V-for-velocity, M-for-metaphor

What can you say about speed? Stereolab songs, racehorses, gazelles and orbital velocity, and pistons, just to name a few off my recent postings. The more I work on the blog here the more I see speed as a kind of metaphor I’m using more frequently for other things in my life, things that I’m still trying to put their own words to.

Every time I come up with a new metaphor for “fast” it is as if I’m asking myself to identify the mystery object in a game of 20 Questions.

Going faster entails the promise of liberation, the hope of improvement, the badge of hard training, and the motivation to keep pushing. You may not be subject to all these varied forces, but I feel them keenly here in the secret city, my little exile’s bubble.

As you can see from the accompanying chart, this has been a pretty good week for biking. The pink line is January’s rides, the fastest seven-mile lap on each day, and the green line is December’s rides, same procedure. (I have no idea what the background is or where it came from, only that it’s a photograph I took.) My personal theory to explain the improvement is that by writing about going faster, it makes it easier to do it. I hope it works for you, too.

Today, matched against a modest Boreal breeze, was a particular red-letter day. Much as I enjoy complaining about it, I slightly prefer riding with the north wind to the south wind because it means I get an extra ten minutes to warm up before I start doing laps. Today I brought my heart rate up to just over 70% as I turned the corner into the headwind and managed to sustain that level for the next 44 minutes as I fit two entire laps into that time period. I haven’t before done two laps at that speed, more than 19 mph.

As I go over the ride in my head, it seems to be composed of the same little episodes that every ride shares, many of which I’ve written about already: e.g., the Funny Hat People doing their little afternoon run; the potential lapse in concentration (avoided!) on the firehouse straightaway; the flip around onto the back stretch and accompanying realization that I’m making good time and can ride fast with the wind for the rest of the way; even the soundtrack for today, Tune-Yards’ “Fiya,” off the same record that “Sunlight” comes from, this one with a monster ukulele riff. Somehow I put everything together like a good little editor and wound up on a pace to be proud of.

Consistency

I’m just back from this morning’s run and can gladly report that it was just about the same as yesterday’s run: same number of calories, same time, same distance. The one change is that I was a little faster toward the end today and (conversely) slower in the beginning. My guess, however, is that it’s better to speed up toward the end (reverse split) rather than lag, so I’m pleased by that.

Yesterday’s bike ride was again a model of consistency, although I changed my song to “In These Shoes?” by Kirsty MacColl, the one gem from her otherwise disappointing Tropical Brainstorm album, from the other day‘s “Metronomic Underground.” No me gusta caminar/no puedo andar por caballo, sings Kirsty’s backup chorus, and there I go, andar por bicicleta.

It was quite warm and pleasant out yesterday, and even though the wind was kind of brisk, it was from the south, so it didn’t bother me as much. I knew I would have a good lap when with my torso tucked down and pacing myself briskly along the open spot just parallel to the runway I looked down and saw that I was working at 82% max heart rate. I did the whole 7-mile lap in less than 22 minutes, or a 19 mph pace, which was enough to bring the average for both laps up to a whisker over 18 mph.

Today’s bike picture is from Antwerp. I like the plastic leaves on the fender stays, personally.

Just like Craig Pond

On the bike today, out for my afternoon ride, I hopped off the curb into the road and all of a sudden, everything was calm, like a smooth and tranquil lake of asphalt. It was like that moment diving into Craig Pond first thing in the morning, when the lake is so still and the water is chilly but it just swallows you up into it, so softly.

(No pictures of Craig Pond handy, unfortunately, so here’s one from Oregon instead.)

The ride went OK. I attempted to psyche myself up beforehand by listening to Tune-Yards’ “Sunlight,”, but it was another song, Stereolab’s “Metronomic Underground” that proved to be the key to victory.

As you can tell, it’s pretty hypnotic, and just humming to myself, “Crazy, sturdy, a torpedo” helped me keep up that steady energy needed for the long back stretch with the wind, past the dump. Of course, first I had to figure out what song it actually was, which is kind of difficult, since my Stereolab sampler is on a single CD that I used to play whenever I would drive around the secret city in the truck.

But it worked! I finished lap no. 2 in 22:48, or 18.4 mph. I was pretty much toast afterward, however, and rode home kind of slowly, still in a daze from hearing the song in my head over and over again.

