I'm Back, Baby! (Part 2)

Yesterday, I left you perched on the edge of your chair as I rolled off on the Cycleton Saturday morning group ride on the venerated FDR (Frustrated Dads' Ride) loop.  Or perhaps those two things are one and the same; I'm still sorting that out.  But I digress; the drama unfolded as... Well, really, there wasn't any drama to speak of.  Early on, I was mainly terrified of hitting a pothole or debris in the road that I couldn't see by virtue of being on another's wheel, but the group was good about pointing or calling out the serious hazards.

All images are screen captures from Reid Neureiter's video

Once past Tower Road, 56th Avenue pitched up, as did the pace, and the group started to string out.  At that point, I did what seemed natural; I moved forward and got into the rotating paceline at the front.  The front of the group, while potentially more exposed to the wind, is a better place to respond to changes and stay out of trouble.  Riders take turns at the front of the paceline, and with enough riders a constant rotation forms.  This takes a certain degree of finesse; when the rider ahead of you reaches the front and pulls off to the side to join the "retreating" portion of the paceline, good form is to maintain the same speed and not accelerate.  Then, once past the rider you were just following, the trick is to shift over in front of him and soft-pedal just enough that you match that rider's speed and the next rider starts to pass you.  I'll make no claim I was perfect, but with every pull I could feel old neurons firing and truly felt like I was back on the old Kirkwood ride from Houston to Fulshear.  I'm back, Baby!

The FDR loop is gently rolling, with the climbs just enough to invite attacks, and when they came I focused on smoothly joining the chase.  On the east leg of the loop, Imboden Road, there's a vaguely stair-stepping climb that made me dig deeper; some riders passed me, others flat-out dropped me as they attacked, but I held it together and didn't panic.  Over the top and then a short descent, and I was still with what I'd call the main group.

You can just make out the Gothic "R" on the back of my Rice jersey.  ARRRRRRRR!

Heading back east toward Denver, the group passed through Watkins, with some riders winding it up for the inevitable city-limit sign sprint.  Past Watkins, though, came the tough part of the ride for me: Miles of rough chip-seal pavement leading to a long false flat that got steeper and steeper as we progressed.  The hill is visible for a  couple of miles, so I gritted my teeth, kept the pedals spinning, and made it over the top in the group!

...while staring at the wheel in front of me.

From there, it's mainly downhill (and fairly fast) back to Stapleton.  I'm sure there was a group that went up the road, but that didn't matter to me.  I survived, and better yet, I had a blast!  My universe was expanded, not least of all by Strava, which showed me what other Strava users I had just ridden with.

What's more, during the ride I learned about the Park Hill Peloton (PHP), a group of riders that woke up early on Tuesdays and Fridays to ride down to Cherry Creek State Park, and quickly.  Suddenly, I had three days a week where I could ride with a fast group, I was meeting new people, riding became much more interesting, and I was pushing my fitness more than I had in a good while.  Life was good.  I could do 30 miles with PHP and get home by 7:30 a.m., and on Saturdays I did the Cycleton ride from the house for a total distance of 57 miles and still got home before 9:30.

Wow, I spent a lot more time on that than I expected.  Fear not, Good Reader, for the tale continues, but I shall end today's chapter until Part 3, when the weird and wonderful ride continues.

I'm Back, Baby! (Part 1)

It's been over a year since I felt compelled to write a blog entry.  That entry, as I recall, celebrated the "end" of my dealing with a DVT in my left calf.  In reality, though, there won't be an end; the damage to the veins is done and, if I'm sitting/standing but not moving, the leg feels heavy and uncomfortable.  The solution, of course, is to keep moving, and from Day One exercise really has alleviated the symptoms.  For stationary times, I've found Sigvaris Performance Compression Sleeves are extremely effective, comfortable, and (utterly un-)fashionable. 

I rock the black ones, and I get twice as much mileage from a pair (since I only need the one... Even more stylin').

Since that last entry, life has ground on as it has before, which is to say no two days are the same.  We've put a deposit down on a partial house-gutting and expansion Laura has been planning for years, the kids continue to grow like weeds (and change every day, it seems), and I finally got a second Mechanical Engineer to help me at work (he promptly filled his plate with work, which somehow left me as busy as I was before).  During ski season, we did our usual Four Pack at Winter Park, and we had fun on the slopes as always.  However, the end of the season left me wanting something... more.

