a [time] trial of faith

There’s a place that you fall into at the tail end of a series of power intervals – the kind that puts you in a severe oxygen deficit – or, as I also discovered a few days ago, in the last three minutes of a 20 minute TT.
It comes after the nausea sets in [that’s at around 12:36], and you’re already aching. By which I mean, everything hurts. You know it, you can feel it, but the worst part is that your brain keeps ranting and raving about it. It starts off a high-pitched wail [like Tony Soprano’s mother when she got outraged] that you can push aside temporarily. You can sort of fight it, and beat it down with willpower because you’ve been there before and you still pulled through. Then it changes. The shrieking to stop becomes more of a seductive whisper. “But you’re perfect just the way you are,” it might say, “You don't need to be doing this. I’ll give you a rich, gooey, calorie-free brownie spoon-fed to you by Bernie Eisel/Adam Hansen/[insert favorite hot cyclist du jour here] if you just….....stop….”

It sounds so easy, because by minute 17:00, motivation has abandoned you faster than Nike dropped Lance. People might tell you that under the laws of physics, anything in motion likes to stay that way. Indulge in a 20 minute self-flagellation on the bike and you'll realize that those people are actually wrong. There is nothing easier than stopping the pedals when you are in that dark, special place. There's actually nothing you'll want more. [And don't get me started on how absurd the principle of relativity seems when you're counting down seconds in a TT.]
When shit my heartrate hits the fan, I’ve tried different tactics, like telling myself I liked the burn – “I AM TOTALLY ENJOYING THIS!" – that the pain felt good. This can work on long climbs done at a “let’s just get over this without killing ourselves” kind of pace, and partners into BDSM. It’s harder to do when ceasing the extremely painful activity in question is entirely within your control.
It is, however, one of life's wonderful mysteries that you don't consciously go into the red [unless we're talking about debt]. It doesn't even happen in degrees, really. You hurt, near an edge, then all of a sudden you're at a place where conscious thought becomes detrimental to survival. I guess you can say it gets worse, but you can really only tell in hindsight.
When my brain flickered back on a few seconds after the 20 minute mark, I felt like absolute shit. The pressure that had been pooling at my right temple drained, leaving behind a weird, woozy throbbing. I couldn't remember a thing that happened in the last two minutes of that TT.

People have an obnoxious way of telling me that nothing easy is worth doing. Usually this happens when life has essentially stomped on my throat, when the primary objective in life becomes curling up in a ball while eating brownies and Googling pictures of Bernie Eisel and/or Adam Hansen, not hearing that this is the way life is/more suffering is required but it will all, probably, be worth it in the end. I always temporarily hate those people out of a selfish need to wallow in my self-pity. Like they couldn't give me a second to weep/stuff my face/fantasize about hot pros before powerslamming me with their advice, which is also conveniently structured for a follow-up "I told you so." It's an even harder pill to swallow because it requires faith. Sometimes in the economy, but mostly in myself; and that can be scary. It is much easier - and safer - to believe what others have told me is true: that my legs will always be slow, and that I deserve to be on the receiving end of phrases like, "well, my friends and I usually do that ride faster."
It makes for a lot of bitter, hoarded rage. The weirdly demotivating thing is that no amount of that anger could get me past the 17 minute mark. With 180 seconds left to go, there's no room for even a sliver of doubt; it's you vs. you, and at that point you just have to choose.
Can you do it, or not?
I dug in, hung on, and held some faith in me.
It totally made my week.

saving fitness

In any good action movie, some lesser spy, when captured, will grind his teeth into a hidden capsule of instant death upon capture.
“Ha ha ha ha, you will DIE! You cannot stop us!!!” He laughs at the hero through his clenched teeth while foam bubbles up from a corner of his mouth.
It’s a scene that plays through my head when events convene to remind me of the importance of being delusionally optimistic. Things like empty bank accounts, too few days off, and a crash might have happened for a reason, I like to tell myself. Some cosmic purpose other than to make my own mouth froth in jealousy at the sight of bike commuters or roadies headed out on weekend rides. There must be, I’ve internally claimed, life points gained in the purgatory of injury and the special hell of lost fitness that follows. It’s optimism born of desperation, but sometimes fish oil and vitamin D isn’t enough to keep me on the right side of hopelessness.

