turn left at kissena

“You’re Japanese, you have to do it.”
It was the default nationality reasoning, which, when you happen to be Japanese, gets applied too often to activities that normal people just wouldn’t choose to engage in. Raving? Cosplay? Zentai? Yup, yup, and yup [and no, I did not do all of the above].
But this time, it actually sort of made sense. For once, it wasn’t linked to sexual perversions, a big step in and of itself when you’re talking about being Japanese. It was something that, while there might be quite a bit over overlap between the fans/spectators of uniquely Japanese fetishes and this activity, I found kind of cool. Something that would probably still elicit surprise in Japan if I ever admitted being into it, but vanilla enough to enable one to talk about it openly [loudly, even] in public.

I am, of course, talking of keirin, or track racing.
A sport that, in my home country, is more famous for its status as a betting sport and doesn’t allow women to race, I never thought that I’d end up on a track on a random Sunday in June. I saw it coming, unconsciously, maybe, acquiring a taste for bicycles, dropping bank on a track bike that consequently terrified me, and choosing to spend a winter developing some semblance of balance on the rollers. But “working towards getting to a track” and “getting on a track” are two different animals. I could waste endless hours on the rollers and never touch a banked velodrome.
But cursed with the kind of friends who think that I could “do well” in certain activities that involve physical exertion and a bicycle [never mind if their logic is rooted in my unchosen ethnicity], “riding my track bike around” just wasn’t cutting it. Mike insisted I get on a track. Jared kept asking me when I was going to show up to Kissena. DS was included in plans to accompany me to Kissena one day in sunglasses, mustaches, and matching tracksuits with “SHIMURA” emblazoned on the back, a rising sun beneath it.

With two single-speeds - one a legit track bike - absurd costumes aside, it seemed like a good plan. So when Jared told me about Kissena’s Women’s Track Clincs, I poked around their website, and just in time, signed up for the last 3 hour clinic last Sunday. I BikeReg’d for my first ever event, felt sort of cool because of it, and then proceeded to spend most of Sunday morning repeatedly telling Mike how nervous I was while he got ready to ride in the support car and otherwise do really cool stuff with DS for the Danish team in the TD Bank Philadelphia International Cycling Championships [yes, I was uber jealous]. He told me I would be fine, that DS said I would kill it, gave me a kiss, and left, leaving me weakly pointing at my bike, on the verge of pooping my pants, yet again.
A few hours later, I was sitting in the middle of the first track I’ve ever been to, watching as experienced riders switched out cogs and chainrings, sprinted, and circled. A few minutes later, Joe - the main instructor and organizer - showed up with loaner bikes, and more clinic particpants filtered in. In all, about 10 women showed up, ranging from 10yrs old to 40. All were experienced in racing in some capacity, and I was thoroughly intimidated.

We first rode around the track, getting used to the banked corners, and learning how to use gravity to launch into a 200m sprint, where to stay on the track and how to pass others. After a drink of water and a few minutes of rest, we were then put in a giant pace line.
And that’s about the time when I started to get my ass handed to me. Mostly by a handful of tweens.
Due to my nonexistent pace line skills, and riding behind the probably 8yr old brother of one of the younger girls, I managed to get dropped, then linger in no man’s land for about FOUR FUCKING LAPS. Struggling to pull the rest of the line back to the front, I didn’t so much blow up as slowly putter out from pushing against the wind for what seemed like forever. I heard Jared’s voice in my head - “hey, at most, I’ll only be 399m ahead of you” - and then the wind gusted again.
The pace line broke apart, we drank by-then hot water, and rested before doing individual sprints, lead-out sprints, telephone pole jumps and power bursts, concluding with mock races. By the individual sprints, my legs were pretty much done. Of course, I apparently still had to go around and around the track, attempting to muster up some semblance of speed, while the wind treated us to billows of yellow sand from the baseball diamond adjacent to the track. By the time we were through, my jersey was marked by chain grease [from flipping my wheel] and patches of brownish-yellow sweat where I had wiped the sandy sweat from my chin. My glutes hurt and the sheer thought of climbing up 5 flights of stairs to Mike’s apartment with a bike over my shoulder - much less the ride back from 42nd St - made my head swirl.

