Turn this beast into the wind

That Steve Earle song, The Other Kind, really struck a note with me while I was working out this morning. "Here of late all this real estate don't seem all that real to me sometimes/ I'm back out on that road again/ gonna turn this beast into the wind..." Of course any song which pays homage to Jack Kerouac has to be a good song. I have been turning my beast into the wind all spring long. The relentless wind off Lake Michigan. Spring is winter fighting with summer, and this year winter is waging a relentless battle. The promise of warmer days is like the sun shining through my back door. Ah the bike, the road, the ride to work, the glass the gangstas and the traffic-- its all wonderful, its all out doors and its where I'd really rather be.

As I mounted the Concept 2 rowing machine this morning, the sun was shining in to the corner of the gym where the rowers live, and I felt this strange elation. The tunes on my music player were just right and I cranked out 5000 meters in 23:28. The bike, the rowing machine both let me go full out, 110% effort with NO PAIN. None of the bad kind of pain anyway, plenty of screaming quads and pounding heart, sweat stinging my eyes-- you know the good kind of pain. Not the case with running. Triumphant though I was, to finish a 5K in 33:33, running the whole way, and I really enjoyed just loping along, having long ago given up any time goals. But the pain was real and it was not the good kind. My damn knees are shot. Meniscus erosion causing bone on bone shooting pain down my outside lower legs. The pain is not in the knee, its in my anterior tibialis and peronius longorus. The race was on Sunday, I was pretty sore all day, but by Monday felt OK. But testing my legs doing squats the last two days revealed the extent of the pathology. Two legged squats are fine, I can go well below 90 degrees, but the one legged squats really exacerbate the pain. As I bend my knee I cross a certain point and the pain shoots down my leg. I can pass through this threshold several times with successive one legged squats, but then I begin to collapse, unable to hold my weight on one bent leg. Yikes. Not a good feeling.

What really freaked me out this year was discovering that same pain when skiing. No say it ain't so! My week in Vancouver, two days at Grouse and one day at Blackcomb in the heavy pacific northwest snow and I was trashed. I could survive as a slow and intermittant runner, but I refuse to ceed skiing to the unfair gods of aging. Despite the difficulty with my one-legged squats, as usual I did a handstand against the wall and then attacked the rowing machine. It was a bit challenging at first, the deep knee compression, but the tunes, the sunlight, the endorphins soon transported me into a 34 stroke per minute rythm, with a deep breath on each stroke. I could see my reflection in the sun lit window and watched my form, feeling the core muscles carve out each pull on the drive, the slight back bend and chest thrust on the finish, and the C-shape in my back as I reached through the recovery for the catch. Rowing is wonderful exercise. It is interesting that my 5K times for rowing are comparable to my 5K times running when I was at my peak, in my mid 40s. 21:30 PR but any 5K under 23 was fast for me. My average rowing times for 5K are 22:38 PR to sub 24 on a good day. Today's 23:28 felt great. The online rowing log at Concept2 allows me to compare my 5K times with other men in my age and weight group. The fastest times are in the 16's-- an admirable time if that were to be a 5K road race for sure. And I have about as much chance of hitting 16 rowing as I did running back in the day.

March winds and April fools

The sun is shining more strongly every day and at last the cruel mantle of winter is being lifted from weather weary Chicago. Not lifted, actually, but blown away. March was a very rainy wet month with 6.26 inches of rain, the most ever in March (as recorded since 1928 at Midway Airport). Not a very good month for bike commuting. Now as the sun warms the earth and summer fights with winter for spring, the winds are howling. My rides home in the last two weeks have been brutal. The wind was blowing so hard and steady straight out of the west, that it was all I could do to stay on my peddles. I went through an underpass and up into the wind and the current of air was so strong I actually felt like I was being stood still, even pushed backwards and over, when actually, I just slowed to 9 mph. It took an hour to ride home through those big blows, and I felt completely whacked when I finally made it to Oak Park. But the west wind is bringing the warmth, and the thermometer is easing up, ever closer to 50, lifting out of the 40s-- and the sun is shining oh so brightly. I always claim that a sunny day is a nice day, regardless of the temperature. In Chicago that means it probably -20, but sunny and clear. I suspect that my feelings about the sun will change as we head south to Egypt. Hot and humid? bring it on!