Unfortunately, that uncharacteristic cup half full mentality which had made itself quite comfortable on the figurative couch of my psyche, had just about overstayed its welcome. Negativity was trying to kick it to the curb. Dropping temperatures and shorter days weren’t helping the slow, inevitable march into a winter promising an exploding waistline and weaker legs. By mid-November, I knew that my version of “taking it easy” was simply a justification to watch more TV. The worst part was that I was starting to not give a shit about not really giving a shit.
It was paralysis by not-so-much analysis. My tempo speed of the past summer is decidedly no longer extant, and my heart rate tends to skyrocket on anything more demanding than quick, easy spins on the trainer. Hills? Mountain passes? Sprints? Call me [next summer], maybe.

Pathetically, I even had the audacity to feel sorry for myself. As if a crash that had happened two months ago was keeping me from spinning something harder than my little ring. I was no longer trying to do that thing where I try to stay on the trainer for as long as I could possibly stand. I skipped out on a few days of scheduled riding, for no reason other than because it was just easier not to.
The problem is, no matter how much easier it is to let some more evil force destroy the world, we all identify with the hero. You know, the fight against certain evil, success against all odds, the shadow of the phoenix that can rise from your coach, dust off the cookie crumbs, and snap off the TV to go ride for once. It’s harder to do – because holy hell is TV entertaining – but the dividends promised are at least more physically appealing than a fluffy butt and a blubbery belly.

The fun thing with regressing, I’ve been telling myself, is that there is no way but up. You really have no choice but to give it your all, even if it feels like your body is trying to kill you in the process. I gave myself heartburn and a leg-beating so bad I saw spots in the last two minutes of a semi-sprint up a small mountain pass last weekend. I tried to keep lemon-lime Nuun water down while spitting up thick saliva at the top. I could barely function on the way home.
It’s the spoiler to the terribly unattractive way in which I’ll be training this winter. Snot will fly, drool will dribble everywhere, and I expect to be generally useless after any substantial ride. But hey, though I’ve often wished otherwise, I’m no superhero; and no one ever said saving a cardiovascular system was going to be easy.

"it's not you, it's me"

Like most women on the shit end of that five word phrase, I've come to fear and resent it. So often unexplained, I've been forced to interpret it to mean not what it states, but that "it most certainly is you, but to accelerate this break up, I'll just take the blame for it. Oh, and there's the door." That phrase, towards which any action seems helpless, has an effect much like the Lehman Brothers' announcement of bankruptcy: my presentability to the general public drops like the Dow, while the economy and I commence a general plunge into the sweatpants phase of "totally letting myself go." Anguished self-interrogation is often involved.
It would be nice to say, here, that it's for these reasons that I've avoided using this phrase when breaking up with someone. You know, tell a white lie, get me some humanitarian points, give off the impression that I've had opportunities to initiate breaking it off with significant others...unfortunately, though I'm prone to general pessimism, past boyfriends will be hard pressed to say that I wasn't at least adamantly optimistic about our quickly deteriorating relationships. So much so that I've ignored clear red flags like a total lack of a sense of humor, or the inability to comprehend simple grammatical rules. Somehow, my generosity failed to be appreciated…and…well, you get the idea.
So it wasn't until my last weekend as a 28 year old that I learned exactly what it feels like to say, "really babe, it's not you, it's me."