I made it, though [an almond butter sandwich helped]. Brakeless, even. I had pulled out the cable in my front brake once I had arrived at the track and failed to put it back in properly. To be honest, I was a little disappointed in myself when I left; even though my riding has recently been limited to my commute, I expected to be a little stronger. I didn’t notice until halfway to the Main St 7 stop that riding brakeless was sort of coming naturally, and that I was totally okay with it.
Rain hit me around 27th St, but feeling bad about pulling out Mike’s Rapha Stowaway with my disgusting hands, I considered it a free shower and toughed it out. I made it up those stairs, jumped into the most awesome shower in recent memory, tried to study for the bar and ended up passing out in my underwear instead.
I woke up to stories and pictures of the Philly race, indulged in a delicious brownie made by Mike’s mom, and passed out yet again, dreaming of turning left at Kissena.

drawing new [tan] lines

“Nice size 36 shorts,” Mike said as he tugged on the back of my jeans shorts. The waist gaped open.
With a little wiggling, I probably could have slipped out of them without undoing the fly, but convinced that a wash would cure it all [I’m pretty sure it didn’t], I insisted that they were just a little stretched out. Besides, being a little too big for me also meant that the legs were a little longer. Almost long enough to cover my tan line.

“Is that your tan line?”
“...Yeahhh...Wow. Damn. Yours are so nice.” Jared had pulled up his shorts and pressed his thigh next to mine.
“Well, someone’s gotta be!” He laughed as I protested that my shorts were not optimal for clean-tan-line-creating. Andy just shook his head and told me that I had to ride more.
Which is true. But, in a way, I’m still sort of convinced that my Pearl Izumi Sugar Shorts aren’t going to give me the kind of tan line that makes your thigh look like it was taped off, then spray painted with tanning lotion. Being a touch too big, the padding would sometimes catch on my seat, making me stumble awkwardly. Despite the gripper elastic, the legs would creep up during my ride, too, blurring that melatonin tattoo attesting to solid time in the saddle. Never mind my jeans shorts, I needed new cycling shorts stat.

Enter Capo to the rescue. After seeing the review of the Cortina jersey, the super nice guys at Capo offered to send me a matching pair of shorts. I wanted to virtually hug them.
Let me back up. Having worn the jersey on more than a handful of occasions, even without extensive jersey experience, I can say that it is definitely super comfortable. The pockets are made of full Lycra, and while there are only two, they’re deceptively deep. Extremely soft and form fitting, there’s no flap-age, reducing the jersey to something you just don’t have to think about while you’re riding. It even passed Coach DS’s zipper test [if you can unzip it with one hand easily - no biting the collar allowed!], and the guys appreciated the attention to detail, like how the label isn’t just screened onto the Lycra. Even my fairly critical, style-conscious sister commented on how nice it looked.

All this meant that I had high expectations for the shorts. I mean, I know they’re going to look good; but Capo’s set the bar high in terms of functionality as well. When I received them, I jumped out of my jeans and immediately tried them on. The first thing I noticed was the segmented padding [ignore how phallic it looks, please], which meant the Diaper Effect was significantly reduced. The padding is comparable in thickness to my Pearl Izumis but it felt sleeker and more efficient. No more feeling like I was sitting on a Maxipad - we’re in tampon territory with these babies.

