bikelovejones

Good morning! As promised, here’s my interview with bicyclist and author David Rowe:

1. It seems that a certain personality type is more commonly drawn to the challenges and rewards of long-distance cycling. Can you describe what kind of person that might be?

I’ve been into randonneuring long enough now that I am beginning to forget what it was like to ride with a club on Saturday mornings, but when I did, I recall thinking that sport-rec riders who decide to ride centuries are, on the whole, goal-oriented people. One of the most typical conversations you’ll hear on a Saturday morning ride is about the selection and planning for a major event in the season. Riders who are into randonneuring are even more focused on their season plan, and their goals, which they talk about and write about in their blogs.

Long distance riders are independent people. They tend to deal pretty well with adversity, and they don’t often quit too easily. I was just looking at the ride rosters for the past 10 years at Race Across Oregon. It was interesting, because I saw a number of cases where a rider DNF’d (did not finish) the ride on the first attempt, but came back the following year and finished at the front of the pack. Obviously, that took some focus.

Long distance riders love the outdoors. I haven’t met a rider out there who doesn’t go weak in the knees when they are riding off the back side of Mt Rainier next to a river or a creek that’s roaring down the mountain, along side them. They love the elements, all of them. Well, maybe not the rain!

2. What are some mental "tricks" that you play with yourself when an especially long ride turns grueling, when you're still a long way from home and you either quit and call for a ride or keep going? What do you do to get yourself to keep going?

I have found that my gremlin can show up on my shoulder at any time; it doesn’t have to be deep into a long ride. It can happen right out of the gate on a shorter one. Just the other morning, I was doing steady state intervals on the trainer, and it was very hard going, and I wanted to quit!

The first thing I do is to get a conversation going with that voice that’s talking smack to me. I ask myself questions and in the process, I remind myself of why I am riding the bike in the first place. I love to ride, so if I’m not having a good time, there is definitely something going on. If it’s physical pain, I usually know how to deal with it, and I do, knowing that it may take a while to work through it. I just keep reminding myself that the rough patches never last.

Of course, they can last a very long time … and it helps to have some mental arrows in your quiver. For example, when I was climbing Bow Summit for example, during the Rocky Mountain 1200, my quads were so painful that I could no longer climb out of the saddle. I am not well trained to climb sitting down, but that’s what I had to do and I was hurting, big time.

Randonneurs will always tell you the way to handle times like these is to do is to focus on making it to the next control. That’s always worked for me, but that morning, on that climb, the next control seems way to far away. Fortunately, my coach had shared a mind game that he uses. He told me that if you don’t think you can make it to the control, then look at the cue sheet and set the next turn as your goal. If the turn is too far away, get your head up, and pick out a landmark – a tree or a fencepost in the distance – and set that as your goal.

I was picking out trees up the mountain, and I would tell myself that once I made it there, I could get off the bike and think about quitting, but not before, and then I’d focus on getting there. Once there, I’d make a deal with myself: ride to that next tree and we’ll think about it then. I must have done that 20 times climbing that pass. When we reached the summit at 2100 meters, the pain vanished, like it always does. We took some pictures and were rewarded with an 80 kilometer downhill run. The entire way down the other side of that pass I kept telling myself, “this is the reward. This is why you worked so hard,” printing the memory of that awesome glide on my long-term memory, and linking it with the pain you sometimes have to endure to accomplish meaningful goals on the bike.

3. A couple of years ago, I rashly signed up to do a night time populaire (100k), even though I knew my night vision issues might pose some problems. I gamely rode a little over 50km, but really struggled when the sun had fully set. Ultimately, I abandoned a little past halfway because riding further would have been unsafe. In my situation the signs were crystal-clear; I was dizzy and couldn't see the white lines in the road anymore. Although I was very sad to have abandoned -- my legs felt good and had another 50km in them -- I knew I'd made the right decision.

But in less obvious situations, how do you gauge when it might be time to stop a ride, to abandon, because continuing would be ill-advised and possibly medically unsafe? Do you have a mental checklist that you run down?

I try to understand what the issue is, what the probable long-term affects are, and if the continuing the ride is going to put me in immediate danger. And if not, whether completing it is worth doing more damage. If it’s an important ride – say, my annual goal ride – and the issue is soft-tissue-related (muscles, tendons, ligaments), then I would be inclined to continue, because I know that will heal. But there’s a cost to that decision, usually measured in the money I spend at physical therapy.

How do you listen to your body when the signs are more subtle? Have you ever regretted abandoning even when it was medically advisable to do so?