Okay, maybe I didn't actually say those words. And maybe the decision was forced on me. And maybe I only came to the conclusion that it wasn't working out after I spent a weekend weeping in frustration, anguish, and self-loathing. But a weekend is still less than weeks/a month/several months/a year; significant enough to consider it progress.
And though I was the one initiating the break up, even if it was with a training program, it still hurt. A lot more than I expected.
Since my first race in June, the disappointment of disappointing others had lingered, ensuring that I would throw myself into training for the next one. I had four weeks to drop weight, get stronger, and build up my endurance. Undaunted by the near impossibility of accomplishing all three simultaneously, I picked up a copy of Chris Carmichael’s “Time Crunched Cyclist,” and proceeded to hammer out intervals three times a week on an empty stomach. On Sundays I would do longer rides with hill repeats thrown in. I bonked at work but figured that generally feeling like you just got T-boned by a semi was normal and medicated with copious amounts of coffee.

It [obviously] didn’t work. Two Saturdays ago I couldn’t finish my last set of intervals; the next day I tried to ride outside, only to come home within 20 minutes, sobbing. An attempt to get on the rollers afterwards escalated into bawling my eyes out for the rest of the day. This level of complete and utter depression – one that wasn’t alleviated by a little outdoor riding – was unusual even for someone who was once christened “Doom and Gloom” by a previous boyfriend. I finally took the hint, stopped riding altogether, tried to fix up that “cheese grater in my kneecap” feeling, had an embarrassing meltdown in the shop, and ended up spending race day at home. I would have been in sweatpants if it hadn’t been 33C/91F.

The time off the bike was probably much needed, but that didn’t make it any less upsetting. What was more alarming though was that after a full week off – something I hadn’t done in months – a general apathy began to settle in. At first, like the random guy who grabs your wheel and won’t let go, any thoughts of riding were followed closely by some lame [yet in my mind, justifiable] excuse. After a few days, I stopped trying to reason with myself and nixed ideas of a quick spin or a slow ride with a simple, lazy, “…nahhh.”
I suppose this is called “burn out,” but knowing that cycling is something that I should want to do makes it harder to accept. A few days ago, after passing my parked bike without so much as a glance, I caught myself wondering if this wasn’t just a prolonged death knell for my cycling in general. Whether the move to Tokyo, the inability to communicate, the lack of friends, and the consequent mixture of anxiety, frustration, and depression aren’t the same red flags I tend to ignore in otherwise totally compatible boyfriends. That perhaps I am once again ignoring the obvious, in the hope that the impossible might, if I just try hard enough, work out.

In response to my wailing, well-versed friends did the virtual equivalent of picking me up, dusting me off, changing my flat, and handing me back my bike. Just as they’ve done every time I’ve eaten shit on that unstable bicycle of Dating and Relationships. And like those post-boyfriend-endo moments, I’m still sort of standing there, unable to clip back in out of fear, guilt, and those occasional moments of bitter rage. The expected liberation of being on the other side of an “it’s not you, it’s me,” never panned out, but I've realized that maybe [hopefully] I've been wrong this whole time. Those five words aren’t always a disingenuous attempt to rid your life of an unwanted other, but can be a concession that sometimes, no matter how hard you might try, right now, at this point in life, you just can’t keep up. It hurts to admit due to it’s simple honesty; because it wasn’t Chris Carmichael, or the bike. It really was all me.
There is, however, one freedom that results from that concession. Assuming an interest in not being a repeat offender/abuser of the phrase, it's one that points to obligations and a personal responsibility to work towards a better version of yourself. It might not save you from overtraining [that's all you], but there's the hope that you just might be on the receiving end of those five words, next time.

casual, caged fun

For the past six weeks, I’ve been seeing a few guys. Nothing serious; just a little casual fun three times a week or so. I travel to a building basement to see them and pay a house fee when I get there. Layers of clothes come off, and I spend the next hour or so in a cage, exhaling audibly. Sometimes I’ll even groan. When I’m done – face flushed and slightly sweaty – I might get a vocal compliment from one of the regulars:
“Did a pro teach you how to do that?”
“That looked solid.”
“Your squat form is super clean.”
My gym – dirt cheap, bare bones, filled with heavy free weights, and lightly populated [mostly by middle-aged Japanese men] – is addictive.