Not to mention the crossover waistband that is a godsend to those with Lycra muffin tops. It’s so thin, too, that there’s virtually no visible line under the jersey...and that jersey doesn’t hide much. My only initial doubts stemmed from the elastic around the legs; instead of gripper elastic, the shorts use a thin, slightly stretch-resistant compression elastic. The shorts clutched onto my keirin thighs and I wasn’t sure if I was going to lose circulation in my toes as a result.
But like the jersey it matches, the shorts look really good. It's dark enough that you don't have to worry about looking chubbier than you are [and what woman wants that when she's in full Lycra?], and in a weird way it almost deludes you into believing - truly believing - that you're bringing sexy back [to the bike]. Maybe I was just in a good mood, though.

But potential sexiness aside, I was concerned about how it would stand up to a decent ride. So I suited up and clipped in to drag the Cross Monster out on an easy 30 miler.
When I sat down on the saddle, my first thought was, weirdly enough, that it was slippery. The next thought was that I could definitely feel the saddle underneath me, a lot more than when I’m wearing my other shorts. Not in a bad way; I was just more conscious of it. There was no need to rock back and forth trying to figure out where my sit bones went. For once, I knew exactly where they were and I had them right where I wanted them.
To be honest, after those first two revelations, I hardly noticed what I was wearing for most of the ride and had to force myself to concentrate on whatever signals my butt was sending to my brain. The one thing that really stood out, though, is that these shorts will not budge. The compression elastic around the legs that I wasn’t so sure about wasn’t uncomfortable or distracting while riding; in fact, they held everything down and refused to creep up. There was no adjusting or pulling down because white skin was emerging from the bottom of my shorts. Unless I forcibly pulled them up or down, those things weren’t moving. At all.

Which meant that when I came home tired and happy, and peeled off my gear, the longer Capo shorts had already left a sharp, clear tan line. Like the kind that looks comically fake but has turned into a point of pride for those of us who are obsessed with bicycles. Never mind the fact that my thighs now legitimately look like candy corn, and that mini skirts might be out of the question for the rest of the summer. Those shorts are going to make me look pro, even without clothes on.
And really, what more can a girl [on a bike] ask for?

hunting for gears

Last Thursday spelled the end of law school classes, but I was still sweating out of stress and completely sober a few hours after class let out. Rummaging around my fridge for whatever was for dinner, I found a few ice cold bottles of beer from forever ago, because when drinking just the neck of a beer can get you floored, a six pack tends to last a while. I thought about it a little, picking up one of the bottles that was lying on its side, putting it back upright before thinking eh, probably not, and finding that spinach that had to be polished off.
I’m thinking more about that beer now that I’m back in Boston and a broken water pipe means that no one in the city should be drinking the water. I was even a little afraid to drink that Americano I got at Cafe Fixe, and I’m definitely questioning if showering in that water is actually going to end up with me being cleaner than the alternative. But back to the beer, and why I wasn’t drinking it.

It had nothing to do with my confidence in my ability to cite a paper while mostly hammered, and more to do with the fact that I had to be up by 6, out the door by 7, and on a bus to NYC by 8. Four hours, lunch, and a few minutes of prepping later, I was back on a borrowed bike that’s too big for me but has gears, and has that adorable tendency to make the seat feel like a pitbull that’s jumped up, bit onto my lady parts and refused to let go. It’s probably the junky seat I have on there [the famed leopard print stripe stock saddle that used to come on the Bianchi San Jose], rather than the bike which rides and shifts like air, but either way I learned my lesson the last time I rode it, and this time, it didn’t hurt to pee for five hours after the ride.
TMI, right? Probably. But hey, it has gears, and like my 8 year old self who didn’t used to care how nasty a pony was as long as it had four legs and a tail, dream bikes with gears - even not so comfortable ones that don’t exactly fit - have been on my mind lately. Which might be old news to some, but of course, I’m the last to admit these kinds of things to myself. Because when you’re stuck with two gears between two bikes, and limited funds, it seems like I shouldn’t be allowed to dream so much. That maybe it’s easier to trick myself into believing that I won’t have shifting paddles for a while, so I should make the best out of what I’ve currently got.
But dreaming is free, and in an attempt to avoid the kind of rash decision-making that puts me into forever-single-speed-track-bike-land, I’ve been doing a little investigating. If I’m honest with myself, I’m irresistibly drawn to lighter frames but might not be so enamored with how aluminum rides. I haven’t tried my hand [seat?] at carbon, which is so deliciously airy but inevitably weighed down by that whole “it feels like it’s going to fall apart” feeling. Then, there’s the old standby of steel; much heavier but cushy and comfortable and unlikely to shatter, but difficult to finance if you’re looking for a frame that isn’t made out of water piping. [That's Andy of NYC Velo's IF and Coach DS's Parlee.]

