T minus 18 days until we leave for our Colorado Rockies bike adventure! Im itching to blog about biking so I thought Id start a little early this time. Especially cuz I have a computer in front of me and Im too hopped up on caffeine to go to bed. For todays long ride we had perfect tour training conditions: sun, warmth, humidity, and trashed legs. Why are trashed legs perfect? Cuz on day 2 of a bike tour adventure you always wake up exhausted and wish you could stay in bed all day. Its the one thing I *hate* about tour cycling: not knowing how the heck youre going to get back on that bike again this morning and ride all freakin day. The remedy, however, is sugar. Pure, delicious sugar first thing in the morning, and lots of it--juice, brown sugar in oatmeal, chocolate croissants, however you can get fuel to your muscles. Unfortunately I did NOT eat that, because Im still at home and I should eat healthfully while Im training and blah blah blah. Which means that the entire first 90 minutes of our ride sucked, big time. Scowling, brooding, lamenting the tiny hill I had to climb on Mounds Blvd. But mostly silence. When my blood sugar is low and Im riding I get really really quiet. Thats how Kai knows something is wrong. Cuz when Im happy and fueled on a bike Im chatting up a storm. Not so today, I didnt have one nice thing to say at all. Luckily Team Tuominen consists of someone with erratic blood sugar (Senia) and someone with stable, unwavering blood sugar who know the warning signs and makes sure the other half of the team gets fueled before she bonks (Kai). After he deposited 20 ounces of Cherry Coke in me at a Woodbury gas station, chatty Senia was back and we were on our way to Hastings with lots of deep philosophical discussions to be had (what else can you do that generates as many happy chemicals as biking 75 miles?) and poetic observations about the land around us (doesnt St. Croix Trail look and smell like Central California?). It felt like minutes rather than hours when we arrived in Hastings, where we found a cute little restaurant in downtown that served the best burgers and sweet potato fries with blackberry ketchup. And Cherry Coke. Now, one thing is different this year about my refueling regimen. Im not eating wheat. What?!, you may ask, youre not eating wheat but youre downing french fries and sugar soda?! Yes, a seeming contradiction but heres why: I learned early this season that when I eat wheat my muscles burn and feel super inflamed after my long rides. For years I just thought that was from muscle breakdown or something, but after a little experiment this spring I linked it to wheat. This is actually quite devastating to me because my FAVORITE recovery food is pizza, and instead of taking gels while I ride I was eating PB&J sandwiches. So Im experimenting with other foods, namely ice cream and rice mac&cheese, but nothing is as easy as ordering a big, gooey pizza that gets delivered to your door after a long, exhausting ride. And I still havent found a real-food substitution for gels. Ah well. If you have any ideas send them my way. So our ride home from Hastings was well-fueled, and actually quite boring, scenery-wise. Im sorry, but Hastings and Rosemount have nothing on Cottage Grove and Afton. Luckily all the caffeine in my system made me downright loopy and I was giddy, recalling some of my and Kais adventures (this week we got caught in a rainstorm while golfing and cowered under a tree for 20 minutes in a deluge, then picked right back up again only to get eaten alive by mosquitos--check out my arms this weekend--and chased off the course by lightning. All in the name of adventure). All was well until we hit Eagan on the way home and I started to feel that first indication of an impending bonk. Lack of bike handling, slow reaction time, imagining a feast of chicken wings instead of the gel Im eating. Of course, when my blood sugar drops I dont actually realize it, cuz I kind of tune out of life for a while. Not good when youre crossing busy streets with mini vans who dont expect you to be there (sorry Eagan, but thats one thing I love about living in the city, drivers expect cyclists at every corner and I dont have to holler and point the Palm of Power to remind them to stop before rolling in front of the sidewalk. Woodbury, you do it too). Luckily, the stable-blood-sugar-half of Team Tuominen recognized my silence and suggested a gas station stop, which sounded like a gourmet gift from the cycling heavens. I was drinking the Gatorade before I paid for it, sat on the curb and proceeded to chomp down a two-serving bag of Lays potato chips and a king size Snickers. Now normally all three of those foods disgust me and taste like garbage chemicals, but today...they were foodgasm worthy. My teeth felt like the strongest chompers ever, like they could mash an obscene volume of potato chips and gulp them down like Kai swallows pizza (picture a pelican). Ah! It was SO GOOD! My teeth were So Strong! I was moaning and and sighing and exclaiming this is So Good! as people are filling up their cars and walking past me to go inside and pay. I didnt care. I was eating the best. food. ever. Ten minutes later were back on our bikes, and it was like a miracle. Whereas I had been on the verge of bonking before and possibly sending Kai to get the car and pick me up, all of a sudden I felt like a rockstar. I felt like a machine. Like I could just add more fuel and just keep going all night long. A hundred miles? No problem. Bike until we run out of money and gels? Bring it! Kai and I started planning our final training ride for next week--out and back to Taylors Falls? Ride to Duluth? Century ride around the metro? Any of the above! Im ready! That to me is the most amazing thing about cycling. Or marathoning. Or cross-country skiing maybe. At some point, you get conditioned enough and you get into that endurance zone and you can just. keep. going. Just add fuel and you are a machine. A never-ending, unbelievable machine that feels invincible. We hit that point today. We rolled into St. Paul feeling like we could just keep going. And it felt so magical. Its what I train for every year now, that feeling that I am a machine. Its a beautiful, amazing thing, to know that youve put in the time and you pushed yourself on those days when you freaking did NOT want to get out of bed, and you got out there and you worked for it and you didnt know if you could ever get there again, and all of a sudden youre flying and you feel like you could do it all day long. Thats why I bike. Thats why I push myself every year. And thats why I share it with you, in hopes that you have something you love like that too and it makes you appreciate it even for one day. That you have something magical, and maybe its not biking, but maybe its something that makes your life worth living and fighting for and you remember not to ever give that thing up even when it feels really freaking hard. And maybe sometimes Cherry Coke helps you get through it and you dont have to take any crap for that if you feel like a rockstar at the end of the day.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 04:28:33 +0000
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