. As my boss pointed out when I showed up on Tuesday all bandaged up, I can just as easily keep fit by going to the gym, or just riding to ride.

So why do I keep racing? There really is an answer, but it's not a rational answer and I have trouble putting it into words. It is similar to the reason why I ride in the first place.

Some people ride because they are looking for something. They are looking for a fun way to exercise. They are looking for a vacation from their brain. They are looking for an experience. But I don't work that way. 

Exercise, to me, is a chore, anyway you put it, on the bike or off. I can take a vacation from my brain by reading a book in a coffee shop much more effectively than all the rigamarole that goes with cycling. I can get "an experience" by going for a walk. And I do all that on many an occasion for those very reasons. These are all rational reasons to ride a bike, and I can't say I adopt any of them. I ride and race now, and I have always ridden because I love to ride. It is an unconditional and unrational love. I don't love it because it makes me fit, though it's a benefit. I don't love it because of what it does to my mental state. I just love it. It's just as unrational as the love I have for my wife.

It's not so much about the big things, about the big epic rides or the big risks and rewards in a race.

It's about the little things.

A gray sky and sputtering drizzle with a backpack on. Swooping through a sharp corner. The brief flash of the finish line at 40mph. Squeezing water out of your gloves. Sitting on a stationary, spinning wheel, 4 inches away from yours. Coffee and conversation with teammates. Looking at the sharp lines of your road bike sitting in the garage. The steady grinding rhythm of your body up a long hill.

When I crash, there is a period of time where I am desolate. Pain, bandages, limitations in my movements. Showers and basic hygiene are a bitch. Equipment has to be repaired or replaced. But never is there a time when I think of giving up this sport. It's irrational, of course. Don't know why.

Why I Bike (chapter 1)

I have kind of a love-hate relationship with cycling.  It's kind of weird, I know.  Anyone who knows me would think that I have an obsession, which, perhaps, is what leads to the love-hate.  I got into cycling many years ago.  I'm only 29 years old, but I've already been cycling somewhat seriously for a decade.  Wow.  That's kind of a long time now that I think of it.

I've gone through a couple different stages in my relationship with cycling.  I first started in high school.  I'm not sure what started me commuting.  I didn't ride to school, mostly because I needed to be there at 6:30am so I could attend jazz band (I played piano and completely sucked at it, but that's a story for another day).  But I started attending classes and swim practice (I was a fairly decent competitive swimmer, as opposed to jazz band player) at the community college which was about 5 miles away from my house.  It wasn't a good road for commuting or anything.  I had a "wanabe" mountainbike, and I chugged from my house to the community college and back on some of the weekends.

Because the conditions for commuting were so bad, I started researching a bit about how to ride in traffic.  I came across the work of John Forester, who is the seminal author of the "vehicular cycling" movement, which postulates that a cyclist in traffic is just like any other traffic and should ride as such - meaning that vehicular cyclists do things like merge into car traffic streams and take the lanes and turn from the center left turn lane; things like that.  Vehicular cycling influenced my cycling greatly and set me on the path to getting very seriously into commuting.

Since I started working, I've bike commuted to every job I've ever held.

In my first year of college, I got a used road bike for $300.  I probably paid too much for it; it was pretty worn out.  In fact, one of the first of the longer rides I took on it, the rear brake cable broke just as I was leaving my dorm.  My roommate was a runner and got into cycling a little too.  We took some longer rides together, and it was with him that I rode my first 40 mile ride.  THAT, was hard.

A couple years later, my parents bought me my first new road bike, a blue fading to black "Univega Modovincere" (the remade version, not the famous, vintage Univega) with fully Campy Veloce.  That spring, I rode with my first cycling club.  My first ride with them was a 60 miler; my first.  I was so blown by the end that one of the kind souls was good enough to tow me to the highway where it was a 10 mile straight shot into town before leaving me to my own devices.  My first bonk and I was left struggling for home at 12 mph, looking for things to eat by the side of the road while staving off cramps.  I decided after that ride to not do any ride over 40 miles without gatoraid (didn't know about the eating thing yet).

Fast forward about six years and 50 lbs gained through college.  Last fall, I bought a new Trek Madone 5.2 to finally replace the Univega, which was aging.  I just had joined a new club in town, the Portland Velo, and I decided that I wanted to lose weight.  Seeing the scales tip past 200lbs was a wakeup call.  The club century was a week before and I was surprised by how badly I was out of shape.  I was thoroughly trashed after that century.  I started out in the third to fastest group, bridged up to the second fastest group on the road, then immediately fell off.  By the time I reached the 3/4 mark, I was destroyed.  I waited at the rest stop for 20 minutes or so before the group I started with caught up with me again, then I sucked wheel for the last 20-25 miles.

The next weekend, after the club ride on Saturday, I rode to the bike shop where they were having an end-of-season sale.  Bad move.  I had thought sporadically about buying a new bike and I was tentatively thinking of losing the 20 lbs first, then buying a good bike.  But then I saw the Madone and it was marked down over $1000.  I test rode it for a good hour or more, then sat for another hour to decide to finally buy it.  I hate buying things with a passion, but love to own and use new bike stuff!

I started riding four days a week, commuting 26 miles round trip to work, and combining that with a long ride or two on the weekends.  over the next four or so months, I lost about 20 lbs at a rate of a steady 1 lb a week.  In December of last year, I joined the club's bike racing team.  I've now raced for a year, crashed hard twice and broke two helmets, experimented with track and cyclocross as well as road racing, and had a blast.  My one regret is I haven't been commuting as much as I would like.  I consider bike commuting to be my roots in cycling.  I feel bad for having gotten away from it over the last year.  One of my goals over the next year is to balance my bike racing and training with commuting.

I commute for reasons I don't quite understand but which go deeper than doing it just for exercise or doing it to save the environment.  Why I am so attracted to cycling as an activity and lifestyle is something I don't quite understand.  I feel like I bridge many of the sub-groups of cycling.  I am a roadie and a commuter.  A racer and a "Fred".  I keep tract of cycling advocacy and am in favor of bike lanes, but I adhere to vehicular cycling tenants (In general, these positions, to be in favor of bike lanes, and to be a "vehicular cyclist", is a contradiction in terms).  All at the same time.  It is a contradiction, given the way these sub-groups are sometimes so divided.  But that's me.