On Rule #6: Resistance
Strength can be a fickle thing this time of year, when the training isn’t as consistent as it should be; it comes and goes, sometimes several times in the span of a single ride or even a climb. Like a rosy-eyed dreamer I keep awakening as I train, thrown like a rag doll between a state nearing euphoria and one resembling purgatory.
My mind is what drives me as a Cyclist, it is what allows my to keep going despite the burning in my legs and lungs. It is what pushes me to leave the comfort of my home to climb aboard my bike when it is dark, cold, and rainy. But there are times when the legs won’t go or the body fails in some anomalous way when we are struck by the reality that we are but puppets, pushed and pulled by forces that exist outside outside the jurisdiction of our will.
Whether or not the body fails, the mind can still resist. It can resist easing back. It can resist turning around. It can resist turning the bars to steer away from the extra climbing loop. Giving in is the worst kind of weakness we have in Cycling. With time all the acute reasons why we want to quit will pass; the acid will flush from our muscles, the gasps for air will give way to steady breathing, the cold will leave our bodies. But quitting, and the doubt it cultivates can last much, much longer.
Quitting begets quitting. It wears down your confidence and makes you question yourself. It asks questions of you that you will struggle to answer when the 2am Ghosts of Lost Opportunities come calling. Worst of all, quitting gets easier the more you do it.
Before my rides, I will decide if it is to be a hard day or an easy day; whether I will do the extra loop with the big climbs or look for the flatter roads. Once on the ride, I will shut off the part of my mind that asks those questions and simply shut off the part of my mind that processes those considerations. I will not stop until I am done.
Our strength may be fickle, but our minds are steady.
@Teocalli
Brilliant – looks like ny ride around Tahoe last year in some serious #9 conditions. Nothing better than the feeling of busting out of the pain cave and looking back at what was accomplished.
@Mike_P
Amen. Each year is a “cycle” in a longer path to improvement on and enjoyment of the bike and the ride. My times at this time of year are behind my best from last year. The stregnth is gaining, but the climbing weight, well……..Set a goal, work hard, make it happen, don’t quit.
Many years ago, while in training in the military, we were marching in full battle rattle, ruck, rifle helmet, everything including a gal of water. After about 15 miles in the hot Texas sun, we stopped and the First Sgt asked if anybody needed a ride. Only one guy got in the jeep, and then we were off for another hour. Same thing “anyone want a ride” and sure said a couple. Another hour, same story. After a couple more hours and about 10 guys had quit, A deuce and half pulls up and about 5 guys jump on board, after seeing this, about 15 more joined them. I said f’ck that because it meant getting set back a week in training. I’m just about dead in 100 deg heat but I’m moving, just around the next corner there are two air-conditioned buses waiting for all who finished. Not quitting saved me!
@The Oracle
Hey, as they said in Life of Brian, “You lucky, lucky, bastard!” 45 degrees? I think my garage is in the high teens, low 20s these days! You have my sympathy for the time-crunch thing, but 45 degrees sounds like luxury to me!
See you on a cogal this year? How about the Cheesehead Roubaix? Your former “local” roads . . .
@Gianni
Fair enough, my man. Myself, I just don’t like letting myself think its ever OK to quit, but that doesn’t mean I’m pushing hard every ride, that’s just silly. But that’s why I decide before I’m out what I’m going to do – or, more specifically – whether I’m going hard. If I get out on an easy day and feel great and don’t have a specific objective I’m working to, I’ll fucking drill it just for fun and break my plan. But if I decide I’m going to ride hard, get out and don’t feel like it, you bet your sweet patoosie that I’m going to push through and make myself do it.
@The Pressure
That’s another reason not to quit right there; sour moods and bad bodies can heal themselves while out on a ride and you never know what might happen.
Also, LeMond wanted to quit the 1989 World Road Race and guess what? He felt great later and won.
@VeloSix
Beautiful!
@souleur
That, my friend, is what we call “perspective”.
@Puffy
I know a couple people like that; my brother is one of them. He’s the master of “off the couch riding” and will just come along and hold on for monster rides after months or even a year or more of no riding.