I’ve never abandoned a ride, and I consider myself fortunate on that count. I would, though, if the cost of continuing were greater than the reward of finishing, no question about it. It really wouldn’t take much. I can’t see without contact lenses. If I lost one I could not see, and I’d be endangering myself to continue, so I’d call it done.

Conversely, Have you ever pushed on and regretted that? How do you reconcile yourself with these issues?

Sometimes, the cost of quitting is very high. If you quit a brevet, you’re going to inconvenience someone, probably the ride organizers, or a friend, a partner or a spouse. If you do that you need to be damned sure you can’t go on. I think that pressure is healthy. It may be just the thing that gets you through a rough patch.

As I said, I’ve pushed on, knowing that I was doing further damage to a soft-tissue injury, many times. Repetitive motion injuries are a consequence of cycling long distances. I have an open account at Life’s Work Physical Therapy! Sandra and David understand and appreciate what I do to my body, because they are both athletes and they’ve been there. They never lecture me when I come back from a 1200K with an injury I could have avoided by abandoning.

I guess I’m avoiding your question: yes, I have regretted pushing through. Last October, I had the opportunity to ride with the Seattle Randonneurs up to Sunrise Lodge on Mt. Rainier. It was a beautiful day, but winter was going to arrive in a major way the following day, so I went for it. The ride was so spectacular, that I found myself just flying through the route with my pal John Kramer. When we reached the turn-off to the lodge, the road grew very steep. I just cranked up the iPod and got into a rhythm, out of the saddle. It was a 15-mile ascent.

About 5 miles up, my right knee began to bark at me. I’d been rehabbing it since the Rocky in July, and it was mostly healed. I thought about backing off, just sitting down, and putting it in the small chain-ring. But my legs were great and I wanted to ride up there with the lead group. I thought, “hey, it’s the end of the season, this will heal in a month, go for it.” I did … and today – five months later – I’m still dealing with it.

Can I reconcile it? No, I can’t. Looking back on it, that ride wasn’t so important that I should undo the work that Sandra and I had done to rehab the knee. Can I learn from it? You bet. Will I apply what I’ve learned? This morning, when my patellar tendon flared-up during the third 10-minute steady state interval in my work-out, I decided to bag the fourth. I don’t know that I will have that much self-discipline on a brevet.

4. In your book, you speak repeatedly of the importance of a supportive spouse/partner. Give me an example of a time when you badly wanted to train or go on a particular riding event and your spouse really, really wanted you to stay home. How did you reconcile each others' needs?

My wife is a very independent person. One of the benefits of planning my ride calendar early is that I can give her a heads up on when I’m going to be traveling for a ride, and that gives her an opportunity to plan to do things with her friends.

My wife has never asked me to cancel a planned ride, not even when I offer it up. I’m not saying that she has never wanted me to bag a ride. I’m sure that she has. But she would never ask. She wants decisions like that to be mine. If I am tuned into her wavelength in the days and hours leading up to a ride, I know when it’s a good idea to change my plans.

Actually, being separated from her is the one thing that I don’t like about long distance riding. I always struggle during the first few hours after I’ve left her to travel to Washington or some such place, away from home, for a brevet.

Has there ever been a time when you ignored or overrode your wife's wishes and rode anyway? What were the results of that decision and how did you work things out afterwards?

I cannot think of a time that I consciously chose to ride the bike when she needed me at home. Our conflicts arises when I let cycling take too much of my waking hours, and things get out of balance. She gives me feedback, and I am usually appreciative of it, because if things are out of whack with the one I love the most, chances are, life is out of balance elsewhere, too.

4a. Does your wife ride a bicycle much? If so, do you ride together? Can you describe the type and quality of the rides with your wife; and do you ever worry that they take away from efficient use of your training time?

She has a bicycle, but she doesn’t ride except during the summer months. We like to ride along the Willamette River on the Spring Water Corridor; the ride from the Sellwood Bridge to the Steel Bridge and back is one of her favorites. We’ve done rides in the French Prairie – picnic rides with friends – and she’s pretty comfortable on the farm roads where the traffic is light. I’ve taken her out on the Three Capes Scenic Highway, and while she loves the area, she really can’t enjoy the ride because of the traffic out there in the summer time.

I never confuse riding time with her with training time. They are totally different ways of riding. I love to ride with her, even though she isn’t on the bike more than a few times a year. But seeing her flying down the road is a great feeling, even right now, just thinking about it.



(David Rowe. Photo by L. Fitzsimmons.)

David’s eBook, The Ride Of Your Life, is now available at www.RoadBikeRider.com