OK, the weather’s great, the days are long, my youngest daughter is home from college and she actually has a summer job – what could be so bad about this time of year?
Annie made her annual Memorial Day pilgrimage to “Poopie Point”, out in Central Washington near Vantage, for camping and just de-compressing. Then she started working at a state park here in the Gig Harbor peninsula, about 7 miles from home, Kopachuck state park. It’s a perfect job. She gets to be outside all day, she checks in campers, she cleans toilets, she sets up a little program for kids, she paints, she learns how to drive the little Ford Ranger pickup with a stick shift, she wears a cute little state parks’ baseball cap – all the things someone should be doing summers in college. Come August, she’ll go back to school a couple of weeks early, to help lead a college sponsored outing. Today, she went down to the harbor with the other three members of her national championship kayak team (“K-4 Sprint Flatwater”), and they all got back in the boat together and tootled around just like the old days. Sigh – how great to be that young and still get a chance to be nostalgic about a high point in your life.
Anyway, her dreamy summer is matched by the weather the past three days: 65-75, sunny, no rain, our world so many shades of green out here. And yet … I’m trying to generate the twin opposing feelings of anticipation and anxiety for my upcoming race in Coeur d’Alene. I’m not doing very good at dredging up either. I’m not saying I’m blase about the race, that I’m looking at it with a jaundiced, humdrum eye. But I don’t seem to be getting the usual feeling of “Oh my God, it’s only 2 weeks to go, and I haven’t done enough hard work to do well.” Or the feeling I get when I start to back off in training volume, and I start to get an odd combination of grumpiness and guilt.
Maybe when Cheryl FINALLY comes home, in three days, from D.C., and we start in on trying to get back to a routine, my pre-race persona will appear. Since Feb 1, when I went to Snowmass with Cody, Cheryl and I have been home together for maybe a total of 3 weeks. If that. After 35 years, I don’t think we’ve forgotten how to be together, but there is something missing, making so many dinners for just oneself.
For the past 20 years, I’ve been a fan of the BoDeans, a straight-ahead musical duo from Milwaukee. They mix a little roots, country, U2, and Bruce Springsteen all together. They’ve stuck together and keep writing simple little songs, still evoking romantic emotions on the far side of fifty. They just released an album called “Mr. Sad Clown”. A song, “If…”, by Sammy Llanas, perfectly captures this feeling of necessity, togetherness, and unwanted absence. His partner, Kurt Neumann, opens up with a lean ringing guitar line, tossing up tremolos, slides, and single bell-like notes behind Sammy’s singing. So I listen to them feel apart and lonely, and get that little smile on my face which appears whenever I come back to them.
I’m getting my bike ready for the race, and it’s about time. Three days ago, I was half-way into a planned 3 hour ride down to Dupont and back, nearly 50 miles, and hoping to get some good work in on a shakedown cruise. I almost got shook down myself.
At mile 20, I hit a little rock, and lost the air in my front tire. I was on the road through Ft. Lewis, which has a wide shoulder, and some hidden turnouts away from the traffic. I pulled into one, and started the repair ritual. Everything went smooth, or at least as smooth as it can when I’m dealing with tires that are just a BIT too small for the rims, making removal a bit of a bear, until I realised – hey, I hadn’t replaced the CO2 cartridge I’d pulled when I packed the bike to fly home from Colorado. No problem, I still had my trusty little carbon fiber pump.
I whipped the tube into place, grumbled and muscled the tire back on the rim, and went to work. Nothing. Air comes out of the pump, but doesn’t seem to go into the tube. I played with it for 15 minutes or so, and finally gave up, convinced the pump was not working. Decided that I could ride back along the way I came, the most popular route for cyclists in the Tacoma area. Surely, i would meet SOMEONE who could lend me a pump.
Naturally, for the first time ever, I saw NO ONE on a bike. Not one cyclist, either direction, for 20 miles.
Since the flat was on the front, I found I could actually ride quite comfortably at 14-15 mph, which is quite a good clip for many people, but probably 70% of the speed I would normally go. And I had to ride sitting up, not on the aerobars. On my TT bike, this is actually the more uncomfortable position, as leaning forward on those bars is the way the bike’s geometry is designed to work. Uphills, I went to same speed I normally would. It was a sunny, warm day, I had my jacket if it got breezy, plenty of calories in my water bottles, and I knew where all the bathrooms and water fountains were. I could make it home, it was just a question of putting in the time, and paying close attention to any turns, as I would have much less grip to stay upright.
I did get home, of course, none the worse for wear, and my glass half full mind started in convincing the rest of me, that, hey, his was actually good training for the persistence through boredom which is needed to complete the 12 hour Ironman day. Everything is training, that’s why we call it a lifestyle.
And I discovered the pump works just fine; the tube I’d brought along as a spare had an unrepaired hole in it, which I could have patched had I known. Grr. Tomorrow, back to swimming and running, and maybe biking to work. Stay the course, run the race, because It’s What I Do.
Good Luck Al. We will be watching!