My rides have also been punctuated by a series of flat tires. Last week I was riding home and was right in the heart of K-town, ground zero for bike commuter-gangsta interactions, when my front tire went flat. I was hard pressed for time, struggling through the wind, but anxious to get home to take over Ryder duty so Karen could go to work. I stopped and reached for my cell phone-- dead! Yikes. I knew with my hand held pump it would take me too long to change and inflate my tire, so I was calling to seek rescue. I was too far between El stops and it was rush hour so no bikes allowed on the train anyway. And the #7 would only get me to the east side of Columbus park, still too far to walk my bike home in time for Karen to make it to work. I saw three guys sitting in the cab of a moving truck and rolled my bike over and asked to use their phone. Kindly the guy in the passenger side handed me his phone-- it was in Spanish, but the buttons still did the same thing and soon I was in contact with Karen and we agreed to meet at Harrison and Cicero about 3 blocks west of where I landed. The gents in the truck were kind and helpful and I am so grateful to them. I rolled my bike down the sidewalk which gave me the *opportunity* to interact with the denizens of the west side. Mostly friendly, some cajoling, but none too threatening. I waited in front of the liquor store and many folks headed in to pick up their 44s in brown paper bags made comments to me as they came and went. It only took Karen 15 minutes to fetch me, and she dropped me and Ryder and my bike at home and drove off to work.

My bike work area has been dislocated and disassembled for the house showings, but it didn't take long to get everything together and repair the tire. I did not have a replacement tube as it turned out, so I wouldn't have been able to fix the flat on the road anyway. This discovery was a bit unnerving. So I attempted to patch and repair the tube and found all the cement in the ancient repair kits was dried up. I put on glueless patches, inflated the tire to test, and the patches came right off. Useless! So, I somehow managed to find a tube which I tested underwater and found no leaks, but was a little concerned about as it went flat on me once standing overnight. Loose valve or something? I installed it and pumped it up and then figured out that I had over inflated the tires-- only 70 psi for these fat boys (37s) and I had them pumped up to 85 or 90. So I deflated both tires to the right pressure and when I checked them in the morning, they were still just as hard. So far, so good.

Until this morning that is. It seems to me that 70 psi is just too soft and the tires noticeably flatten out under my massive weight. I didn't notice that the front tire was in fact just a little too flat, and when I jumped on the bike and took off, I got to the first corner and the tire gave out and I went crashing to the sidewalk. I lay there on my back, still clipped in like a turtle on its back not able to get up. Now usually at 6:25 AM there is no one on our street, but this morning there happened to be people walking to work and cars driving by. I was unscathed, just a bit embarrassed, and also concerned about the flat. Undeterred, I rolled back home, pumped up the tire and hit the road. The whole ride I kept hoping the tire would remain inflated. I felt like I was in a Viagra commercial and kept chanting "stay hard, stay hard." The tire did manage to stay hard all the way in. Fingers crossed for the return trip. I missed my buddies at the meeting place, but they rode the long way around the park to avoid Lake Columbus, which did not deter me. So when I emerged from the path at the east end of the park, Elissa and Paul were just riding up. It was lovely riding in with them this morning. A gorgeous but still chilly morning. The sun glinting of the shattered glass strewn over the road (I had picked a half dozen shards out of my flatted tire last week) and the strong smell of the 24 hour Maxwell Street hot dog stand permeated the cool morning air-- features of the ride I savor, but so look forward to leaving behind. Only a few more weeks of surviving the ride through the Big Ugly and my bike commutes through the west side will be over.