IT’S NOT WHAT’S IN YOUR LEGS — IT’S WHAT’S IN YOUR HEAD
PSYCH 101 – You’re Only As Good As They Think You Are!
You train hard through the winter. Spring comes and you ride better. You’re no longer a follower, and you’re not having to suck wheels so much any more. You’re not getting dropped on the hills — you’re actually doing some dropping. And you’re not trying to close the gap with your pals; more and more they’re trying to close the gap with you.
Thankfully, you’ve got all that off your back. No longer do you roll out of the garage for the club ride knowing you’re going to get trounced. Now, people around you are getting trounced while you’re comfortably sticking with the pack. Even when the fast guys get rolling, you’ll be with them all the way back to the shop.
Feels great, doesn’t it? Not a worry in the world, right? All that hard work paid off in spades, as they say. Now it’s all there for you to enjoy. Or is it?
Here comes the reality check.
Where one monkey once sat atop your shoulder, another seemingly has taken its place. The one we used to call disappointment, and at other times went by the name of frustration, or humility, has kindly been chased off, only to be supplanted by his evil twin whom we’ll call alternatively by the names of fear, expectation, or unending pressure.
My story goes like this: For the past few seasons, the hierarchy within our small group of riding partners has been relatively stable. I was not the weakest of the bunch, but precisely one step up from it. I wasn’t the last one up the hill, but typically next to last. Steve was in front, Big Diesel was slightly behind. From year to year, our little group got larger and stronger, and we’ve continued to challenge each other subtly but effectively. But rankings within the bunch hadn’t changed much. First Time Phil started joining us, and he quickly slotted in ahead of Big Diesel, but behind me, and Stray Dog found us and quickly became the top rider in our gruppetto. If you’re following the math, that leaves yours truly exactly in the middle, where this story began.
Then I spent last winter on my Cyclops doing interval indoors, and, ou est la! things changed in my favor.
Breaking it down, Big Diesel and FTP are Cat 5s, Steve, who hasn’t garnered a nickname (but may soon if some of the taunts by Stray Dog stick) is a 4, and Stray Dog is a 4 who intends to cat-up to 3 this season.
That’s our fine group, and I’ve usually been the 5 who could ride closest to the 4s — but posed little threat. That set up a comfortable dynamic in which I didn’t feel compelled to do a lot of pulling, for example. Let the 4s do the heavy lifting, since their engines were mightier. Matter of fact, I spent a lot of time in “energy conservation” mode. On the hills, my goal was to stay as close as possible to the rear wheel of one of the 4s — while being careful not to convey any sort of challenge because God knows I wouldn’t want the pace to rise, either. Okay, these tactics won’t leave you proud of your ride when it’s finished, but what’s a 5 to do?
But that’s in the past now. The earth has tilted slightly on its axis, and my playbook reads quite differently.
See, with a reasonably concerted effort over the winter, I’ve boosted my power and endurance closer to the level of Stray Dog and – at last check- marginally ahead of Steve. Stray Dog I don’t feel so compelled to go mano-a-mano with — but it’s lost on nobody that he isn’t entirely comfortable that I can stay close to him on the climbs. He won’t miss a chance to drop me, which says more about his insecurities than it does about my ability, if you follow me. Any other rider in our club that considers himself a worthy 4 – let alone a budding 3 – wouldn’t give me the satisfaction of showing signs that I present a challenge to them (because we would both know I don’t). But Stray Dog seems to be sending off a “fragile” scent, and at least I can be happy about that. [Note to the Dog: You don't really think I'm a threat, do you? That's just crazy, isn't it? You've been traveling a lot lately, does that hurt your form? Just wondering.]
Anyway, back to the group dynamic.
As winter dragged on, we got very few opportunities to get out on the roads. Finally we’d get a day above the freeze point, and out we’d go, bundled as if for the ski slopes. Immediately it was noticeable that Steve was hurting and getting dropped on climbs, and, for the moment at least, a “new order of things” was thereby established. Now my position rested comfortably as #2 to Stray Dog, and Steve, well he had become mid-Pack-Man (is THAT his new nickname? I think I like it A LOT).
Anyway, the problem for me was the target that drew on my back. And the magic markers used to sketch this in were held firmly in the hands of Steve, and myself.
Simply put, Steve – ahem, Pac Man – knew and I knew that eventually he must reclaim his rightful place.
It simply would not work for someone who never fails to chase a bunny up the road — to suddenly capitulate and accept a permanent lesser-role. No, it clearly disturbed his pride and he let it be known that by June, it would all have been my “moment in the sun” and nothing more. I give him credit, he’s been riding often and hard, trying to fulfill this commitment. [And, credit where credit's due, I'm still beating him].
In the meantime, I still need to go out there on a regular basis and reaffirm that the gap remains. I still need to pick my hills and do what it takes to drop him, so that we leave no question about the status of my newly elevated position.
On one recent ride I was going hard up one particularly steep hill and I hadn’t looked back, but something told me I’d gotten a gap on him. Now fear kicked in – the fear of blowing up and losing that gap – so I upshifted and pushed. Next thing I knew, there was a sound like someone’s cellphone ringing — and it didn’t sound like mine. Suddenly I feared someone coming up from behind. Was I about to be passed? I chanced a look around and found that, to the contrary, I was completely alone. There were maybe four riders from the club who’d dropped me and were visible up ahead, but Pac Man and the rest of the club were a good ways back and hadn’t even made it around the last bend. I was on my own little island of pain and suffering. Then the ringing happened again.
This time, I noticed it came from very nearby, and glanced down to find my Garmin 705 going bat-shit with a warning that I’d set a new all-time high on the heart-rate monitor.
