Dubstoevsky and the Rigors of Shadity

In the weeks immediately following the D2R2, Dubstoevsky scales back his aggressive training and reins in his typically fast-forward pace. Months of training have come and gone and what's left is, well ... actually, there's plenty of nice weather still and an ample amount of late afternoon sunlight so really there's no excuse, other than the body's natural urge to pause, to not keep charging ahead at breakneck pace, to not maintain an unrelenting assault on ennui. 

In that happy light, Wing Nut and Dubstoevsky rendezvoused the Saturday following Team Shad's abbreviated D2R2 and, in semi self-flagellation mode, hammered out sixty redeeming miles. The Connecticut River was crossed four times at four different places.

4th Crossing of the Connecticut River, 
Sunderland, August 27, 2016

"Dub, it's water under the bridge"
August 27, 2016

Wing Nut, ever ready to sum up complex issues in succinct elocution, offered guidance.

"Dub, it's water under the bridge." 

And now the After Season (though not the Off Season).

Now the onset of autumn and the waning light. The certainty of New England cold. Who knows whether the coming winter will mimic last year's and be a rider's dream winter of no snow and mild weather, or be like two winters ago, a snow apocalypse. It's day to day, ride as one can, ride as mood and sensibility allows.

September has almost slipped away. Dubstoevsky has banged out solo rides in the hills outside Woo City, has lashed himself periodically on hard rushes past the half-empty reservoirs in Leicester and Paxton; though on the whole, there's been a waning of purpose. 

Then Dubstoevsky fled to California, to the high mountains, to the Sierra Nevada east of Fresno. He wanted to get away, to evaluate the season's ending. The stress of the six month run up to the Big Challenge and the frustrating outcome weighed on him.

He had to see the Giant Sequoias. He had to get away from the Shad.

In the company of giants

The President Tree
More than 3,000 years old

Being in the Giant Forest overwhelmed Dubstoevsky. Everywhere he looked, he saw tenacity. He saw the cartoon thighs of Eddy Merckx. He beheld the dogged force of enduring survival. A real gut-check. What was Team Shad and what did it mean to gnaw away ride after ride, honing the sinewy gnarl of quad and calf?

In the end, nothing compares with standing in the shadow of a 3,000 year old Giant Sequoia. Dubstoevsky soul-searched, ran his fingers through his non-existent hair, he gathered duffel bags of sequoia cones so that later he could lay in a porcelain bathtub immersed in the trees' clustery seed husks. There was power to be had, genius to be understood and wrestled with, there was the possibility of attaining the kind of true humility that shields one forever from shame and scorn.