[A typical training week now that it's rainy season in Japan...]
Monday: Rest day. Check out training plan for the week.
Tuesday: Longer spin day, with intervals that don't look so bad so I'm all...
An hour later...
Wednesday: Short, sweet recovery.
Thursday: Power intervals. Ten times. DONE.
Friday: Rest day.
Saturday: 2 hours inside because of the rain.
Sunday: OUTDOOR RIDE!
Rinse. Repeat.
Got a little ride time outside this weekend...
Tried out a new climb by an amusement park...
Found a dream car on the way down...
And relaxed with with an article and photo of Adam Hansen by Kei Tsuji, in the latest issue of Bicycle Club.
The Tour starts in five days. Life is good.
Catching a glimpse of my reflection in the train window the other day, I realized how much I used to dislike my face: the boring, brown eyes that weren't big enough [or some exotic shade of blue or green], my Asian nose, cheekbones that didn't seem to exist, and a face that lacked angles and looked too much like a spotty, brown egg. I never had expectations to be truly beautiful, but there's always some adjustment required when you're told to live with something you had no part in acquiring. My adolescent-into-young-adult wish to look more...whatever obviously never materialized, but for a while there, I really wanted it to. It wasn't for a lack of trying, because I did try. Like, really hard. In the way that is unique to that lethal mix of vanity and insecurity. I was skinnier back then, too, but predictably unhappy. [Yeah, that's me, circa 2005.]
Then sometime after I turned 25, I stopped caring so much.
In hindsight, the change was fairly abrupt. The exhaustion from wanting so much, from feeling that if I just had this shirt/beauty product/pair of jeans/handbag/shoes, my life would be better, wore me down. It helped that I was barely employed, and thus unable to afford anything I wanted. It also helped that I was in Japan, where appearances seemed to rule everything. The impossibility of keeping up, the unhappiness implicit in any obsession with appearances, the superficiality of what I was buying into simply became too much.
I think of those years when I tried on vanity, then discarded it as a bad fit, as kind of like a 12 minute interval. There's discomfort felt at your own perceived physical inadequacies, and even a sense of rejection at first, while you feel sorry for yourself, before you settle into the pain. It lasts longer than you'd really like, and quite honestly, you're not very attractive while you're in the midst of it, but you arguably come out a better person. You could dope via plastic surgery, but to me, it's never seemed worth it.
I'm tempted to say that it's not ideal, that you deal with the face and features you're given, and you make the most of it. That that's the best you can really do when you're not gifted with the right balance of genetics. I think that can be true, but these days, I'm fortunate enough to forget what I look like. I only manage to remember when I catch startled, horrified stares from strangers. What are they looking at? I sometimes wonder, before tugging down the sleeves of my t-shirt ["oh, yeah, that"]. If they're staring a little higher, at my face, I don't even bother. I mean it's not like someone drew a penis on my face while I was asleep last night, right? .......Um....Right...?
Because, really, I'm okay with it. My physical appearance - the freckles I'm secretly proud of, the tan lines that limit my wardrobe - is the cost I pay for doing business in the life enrichment industry. Like the millions of "I'm sorry"s and "thank you"s that are due to loved ones, they're signs of kilometers imperfectly traveled. Admissions of guilt or gratitude never kept me from wearing a strappy dress, but the frustration of living in a t-shirt filled fashion hell is easy to forget. I know every time I slip into my [Lotto-Belisol <3] jersey, that I'm printing my skin with another declaration, tattooing lines that will take multiple winters to fade away. I look at my chipped nailpolish, stubborn chain grease hiding under one fingernail, a cut on a finger from working on my bike. None of that ugliness ever matters enough to trade it away for appearances' sake. And once the legs are turning over the pedals, my face, my imperfections, my insecurities about my facial imperfections, all slip away.
All that extra shit just gets in the way, anyway. They are excuses to cling to something that signifies acquiescing to obligations to appear a certain way, to live life as someone else has described it for you. A perpetual Plan B, an escape route for when your efforts don't pan out, that foot out the door just in case you fail. It may give you a multitude of empty "could"s ["well, I could be better at cycling, but sweating makes my eyeliner run..."], but ultimately, you get short-changed of your full potential.