Laura had switched to snowboarding for the season and was enjoying it, so for our last day on the slopes I said, "screw it" and committed to spend the day taking a "First Timer" boarding lesson.  It turned out that only two of us signed up, so it was a semi-private lesson at a great rate.

Turns out that boardin' is bitchin'.

Wow, what a revelation.  We took baby steps that day, but with just two students our instructor, Rosini, gave us lots of reps and even taught us some tricks.  I learned some basic stuff I had no clue about, like your upper body stays neutral (you turn with your edges, not by yawing the board), and lifties give boarders more respect.  It was all fun until I found myself on a flat and suddenly needed to sit down.

Friends had cautioned me that one spends much of his first snowboarding days on his ass or knees.  I was doing a decent job staying vertical, but after stopping on the flat I sat down rather quickly... And my butt landed between my heels.  POP! went my right knee, and I immediately flashed back to Laura's ACL tear in Karate.  What have I just done?  Stunned, I poked and prodded myself, and the knee seemed stable; it just hurt.  The pain persisted, but it wasn't bad enough for me to bail out of the lesson.  I finished the day stoked about boarding and already planning to buy a board at Sniagrab (Google knows what it is), but I worried about my knee.  Really, the sensation was one of the tendon on the "outboard" rear portion of the knee having snapped past the top of my fibula, so I hoped it was just a slight strain rather than an outright tear.

A week later, the pain wasn't improving so I made an appointment with Dr. Gonzales, the surgeon who repaired Laura's ACL.  The day before the appointment, I awoke to find the pain was utterly gone; it appeared taking it easy for a few days was just what I needed.  I kept the appointment, reasoning I should have that knee looked at anyway, plus I wanted to get a baseline assessment of my left knee, which took a heavy blow almost exactly 20 years earlier when I was hit by a Buick on a Rice U. Cycling Team training ride.  It didn't take Dr. Gonzales long to tell me my right knee was fine; it was probably my hamstring that went pop, and they do that.  As for my left knee, X-rays indicated a narrowing of the gap between the femur and tibia on the inboard side (funny; that's where it tends to hurt).  In other words, "Congratulations, you're starting to have arthritis in that knee."  Yay.

As we wrapped up, I mentioned to Dr. Gonzales that I felt kind of silly coming in, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't messing up my knees by upping my mileage on the bike.  "Oh yeah, you used to race, didn't you?  You should check out the Saturday morning ride at the Cycleton bike shop in Stapleton.  The B's group goes pretty fast, and the A's are a bunch of racers."  A light bulb went off in my head.  For years I had been riding solo, marveling at the difference in cycling culture between Houston (many of the few riders there were racers, and there were always massive group rides) and Denver (everybody rode, and everybody pretty much did his own thing).  I once more found myself wanting... more, except this time on two wheels, not on the slopes.

Here's where the marvel of the social Internet came into play.  I've been storing data from my GPS bike computer on Strava, a website that not only maps out where you've ridden but where, and how quickly, others have as well.  Searching for "Cycleton Ride" quickly revealed an oblong, almost UFO-shaped loop aligned east-west between DIA and I-70, extending eastward to the edge of Front Range Airport.  I rode part of the route solo and found the open, relatively flat roads (alpine by Houston standards) were an interesting change.  I stopped by Cycleton, introduced myself to Andrew, and expressed my interest in the ride.  "Hey, I'm a Cat. 3 on hiatus and was looking to start riding with a group again."  "Cool," he said, "the A's average about 22 mph, and we roll out promptly at 7."  All-righty then!  Let's see if I still have what it takes to hang with a fast group.

May 18, 2013: Not knowing how I would fare in the 42-mile ride, I toss my bike in the car (an activity I normally find abhorrent) and drive north to Cycleton.  I find the group hanging out in front of the shop and start practicing the introduction I'll give to anyone who will talk to me: "Hi, I'm Garrick, I raced Cat 3 in Texas before I moved to Denver in '02, I've had 3 kids since then, and now I'm tired of riding by myself and want to find a fast group."  NOOOOOOOOOOOB.  Dear Lord, what am I doing here?  Oh well, someone in a Cycleton jersey says it's time to go.  There's a fellow (Reid Neureiter) on a motorcycle with an SLR camera, so maybe I'll get a decent action shot of myself... Turns out he's shooting video, and he captured my first clip-in on my first group ride in, what?  Ten years?

With his brand-new shiny Sidis and yellow bits... Phred!!!

...TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2 OF "I'M BACK, BABY!"