I never thought the World Championships were easy, but after having spent the past few days training on the Big Island, I have a whole new appreciation for the athletes who race in Kona every October. This course is no joke. In fact, it kind of sucks. Okay, it doesn’t kind of suck. It really sucks. Parts of it are scenic (I am in Hawaii, after all), but most of the bike course is along a desolate stretch of highway surrounded by taint-scorching lava rock that makes me feel like I’m cycling on Mars. The heat isn’t bad (I raced in 96-degree temps in Costa Rica) but the humidity is demoralizing. Oh, and have I mentioned the wind? Yeah, let’s focus on that for now. I’ve heard plenty about the famous winds here–how they’re absolutely brutal, how they can change direction without warning, how they can blow people across the road and even knock them down–but hearing about them and experiencing them firsthand are two different beasts entirely. My only previous experience with strong winds was the demoralizing Boise 70.3 in 2010, in which I got manhandled for 56 miles and only managed to bust out a 3:27 bike split because the gusts were so bad. Those winds, as bad as I remember them being, are nothing compared to the winds here. Good grief. For our first ride, Jas and I headed out onto the highway and couldn’t help but laugh at how absurd it was to ride at an angle along the shoulder as we leaned against the wind that was hell-bent on shoving us into the road. I managed to stay calm and kept reminding myself to keep a clear head and remain focused and that freaking out or panicking would just make the situation worse. We got to the turnaround point in our ride and I clipped out my right foot. Teresa was in the middle of explaining the race bike course to us when a giant gust of wind blew at us from the right and knocked me down like a domino. Since my left foot was still clipped in, all I could do was get slammed to the pavement and pinned by my bike. I emerged with no scrapes but a few lovely bruises, although I’m happy that I got blown down while at a standstill vs. cruising along at 20-30 mph. On our way back, the crosswinds went from trying to push me into the road to attempting to shove me into the guardrail and onto the lava rocks, which actually made me more nervous than being shoved onto the highway (at least I could hope that a car would see me and swerve around me–crashing into a guardrail, on the other hand, seems like a profoundly no bueno situation). I felt a sense of accomplishment for having survived a gnarly bike ride against the famous winds, but the idea of riding an additional two hours in this mess wasn’t exactly thrilling. The next time we tackled the Queen K highway, the winds weren’t as unpredictable but were still as strong as ever. I hit a steady headwind on the way out and was flying along the highway on the way back. I couldn’t really take advantage of the free speed because I was paranoid about a sudden crosswind coming along to take me out, so I struggled a bit as I tried in vain to anticipate how the winds would be blowing (an impossible feat). My bike splits have become the strongest of the three disciplines for me, so I’m hoping I can stay strong and steady among the field since they’ll have...

We’ve all had them–I’ve certainly had my fair share, like when I set out to ride the Lake Stevens course a couple times and made it 10 miles. Or when I set out to ride 82 miles and made it about 30 and nearly froze to death. Sometimes you just have one of those days where you set out to do something and the forces combine to eff up your ess so that you have the worst day imaginable as one thing after another goes wrong. Yesterday was one of those days for me. I had a speed run workout scheduled, so Jas and I headed to the Greenlake track on our lunch break to bust it out. The plan was to do a 20 minute warm up, then two miles all out with a five minute recovery, then 4×100 at my previous all out pace with a three minute recovery, then a 10 minute cool down. Total workout time: 1 hour. I started my warm up then began my hard effort. It sucked. Bad. My stomach was really sour and I felt like I didn’t have any speed. I stopped after one mile, figuring I’d do my recovery and then I could do another hard mile. I started my recovery time and the sour stomach went into overdrive. My easy set quickly incorporated some “awkwardly mosey over to the portapotty and unleash the fury” time (at least there were portapotties nearby — I wasn’t about to fail my #1 goal). When my stomach quieted down, I left the portapotty and dejectedly made my way back to the track. Okay, so my two mile hard effort was kind of a bust, but at least I could do my 4×100 sets, right? I started one and had a decent lap time, then did a recovery lap. During my second lap the stomach acted up again, and once again my recovery lap included a sprint to the bathroom where I had to do the walk of shame past the same tennis players who I had just passed five minutes ago. I felt like waving and announcing, “Yes, yes, it’s me again. Yes, clearly I’m having some sort of bowel issue. Thank you for noticing. Yes, I have seen Anna Kournikova on The Biggest Loser. Uh, no, I don’t really like her more than Jillian. I mean, she kind of sucks and she’s got the crappiest team, so…you know what, speaking of ‘crappiest,’ I really gotta go. Again.” After Wave of Number Two #2 came and went, I managed to bust out a super sad cool down mile, figuring that the workout was a complete bust considering my guts weren’t letting me run hard. Instead of 7-7.5 miles, I managed a fairly sad five. We drove home and I had some soup and some tea to try and quiet things down, then I headed to the allergist to get my weekly shot. I needed to get a swim workout in but wasn’t sure I’d make the swim time at our gym, so later that evening after my shot I headed over to Medgar Evers to drop in on their lap swim time. When I got there, the employee recharged my parks & rec card and was about to scan it when I looked over at the pool and noticed an unusually large amount of pre-teens occupying the lanes. Me: “Uh, is lap swim going on right now?” Employee: “No, it’s a youth swim clinic.” Me: “Oh…how long does that go for?” Employee: “From now until 6:30.” Damn it all! Me: “Does lap swim start after that?” Employee: “Yeah, from 6:30 to 7:00.” Oh,...

