Rutland Loop

Finally, a day approaching 70 degrees, a day that doesn't require multiple layers and a half hour to suit up. Though ferociously windy, there was no chill in the wind. I wore 3/4 length bib tights, two short-sleeved cycling jerseys (one a base layer and the other over the bib), and arm warmers. Perfect! No booties, no wind breaker, no layers, no full-fingered gloves. What a treat.

Psychedubstoevsky

Busted out the Steal Your Face skull and lightening jersey and, at one point, climbed a long hill on High St. Irie.

And the overall results were good too - 15.1 mph over 27+ miles, with plenty of climbing and the aforementioned wind. Felt strong today, pain-free, rested. Shoulders didn't bother me at all.

A fine route up past Holden Reservoir then 31 west to Paxton then up rt 56 to Rutland, a right onto Prescott St which turns into Hill Side Rd which is all downhill from this direction and which takes you by Alta Vista Farm and then down down down through oak and maple forest to Causeway St. Super sweet riding, and no cars to be seen for much of it.

Alta Vista Farm, Rutland

Have tallied something over 40 miles this week with the weekend still to come. Though this delicious weather isn't supposed to last. Colder weather on the horizon, could be cold rain Saturday morning, and then next week an arctic air mass moves in.

Not sure what's happening in East Burke, VT. Unfortunately, the Rasputitsa race organizers post course conditions on Facebook only, assuming, perhaps, that everyone is on Facebook. Alas, Team Shad has no Facebook presence so lacks the latest news from the race scene.

On the fly

Back in the Saddle

72 hours after being unable to use my right shoulder for much of anything, everything has changed. In my mind, the toothpasty calcium has broken up and dispersed and is no longer irritating the tendon. Maybe the 150 MGs a day of Diclofenac Sodium has helped that process, maybe not. It's hard to know without another x-ray. But I can lift my right arm now almost pain free. The range of motion is better than it's been in months. Bizarre.

Nevertheless, I started physical therapy today, an effort designed to re-open my shoulders & chest and loosen up some of the tighter muscles like the pecs which, taut as piano wire, are constantly pulling the shoulders inward. This will be an ongoing effort and Team Shad's medical staff has been directed to hire a full time masseuse to attend to Dubstoevsky's condition.

The good news is that I was well enough to get back in the saddle. Despite a ferociously gusty day, and despite the lure of a hot bath, sparkling mineral water imbued with lemon, and a good book, I made a late afternoon decision to ride, to put some miles under the tires, to loosen up the legs. And was glad I did.

I managed a 17+ mile super windy Reservoir Loop (including the South Rd climb). My Strava feed shows 16+ miles because I forget to push start until I'd ridden a little more than a mile.

Ended the ride with the climb to Bancroft Tower.

Bancroft Tower, March 29, 2016

A Setback: Pain, Lethargy, and a Raw Easter Sunday on which Gluttony and Sloth Supplant the Shaddian Will

Stock image of a calcific deposit in a shoulder

The shadow on my x-ray looked very much like this stock image of calcific deposits in a rotator cuff (above). In my case, the shark fin-shaped shadow seemed hazy and vaguely benign yet to a trained professional it symbolized pain, potentially severe, for the unfortunate one in whose shoulder the toothpastey ooze coalesced. In this case, Dubstoevsky's right pectoral fin.

Dubstoevsky as American Shad

What I've learned about this affliction has come from the internet and not from the mime-as-doctor known as Dr. Re (a man whose last name even seems an abbreviation). Perhaps because calcific tendonitis is fairly common in a given population of 30-50 year olds, the affliction must hold no intrigue or interest for Dr. Mime. He's obviously tired of discussing it with patients because at no point did he explain to me that this condition has two possible iterations; reactive (i.e., the body is reacting to something and leaving behind calcium in the rotator cuff; cause unknown); and degenerative (a chronic condition in which the tendons are actually degenerating; thought to be age-related). Nor did he bother explaining that the stage at which the calcium deposits begin to break up (whether spontaneously, which is not uncommon, or from treatment), is the painful part. Seriously painful.