Next stop, the glue factory

Today I sent ol’ Number Four, my exasperating mountain bike, off to the scrap yard to be turned into plowshares or musical instruments or whatever. I was hoping it would get there today but my friend who was taking it there wanted the tires for himself, so it will be even more stripped when it finally hits the scrap heap.

I only paid $40 for it, and it was already having problems with the bottom bracket (where the pedals are attached to the frame), so I didn’t have high expectations to start with. It got me around the secret city from June through September, and then two days before the fixed-wing came in the mail from Brooklyn, the bottom bracket finally loosened for good and I couldn’t pedal it any further. It was the fourth bike I’ve owned for myself, after the black Jamis Durango ATB, the ten-speed I bought to commute with (and that is now on its fourth frame and third drive train, but the handlebar grips are the same), and the Basso Ti-frame racing bike that’s sitting in storage. Four is supposed to be an unlucky number, right?

After the problem with the bottom bracket put it out to pasture, I donated the brakes to Cindy and the pedals to Wilner, which is why it is missing those things in the picture.

Thanks for everything, number four! Best of luck in your new incarnation!

Notes on motivation, two-wheeled version

(I wrote this and am posting it not necessarily to motivate anyone else, but more so that the next time I am in the same situation, I have something to reference it to.)

Cycling this afternoon, I came around my first loop with the straightforward intention of getting in a good ride. The wind had lightened up since the day before and it was actually almost warm, in the low 60s probably. Riding into the wind, I hit the straightaway from the flagpole past the fire station, old chapel and refectory, checked my heart-rate monitor, and set myself the task of raising my heart rate to 80% of max from 64%. I got distracted somewhere along the half-mile stretch and reached the turn with the monitor still stuck at 64%. I passed the Funny Hat People running and singing their goofy songs, as is their custom in the afternoons, then came around for a second loop.

Learning from the first lap, on the second I focused intently on the pedal stroke to get my HR up and when I made the turn I was at 81%. I didn’t get down to below 70% until I got to the Leticia straightaway (There’s a clamshell structure there permanently under construction, with the word “LETICIA” in wrought-iron letters mounted on the crane above the clamshell; it always looks striking because when I ride in the afternoon, I see it with the setting sun as a backdrop.) and felt like I was falling a little short of vim.

Feelings notwithstanding, as I came around the tight turn, onto the back stretch, I checked the stopwatch: it read 1:09:58, and I had started the loop at the other end at 56:50. So I had only taken 13′ and change to complete the out stretch, fighting the wind the whole way. That was a pretty good sign, so I sipped some water, grabbed the drops, tucked in and pedaled hard, with the wind at my back, all the way past the dump around to the loop starting-point by the barrels. The entire seven-mile lap took 22:32, a pace of 18.6 mph (my target is 23:22, which is an 18 mph pace; if I’ve looped around faster than that, it’s a red-letter day).

I kept up a crisp pace on the way home from the barrels, and even sped up a little bit at the end, trying to get in under 1:40, my full-ride reference time (I always assume it takes 100 minutes to get in an afternoon ride), and missed it only by a couple seconds. Not bad for a ride where the first fifty-six minutes were pretty poky.

I guess the conclusion to draw from today’s experiment, which I’ve apprehended before but have been absorbing only slowly, is that the first good push is critical to getting my heart starting to beat fast enough to maintain a swift, satisfying pace. The only times I’ve kept that 18 mph pace, I’ve had an average HR for the loop of over 70%, which means that I need to do some serious hammering over the 23 minutes it takes to loop around. On days when I’m feeling slow, it’s hard to push past 65% at all, so averaging more than 70% is more of an achievement than it might seem. On the other hand, as I go over my records, I see that I only rode an 18-mph loop five times in the entire month of December (twice on the 30th). I’ve already matched that sum for January, although I haven’t felt as strong this month.

Attached picture is my ride, in today’s late-afternoon light.

Chain tension again

Jose and I went back to the wrench work today to loosen up the overtight chain. I had tightened it two days ago because it was getting a little too loose. I was afraid that as the tension got looser, speeding up would cause the chain to flip right off the rear sprocket. This used to happen during interval workouts in early December, before the most recent time that I tightened up the chain tension. I would get a good head of steam on, and then about when I got to 25 mph or so as I passed the dump entrance (my point of reference for the interval), I could hear a loud grinding sound as the chain slack from the take-up was pulled around the rear sprocket and the chain would be riding clatteringly on top of the gears, instead of nestled smoothly inside them.