And I did that racing against phantoms. That’s what the evil-twin monkey makes you do.
On another recent outing, we did a little over thirty miles and the whole time I felt like spoilt milk. I hadn’t ridden or exercised once that entire week. I told myself it was a recovery week. Actually, it was just a busy work week with too much travel. Now we were working our way home and the locally infamous Hog Hollow climb lay ahead, and I debated whether to mention that I was going to take it easy, rather than race up. There was a chance this would have relaxed Pac Man (Big Diesel was also there, but wasn’t going to be a factor on the climb), and we’d roll up nice and easy. But the monkey told me this would be like filling my pockets with chum and diving in the shark-tank, so I’d better keep my mouth shut and get my damn-self up the hill as quickly as possible.
We hit the bottom of the climb and I set pace, Pac Man lurking just beside my back wheel. I pushed a tempo I hoped I could sustain to the top, with just a percentage or two held back in case he made an attack. As we got to the final fifty meters, where the hill does a terribly short false-flat and then kicks sharply up to its steepest pitch yet (nearly 20 degrees, for those interested in the math), the monkey told me to man-up and go, and I chanced pissing off my heart-rate monitor once again and raced to the top.
Oh yeah, you know it hurt — bad.
Now, every weekend I expect that this will be the one I cave-in on. This will be the one when Pac Man sticks on my wheel, and finally edges ahead. Every weekend I go out expecting to blow up, and saddled with the burden of thinking about how to make sure that doesn’t happen. Every weekend I try to show more comfort than I feel; try to take strong pulls without letting my body show when it starts to get pained; try to figure out how to pace up the hills so as to discourage attacks, while reserving something for when they occur anyway.
Bringing this all to modern day, last Sunday we did the usual 30+ mile spin and I left the garage with the knowledge that the group had gone out the day before without me, and put in a hard 50+ miles. My legs would be fresher than theirs. It’d still be a hammer-fest because the Sunday route is mostly a mix of rolleurs and flats, with only one race-is-on! hill to climb. And it would be a hammer-fest because Pac Man and Stray Dog verbally bait each other endlessly. Stray Dog’s got the bigger engine, so he misses no chance to show it off, but Pac Man is the smarter rider and often coaxes Stray Dog to do things that result in his effort peaking somewhere short of the finish line. In any case, fuel an outing with equal doses of rhetorical gasoline and testosterone and what you get is anything but a recovery ride.
While these two street-fighters slash away at each other, mostly I aim to ride invisibly, conserving energy and waiting for moments to affirm my standing in the group. On our regular Sunday ride, that would be the aforementioned Hog Hollow. As we approached it this time, Stray Dog and Pac Man deferred to me to set pace — which was fine by me. I find it mentally less grueling to push myself than to feel like I’m hanging on while someone else dictates how hard we work. My approach this time was to go at it enthusiastically-enough so as to discourage early attacks, but saving something for the inevitable throw-down that Stray Dog would issue whenever he felt it was warranted.
As we got to the false-flat, Stray Dog stood and went, not jumping so fast, but telegraphing that it was time to ante up or fold.
All I knew at that moment was that Pac Man would fold. He is thoroughly convinced he cannot climb with Stray Dog. And he’s right. But knowing that he would fold meant that I could safely beat Pac Man, as well, because Pac Man would assume I’d give chase to Stray Dog, whom he was going to let get away. So Pac Man would choose to settle into his own pace to the top, and probably that would mean he’d ease up a bit from the pace I’d been setting. I knew all that in a second, and took advantage of it by standing up and giving a half-hearted pursuit to Stray Dog. There was no way I could beat him – especially since he had a jump on me – but there was also very little hill left, so he wasn’t going to beat me by much, in any case. Maybe a few seconds. Nothing to make a Cat 5 like me feel bad about when the guy up ahead is about a Cat-and-a-half higher.
The climb ended predictably, and for another week, the world-order was unchanged. Most of what transpired in that last 20% of the hill that ended up separating the three of us was about what was happening in each of our heads — not in our Quads. One guy had to win, and fear drove him to do what it took. One guy was convinced he couldn’t, and he dropped his chase as soon as he sensed it had become futile. I capitulated to Stray Dog for a similar reason, but also accepted the gratuity of an easy second place not by beating Pac Man, but by taking advantage of his belief that I could.
As I finish this off on Saturday night, I know that we’ll give it another go tomorrow morning, an in normal circumstances I’m convinced we’d have exactly the same outcome.
However, I’ve decided to play with destiny, and see if the outcome changes.
See, when we got done with the ride last week, I told Pac Man that he was letting himself off easy; that I was sure he now had the legs to stay with me, but that he was copping out. He admitted this might be the case. I told him that, next time, he should just decide that he wasn’t going to allow himself to drop; that he only did so when we were so close to the top of the hill — that there was no way he couldn’t give it just a little extra. He agreed this made sense. So I expect he will glue himself to my wheel as tightly as possible tomorrow morning, and if I’m to drop him, it’ll have to be through repeated attacks, or other tactics. While I don’t believe he can realistically drop me, I suspect he may finish on my wheel, and there’s truly nothing I can do about that.
On the other hand, I intend to give myself the same admonition when it comes to following Stray Dog, and he’ll be granted no walk-aways tomorrow. During the past week, I spent some time doing extra long and hard hill-repeats at max wattage on the indoor trainer bike, possibly building more confidence than anything else, but bracing myself for a peak-effort when the road pitches up to its max angle tomorrow morning.
I’ll let you know how it turns out.
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BMC Working Well
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