five years of bikes, a blog, and some bruce lee

It's been five years of pedal-strike, guys, and I initially couldn't come up with anything that had changed.
Which is completely ridiculous, I know. Because if I browse through my own archives, I've gone from riding a crappy fixed gear around town to making cycling caps to getting a real [beautiful] road bike to doing group rides to moving to Tokyo to visiting Paris for the Tour to being able to call pros like Tim Johnson and Adam Hansen, friends.

But always my own worst enemy, I tend to discount whatever these "achievements" or "milestones" might mean. So when this blog's fifth anniversary rolled around, I didn't know quite what to write. Conveniently, I was also in Paris - the first time I'd ever gone to Europe in my life - and settled with the mental excuse that it's not that one can't blog in Paris, just that one shouldn't.
With the end of 2013 approaching - too soon and not soon enough - I've been looking back on the year[s] and the drafts never published. I may have only raced twice in my life so far, haven't become quite as fast as I'd like to be, and still struggle to climb. So what's really changed other than slightly more toned calves and a definitely more worn down cassette?
Well, to take a less egotistical view: a lot. Although I've most likely changed more than I realize, my experiences cycling and through this blog haven't become strangely awesome because of me or anything I've done. If you haven't noticed, I tend to get in my own way. I've looked at my bike too many times and seen it as pregnant with unnecessarily negative associations. The heavy guilt of feeling inadequate and the insipid, toxic bitterness of that emotion can pollute even the simplest of loves. Sometimes, it's no small miracle we're still together.

Perseverance appears to have little to do with it. I'm pretty good at this so I feel competent enough to comment on it. Really, I can persevere with the best of them. I can persevere though 3 hours indoor trainer rides, summers in Tokyo, and multiple seasons of NCIS. I could probably persevere my way through the seven circles of Hell [wait, was that called “law school”?]. But guess what, an ability to persevere doesn’t correlate strongly with enjoyment. My ability to be sticky isn't what has made cycling sticky. That stuff, the good glue that's held all this together, and has made my not-so-well-financed life exponentially richer, is made up of the brilliant people I've met along the way. An experience, I've learned - however amazing - can only go so far without great friends to share it with. You guys have even made the shitty experiences laughably memorable. I can't thank you all enough.
There have been a few other big lessons this year, too.
Hypothermia, deadlifts, and the art of YOLO-ing
A few days ago, at a Starbucks at Narita airport, Adam was telling me about the closest he’d been to death. It involved a race, a gas station water boiler, and hypothermia. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing about this,” I said, mid-almost-falling-out-of-my-chair-LOL-ing. “Oh, we all do,” he said, “but, you know, I wouldn’t want anyone I care about to have to go through something like that.”
It was a simple statement, but one that reminded me that unless I’m getting paid boatloads of money to do something [like, shipping container boatloads], I don’t really have to do anything I don’t want to. The blog and the cycling have been largely self-financed [I can count the number of paid writing gigs I’ve done on half of one hand], because money was never really the point, only my [admittedly] selfish enjoyment of the sport. Racing can be a natural progression of that enjoyment, but over the past few years, I’d made it a necessary one. I felt I had to race to be considered a “real” cyclist. And that’s really just a bunch of fucking bullshit.

People will always advise you on what you should be doing, regardless of how it affects your happiness. Shoulds are easy. They’re laid out for you and you just follow the rules. You end up "right," but also boring and predictable. Your friends, on the other hand, will tell you to do whatever makes you happiest, and to fuck the shoulds. When you ignore their extremely well-meaning advice, they’ll be there for you when you end up unhappy, overtrained and overwhelmed. And then they’ll give you the same piece of advice when you wail, “what do I do?” And maybe you’ll do that and maybe you won’t, but eventually you’ll figure it out and do whatever it is that makes you happiest. When that finally happens, you’ll also probably feel sort of like an idiot for wasting everyone’s time. So, since [as far as we know] we only live once, just do it. Whatever makes you happiest, even especially if it doesn’t line up with all the shoulds.