The first time it happened (2 December), I thought I had achieved enough speed to take off into the air, like one of the jets on the parallel runway, and that the grinding was related to that. It was easier to believe at the time than it is now because I had my hands in the drops and was bent way over, so that I could barely see the road ahead and all I could see what the quickly moving pavement right underneath the front wheel.

After Tuesday’s episode at the workshop, I noticed that it was hard to turn the pedals in reverse (free-wheel) and that in general the bike made more noise than it ought. Overtensioning the chain could lead to destruction of the race and bearings in the freewheel, as well as deforming the chain, so I took yesterday off, staying out of the saddle instead of riding the bike hard and wearing out the parts for no reason.

Last night, the good news started to return, however. First I discovered my personal 15mm box wrench in my jacket pocket so I didn’t need to go back to the garage to borrow their wrench. Then this morning, with Jose again levering the wheel tight with the broomstick, I tightened the bolts finger-tight and made sure that the chain could turn freely on the freewheel in both directions (look out for those fingers when the wheel turns, kids!). Then with the broomstick keeping the nuts from sliding forward in the dropouts, I tightened them up with the box wrench.

The first time on the bike again, on the way to the refectory this afternoon for lunch, I turned left at 2nd Street and pounded up the slight hill, leaving Jose and his boat-anchor bike in the dust. With the tension right, I could feel the difference in the ride, as the power I applied to the pedal stroke was smoothly and instantly transferred to the top of the chain, pulling the freewheel cog around and driving the rear wheel.

It sounds a little technical (I was going to call this post “Chain-al re-tension” but didn’t dare), but I thought I could tell the difference in the action, especially going uphill, where I use the freewheel less and rely more on the direct pull from the pedals to turn the wheel. Hasn’t the pony been riding a little sluggish lately? I thought it was me, but maybe it’s been the bike. I’ll find out more this afternoon on the ride, which I am looking forward to now that the wind has died down after three days.

Tighten chain tension; feel more relaxed

Jose gave me a hand with the chain tension this afternoon. I was hoping to do it this morning, but I couldn’t find my 15mm box wrench. So I went down to the garage area and borrowed one of the mechanics’ wrenches. As I had the bike turned over, Jose says, “Let’s do this old-school,” and goes to fetch a broomstick. After I loosen the wheel, he wedges the broomstick between the bottom bracket and the rear wheel, between the chain stays, so that it is both pushing the wheel toward the rear and holding it in place. All that was left was to tighten the axle nuts gently with the box end of the wrench, alternating sides so the wheel doesn’t get locked off-center.

Of course, some buttinsky walks over and warns us that if we push the wheel back too far, it won’t turn. Huh? Then he comments unfavorably on my 700×23 tires, suggesting that they are a poor choice for riding on dirt. I looked him in the eye, then gestured to the expansive pavement.

I rode back to the lodging sweetly, with the new tighter tension. I had been a little worried that the chain would start to leap off the sprockets like it had back about six weeks ago, right before I tightened the tension last. No ride this afternoon, however, no interest on my part in a rematch with Boreas. I went running this morning in the light of the full moon before dawn and I actually felt pretty energetic, and it even seemed as if the wind had let up a bit.

Boreas vs. Me

I complain a lot about the wind here on this blog, but today was the north wind’s roughest attempt yet to keep me off the road. Today was a bright, sunny cloudless day. I got out on the bike a little early this afternoon and I could notice the gusts even down here in the canyon. When I got up to the plateau there was one smooth bit where I had the wind at my back, and everything was beautiful and quiet, and I could listen to the wheels rushing against the pavement and the chain spinning around the sprockets.

Then 10 minutes later, after passing the dump, I came around and headed directly into the Boreal fury. I’ve noticed about the flat desert around the airfield that there’s no letup. Nothing stands in the way, apparently, between me and Greenland, or Kamchatka, or whatever they call the House of the North Wind these days. It’s relentless, completely different from the gusty winds that blow, careless about their direction and force, back home.

I’m reminded of one evening back in 1988 when I was walking along 14th Street in the middle of the night (on the way to Nell’s, if I recall correctly) and ol’ Boreas was blowing right off the Hudson and wrapping around my bones, poking and twisting with his cold fingers between my muscles and ligaments, like my grandmother taking apart a chicken.