Amazing willpower, but I always think, what that boy could do if he trained…
@fat999
The V is everywhere, it surrounds us, penetrates us. It holds our world together!
@Howard
Welcome to the fold, mate. You’re in the right place if you’re trying to learn about that stuff.
@Isaac
Look at Abandy Schleck – he’s gotten so fucking used to quitting, it started to feel like winning any time he crossed a finish line. Not where you want to be!
Fuck. Just…fuck.
@Cjcosgrove
Or fake a dropped chain! I’ve TOTALLY had this happen as well…don’t give in! Its a dirty little trick your mind is playing on you!
This is why you shut off that part of your brain.
@Mike_P
Agreed – the best way to get better is to ride with faster people than you.
@wiscot
We used to dream of having a basement. Our hovel sat on a bog. My da would dig a hole in the bog and put my rollers in the hole. And we were lucky.
@wiscot
Of course, even 15-20 degrees sounds delightful compared to the negative-15 it was the other morning.
I’m up for a cogal, of course, although let’s keep it somewhere south of that 320km mark you were blowing out your ass earlier. What weekend is the Cheesehead this year? I’d have to check my calendar. I couldn’t make it the last two years.
@Teocalli welcome back! Hope the white stuff has been good to you and you’ve not broken anything
@Gianni
Did you live in a Monty Python sketch?
I most often hear the little voice of quit in 2 situations: those long drawn-out efforts where everything hurts, the legs can barely turn the pedals, etc and the short retina-hemorrhaging full gas stomps that make aortic dissection seem like a nice way to relax. Quitting is much less likely, personally, in the former than the latter. And it shows.
@Mike_P
Like a nasal septum?
@The Oracle
Hey! April 27 for Cheesehead Roubaix. Fireman’s Park, Newburg.
I got a 250kms ride in last year and felt damn good at the end (all things considered – cramping left foot). That’s why the goal is 320 kms this year. Or 200 miles as we say in West Bend.
@GogglesPizano
Perfect. Take your Rule #6 lessons on the trainer. Pretty good place for it I’d say.
@zugo
Who are you kidding? Of course you have a problem with quitting! You quit before you even started buddy. Joining the fast group and getting dropped day in and day out is best thing you can do to school yourself in Rule #5 & #6. Each time you get dropped it will be closer to the end of the ride until one day you don’t get dropped.
@frank
I’ve learned a trick so that I don’t stop/decide it’s a good opportunity to quit. If I drop a chain (outside on the bigdog) I don’t stop to fix it. Put the deraillure back to the small ring, unclip the left shoe and use the rear wing of the (SPD) cleat to lift the chain back over and hold whilst the left leg turns the crank over slowly. It’ll drop straight back on, clip back in, get moving, change back to the big dog and you’re off.
@Puffy
I fixed that problem my never shifting out of my big ring.
@Gianni
Luxury!
@Mike_P
@Mike_P all in one piece thanks. Off again 21st for another couple of weeks, been dumping white stuff in Colorado since we came back. Trying to fit in a FRB between the rain/gales/floods. Trying to avoid confronting Rule #9 in the mirror.
@souleur yup, it’s amazing the fight people have in them when they need to draw on it. SA (and our cycling community) unfortunately lost an amazing individual this week. Ashleigh Moore (OAM) had managed to fight off cancer 3 times in the last 9 years before it took his life on Monday. During that time he worked tirelessly to set up & promote Cancer Voices SA as an advocacy group for cancer fighters here in SA along with running a cycling team/club under the same name.
I first met him around October 2011 & have done a few different rides with him & the other CVSA riders over the past couple of years, during that time I watched him complete 100k rides basically on one lung & if there was ever a consideration of not finishing any ride he went on, it was never made apparent to those around him.
As poor as the reputations of Lance Armstrong & Livestrong are at the moment, I know that the amount of support that Ashleigh & anyone linked to CVSA have received over the last few years from them has been amazing & it’s one of the reasons he was able to see multiple versions of the horrible disease off as many times as he did.
