Life On Two Wheels

Along the river and toward the mountains a morning shadow shimmers across the road. The rays of the first light jet through the trees and across a figure gliding upon the road. His breath trails in short spurts, petrified as it hits the icy air. All is quiet except the slight sound of the athlete as he summons himself for yet another days work. Soon the rest of the world will bustle with life as well and the brief simplicity of cyclist and nature will disappear into the everyday struggle of life in full motion; the errands and intervals, the appointments and intersections, and the deadlines and finish lines OutPaceTheRace

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Boulder, Co- Feb 9, '06

Boulder, Co
February 9, 2006

It’s great to be back in the US, stuff is so much easier. Everything is so much more productive here; you can get ten times the amount of stuff done here in a day than you can there.
Although I went to Boulder in late December for a short team camp, I never really got to know the place. I didn’t realize how abrupt the plains hit the mountains. It’s like the mountains suddenly sprouted- there are no foothills or anything to suggest that mountains will be in the region, they’re just there. Strange. It makes for perfect riding though; you can go do an easy 5 hour ride in the plains or a hard 5 hour ride in the mountains. Except for the altitude, the riding would be perfect, but at 5500 feet, the weather can change in an instant- you don’t get the consistently mild weather that you get in Washington. There at least you always know it’ll be raining, in Boulder it can be 60 degrees in the morning and 20 in the afternoon & snowing. Kind of abstruse really.
Today was a bit frenzied; it put the streamlined US culture to the test. I first had to get my training bike from the trailer, which was at the tire shop getting new tires, then I had to ride over to the Chiropractor for an appointment, and then I had a 5 hour ride to do. It all worked out and I ended up getting back at 5:00. Not your typical European day.
I’ve never actually been to a chiropractor before and had a preconceived notion that they were a bit of a hoax. But indeed, after the appointment I realized that they do a lot and play a ridiculously important role in sports therapy. After the crash apparently the left side of my body wasn’t working as well as the right, so he used his contraption (a laser that sends signals to malfunctioning ATP in the mitochondria) to reset the faulty impulses that the cells were receiving. After he reset them the cells were “firing properly” and the left once more worked as well as the right.
The five hour ride was meant to be very easy so that I could get my legs back after the flight. It all went smoothly; I profusely enjoyed riding in an area with so many different choices of road. They oil the dirt roads here, so their super smooth & of course, since their dirt, they’re less traveled. On a five hour ride the more you can shake up the monotony of the ride the better, and often the dirt roads are the key to the shake up.