Pictures are stealth-camera shots, taken with my cell phone, on the same 14th Street.

Latest night ever!

Eyes bleary from lack of sleep and mouth acrid from stale coffee, I
check in with my faithful readership. I don’t know how I got myself
roped into working the graveyard shift here at the Emotional Trauma
Center and Whine Ward. It’s been refreshingly quiet and the phone has
not rung since I got here at 10:30 p.m. Jason, tonight’s able
assistant, and the pet mouse sit in the front room, buying motorcycle
helmets online.

 It seems like a long time since I went biking this afternoon in the
warmer weather. I actually stripped down to short-sleeves for the
first time in about three weeks and was rewarded with a good hustling
pace, making 18 mph on my pair of seven-mile loops. Unfortunately for
me, the fickle wind shifted direction between the first loop and the
second. On my first loop, I was cycling in the doctrinally correct
manner, pushing against the wind on the out leg and reaping the
benefit of the tailwind on the return leg. That created a nice reverse
split, where the back half was faster than the front half.

 On my second trip around, I noticed myself daydreaming a little bit
about the book I was reading (Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories)
instead of really pushing hard, and a couple minutes later at the far
western extent of the loop, I checked my time and saw that though I
hadn’t pushed too hard, I had still beaten my corresponding split time
on the first lap. Of course, the return leg was a doozy because I was
pedaling into the wind. Takeaway lesson from that is: if it feels too
easy, it probably is and you should push more.

 On that last doomed leg, however, I discovered something new: an extra
(fourth) gear. Not really a gear, as if I had an automatic
transmission instead of two leggy-pegs, but a metaphorical gear. First
gear is just pushing the pedals along, second gear drops the elbows to
relax the arms and lower the upper body while the legs start to move
the pedals in circles, both pushing down and lifting up (I have found
that not overlubricating the chain is actually a pretty good way to
determine this because I can hear the ruff-ruff of the mostly pushing
stroke, as opposed to the smoother circular stroke sound). Third gear
involves pushing the ischial tuberosities back off the end of the
saddle, which moves the fulcrum of my femurs slightly more distal,
like choking up on a baseball bat, shortening the pedal stroke. This
new fourth gear, which came upon me as unexpectedly as a power-up in a
video game, involves the same position as third gear except for a
slight extra bend forward and just more pedal strokes, more quickly. I
wonder if I’ll be able to get to it again.

Galway Kinnell, “Why Regret?”

Once again, I’m reminded [follow this link, maybe?] about this fantastic poem, which I first came across cradled in the folds of an excerpt from Nick Hornby’s “About a Boy” within the pages of the December 22 & 29, 1997 New Yorker.

I had memorized the Kinnell poem back when I lived in Greenpoint in the winter and spring of 1998, when I still spent time walking over the Pulaski bridge to get to the subway to get to whatever job I might have had then. This 20-minute exercise afforded me the luxury of spending time memorizing poems off of index cards: I would carry the index card in my jacket pocket, or hold it in my gloved hands (this one is a winter memory, you see), while hustling across the freezing Newtown Creek toward the no. 7 train’s Vernon-Jackson stop.

Memorial Day of that year I bought my first bike and by fall of the next year I had sworn off the pedestrian transit of the bridge in favor of cycling over and taking the Queensboro bridge into Manhattan, one side effect being the loss of poetry-memorizing time. But every once in a while I look around for the Kinnell poem, which has gotten much easier to find since it was published in a book Strong Is Your Hold.

Unfortunately for me, Mr. Kinnell has revised his poem for publication (which is why I’m not putting the whole thing in this blog post; I remember the old poem, not the new one. It would be like showing a picture of a 2008 Jamis Durango and claiming, “This is the bike I bought in 1998, which freed me from the drudgery of walking across the Pulaski Bridge on winter mornings.”) I remember line 17 as being “muck, birdlime, slime, mucus, gleet, ooze,” not “glaim, gleet, birdlime, slime, mucus, muck” as it is in the book.

The Robbins poem, “Alien vs. Predator,” when compared to the Kinnell poem, just seems glitzy and shiny and made of tinfoil. Its delights are insipid compared to the deep wonder and insight of Kinnell’s verses.

 

“a little foam chiropractor”? Meh. What’s the fun in memorizing a poem like that?

Galway Kinnell, “Why Regret?”