As someone who loves checklists, guidelines, and rules, that concept is still a struggle. I got lost there for a bit because no one can tell you what makes you happy; you have to try a bunch of stuff, fail really hard at all of them, and see what still makes you smile. Cycling is a huge part of that, but I’ve made room for heavy deadlifts, sewing machines, and that giant list of other super secret projects. Sometimes, instead of riding I’ll go shred my muscles at the gym. And if a voice inside my head tells me I should feel guilty about it, I say, "Hey, you know what? Fuck it. Because YOLO. And today was a good day."
Bruce Lee, earthquakes and making it good
We had an earthquake a few weeks ago, while I was 13 floors up in a high rise office building. When you're up that high, your world doesn’t just tremble, it sways. It can be nauseating and everyone pauses for a few seconds. We brace ourselves for the swaying to either stop or get worse. No matter where I am - at home in bed, at work at my desk - I grab onto something unconsciously, as if anything could anchor me into place when the earth is moving.

The action is futile, but ingrained. And in grasping the edge of my desk that day, I realized that it's extended to the way I've clung to situations, beliefs, and people for fear of losing some kind of foundation. Like my grabbing at flimsy cubicle partitions when the earth starts to shake, those tendencies have been to my own detriment.
I don’t think I quite realized how much I’d been limiting myself until I read an excerpt from “The Art of Expressing the Human Body” by Bruce Lee and John Little. Bruce said a lot more, but the important, famous bit he said was this:

“Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.”

I know that seems to contradict my previous statement about not racing, but I like to see that statement as more broadly applicable. That in letting go of ideas of limits, inabilities, and of who you should be, you can create your own possibility – whatever that is for you – and you can also create the goodness of that possibility. I don’t mean succeeding; just that, like those rides that blow up in your face, everything is what you make of it. Life is short – as those earthquakes always remind me – so why limit yourself to something less than good [assholes not included]?

Because if you think about it, this day, this hour, this minute, is a piece of your life that you're giving away. Whatever you're trading it in for - oxygen deprivation, a sultry kiss, snorting a mouthful of coffee out of your nose - well, it better be fucking worth it. And if it isn't, then why the fuck are you wasting your time?
Which might be a long winded way of saying that clinging to certain things has seemed to be the safe thing to do, but if it keeps me unhappy, I'm learning to let them go. One white-knuckled finger at at time. But if it does make me happy? Well, I'm going to try to keep it in my life, for as long as possible. And hopefully not in a weird, creepy Gollum-y kind of way.

I won't lie; the stress and pressure of this blog has sometimes been the source of a lot of unhappy times. But in looking back - even just on this year alone - I'd like to think I'm a better person for it. Sure, all those lessons and attitudes I just wrote about are still in progress. There will be times when I'll be a shitty friend, care too much about what some asshole thinks, or waste my time on something that makes me miserable. But I like to think of it kind of like indoor rides on the trainer. It might look like I'm going nowhere, but I'm putting in the effort.
If you read all of the [disjointed] above, well, drinks [and probably sushi] are on me, if you’re ever in Tokyo. Because, YOLO, right? We might as well make it really fucking good.
See you in 2014!
oxox, k

juicing the holiday cheer

I've been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks and didn't realize it until a few days ago. A flare in the form of a Tweet mention ripped me back to reality. Where have I been? What have I been doing? How long has it been since I stalked Adam Hansen online checked Cyclingnews?
I blame the holidays, all the commercial "Christmas cheer" and reminders to pre-order buckets of KFC. I blame my sometimes uncontrollable IBS [TMI?]. I blame the cold [because yes, I now consider 5C, "cold"]. In between shivering in the office and dousing myself in various layers of fleece at home, I’ve only been able to ride half-heartedly. It’s not even barely Christmas, and I’m already pining for MSR.

