Yesterday was a strange day riding. I wanted to get in at least 4 hours, but hadn’t really taken a rest day for a while. But, the weather was supposed to get bad last night and today was supposed to be colder and super windy, so I talked Bill into going out with me.

It was pretty hot. At least hot for around here in March. It wasn’t supposed to be so hot, but somehow they missed it and the temperature was in the mid 80’s. I thought I felt pretty okay when I left my house, the pedals seemed to be turning over pretty good. But, after a couple hours, I didn’t feel that great. I still was set on the whole ride, so we turned to the east and headed over to Lawrence, which would put us at a 50 mile point for a stop.

We got to the coffeshop and both Bill and I had rear flats. We were planning on riding back to Topeka on the River Road, which is gravel, but we used two of our tubes before we even got there. I had a piece of wire in my tire and I think Bill’s flatted on his rim strip. Anyway, at Starbucks, they had the air conditioning on. And it felt great. I used the restroom and it was super cold, like a meat locker. I didn’t realize how hot I was unti then.

The water coming out of the faucet was super cold. Way colder than Topeka’s. I love that about the winter, nearly ice cold water out of a faucet. I like that about up in Dennis’ in Cable and most mountain places in Colorado. The water is cold in the summer. I washed off, a little, to get all the road grime on my hands from changing my tub. The cold water was rejuvenating.

I told Bill that I though I was burning twice the calories that I would be at 55 degrees. He agreed. Anyway, we started back towards Topeka, it’s 30 miles, and just a bit down the road the wind switch from the Southwest to the North. Like instantly. And it got really windy, over 30 mph. We had a few miles to ride north, so we weren’t that pleased about it. We were riding on a flat road and I noticed Bill was standing. We were going 11 mph. It was windy. And getting colder by the minute.

We decided to take the gravel back even though we only had one tube. It was probably not the best decision, but it didn’t bite us this time. A few miles after we turned onto gravel, we came upon a section where they had poured new gravel. It wasn’t just gravel, but dirt and gravel. It didn’t seem like they had just re-graded the road, it seemed like they had poured new small gravel and dirt. Weird. Anyway, riding west, with the wind gusting from the north was challenging. It was like our wheels were being blown out from under us. It was pretty sketchy for a couple miles.

Finally, the section cleared. I hadn’t realized it, but I had been feeling better and better ever since the wind changed and the temperature dropped. The temperature went from the 80’s to the 60’s, to the 50’s and just kept dropping. Finally by the time we hit pavement, it was in the upper 40’s. My arm and hands were cold, but my legs felt great. Super great.

I can’t remember a time where I’ve experienced this before without water/rain being involved. I think Bill felt the same way. We both were definitely cold, but were riding pretty well. I’m sure some of it could have be psychosomatic, but whatever the reason was, it applied to both of us.

Controlling body temperature is a super important part of the sport. It always amazes me how much clothing some new riders wear to race. It takes so much more energy to cold yourself than to keep yourself warm. Plus, you can always put on a wind vest or a wind jacket to bring up the heat just a tad.

I’m still not exactly sure what a human’s body does to get used to heat and cold. I do know that I’m not used to riding in hot conditions as of now. I wasn’t good a couple weeks ago in Texas, when it was in the 80’s and I wasn’t good yesterday, until the temperature dropped into the 50’s. Strava temperature number, etc. here.

I’ve been eating way more protein the last few weeks when I’m riding bigger miles. I’ve been hard boiling eggs and just eating them with salt and pepper as a snack.

I’ve had a couple experiences that has led me to think about how important training is and what exactly makes an athlete perform at his/her best. I’m not comparing athletes to each other, each of us has what we were dealt, just what one person does to be at optimal form. And I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not sure that training is the answer.

I know I’ve been riding bikes at a pretty high level since puberty. And I am one of the few guys that has really never taken any time off. So, I’m not the norm in athletics. But, I’m not sure that has anything to do with my observations.

Okay, here is the deal. I’ve been riding, at least feel like, I’ve been riding pretty good so far this year. I’ve got normal issues, but in general, I’m pretty happy with how it is going. I’ve been riding more miles than I have in recent history and it seems to be paying off, so far. But I was wondering if it really is the miles or something else.

On Tuesday, Bill and I went out for a 4 hour ride. It was pretty hot for the first 3 hours, I felt like I was falling apart, then a front came through and it got downright cold. I went from feeling shitty to pretty great in just a matter of minutes. Obviously the cold air was “better” for me than the hot temperature.

When I got home, I felt good about the day. Missed the front, good mileage, life was pretty good. I’ve been using a foam roller and stretching some before and after riding this year. I haven’t done any sit-ups or pushups for maybe a month and a half. I knew Wednesday was supposed to be crummy, so I thought it would be a good time to get back into the routine. I usually do somewhere around 25 pushups and 50-75 sit-ups, depending on how much I struggle to get to those numbers.

I start doing pushups and blow through 25 and keep going. I got to 50 and thought I should stop because I’d be sore the next day. I easily could have done another 25, maybe 50. Then the same thing with the sit-ups. I get to 50 effortlessly. So I keep going and stopped at 100, just because of the soreness issue. I’m not sure how many I could have done, but my stomach muscle wasn’t fatiguing the least.

I definitely wasn’t trained for doing either of those exercises. If anything, I should have been bad and should have woken up yesterday sore. But I didn’t feel a thing.

Four winters ago I spent 2 full months off my bike. For 60 days I only rode 3 miles once, just to get somewhere. So, I was as untrained for cycling as I’ve been in 40 years. Plus, I’d been spending somewhere between 12-18 hours a day doing hard, manual labor. I went down to Austin to start up riding again in the beginning of February. I rode for two weeks, maybe 600-700 miles.

I flew out to the East coast to ride with this group of guys, but they had thrown themselves, or really, the wind had thrown them on the ground and two of them broke their collarbones, so I was there for nothing. It was super windy and I put my bike together at the hotel and thought I’d go out for a ride, try to find some sheltered road.

The temperature was in the lower 50’s and I started out against a super strong cross headwind. I kept looking down at my computer and it said I was going over 20 mph. And I felt awesome. I started riding a little harder, but nothing crazy hard and kept it at around 23-24 mph. This was riding into a 35 mph wind. I rode 27.5 miles out and decided I’d better turn around before it got dark. I was flying back. Coasting over 30, pedalling easy at 35. I had to put on my wind jacket because I was getting cold from the lack of exertion and was still going a little less than 40 without hardly trying. When I got back to the hotel, I had a 26 mph average speed for the ride. The fastest training ride I’d ever done and I wasn’t close to blown. Maybe the best day I’ve ever had on a bike. And I’d ridden two weeks out of the previous 8.

I have no explanation for the two examples above. I, of course, think a certain amount of training and the ability to learn how to do a sport efficiently, is very important. But after you get to that level, I think it is having good blood or something that makes an individual perform at their best. I think that when everything is chemically correct in one’s body, that is the time you can have those extraordinary experiences. And I don’t think that you can train that, I think that it just happens. And hopefully it happens when it is important to you.

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