The anatomy rendition

So perhaps waking up Friday morning in surprising discomfort, with the right shoulder throbbing dully but continuously, was a good thing. Perhaps it meant the calcium was starting to go Soviet Union on me and was entering the break apart stage. I sought a silver (not calcific) lining to the pain so seized on the dissolution stage as the likely reason for the intensification of discomfort.

Unfortunately, what it also meant was very limited movement of the right arm and the need to be constantly aware of what you would otherwise not give a second thought to: putting on a shirt, reaching for a pen, shifting into 5th gear. Every basic movement held the possibility of radiating pain, like flashes of evil genius lighting up the temporal lobe of a psychopath.

Pain that causes you to alter how you get along on a daily basis is ever humbling. You quickly realize how complex the body is and how interdependent its many moving parts and systems are in order for it to operate smoothly and efficiently. You cannot neglect one part and expect all the other parts to function perfectly.

Easter Weekend Training Camp

A complete loss. I'd hoped to build on Tuesday's strong 28 miles by back-to-back Easter weekend rides; a big Saturday ramble of 30 or 40 miles, followed up with an Easter Bunny chase on Sunday, another 30 miles or so. It was not to be.

Saturday, the arm was useless. I knew as soon as I woke that riding was out of the equation. I shook down Team Shad's medical staff for half a trampy doll* (25 mgs) and some jolly green meditation and repaired to the claw foot tub in which I soaked, uninterrupted, for almost two hours (having to drain the tub nearly empty twice in order to refill it with hot water piped from the upper reaches of Hades). I read about the cretaceous extinction in Elizabeth Kolbert's superb "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History." Though not mentioned by name, the shad and its order clupeiformes probably emerged during the late cretaceous period and apparently survived the Great Impact, the asteroid that struck the Yucatan Peninsula and effectively brought the cretaceous period to a close (ending, as well, the reign of dinosaurs like the Mawgasaurus).

So the shad has longevity on its side.

Easter morning dawned raw and gray. Though the shoulder seemed better, and though under normal circumstances, the inhospitable 40 degree overcast day would not have been a deterrent, today was different. Dubstoevsky, softened by hot baths & pharmacological ingestants and facing the prospect of a mid-afternoon gastronomical event, gave about five minutes of serious consideration to riding before abandoning the thought completely.

The thing is, the arm is strong enough to perform 12 and 16 ounce curls without difficulty; the weight of the common table fork does not unduly stress the shoulder when lifted repeatedly from plate to mouth; and the possibility of inhibiting the calcific toothpaste dispersal by over-taxing the rotator cuff in the course of cycling, all these things convinced me that a second rest day was in order. To force a ride today, I told myself, would be to go against the inexorable tide of sloth and gluttony. It was a Christian holiday after all and the only good thing about the Church is the holidays that its tradition has bequeathed to our modern culture so that secular humanists like myself can enjoy a day off or a guilt-free opportunity for overeating and over-drinking.

So what of the "shaddian will" and the relentless energy that comes natural to the Alosa Sapidissima? Abandoned for a day. Dissipated in a cloud of orthodox incense wafting from the censer, floated away with the ethereal plainsong of the devoted.

Times like this are like being dragged out to sea by a riptide; one's only hope for survival is to yield to the tide and allow oneself to be swept along with the current until the current itself tires of its relentless pull. Only then should you regroup and reach inside yourself and, like Bullwinkle pulling a roaring rhino head from the top hat, yank up a cache of shaddian will and get your ass back to swimming.

* "trampy doll" is slang for Tramadol, a prescription painkiller

Tuesday

Just Tuesday. But sunny, bright. I summoned the motivation and went out. It was the right thing to do. On the 28+ mile loop, I saw this:

Holden Reservoir

That was enough to fill the day with goodness. I felt strong, too, a bonus. Windy, but there was no bite in today's wind. I dressed correctly. Though when the sun sank low enough and I rode in shadow, that was chilly. But not until near the end, at which point I ramped up my effort and went all out.

Oh, the snowstorm I mentioned previously did happen, but in a very benign way. We got maybe 5 inches overnight on Sunday but Monday warmed up and most of the snow melted. In the hilly forest slopes, some remains, as the photo below on Reservoir Rd attests. But the storm was more or less a non event and won't compromise training at all.