Usually, I would call this “winter motivation apathy”; the predictable drop in temperatures bringing with it a lethargic cadence and the average speed of a grandmother. When you don’t race ‘cross, there’s not much to do when winter rolls around, other than fantasize about hibernation while dousing yourself in layers of fleece in front of the TV. Not that I don’t fantasize about doing nothing while binge watching episodes of Law & Order in the summer. It’s just that the excuses come easier when it’s cold outside and riding requires baselayers, gloves, jackets, hats, and neck warmers. Most of which has to be taken off, then put back on, every time you need to pee. Things are just harder in the winter, riding included.
This is old news to me, but for the past few weeks, I kept spewing out the guilt-ridden excuses. Because IBS has been kind of a horrible bitch to me recently. In the privacy of my own home [and once at work], I cried to a good friend about not being able to train while my intestines refused to function properly. For once, I had the motivation to train – two-a-days are the highlights of my week – but my body wasn’t cooperating. I was experiencing the kind of frustration and rage I usually reserve for screaming toddlers on 12 hour flights, except it was directed at myself, on a daily basis.

Despite only being able to work two days last week [a visit to the doctor’s office, then the hospital, sort of harshed my working girl vibe], I climbed onto the bike both days this weekend. It was exhausting and cold, then exhausting and hot. My Lotto-Belisol neck warmer soaked up my frantic breathing while my Assos tights soaked up my mis-aimed snot rockets [I’m 100% sure that I lose more water out of my nose in the winter than through my skin]. But the sun came out, and when I flew by a bright red Ferrari that reminded me of a favorite friend, I turned around to take a picture of it. Because for once this weekend, I didn’t have to cut a ride short because of something I couldn’t quite control.

The next day, I stretched out my supposedly 45min easy recovery ride into two hours, just because. An enthusiastic headwind countered, and I felt good enough to laugh a little to myself. I knew in a few days, I was probably going to feel like shit [no pun intended]. But in a way that was almost okay. Because I’d made the most of today, juiced my relative health for what it was worth, and even if it was a short ride and my legs were absurdly sore afterwards, I’d ridden. Outside. In the sun. With snot dribbling and flying everywhere.
And next weekend, fingers crossed that the medicine will kick in enough, I’m going to do it again.

wind hungry

I left on my usual lunch break walk Monday afternoon planning on crafting a lame excuse for a small break. It would go something like this: "Hey guys, sorry work/life has been hectic. I may not post anything this week but I'll be back soon!" I was thinking about how exactly to word this cheerful, open-ended, white lie, because neither life nor work has been hectic. I've just been having trouble crawling out of some life stuff - bike included - and it's all been starting to feel like quicksand.

It's been unseasonably cold out, and Monday was windy enough to have me walking a little sideways. The insides of my ears started to hurt as the crosswind turned into an enthusiastic headwind. I wasn't expecting it, and it shoved the air I was trying to breathe out back down my throat. The suffocating pressure felt like an appropriate analogy to my current life situation: functioning on a day-to-day basis has started to feel like riding into a considerable, seemingly-never-ending headwind on extremely weak [non-Dutch] legs.
In the context of the bike, it's familiar and sometimes inevitable. Shit happens, and sometimes it comes in the form of currents of air that like to mess with your front wheel, your inertia, or both. There is a stretch of windy, gusty days every year in the spring here; early enough in the year that there are cobwebs and dust bunnies still lingering in my legs from long, steady efforts all winter, but late enough that I'm practically begging weather.com to ride outside. The timing is always perfect, because I'm never ready. And so I spend a few weekends pedaling against a wall of air, sometimes doing the walk of shame while trying not to get my steel bike ripped out of my hands and down into the Tama River. It's frustratingly unpleasant and if I'm hungry enough, can shove me into an abyss of hopeless helplessness. If I'm honest, it's never not scared me.

Pushing my cold hands deeper into my pockets, I'd turned my head to try to breathe last Monday, glad that I wasn't trying to ride outside that day. As chance would have it, I was next to a small Japanese cafe I'd taken Alex and Tim to last February. It had been windy, then, too, and we'd found good ramen after riding around the Imperial Palace. Tim - like all cross addicts - skipped around sidewalks and curbs on his Super X, Alex was relaxed and steady, I'd tried to keep up without blowing up.
"I hate wind," I'd cringed to Tim.
"Bend your elbows," he'd said, "lean into it. And keep pedaling. If you coast, you're fucked."
I filed that into the mental "practical things to know about cycling" folder and pulled it out a month later when the wind predictably picked up again. It worked, and like most good advice, it's seeped into other moments, like when I feel the need to mash down on the life panic/pause button...for about five weeks...to get fat and feel really sorry for myself. I remembered, then that while slamming yourself into a brick wall won't always be productive, easing up too much on the pedals - like I've been doing - can be just as silly. In the end, it just makes it that much harder to get back on the bike.

