I came strongly into the Fall, stronger than in other years thanks to a late-season objective to do well at my first Heck of the North gravel classic in Minnesota. I was light and I had built good power and endurance by riding the steep gravel roads that pepper the North Cascades and suffering through brutal interval sessions on the windswept stretch of road along Shilshole Bay. I was good at hurting myself.
With the race behind me and the first of the next season’s objectives many months away, I entered into what in many ways is my favorite time of year to ride: Winter. The months between objectives at that time of year provides a kind of serenity on the bike that is hard to find when goals are looming. Focus shifts away from building a sharpness in the muscles and towards putting in long base kilometers at steady speeds. There is no need to push hard on the climbs, just slip into a nice tempo and explore the beautiful quiet of a steady rhythm.
With that serenity comes a different kind of suffering; not so acute but where the cold winds and rains harden the mind against the long hours of discomfort and somatic pain. Simply staying on the bike all day, riding from sun up to sun down, is suffering in itself. The willpower and discipline needed to hold the course and do the Work is itself an entirely different but very real kind of suffering – even if the suffering is not intense at any given moment.
But as Winter slowly loosens it grip and the days grow longer, so too do the objectives for the coming season loom nearer. It is time to pull myself out of steady rhythms and once again build towards the sharp sensations of a hard effort. I find I’ve nearly forgotten how to do it; my body resists the signals coming from the mind; its first impulse is to employ the Scotty Principle, I’m givin’ ‘er all she’s got captain! It seems my mind has forgotten that whenever it gets that message, there is always another 10 or 20 percent left to to be taken from the body.
Janus is the Roman god of beginnings and transitions; he has two faces – one looking to the past and one to the future. I’m transitioning from one kind of suffering into another; the work I did yesterday will make tomorrow’s ride a little bit better. My mind navigates through the mixed signals it receives, and the body responds and adapts. To transition is to explore the boundary between two seemingly separate entities. Science explores the boundary between ignorance and knowledge; art explores the boundary between reality and imagination; Cycling explores the boundary between the mind and body.
We are Cyclists. The rest of the world merely rides a bike.
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Ontario winter was brutal this year. This morning it was -18degreesC on my way to work! Got me a set of rollers. Just finished a quick HIIT session. I like this one because I just put in the earbuds, keep the iPhone in the jersey pocket and focus on the V-meter--flat out. Nice to hear some encouragement, too: "Good effort--you're looking strong!"
@Ron
I feel slow in full leg warmers and long sleeve jerseys. But I feel fast with tanned guns and short sleeves. I feel even faster in warm(ish) rain just cool enough to merit knee warmers, arm warmers and maybe a gillet. That is the ultimate.
Had that Sunday, went about 15 minutes mo'fasta on the same route as I did the day before in sun and shorts.
@Doug, @cyclebrarian
I've heard quite a lot about those damn Sufferfest vids. I'm going to have to check into that. Do they have one for the Hour Record? I'm envisioning an Obree-style training of threshold hour-long efforts on the trainer to prepare.
@Joe
Gravity-resisted training is a good way to start the season, just ask Bernard Hinault. The catch is you have to lose the weight by the time shit starts going down.
@Velodeluded
The Now is great, but when you realize you have to shake off that "steady as she goes" mentality, its a rude fucking awakening. I was toiling up a climb the other day wondering how I ever went so fast up it. Then I just concentrated on making the pedals go round faster and before I knew it I was cruising. Easy as that.
@Mike_P
Top marks, mate. Top marks.
@Fausto
This, and if you're like me and train mostly alone in Winter, then you won't know until its hammer time.
Nice write-up, Frank!
My winter season started in October when I was cutoff by a car and hit their right rear door at about 30kph. (This only 10 weeks after my lovely RV incident on the 2nd Annual SF Bay Area Cogal.) While recovering from that, I came down with a Sinus infection that included 6+ weeks of such shitty dizziness that I felt I'd fall out of bed if I wasn't gripping for dear life. Then in December I came down with another URI, constant nausea (which is still bugging me now), and such awesomeness as - and I have no fucking clue how the fuck this happened - a bilateral inguinal hernia, for which I had laporoscopic repair surgery mid-January.
Once my surgeon gave me the a-ok to resume activities without restrictions, I took my Trek to my LBS, got it fixed, and started getting back out there. It really sucks that a 40km ride would do me in, when the weekend before the October car accident, I'd just completed a nice 137km organized ride with my brother.
I'm slowly, but surely getting my legs back. Eventually, I'm sure my strength, endurance, and stamina shall return too. I have faith in Merckx on this.
@paolo - very debatable my friend. Decker, Flores or Deer Creek, mebbe. Where I have newtons finest on my side....:)
@Frank - gravity training is one thing, the top of that hill felt like a big wet vinegary sponge was being squeezed out in both thighs. Toxic. Will give it a go again in a couple pf weeks and see what new language i can come up with...
I made an account just to comment. This is a great, great article.
I work in Minneapolis as a messenger, and we feel it year round (because we ride all year, and if you're not feeling it, why ride?), but the utterly different nature of winter's physical and mental demands from those of summer isn't always easy for me to describe. Minneapolis and St. Paul had exactly 50 days below 0F this winter, and I rode most of them. Often, it was a lot of fun, but every day I was exhausted, having only ridden at 2/3 speed about 1/2 as far as I usually ride in the summer.
I've biked through winters before, but this one was rough, and at first, I was mentally unprepared to put those sorts of temperatures plus wind out of my mind and address the increasingly dubious road conditions (there were weeks on end where even the main roads seemed to have been zambonied). I'd never been robbed of my speed, then punished for not raising my heart-rate before. I also never really noticed how much my handling suffered when I was out of my comfort zone. Now, I have some sprint-practice and mild muscle rebuilding to do this spring on account of my pace reduction, but I see the last few months as an extended pain cave designed to make absolute focus an instinct rather than an effort.
All nice days are the same, but each shitty day is shitty in its own way. Rule 9 isn't an injunction for needless self-flagellation. Rule 9 is a reminder that the more extreme the conditions, the more rare, or even unique opportunities you'll have that day to learn new and better ways to ride hard. Rules pertaining to etiquette and aesthetic are important and awesome, but to me, Rule 9 and others like it are the ones that truly make us cyclists.
Go with Gaul
Ten weeks away from my year's objective, this week and the next two calling for a big step-up in training volume. Already glassy-eyed and zombified, and it's only Tuesday...
Normally at this time of year I'm in top shape... Keepers Tour looming, a summer of frequent long, hard rides behind me, tan lines crisp as a packet of Doritos.
With the knowledge that I wouldn't be on the cobbles this northern spring, my priorities shifted. After the previous two summers of fearing the mountain bike (so I'd not get injured before KT), I've been on the dirt a hell of a lot more than on the road this time. And it's been the funnest summer for, well, two years!
Now the days are shortening, the long evenings no longer around for a sneaky trail session, so the road bike has been in play a lot more over the last few weeks. And it's a different kind of suffering altogether. Hills are attacked, whether I like it or not, due to my cruelly zealous riding mates... on the mtb we cruise to the top, and let it all hang out on the way down (so Enduro!). On the road, it's a cacophony of constant tempo, sharp efforts and sprinting up anything that isn't flat.
I'm looking forward to the winter.