Makes it kinda tough to justify any type of excuse for pulling the pin on a ride cos you’re not quite feeling it…
@xyxax
I see what you did there. Nice.
Wait a second, is Gitane, like the bikes Le Badger rode for awhile, a cigarette company?
*I’m probably many years late in realizing this, but I was reading yesterday and this seemed to be the case.
@andrew
A bog? You were lucky. Our house was on a frozen lake and would sink in the spring. Rollers? Our rollers were made of tin cans glued together and stuck to branches with plaited hair for bands.
@Ron
Ron, FYI from the interwebs:
Gitane is a French manufacturer of bicycles based in Machecoul, France; the name “Gitane” means gypsy woman. The brand was synonymous with French bicycle racing from the 1960s through the mid-1980s, sponsoring riders such as Jacques Anquetil (1963-1965), Lucien Van Impe (1974-1976), Bernard Hinault (1975-1983), Laurent Fignon (1982-1988), and Greg LeMond (1981-1984). It is owned by Grimaldi Industri AB.
Gitanes (pronounced: [Ê’i.tan], “gypsy women”) is a brand of French cigarettes, sold in many varieties of strengths and packages. It is currently owned by Imperial Tobacco following their acquisition of Altadis in January 2008, having been owned by SEITA before that. Originally rolled with darker or brun (brown) tobacco, in contrast to ‘blondes’. In honour of the name, the cover sports a silhouette of a Spanish gypsy woman playing the tambourine. The boxes have always featured the colours black, blue and white.
Interestingly, Roger deVlaeminck never rode a Gitane bike, which would have been logical given his nickname of “The Gypsy.”
@Ron Cycles Gitane et Gitanes
@wiscot
Rollers – ha – luxury we had to ride our bikes at night on potholed roads in the pouring rain –
Oh hang on – that’s what I actually do
@Mike_P
@wiscot quotes from Wisconsinites’ favorite MP movie. Blessed are the cheesemakers.
@wiscot I’ve got April 27th pencilled in. Hopefully I can get the family logistics to work out and actually make it this year.
… and on topic–this post worked for me last night. I ignored all of the excuses and did 1.5 hrs on the rollers.
@the Engine
You live in Scotland. You forgot to add the incessant howling gales!
@The Oracle
Excellent. It’s been getting quite a big turnout but it usually settles down after the first couple of sections. Maybe it’ll be above freezing by then?
@The Oracle
On a point of order that wasn’t a Python sketch it was from At Last the 1948 Show – which begat both Python and the Goodies
First person to say they weren’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition has to do hill reps
@the Engine
Or eat spam. Spam, spam, spam (ad nauseum) . . . or even a wafer thin mint. (said in a cloying, obsequious French accent).
@the Engine I will defer to thy greater knowledge, good sir.
@wiscot
The Black Knight knew how to suffer, though…
@the Engine
Not forgetting I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again as a nursing ground for both.
@Teocalli
And the Goons begat MP and the Goodies. Milligan, Secombe, Sellars and Bentine. I remember Bentine’s kid’s show in the 70s – wonderfully strange. Also Milligan’s QB7 stuff – just strange.
@Mike_P
@zugo, do it. That time in the pain cave has rewards. I did the same, called it my Thurday Death Ride. But before long I was hanging onto the back of the group, then I was in the group, then I was dropping back to bring slower riders up. The faster riders commented on the progress I’d made. It as all very encouraging. My fastest year on the bike since the 80’s, and just a few months after ACL reconstruction.
“I rode. I rode until my muscles burned and my veins pumped battery acid. Then I rode some more.”
Fight Club minus Tyler Durden from Richard Trammell on Vimeo.
Percentage wise, doing nothing is 100% easier
@Chris
@wiscot
Hey, keep to your own turf. You can have your crappy cheese but Spam belongs to Minnesota!
@RedRanger
Similarly, going slow is the only thing you don’t need to practice in order to get better at it.
(Not totally true, I actually find that only really good cyclists can go however slowly they need to in order to ride with someone who sucks. Museeuw riding with us being a prime example.)