Showing posts with label fatigue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fatigue. Show all posts

14 May 2022

In Any Language: Blame The Bike!

You're riding in a race or event, or with your club or a friend or two.  The hill climb feels more arduous than usual, the wind stiffer than what the weather forecasters promised or that straightaway longer than you remember from the last time you rode it.  You take a bite of your energy bar, gulp down some water (or Gatorade).  They don't help.  Nothing does.  You feel that instead of the scenery, the weather or anything else about the ride itself, everyone is noticing that you're struggling to keep up.

Someone asks, "Are you OK?"  Or maybe they don't have to ask.  Their gaze, their facial expression tells you they know.  Do you deny that anything is wrong?  Or do you say, "I didn't sleep last night," "I'm  not feeling quite right" or offer some other excuse that implies you're normally a stronger, faster rider than the one they're seeing.

Perhaps you blame the bike.

That's what Colombian Fernando Gaviria did after finishing second in a high-RPM sprint in the fifth stage of the Giro d'Italia.  

He bounced his front wheel as he crossed the finish line. Then he got off the bike and pounded the saddle with his fist. He unleashed an exclamation they probably didn't teach you in Italian 101:  "Che bici di merda!"  Translation:  What a shitty bike!


Gaviria and Arnaud Demare at the end of the sprint. (Image from Sprint Cycling Agency)

He couldn't get into specifics about the problem, he said, because he'd "get told off." But a video suggested a shifting problem:  As he spun his pedals faster and faster, his chain seemed stuck on the 14-tooth cog.  For a sprint finish, he would have wanted to change to a higher gear.

Perhaps his complaint is legitimate.  But I must admit that it would be funny to see an overweight chain-smoking desk jockey blame his $12,000 rig when he couldn't get up a bridge ramp without seeing stars. 

 

11 April 2015

In The Time It Takes To Go To Paris, I Made It Home!



Today dawned fair and excellent:  bright, clear and cool.


Now, most of you found at least one problem with the previous sentence.   Some of you might have known that I didn’t come up with “fair and excellent” all on my own.  The credit for that, of course, goes to Emily Dickinson.


The rest of you, if you’ve been reading my blogs, probably know that I don’t normally use “dawn” as a verb.  I have nothing against it:  In fact, it’s one of those near-anachronisms that I like.  It’s one of those locutions I really wish I could use without sounding self-conscious, sentimental or, worse, pretentious.  I know I can be pretty literary (Is that possible?) but I ain’t that literary.


It reminds me of the time Tommy James used the word “yonder” in one of his songs.  I don’t know the man personally, but somehow I doubt that he’s ever uttered that word in his life. As with the verb form of “dawn”, I love it.  However,iIt’s not the sort of thing one drops into normal conversations in this culture and time; one isn’t likely to hear it much outside of church hymns and Christmas carols.  


Anyway…back to the opening sentence of this post.  What’s wrong with it—as some of you might have suspected—I didn’t see anything “dawn.”  I slept through it because I didn’t get home until 1:40 this morning.  That’s about three and a half hours later than I’d planned.  


If you live in the central part of the United States, you might have experienced some wicked weather.  Well, when you guys (Those of us raised in blue-collar neighborhoods in northeastern US are wont to use “guys” as if it were a gender-neutral  term!) in Kentucky and Illinois and other place were experiencing hail and even tornadoes, much of the southeast and mid-Atlantic region were drenched and shaken by storms that flashed through the skies.  


Those storms hadn’t begun yet when I was waiting to board my flight at Daytona Beach.  But, as you know, when  Atlanta sneezes, almost every other air terminal in the region gets at least a cold.  And the Hartsfield was experiencing convulsions and seizures.  Hence the delays in Daytona and other depots.


At first, I didn’t mind. They way my flights were originally scheduled, I had a layover of nearly two and a half hours in Atlanta.  So, a half-hour or even an hour’s delay would still leave me with plenty of time to catch my flight to JFK, even in a terminal as sprawling as Hartsfield.  Then again, I figured, my connecting flight would probably be delayed as well, I mused to myself.


That’s probably the biggest understatement I’ve made to myself in ages!  It had rained in Atlanta, all right.  But an even bigger cloudburst was on the way.  After the other passengers and I boarded the plane, the skies opened up so much that we could barely see outside the window.  So we couldn’t take off.  Nor could many other flights scheduled just before and after ours.  And, as it turned out, there were more of such flights than usual because of the Augusta golf tournament.  Plus, students (and faculty members) were returning from spring recess.  So, all of those flights were completely booked, which meant that the terminal was packed with people waiting to board the flights after ours.