That realization of what I've been doing [or, more accurately, not doing] hasn't gotten me tearing up the sides of mountains on one gear, setting PRs or otherwise accomplishing anything other than sitting in my trainer [and finally completing a workout, to the virtual cheers of my coach]. I've already broken my promise to cry less, but I haven't self-medicated with chocolate in three [!!!] whole days. It's not much so far, but I'm trying not to coast. I'm calling it "active recovery" - of the mental and physical kind - with fingers crossed that a Type A personality and the demotivatingly boring hell that is easy spinning will get me a little closer to hungry.

the happiness triage

"A cut, color and a...perm," I wretched out that last word through almost-clenched teeth a week before I flew out to New York. A part of me internally wept at the cost involved in getting my hair to look somewhat presentable, and the other side heaved a sigh pregnant with relief. After a move that involved buying too much furniture and a trip to Paris, saving money had turned into a favorite sport. The first thing to go was non-shitty coffee. After that, it was clothes, my hair, and waxing appointments. I couldn't decide whether to prioritize paying my coach over food expenses, but I knew that worn down chain - the one I've been meaning to replace since, um, June - would probably survive a few more weeks until I made it stateside. It just meant that I had to shift up twice in the back, then down once to actually shift up a gear. But like no big deal, right?

Because by then it was almost a game: to see how long I would last before I went completely insane and either shaved my entire head or went on a shopping spree for stuff I didn't want. I vented my frustration by tweezing my eyebrows a lot, even if that didn't change my messy hair, the boring, dated wardrobe, or the races I couldn't afford. I started to get really into it, nesting down in my self-created patheticness like a homeless junkie.
"But if I really loved racing, I should be willing to go broke for it, right?" I asked a good friend, while high on self-imposed poverty.
"No, I think that's called 'obsession,'" she said bluntly.
In that brief moment of clarity, I called my hair stylist. The hair triage I'd requested ironically cost less than a race [entry fee, transportation, lodging] would have, and less than what standard tune-ups go for, here. It felt like cheating. I still made an appointment to get waxed the next day.

And you know what? It hurt [my wallet], but it felt really fucking good. I even went so far as to mentally pat myself on the back for "totally pampering myself."
Less than a week later, I walked into my favorite bike shop in New York City to see my bike in a familiar stand, the bar tape rewrapped, wheels trued, front derailleur cable trimmed [I have embarrassingly large calves], chain replaced, cassette cleaned, frame polished, and that gross and yellow-ed chain stay sticker peeled off [there's a new, clear one on there now]. It was only then that I stupidly realized that I hadn't been pampering myself at all. I'd taken care of basic, personal hygiene; apparently something I'd unlearned how to do for both myself - and more importantly - my bike.

