Tag: cycling

Cycling the Chesapeake

October 9th, 2024

Last week was A Week at work. My husband and I had a getaway on the calendar that we’d scheduled back in August, and I was grateful for the chance to put our everyday lives away for a couple of days. After riding hills and mountains all the time here at home, we wanted to see what it felt like to ride flat roads. And we both were craving the coast.

We put our bikes on the roof rack and headed to a little bed and breakfast we’d visited back in 2021. When the innkeeper asked what time to expect us for breakfast, Brian and I looked at each other — do we want to eat before we ride, or after? The whole reason I exercise is so I can eat. I wanted the anticipation of breakfast while we rode.

“Food is my reward. I want to eat after we ride,” I said. We told the innkeeper 9:30. We got up early Saturday morning, before the sun, and rode out as soon as it was light.

We rode close to 30 miles and it felt great. It was so easy compared to the hills back home. The roads were quiet, and the sunlight glowed on the marsh. When we returned for breakfast, the coffee, fruit, oat pancakes, sausage patties, and baked egg with cheese and dill were deeply satisfying.

We didn’t have anything else to do, so we went for another 30 miles after breakfast, this time to several of the nearby beaches.

We showered, got lunch at a Mexican restaurant, where I ate all the guacamole I could bear, got a coffee and walked around the quaint little town of Gloucester, and then went back to our room, where we collapsed into a deep and beautiful afternoon nap.

Besides eating, weekend naps in daylight, where your mind and body stop with the mania — no more thinking, no more doing, just blissful surrender to daytime drowsiness — are one of my favorite things in life.

Sunday morning, we rode again before another delectable breakfast, this time of spinach, egg, and cheese casserole, fruit, bacon, asparagus, and lemon panna cotta with honey and toasted almonds. In all, we rode close to 90 miles over the weekend. It’s probably been 20 years since I rode that much in that condensed a time. It felt great to empty my mind and my body, and to come back home refreshed.
Back to bicycling

May 11th, 2024

It’s Saturday morning, and I’m doing something I rarely do during the day: I’m watching TV. I’m watching the Giro d’Italia bike race.

Many years ago, pre-children, I loved cycling. I bought a compact Cannondale road bike shortly after my husband and I married 25 years ago, and I rode it all over the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. We lived in Maryland at the time, and had endless access to low-traffic, rolling-hill roads among beautiful bucolic scenery.

I guess I rode for about ten years, and I feel like I maybe even clocked 10,000 miles, though I could be making that up. Then kids happened, and priorities shifted, and biking fell away. I don’t remember when I sold my bike, probably in Minnesota because I don’t remember bringing one to Virginia. And so, for the past 15 years, I’ve been bikeless, and I didn’t really miss it.

Something happened in the past year, though, where I started itching for it again. Maybe it was getting back into the Tour de France last year. After the men’s Tour, we watched the women’s Tour. Then the Vuelta a España. Cycling season ended for the winter, and when the spring classics began, we began watching again: Milan-San Remo, Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

A bigger contributor is that my husband bought a road bike again last year. At first, watching him ride out didn’t affect me. The hills where we live are steep, not rolling, and our roads are tight and mountain-winding, not wide or super cyclist friendly. I was a big No thank you on cycling, and I didn’t think I wanted to ride.

And then I did. We bought a convertible Mazda last May, and the feel of the wind when we drive these mountain roads with the top down reminds me of what it feels like to ride a bike. I love moving quickly through the air, with the wind on my face and my arms. I love the freedom of it. I miss that, and I was getting bored with swimming, walking, and running for physical activity.

At the end of March, my husband and I went to DC to see a jazz guitarist play and to see a Dorothea Lange exhibit. While we were there, I bought a used road bike. A Cannondale, the bike brand of my heart. On our walk around Georgetown, I bought a helmet.

Slowly, gently, I’m riding a bike again. My first couple of rides, I just did laps in the neighborhood; the tires were old and I didn’t have a tire change kit or any way to carry one with me, so I didn’t want to go far from home. Then I extended my laps to a circuit outside of the neighborhood. It feels so good to go fast through the air.

Gradually, I’m updating my bike. My husband changed out the cables and brake pads, I changed out the tires and the tubes. My bike shifts beautifully now, and the chain no longer rubs. I bought cycling shorts and a jersey, so I can ride in comfort and carry my phone and a pump in my jersey. I bought a tire change kit and a little saddle bag to store it in. I bought some cycling shoes. Today, while we watched the Giro, my husband put my new Speedplay pedals on.

I’m riding again.

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Tour de France

July 4th, 2023

I used be a recreational cyclist, and I used to be big into cycling in the early 2000s, the era of Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich. I loved watching the Tour de France. I loved listening to Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin call the race. They’d sometimes hand the commentary over to Bob Roll, who was still young and rowdy in those days, and he was reliable for entertainment.

July was always an exciting month because the Tour was on. We’d watch the teamwork of professional cyclists in the dance of pulling and protecting their leader in a moving caravan of 150-200 men riding shoulder to shoulder at high speeds, with only a layer of lycra for protection against the pavement they often crash and slide along. We’d watch the chaos of bunch sprints where riders propel themselves at 40+ mph under the power of their own legs. We’d watch the brutality of climbing mountains for more than 10 miles at grades that average over 7.5%, and then attacking with huge bursts of power in the middle of those climbs. We’d watch time trials where the riders don’t get the help of their teammates, it’s just each cyclist alone with himself, riding against the clock. And we’d watch the team time trials that are just beautiful to behold in their fluidity.

When I was pregnant with our son 20 years ago, my husband and I were visiting a friend in Marseille on a year that the Tour happened to come through. We got to see the peloton come screaming into town. We saw the yellow jersey of Lance Armstrong streak by and heard the whir of 150 high performance bicycle chains turning over cogs.

Then all the ugliness started to come out. The doping. All the cycling heroes lying through their teeth about the doping. I wasn’t surprised but I was disappointed, and I lost interest. It was hard to find decent coverage of the Tour in the days before streaming services anyway, and I stopped watching. After a while, I didn’t know any of the riders anymore. Until this year, I hadn’t watched a Tour probably since 2005.

Last week, my sister-in-law visited. She’s also into cycling, and she used to race. She was on the UGA cycling team, and we used to ride together and work out together when we were in town at the same time. We also used to watch the Tour together. When she visited last week, she told us that the same people who produced the Formula One Drive to Survive show on Netflix did a Tour de France Unchained show for the 2022 Tour. She said that she had also lost touch with the Tour, and especially who all the riders are now, and the show caught her up on who’s who and what’s what now.

I felt a surge of excitement about the prospect of getting into the Tour again. I was surprised by how excited I got. My husband and I binged the whole Netflix show in three nights, starting on July 1, the day the Tour began. We signed up for Peacock to stream the Tour and have been watching every day. Paul Sherwin passed away a few years ago, but Phil Liggett and Bob Roll are still calling the race. The first time I heard Phil’s voice this week, I was struck by a deep nostalgia, and I remembered the joy that bicycle racing brings me.

I’m super excited about the Tour again, and about all these young fresh riders. I’m already attached to a few of them, like the current King of the Mountain, Neilson Powless, from the hot pink EF Education-Easy Post team of misfits, as they were described on the Unchained show. I’m attached also to team Jumbo-Visma’s Jonas Vingegaard who won last year’s Tour. I want to see Fabio Jakobsen do well, too, and you’ll see why if you watch the Netflix show.

I don’t love extreme heat — I don’t know how I survived however so many years living in Florida — but I do love summer for my flowers, for the abundance of fresh produce, and for the sports I like, which I realize now still include cycling.