Last week I checked my training workouts and saw that Teresa was seemingly intent on turning my taint into a giant callus on which I could strike matches by scheduling me four bike workouts: one tempo/strength ride, a recovery ride, a 3 hour interval workout, and the 7 Hills of Kirkland metric century ride on Memorial Day. She emailed me and asked if I was doing the ride. I responded with a “Maybe…who else is doing it?” Teresa directed me to our Yahoo! group forum so I could coordinate with some teammates and have someone to ride with. I, of course, was too lazy to do that so I ended up not knowing who was riding and when they planned on starting. My half-assitude lasted me through the weekend until I figured it was time to actually do some semblance of research and see who I could ride with. I had never done the Kirkland ride before (it’s put on by the city every year to raise money to help homelessness), so I asked Jason if he’d sign up with me. He gave me a “Pshaw hell nah, I’m tapering for Boise.” His dad, on the other hand, was interested in doing the ride so at least I’d have one cycling buddy for the day. In keeping with my “total lack of research” theme for this ride, I woke up early Monday morning, got my gear together, did a quick glance at the 7 Hills website to get the address of the starting point, and took off. I met Jim, Jason’s dad, at the park where the ride took off from at 7 am and begrudgingly coughed up $55 for the registration fee. (A cost that I think is too expensive, especially considering that the course is still open to car traffic and we’re really only paying for a couple of aid stations. I reminded myself it was for a good cause and remembered to take more fuel gels than I needed at each food stop to make up for the dent in my wallet.) The ride started out pretty decent, and the climbs were pretty good but nothing that was pants-crappingly difficult. Unfortunately, I found out pretty quickly that it’s not the best idea to do the ride on a time trial bike — there are enough climbs that having a road bike would be more beneficial, plus the descents are often winding/zig-zaggy and there aren’t that many flat/fast stretches to get into aero. I ended up being that doosher trying to look all bad-ass on my TT when a road bike was way more appropriate (at least I didn’t have race wheels *coughBrentcough*). Jason’s dad had warned me ahead of time that the Winery Hill climb was the worst, and he had also cautioned me to be in the proper gearing as soon as we turned onto it. He wasn’t lying — as soon as you take a right onto that road, you run directly into the start of the hill. If you’re not in the correct gear when you hit it, you’re pretty screwed. The climb itself is shorter than the other hills on the ride, but it’s a steep fucker. My rear shifter was pointed towards the sky and I was cranking down on my pedals so hard, I nearly keeled over a couple times (I do not know how those professional cyclists wobble back and forth on their bikes so aggressively). When I got to the top, I was greeted by a woman sitting in a lawn chair and clapping, and once I made my way out of the neighborhood, a bag piper played the...

