Close The Door!

BlogWHAT? Not much to say lately. Been trying to do longer rides than in the past, and ride more, of course. I was doing pretty well until April, then somehow, after the nice weather we had for Ronde de Rosey, I fell off the wagon. Once I get one day in shorts and short sleeves, 40 degrees does not seem warm anymore.

Having not really ridden since Rosey (well, I rode that Tuesday with Curtis, but then nothing for 2 weeks), I felt obliged to try to get long miles with Chris Milliman at his cool sounding UV Epic. 90 miles, 9k feet of climbing, on dirt. Now, I was pretty sure I could not complete the course, but I needed long hours so I figured worst case I bail along the way and get back to Hanover.

Needless to say, the weather was truly EPIC (and I don’t use the word) and my legs were total SHITE. Maybe that run on the hotel treadmill in between four days of walking around Boston was not the best prep.

All I remember is shivering, and in retrospect, that Vermarc thermal jacket IS NOT WATER PROOF. Duh. I never, ever, EVER ride in the rain cause, duh, I am a CAT 4, I DON’T HAVE TO! So I never really realized that is not even really water resistant. Its super warm in a sponge-like way. Checking the photos, I was the only one not in a rain cape. Big mistake. My legs/feet were fine. My hands were ice bricks, even though I had three pair of gloves on me, one neoprene. It didn’t help.

Here is how Chris wrapped up the ride:

It was the hardest UVE so far, and it only last 25 miles.

What started as a light sprinkle in the early morning was, by our 8 AM departe, a pretty steady wet snow with 36° temps. But 15 of the stupidest riders in North America weren’t going to let a good morning go to waste, so off we went into the cold and wet. All riders’  feet were soaked within a mile and hands followed quickly after.

The first climb of the day had half the riders off their bikes and walking, the combination of 2″ deep snow and wet sand proving too much for road tires. The second, and what turned out to be last, climb was great except that as the elevation rose so did the depth of the snow. With two riders going down on the descent to Beaver Meadow Rd, one twice (ahem, Jerry), calling it a day was not a hard decision to make. (Notice in the picture the minivan in the background, it couldn’t get up the hill we’d just come down.)

It wasn’t just that it was cold and wet, which it definitely was, but the road conditions were getting unrideable at a rapid rate. So we all live to ride another day, no doubt bummed out that long car rides had not netted a better ride. But nature plays the trump card every time.

Oh right, I forgot…on the first hill, we all fell over riding up in the snow, spinning out. That effed my dura ace pedals and I was unable to clip in from that point forward. Oddly, who knew (no really who knew) riding unclipped on steep slippery downhills on fat slicks is really hard. I think I can ride a bike, but I wiped out TWICE. The snow/mud/ice packed those damn pedals so hard I just could not get back in, no matter how much cleaning and banging I did. So I just kept wiping out. Also could not get UP the hills cause I could do much pedaling. It was not ideal and I did not “represent” very well, being OTB as usual.

In the end, we got about 20 miles and maybe 2k of climbing.

Pictures or it never happened:

My ten year old, Noah, is rather emotional. He loves to argue. Not to be mean, but because he seems to have an overactive “sense of right and wrong and fair play” according to one of his recent parent teacher conferences. Its a very accurate description. If you are playing a game with him, or other organized activities, he can be difficult because he will get very emotional and worked up about the rules, often bringing himself to tears in the process.

He brings himself to tears quite a lot, really. If you scold him, he wants to argue his defense so vigorously, often when he is totally in the wrong. I usually try to cut him off before he does more damage to himself (or to my blood pressure, I am not going to live forever at this rate) and he just. can’t. stop. He just has to try to keep explaining why it happened, taking you down a long and winding road, usually in a direction away from the “scene of the crime”. When you try to take him back to point, focus on the issue at hand, or just end the discussion, he only gets more emotional, more animated in his defense, usually to the point of tears.

He usually storms away in tears, red faced, angry, no – outraged, that all along he was JUST TRYING TO TELL THE TRUTH! He is so righteously indignant that I almost feel sorry for him. I mean, there is always a kernel of truth in what he is arguing. And he just clings to that truth SO HARD. He just won’t let go, instead he focuses in like a laser on some crumb of injustice, whether specifically related to the origins of the argument or not.

You see, that is the trick. That is what makes his argument so defensible in his mind and why he gets so emotionally invested in his position. He begins by getting caught, red handed, for some infraction of the rules of the game. He has a small window of opportunity, a moment in time, right then, but it’s ever so fleeting. A moment in time to simply capitulate, shrug his shoulders, hang his head for a moment, and accept it. We would all hug and move on and in a short span of time it would all be forgiven. We would all just let go, because we were not that emotionally invested in the argument.

Instead, due to the life lessons he has not yet learned at ten years old, he always feels he can defend himself and argue his way out of it. He starts explaining why it happened and I counter with why shouldn’t have done it, and he instinctively searches for the high ground, an island of dry land in an ocean of guilt. Soon we are arguing about something only peripherally related to the original infraction because he has crafted a sound argument, based up his kernel of unrelated truth, his island in the sea.

Run to the truth. Cling to the high ground. Dig your fortifications. Hold out. Focus on the truth, and deflect attention from the fault. Of course, the trap is that on such hard fought ground one cannot easily yield. Instead, one is compelled to hang on till the last. Till the bloody end.

In Noah’s case, the end is usually an early retirement to his room to sleep it off.

I reflected on this last night, in frustration at yet another senseless, avoidable argument in which he had lost all grasp context and was an emotional mess, honestly believing he was completely faultless and now being WRONGED BY THE SYSTEM! Clinging to his little kernel of truth. Living on his island.

This morning, I read Alberto Contador’s reaction to being cleared for alleged PED use. He revealed, in essence, that he had stomped his feet and argued until he literally had cried himself to sleep.

“The fault is with the institutions that haven’t served their purpose and who haven’t been able to review a case like this. It’s been six months of sleepless nights, pulling your hair out — there are times when I cried.”

Given my parental insight into such emotional arguments, I can understand the sincerety of many of these athletes charged with doping. I can see that fleeting moment when they found themselves running to their truth, found their high ground, built their defenses. Soon the defense of their island becomes so all encompassing that they forget what is too often revealed to be the real truth – that they doped.

“… all that matters is that you recognise that you have done nothing, …there was such a great injustice that I had to fight.”

They get so lost in the process of the argument, on what they can defend, maintaining their sanity by focusing on what they didn’t do. They find fault in the system, and point well taken, it is flawed. They redefine the argument around their truth, and they garner sympathy for their treatment.

Later of course it is often all revealed. The Kimmage interview with Landis gave a remarkable insight into the process of circling the wagons and the loss of touch with reality that seems to trap so many of these athletes. They spend millions of dollars defending their truth, when in reality they are in the wrong argument, the one they created in their mind to deal with what must be a sickening realization of being caught. The one they can win. The one in which they are on the side of THE TRUTH. They lose sight of the overriding truth that they are guilty, and now they are caught.

One can only hope that they read. That they read interviews like the one Landis gave, like the one I sincerely hope Tyler Hamilton will give one day, the that even Richard Virenque ultimately gave. The same one that Lance Armstrong will never give. Hope that they learn from those before them of the futility and inevitably, the greater damage to their lives and their relationships that will result from running from the one truth towards the another.

Or hope that they have kids.