The most embarrassing part isn't due so much to how my bike now hums and purrs, instead of creaking and rasping. Or knowing that I don't have to do some DJ turntablism on my gears to get them to actually shift. Or how my frame is no longer covered in several layers of self-pity and misery. It's embarrassing because I finally realized how all those people on Hoarders slowly slide down the spiral towards a house filled with garbage, dead cats, and old bills. "I...I really can't let this one go," they always say, caught in that weird space between weeping hysterically and full-on panic, to the professional organizer/psychologist, while clutching a phone bill addressed to a family member from 1975. And that was totally me.
That might be a slight exaggeration, but the point is that focusing on saving as much as money as I could possibly squeeze out of my salary to enable my riding pretty much blew up in my face. In like, the worst, most humiliating, bukkake-esque way possible.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at the irony of how letting yourself go tends to bleed into the things you love, even if you're ignoring yourself in an attempt to keep them above the water line of flooding desperation. It still caught me by surprise, in part because I believed that it would work out. Unless we're talking about ex-boyfriends or frenemies, I don't actually believe that my unhappiness is a prerequisite for others to be happy. Sometimes, though, deferring the option of happiness appeared to be the lingering status quo. So instead of fighting it, I squeezed it to me. I wasn't just kind of dealing with a tight budget; I actively made myself miserable, as if I could use that to build up credit towards future happiness. And in clinging to that idea, I failed to realize what it was doing to the very thing I was trying to save.
The bike - clean, still pristine - and I are back in Tokyo. As odd as it might sound, it's always a struggle to adjust back to a place others would call my "home." The little things, though, like my bar tape, the derailleur cable that won't chew up my leg warmers, a new chain, are reminders that I really should let myself be happy. At least, you know, once in a while. That doesn't mean I won't wait a few weeks longer than I should to get my hair cut, everything waxed, or my chain replaced. It means that I'll try, as much as I'd feel guilty about it, to not settle [too, too much] for simply "content."

internet dating intervals

The Training Peaks app for the iphone changed on me a few updates ago. That was, more accurately,weeks ago. Like the friend who comes back from studying abroad, cultured and well-dressed, it threw me off. The new app is clean, snazzy, kind of complicated-looking, and all I could do was stare in disbelief and slight disappointment. I wanted the old TP app back, the one whose wardrobe consisted of three colors - blue, black, and white - not like 10 million, including pastels.

The change, and my discomfort with the change, reemphasized something else: that my attempts to ease back into things for the past three five or so weeks have been as graceful as a belly flop from a 10 ft diving board. I've been chasing my own form, rear wheel usually locked in my trainer, acutely aware that there has been something missing for some time. Meanwhile, it is already September, CX is coming here, and I am still, still shifting into the little ring on climbs. That last one would trigger an army of sighs if I was actually capable of breathing. Like setting up an online dating profile, it's a necessary move that still sparks some unsettling sense of acquiesing to a suboptimal situation. Am I really doing this? I ask myself, while the other, more practical side of me that tends to encourage not shredding my legs on 3% grades [or never getting laid, as the case may be,] says, firmly, yes, yes you are. The physical movement of my left middle finger pushing inwards turns into a mute response.

Passive-aggressive gestures aside, the hard part is that I'm aware that it's not just the legs that have to be built back up, but that loss of confidence. The knowledge that I can reel that guy in, that I can make it up this climb, that increasingly harder intervals aren't going to kill me, that Internet dating doesn't mean I'm either physically repulsive or have a terrible personality. The physical and mental discomfort are prerequisites to getting to a better place, I've been told. That doesn't make the situation suck less, but you might end up faster for it. Or your date might actually turn out to look like his picture and not be a complete weirdo. And if not, well, you just gotta keep trying. Because there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You're just so far back you can't see it yet.

That last one doesn't inspire much confidence, I know. But like the 50 [million] friends you have that are currently engaged/happily married to [attractive, sane, and interesting] people they met online, reality rebuts the anticipated pessimism. It will always feel like grasping at straws, the glimmer of hope remaining frustratingly elusive. But that promise of potential still manages to keep me in the red, be it with shitty online dates or oxygen deprivation. Because the millionth time's the charm, right?
Or that's what I keep telling myself, anyway. This morning, I caught myself going through the same mental games, trying to con myself into believing that a ten minute interval was a five minute one, just so I would hate myself a little less. As always, it worked, but not very well. Still, I found myself graduating from cheering ["come on, you can do this!"] to a sustained conviction ["you just did this, you'll be fine"]. I realized only later that I'd managed to spin - half kicking and screaming - back to the edge of confidence, where doubt wasn't constantly simmering in my stomach. Like a seasoned speed dater, I'd arrived at that mental place where I know I'll survive, that failures aren't always a reflection on inately unchangeable parts of my personality, and that optimism can take you a long way.
Okay...maybe not through a really crappy Internet date, but, you know, at least through a few Tabatas.

re-connecting

My Internet connection at home inexplicably disappeared for a few days, but like a banged up knee, it's back in action.

Good stuff coming in a bit!