Bailey Rd, March 22, 2016

Rasputitsa Training Camp, Day 1

Team Shad team cars

With a little less than a month before the Rasputitsa, Team Shad met in Orange, Massachusetts, a town clearly misnamed as there is nothing bright or wholesome about the place; it is, in fact, desolate & run down, a small enclave far from anything meaningful. But the parking was convenient, in a mostly empty lot next to the Honest Weight Brewery, and peeing into the ditch separating the lot from the railroad tracks was convenient.

We are a team of two: Dubstoevsky, Team Leader, and The Virginian, stalwart assassin & congenial cycling mensch whose generosity is boundless and whose killer instinct is unpredictable. He is, as I've long said, the man you want on your team.

Downtown Orange, on the way out

We opted to ride out of Orange because we'd explored the roads to the north of there before, last November on road bikes. On that ride we'd ended up doing a fair amount of hard-packed dirt, more than we'd wanted to at the time. However, for Rasputitsa Training Camp, that's exactly what we wanted, miles of packed dirt roads, and maybe some wood roads and trails of various conditions. We wanted to simulate at least some of the conditions that we're sure to encounter at The Rasp. We weren't disappointed.

Oxbow Rd, Orange
Dirt just 1.5 miles into the ride

Several righteous stretches of clay-sand-packed hill roads swept us along Oxbow Rd and Pine Hill Rd and Town Farm Rd, still bright sun, shadows from the naked hardwood, the day hinting at warmth though not quite getting there. The Virginian and I pushed each other. We talked about strategy for the Rasp and how to approach it. I offered him free rein; if he wanted to launch ahead and get his best time, I wouldn't hold him back. We did agree that we wouldn't attack each other.

But that wouldn't be true on a training day so I kept a wary eye open and reeled him back after a couple friendly launches.

Perfect conditions

The Virginian on the attack

Dubstoevsky restoring order

Eventually, we exited the back country dirt packed roads and plunged into the woods. Conditions deteriorated quickly.

We reminded ourselves that decades-ago we had gone night mountain biking together, on several occasions. "In the winter" The Virginian added.

Today, we were on a woods track that appeared as a dotted line labeled Royalston Rd on the photocopied page from the NH Gazetteer I'd brought along. We hoped the track would connect back up with North Main St near the NH border, but in a way it didn't matter because this was real Rasputitsa terrain. We reassured ourselves that it would have to end up somewhere (as if that weren't a universal truism of every trail anyway).

Entering the forest

Mountain biking skills preferred

Crunching through the icy forest run-off

At one point we came to a frozen-over set of tire ruts on a logging road. We exploded through them like stampeding mastodons, shattering the thick ice into a thousand diamond shards and sending a tsunami of muddy water into the beaver marsh on either side. Then we posed like Zeus and Thor to immortalize the moment.

We leave shattered ruts in our wake

Full disclosure: ATVs had mashed through the ice ruts; we gingerly negotiated our way around the edges. The day was far too cold to risk getting wet. I'd even had second thoughts riding up the middle of the old abandoned wood road, draining as it was with an inch or more of water sluicing its way through icy, pebbled crust; one wrong tire turn and I'd be down. Luckily, that never came to pass.

Unluckily, I found myself quite chilled for much of the first half of the ride. Initial climbing early on caused me to break a sweat; then a fair amount of descending on pavement cooled me down quickly. For the second ride in a row, I'd misjudged my layers. Today, I could have used a 4th layer, or perhaps even just a brown paper shopping bag against my chest - I'd consciously eschewed it today, thinking that the Gore base layer, the fleece long-sleeve middle garment, and the thick neoprene Gore anti-wind top layer would be sufficient. It wasn't. When we finally got back to the team cars, the temperature hovered around 40 degrees, but for much of the ride it was below that, and, as expected, the day had grown overcast, obscuring any warmth from the wan sun.

But the day was a success. 37.2 miles, almost the length of the Rasp (which is a shade above 40). Three hours and fifteen minutes in the saddle, certainly more pavement than the Rasputitsa and perhaps not quite as challenging terrain over all, but for the first day of training, we were pleased. We'd acquitted ourselves well and concluded that Team Shad is on course for a strong race next Month.