The tyranny of choice. Sometimes I wish someone would push a bike into my hands and tell me this is the only bike that will ever fit me so I better ride it into the ground. Which I happily would do, instead of wavering over websites, frames, and magazines, judging components and wheels to see if this bike is actually worth it, or if it fits any one of my ridiculously arbitrary requirements like “it doesn’t come with Sora” and “I refuse to ride something that is women’s specific and therefore only comes in baby blue.”
I suspended all that, though, when Bicycling came in the mail the other day. “Editor’s Choice Bikes of the Year,” it said, and I was sure it would be filled with good stuff. With a female Editor in Chief, Bicycling’s been doing a fair bit of stuff for the fairer sex, so I naturally expected to see a women’s specific section, which there was. Awesome, I thought, this might lead me to the dream bike of my dreams that comes in size tiny...!

Um...yeah...
When I flipped to the women’s section, for some reason I guess I expected a women’s entry level bike too. Instead, all three bikes listed are over $3k. Great carbon fiber bikes with solid components [the Giant TCR Advanced 1 W comes with Ultegra 6700], but way out of my budget, not to mention a price tag at which I’d rather go custom. But then again, I’m not a competitive cyclist by any means, and maybe CF gets some people’s juices going. That’s not to say I didn’t see a few interesting not-quite-entry-level stuff [the Jamis Xenith Comp priced at $1950 and the BH Speedrom 105 at $2399], but of course, they don’t come in my size.
There’s good stuff in there, just not THE ONE for me. Which, I suppose, is a blessing in a way. Because this whole frustrating, headache-inducing, sometimes disappointing, other times extremely satisfying hunt for the perfect bicycle is what makes it all worth it in the end, right?

wind allergies

I admit it, I looked [read?] like a total idiot yesterday when several hours after my dramatic whine-fest, the weather turned out to be pretty frickin’ gorgeous.
Other than that whole giant gusts of wind that made it feel like I was running through water thing.
Yesterday was actually the first time I did that Dover ride in winds that strong. That’s saying a lot, given my wind allergy. But after more than two days off the bike, I was getting impatient, and worse, feeling really lazy and lethargic. Vitamin D was calling my name late yesterday morning, between a 8.30 class, a small pile of art law reading, and a blitzkrieg of cite checking. I also really wanted to start putting the DS plan into action. Never mind that the wind kept trying to tear the bike out from under me on the way to and from school. Headwind ain’t a thanggggg.

Or so I thought. Until my thighs started burning within the first 30 minutes into my ride and it really didn’t seem like I was moving forward. At all.
You know how when you’re riding with other people and you’re fighting a decent headwind and someone says, “well, at least we’ll get a good tailwind on the way back!”? I always want to slap those people. Mostly because that headwind consistently turns into another headwind as soon as I turn around. Wind and I do not have an amicable relationship.
And that’s exactly what happened. I felt like I was cheating a little bit, trying for a negative split on the way back, almost believing that the wind would be on my side. Not true. I mean, I did get a negative split [yay!], but I had to book it; and at a certain point, I’m pretty sure I was going about 8mph. I was trying really hard to maintain that speed, too.
One perk, though: I had nothing on my back this time, proper shoes, gloves, and a slightly windproof jacket. I felt so weightless...until, of course, that wind tried to push my bike over, smother me, make me actually pedal down the hills, and otherwise make me cry my ride slightly miserable.