Particularly to those who know me [including myself], there is something disturbing about the mental image/current reality of my loading up an Olympic weight barbell and spending more than five minutes within two feet of a power cage/rack. Because I have never been the gym type. Hitting the gym on a regular basis has always been a concept similar to marriage. It seems nice yet very foreign; something that appears to require more thought, maturity, and dedication than I believe myself capable of. In the same vein, I’ve persuaded myself that visiting a starkly furnished room several times a week with the intent to exercise or otherwise better oneself is probably way less exciting than the rollercoaster of poor health, where you never know if you’re actually actively killing yourself [though eventually, like all rollercoaster relationships, you end up feeling like death at least once]. When people tell me that they like to go to the gym multiple times a week, and not only for the month of January, I would visualize clenched teeth behind those bright, energetic eyes and clear, healthy skin; secret self-hatred weighing down those yoga-chiseled shoulders and upper arms.

But spend a few months hunched [mostly] over a computer and [sometimes] over a bike and atrophied muscles will tell you exactly how much you should be hating yourself. The last time this happened, I took up a few yoga classes. It helped, but chatarangas and a total lack of upper body muscle are like semi-attractive, abusive boyfriends. You get along great at first; you love his serenity and appearance of utter calm. You convince yourself you can be less of a nut case if you stay with this guy. But one day he jerks your arm and you end up with a sore rotator cuff. You take some time off, but he’s cute enough to merit a second chance. Your hormones also have turned you into an optimist; one that is willing to overlook his obviously deficient personality [fingers crossed it gets better! Spoiler: It doesn’t!]. But the asshole does it again, and this time it takes a little longer to stop hurting. And this time, it affects your time on the bike. And this time, you realize that living in fear of temper tantrums should be reserved for parents of toddlers and those gifted with a fast jab, not women with weak arms.
It still didn’t keep me from once again considering yoga classes when my rhomboids decided to implode. My wallet, however, did.
But Google – like the [mythical?] hot guy who arrives with an extra tube just as you double-flat – saved the day with a public, municipal gym requiring a monthly fee that was close to 1/4th the usual Tokyo gym rate. A little more digging around the Internet gave me a lifting program to follow: Stronglifts 5x5. Three workouts a week, consisting of three compound, full body exercises per workout, with 5-10lbs added to each exercise every time. My limp, T-Rex arms had found their unicorn.

Not that I’ve turned my doughy body into the chiseled physique of Hilary Swank in “Million Dollar Baby” [I. Fucking. Wish.]. In fact, despite the bordering-on-disgusting pictures my sister has sent me with my face Photoshopped onto the body of an oversized, fully roid-ed up bodybuilder, there hasn’t been much of a visual difference. The most I can say is that sometimes, the baby bump of a bicep will peer around my arm when I’m blow-drying my hair or slathering on some chapstick, and that the magnitude five earthquakes on my upper arms have been reduced to about magnitude three. Full disclosure: I even gained weight [I prefer the term, “mass”].
And though I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “strength,” I also gained something resembling the beginning of some decent lifts. Since mid-January, I’ve doubled the weight on nearly all of my lifts…with the exception of my favorite: the deadlift. Because apparently 45kg is not 100lbs. It is 99.2lbs. But that still means I can deadlift both my mother and sister [Whaaaat?]. My upper body’s still lagging behind like the triathlete that keeps showing up to the hilly rides, but I’m warming up with weights that I previously struggled to bench press, arms quaking like well-made Jello. I even developed some bad ass callouses. All of which has blown-up my ego, thus more than making up for the lack of pulsing biceps.

And while lifting heavy – sometimes usually red-faced and sputtering with effort – can look like the complete opposite of meditative, ever-calm yoga, it’s taught me a thing or two in the past six weeks. Like how crucial rest days are, how awesome noob gains can be, and how much fun it is to simply compete against yourself. And what a terrible, terrible idea it is to shovel wet, heavy snow for an hour on the same day you set a personal record for squats and deadlifts. You will want to die. I almost did.
I’ve taken the past week off to deload, but I’m back in the gym on Monday morning. And you know what? I think it might even be deadlift day.