There are pros and cons to riding indoors vs. riding outside. On the one hand, when you’re riding outside you get to experience terrain change and adjust accordingly — you can work hard to climb hills, coast on descents to give your legs a break, etc. You also don’t have to worry about creating a lake of sweat underneath you when you’re moving along an actual bike route, and your place won’t smell like wet feet and buttcrack when you’re done with your ride. Riding indoors, however, gives you some nice luxuries — you don’t necessarily have to get up super early to begin your workout, you’re always near a bathroom, and you don’t have to worry about running out of fuel or getting in a crash. These are all nice perks, but my absolute favorite reason for cycling at home is the obvious one, and that is I can watch whatever crap I want for the duration of my workout. Jason and I watch a lot of movies when we ride. We watch TV too, but usually save the DVR’d shows for shorter recovery rides and opt for full-length movies or TV on DVD for longer workouts. Our preferences typically include the following: something with subtitles so we don’t have to blast the volume too loud no heavy dramas or depressing crap that can suck the cadence right out of you; this means we usually end up watching a lot of mindless action movies or lighthearted comedies something that’s long enough to last the entire ride (either we’ll watch a bunch of TV episodes in a row or we’ll try to find a movie with a running time that matches closely with our workout) I thought I’d try to chronicle some of the movies we watch while cycling in a segment I’ve coined Cyclepiece Theater. My first two entries come from the Paul Verhoeven collection, my favorite guilty pleasure director. Two weekends in a row we watched some awesome vintage Verhoeveny goodness. RoboCop Genre: Action Year Released: 1987 Running Time: 102 minutes Awesome?: Yes! Memorable Quote: “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me.” Lesson Learned: Crime doesn’t pay! Also, in Verhoeven-envisioned futures, men and women share locker rooms because they are sooooo progressive (see also the Starship Troopers communal shower scene). When I first met my friend Matt and told him I was from Detroit (I’m not, but saying “I’m from Detroit” to people who aren’t from Michigan is better than saying “I’m from 40 miles outside of Detroit”), he perked up and said, “Oh, really? I don’t know anything about Detroit — do you guys just have a bunch of RoboCops wandering around the city policing it?” Dude, I wish! That’d be supremely awesome. Alas, I have to make do with watching it while doing a dumb cycling workout. Boo. The movie holds up well, although you might be weirded out seeing the dad from That 70’s Show acting like a total dickwad to the entire population of Detroit. It’s a good one to cycle to — you’ll get caught up watching Peter Weller transform into RoboCop while his partner who had been paired up with him for literally less than a day feels an inexplicable bond with him (it’s like those d-bags you barely spoke to in high school who are now all of a sudden coming out of the woodwork to friend you on Facebook because OMG REMEMBER WHEN YOU BOTH WENT TO THE SAME HIGH SCHOOL?! BESTIES 4 LIFE!!). He mops up the street while Clarence Boddicker mops his toxic waste-soaked henchman off his windshield (that scene is so nasty-cool). The actual citizens of...

When I first started this nonsense sport, Teresa lent me an extra bike trainer she had so I’d be able to do indoor rides. It was a sad little thing that Jason wasn’t allowed to use because I was convinced he’d snap it in half. After a couple seasons of slumming it on the little trainer that could, I finally shelled out major coinage for a Kinetic fluid road bike trainer, the luxury sedans of trainers. It’s supposed to be one of the quietest trainers on the market, meaning I’d be able to ride and actually hear the movie I’m watching without having to blast the volume up so loud, my neighbors want to murder me. The first one I bought had some B.S. problem where some hole wasn’t drilled properly, forcing Jason to hammer the screw in all janky-like. You’d think shelling out a few hundred bones for a pricey hunk of metal meant it would be engineered properly, but I guess that’s not the case. Despite the minor setback, I was pretty stoked to finally be rollin’ on a “grown up” trainer, and a whisper quiet one at that! …or so I thought. About six months after using the trainer, one day I hopped on my bike for a spin and my Kinetic promptly sounded as if the Inception buzzy noise had personified, gotten stuck behind my wheel, and was being slowly and tortuously ground to death. I tried to ignore it at first, but this stupid noise got louder and louder to the point where I was blasting Teen Mom 2 at full volume in a futile effort to hear whiny girls and their baby daddy drama over the honking whir of my trainer (yes, I watch Teen Mom — it’s part of a Scared Straight program for my uterus so it doesn’t try any funny business). Eventually I gave up and hauled the bright green abomination back to whence it came so I could swap it out (REI, you mofos have the best return policy ever). Thankfully, the apathetic customer service rep was fine with me exchanging the nearly year-old trainer, so I grabbed a brand spankin’ new one and brought it home. Jas offered to help me set up Kinetic 2: Electric Boogaloo, but when he unpacked it and began assembling it, he noticed something wrong. Kinetic, you’ve screwed me again. The new trainer came with a screw that was, inexplicably, too short to fit through the one hole it was designed for. You’re kidding me! This shit is worse than Ikea — I expect some discrepancies when I’m buying hard-packed sawdust passing as furniture for a fraction of the cost, but when I’m plunking down hundreds of bucks for a hefty piece of machinery, I (foolishly) figure that all the pieces are manufactured properly. Rather than have an entire department in REI hate my guts, I opted to go to Lowe’s and shell out 15 cents for a replacement screw. Afterwards, Jas was able to get my trainer working properly and I’m once again riding in relative quiet…that is, until it borks again (which, considering my luck, I fully expect it to do). Of course, Jason’s trainer has given him zero problems while I’m on my third one. Oh well, the best I can do is cross my fingers and hope that the Kinetic plays nice so I can ride and watch my crappy action movies and trashy TV in...