Image result for airport delays atlanta



Our flight was scheduled to depart at 17:58.  But it didn’t take off until 21:20.  Yes, you read that right.  And we landed in JFK at 23:00.  But, according to the captain, there weren’t any airport staff members to guide the plane into the gate.  So he did everything he could to summon them.  Finally, we started to exit the plane fifteen minutes before midnight.  By then, almost all of the concessions in the airport were closed.  I didn’t need them, but I’m sure others could have used a cup of coffee or a drink or something.  Even more important, they were connecting to other flights.  The guy sitting next to me was going to Dubai.  That flight was also delayed, but even so, he had only a few minutes to get to it after we finally got off our plane.


I got off at a part of the airport that was unfamiliar to me.  I don’t know whether it was my fatigue or a lack of signage, but it seemed to take almost as long for me to get out of there as it did to get to it! Oh, if only I’d had my bike with me!


The flight from Atlanta to any NYC airport normally takes a bit less than two hours. But when I finally got off the Air Train and into the subway, I realized that from the time of the scheduled departure until the time I got off the plane, nearly six hours had elapsed.  That’s how long it takes, on a typical day, to fly from JFK to CDG.  I’m sure someone on my flight was going there.  I hope that person caught his or her flight!


Maybe I’ll ride my bike down to my parents’ next time I go.  Of course, I’ll need a longer recess for that.  As for today, I slept late and was still tired, so I didn’t ride.  I hope I will tomorrow.


19 August 2014

First Ride After An Accident: Going Bonkers



If you've done at least one long ride or have been training with a group, you've heard of "bonking".  You've more than likely experienced it--admit it! ;-)

You've also probably heard it referred to as "hitting the wall". In scientific terms, it's the depletion of the glycogen stores in your liver and muscles.  You know it's happening when, all of a sudden, you can't pedal another stroke or run or swim another stroke.



It happens even to  the most experienced cyclists, runners, swimmers or other endurance athletes.  We do what we can to prevent it, mainly with proper nutrition and rest.  But every once in a while, some condition we didn't anticipate--such as a change in weather or a detour up a mountain (Yes, that's happened to me!)--presents itself.  Or, something causes changes in our metabolism or other bodily function or condition.


Today I felt myself "bonking" after just a few miles.  The ride wasn't difficult and, although I was trying to give myself a workout, I wasn't riding at an exceptional pace.  The temperature and humidity were, if anything, a bit lower than one might expect at this time of year.  And a scrim of cirrocumulous filtered the midday sun.

I don't think my sudden fatigue had anything to do with food, or lack thereof:  I'd eaten shortly before I started riding.  I can only wonder whether it had something to do with whatever trauma, however mild, my body experienced from my accident on Saturday.  I'm still feeling a pretty fair amount of pain on my left side, below my rib cage, though it's not quite as bad as it was yesterday or the day before.  And the bruises are more noticeable than they had been.

Hmm...Maybe it took my body a few miles to figure out that it was still hurting, still in shock.  After all, this ride--I did about 20 miles (32km)  in all--was my first since the accident.

Whatever I was experiencing, I find it amusing that it might be described with a term ("bonking")  that the British use as a less-rude synonym to "shagging" or the f-word.
 

16 August 2010

Do The Laws Of Energy Apply To Cyclists?

Today, dear reader, I’m going to ask you to help me to solve one of the mysteries of the universe. 

All right, I was exaggerating just a bit.  But there is still something I haven’t figured out after more than three decades of cycling.

Here’s the dilemma:  Yesterday I rode for less than an hour, on flat roads.  Yet I felt more tired than I did after my ride to and from Connecticut last week.  In fact, I was so tired that I didn’t write last night. 

I don’t think I’ve lost any of my conditioning (such as it is) during the past week.  And, I don’t think the fact that I rode my fixed gear yesterday rather than my geared road bike (which I rode to Connecticut) should’ve made a difference.  If anything, my fixie is lighter, simply from having fewer components on it.  Otherwise, they are similarly built Mercians:  the geometry is slightly tighter on the fixie, but they are both built of Reynolds 631 tubing.

And I undertook both rides about an hour after eating breakfast/brunch.  Yesterday I ate a mushroom-and-onion omlette with corn tostadas and salsa.  If I recall correctly, I ate the same thing, or something very close to it, last week.

So why did I have enough energy after last week’s ride to make dinner but, after yesterday’s ride, I had some Chinese takeout and fell asleep shortly afterward?