Meat Raffle

March 19, 2016

I got excited by the idea of the meat raffle but a sign just further along indicated that it's April 2, not today, so I rode on. Who knows what else goes on in the hills of Rutland? I was just passing through.

Rutland blue

Today the sky was BLUE. A blue ride, a blue sky, a blue degree of fly. Sail on. Wanting 30 miles today, colder than it looks. Blue cool, under-dressed; two rides in a row, wardrobe miscalculation. Today's ride proved colder than I dressed for; though it was 44 degrees when I left, it was a chilly 44 with occasional wind activity. Not gusts or bellows, and not steady, but periodic swirls of chilly air blowing right in the face. Winds are always headwinds, no matter in which direction you ride. I sweated, sopped a layer, hit downhills, cooled way down quickly, never quite warmed again. Would have like a thicker middle layer.

Several faces of BLUE:

Woo City Blue

A trio of giant oaks

Atop airport hill

Kettle Brook Reservoir, Number 2

Kettle Brook Reservoir, Number 2

Back at Team Shad HQ after two and a half + hours in the saddle, soak layered & chilled through, head straight to the hot shower. Dried and dressed in clean warm clothes, hungry & thirsty like a Visigoth after a day of rampaging; slake my thirst lust with the Framing Hammer, a Baltic Porter.

Recovery drink

34 miles, 1700+ elevation. On track to notch the 63 mile weekly mark dictated by Crusher. The nor'easter we were all worried about that was supposed to hit tomorrow, has fizzled. Any snow that occurs (a couple inches?) won't start until tomorrow evening. That means The Virginian and I are on for a cross bike adventure, dirt forest roads in southern New Hampshire, cracked pavement out of Orange, Mass.

Unprepared for the Unexpected

All day I gazed out the window onto a mild sunny day, biding my time until I could sign out of work and hit the road.

The time came. I donned arm warmers, then debated. Would I need them? Might as well, could always take them off. Long sleeve windbreaker? Nah. Booties? Nope, no need. Skipped the brown paper bag as well.

I'd read of rain in the forecast but understood it to be a late evening event. Striking out from HQs, just underway I saw the first big dramatic clouds of the day looming on the horizon.

A mix of clouds and sun

It's obvious where this is going.

I reached South Rd, the mile long climb to rt. 31. I'd planned to head to Paxton then north on 56 to Causeway Rd. I got to the top of the climb and the intersection with 31 and just as I turned left, the darkening gray sky boomed. Thunder! Foiled.

I abandoned the route and decided to head in the opposite direction; to the northeast where the sky still seemed reasonably bright. So I raced back down South Rd, took a left at the Reservoir, hammered across the half mile or so to Bailey Rd, then up, all on nice new pavement, to Putnam Rd. I stopped briefly to don the European neck warmer and my insulated cap, then raced off again.

But it was no use. With around seven miles to go, the rain came. Lightly at first, then steadily. An icy rain, with occasional solid droplets. Hail? Much of the run back to Woo is downhill and I hurled along with Buddha-like acceptance of the moment.

With the wetness

In the end, I was pretty soaked and decently chilled. Not shivering chilled, thankfully, but cold enough. Wet feet (booties!).

But I did get in 16+ miles today. That's good because "Crusher" Mawgs has taken a keen interest in Team Shad and the run-up to the Rasputitsa. He demanded I ride a minimum of 63 miles a week between now and race day. That's doable, if the weather cooperates. I'm reading ominous reports of a potential nor'easter this coming Sunday afternoon (late day, I hope). The first day of spring. Possibly 13 inches of snow. Classic New England. Fucknatty!

But as for reaching the Boar 63 threshold this week, not a problem given the 16 today. Assuming the storm smashes in late Sunday afternoon, the Virginian and I will ride in the morning and early afternoon so should get between 35-45. Saturday is supposed to be cool, clear & sunny so I could easily go for 30.

Numerological Note: 6+3=9 /3 = 3; likewise, 6-3=3; 9 = 3|3|3

Ah, but if only the whole ride today could have been under a sky like this:

Before the storm, St. Patty's Day 2016
Woo City