Since letting go of the silly, sometimes extreme, self-consciousness, I've found that there's much more to life than sleeveless tops, strappy dresses, evenly tanned legs and wearing shorts without shame. For me, there are pro jerseys, Assos bibs, and a bike that has yet to fail me. There are places to discover, foreign countries to visit and pro races to see, with eyeliner or without. The latter would never fit into a life as it should be lived for a single Japanese woman. Obsessions with beauty products and fulfilling empty social duties to look pretty seem like a shitty way to live, though.
Looking back on my vain era, I think I've figured something else out, too. That when you can live life in a way that you end up forgetting what you look like, when you can get out of your own fucking way and stop tripping on your ego, then, well, you're finally doing it right. And that's something worth hanging on to, because that's what makes you a stunning kind of beautiful.
I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather [hence my absence last week], but my weekend was considerably better. Don’t you just love it when there’s something that makes you really, really happy between your legs?
And then, while I was feeling sorry for myself about having to ride inside all weekend [hey, it’s rainy season!], I watched The Avengers for the first time. And no one told me that JEREMY RENNER was HAWKEYE and therefore IN THE SAME MOVIE AS CAPTAIN AMERICA. I almost had to change my bibs when I saw them together. And I was all...
[Yes, I am totally sweaty in that picture. And yes, I had that expression on my face for the entire movie. And because someone told me I need to smile more: see! I'm sort of smiling!]
Happy Monday, everyone! More soon!
Great poster, unfortunate copy.
[This week's been a bit hectic but I have a few posts coming up soon!]
It was like the first time I saw Matt Freeman play live, felt the throaty bass line of a punk song I loved while getting battered by a room full of anxious Japanese punk rockers. We'd all turned our studded belts inside out to get through security, but the sharper ends were out again and jostling into my sides. Limbs flailed to the music, bodies knocked against each other, we pressed, pushed, and shoved. This was no American mosh pit - in which my chances of survival would have been reduced to zero certain death - but my arms would be sore for days afterwards. My eyeliner dissolved in the sweaty, sticky heat, and the goosebumps kept coming in waves that tasted like metallic ecstasy.
The goosebumps here were warmer, though, more seductive, loud only if heard from inside your own head, like the humming heat that swirls around your lips and the back of your neck the first time you kiss someone you really like. The only noises audible were the creak of a chain, an occasional shout, and the thrum of velvet tires on wood so smooth and so steeply banked that my stomach turned into knots looking down at it. A few hundred feet from a race that had destroyed me, I found serenity at the Izu Velodrome.
Opened in October 2011, the Izu Velodrome is Japan's first, indoor, wooden 250m track, complete with 45 degree banks. Built by Gensler to serve the dual purpose of allowing Japanese track cyclists to train at home and to give Japan the ability to host UCI Category 1 track races, it is also used by the Continental Cycling Center as a training facility for promising track cyclists. On Sunday, two Hong Kong national track cyclists, Singaporean Wai Mun, and a Japanese female pro keirin cyclist were circling the track. They slipped around each other, trading places with an easy grace that understated how fast they were actually going. Responding to unintelligible shouting from a coach, they took turns sprinting around the banks, riding so close to the railing that I snatched my hands back more than once, catching my breath as they rushed by.
I remembered the first time I rode on a track [at Kissena], the slightly banked corners nearly shoving me down towards the sprinter's line, gravity simultaneously pulling me to earth. The speed took me by surprise, my stomach flopped and fluttered, before the muscles in my legs forced my attention elsewhere. Launching down the corners of the Izu Velodrome must feel like freefalling in comparison. My heart pulsed at my throat as I watched the pros riding perpendicular to the slick surface, my hands sweating for them.
People dismiss eternal laps of the track as terribly boring. There's nothing to see, they say, nowhere to go. There is truth in that. I dare you, though, to stand next to a velodrome and not marvel at the simple beauty of it. To not be tempted to try spinning down steep, slippery banks made to shave seconds off sprints. With feet clipped into a bike with a single, fixed gear. No brakes, no wind.
Just you.
Just you and your gut-wrenching goosebumps.
[For those of you who want to try riding on the velodrome, the Izu Velodrome also hosts a series of [what appears to be] amateur races. Hmmm another excuse to visit...?]