The short ride done, I rewarded my legs with a new snack combo: Fig Newmans broken up into Fage nonfat greek yogurt. Sounds gross but was actually really delicious. It even kept me conscious through cite checking 214 footnotes later that night [okay, that Americano might have had something to do with it, too]. As usual, I was unjustifiably proud of myself. Happily exhausted, I came home late last night to find an email from the faux-ch with about 10 million links to possibly affordable frame sets [isn’t he nice?]. That made me even happier, even if most wouldn’t really fit.
And it’s made me more motivated, too, in a weird way. So I’m off again to make the faux-ch proud [or try]. Because it’s gorgeous out, again.
Go get you on a bicycle!
[Thanks for the jersey recommendations, guys! Keep them coming!]

getting faux-ched

So, it’s getting warmer out. I mean, it’s shitty out now, but weather.com tells me we’re going to have an awesome weekend [starting Thursday, of course]. This also means layering and hiding behind coats is no longer an option. Time for everything to start getting shorter and tighter!
Wait...shorter? Tighter? Um...I am pointing to my still extant muffin top and...hi, wait, what???
A part of me kind of wants to tell spring to fuck off for a little longer. I’m pretty sure I haven’t lost any of that weight I gained the first year of law school which was...oh...like...THREE YEARS AGO. I mean, I can stay in denial for at least another 3 years, but with every women’s magazine on the planet touting ways to get into shape for “bikini season” [cue massive internal groaning], I’m well aware that I’m falling short.

To say that I started cycling to stay become fit would be like saying Tiger Woods is unfaithful. Not entirely inaccurate, but in both cases, we’ve managed to find something else along the way that piques our interests and addiction ensues. Unlike Tiger, I’ve been a willing participant in broadcasting my lack of game cycling skills, but honestly, guys, failure is exhausting.
And when you only have hardcore training plans and/or Chris “Imma make you do intervals until your heart feels like it’ll pop, then you can rest for 3 seconds before we do it all again because you want to be like Lance, don’t you?” Carmichael available to whip me into some semblance of shape, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. And while I’m completely okay being the slowest cyclist on the planet, I still finagled my way into a meeting this past weekend with a coach.

Enter Dave Sommerville. One of the handful of Cat 1s in NY, and one of three [yes, three] Cat 1s that work at NYC Velo. His UCI card has two “1”s and a “2,” which he wants to turn into a “1.” This would make him a triple Cat 1 in road, cyclocross, and track. His training plans are like from another universe of fast and painful.
I know this, and he knows this, which is why he’s not really my coach [more like my faux-ch]. But because DS is an awesome guy, for the price of dinner, I got a good two hours to form some sort of structure to my crazy pedaling. The man’s been racing pretty much as long as longer than I’ve been alive, so a lot of dinner consisted of me shutting my mouth and just listening [and scribbling]. He made most of his suggestions to me sound easy, but I suppose that comes with the territory when doing 1400+ laps around a 50 degree banked velodrome is your definition of fun.

I was sent home with some solid advice on where to start, reasonable goals to strive for [even without a road bike! Yay!], a stack of literature, some goodies [not that jersey though, more on that later], and the assurance that I have yet another pair of eyes looking out for an affordable, geared “hobbit bike.” I spent a good chunk of the rest of the night scouring ebay, though not much is popping up in my size. Of course, a little more digging revealed quite the beaut, but if I had $3k to blow, I’d like to think that I wouldn’t still be pulling at my pudge and pouting [but it’s not about the bike...right, Lance? RIGHT?!].
Okay, it's not about the pudge, either. But if I'm going to show up to my graduation in Lycra, I'd like to at least look fast doing it.
So I got some new goals, some more body fat to lose, and a motherfucking training plan, son! Now let's see what I can do with myself by graduation...