It may come as a shock, but there was a time in my life when I wasn’t seriously engaged in cycling. Yup! I had that section of the trajectory that is often labeled “Career and Family.” It could as well be said to be, “Getting Fat and Out of Condition.”
During that period, I became a somewhat less than frequent rider and runner. Then I rode more than a ran. (Running hurt more. Face it, I was getting heavy!) Riding contained some element of joy and escape.
I came to the place where I decided to “do something about it.” It took me a while to make all the changes in life that I needed to. Along the way, my running “career” ended forever. (An accumulation of over-use and impact injuries and some stern warnings from the medicine men put an end to all that running stuff.)
So I included riding as part of my “Recover Health and Sanity Program.”
All this was fortuitous. My Daughter was of just entering that age where it is fun to teach and train a child to ride. (More on that in a moment.)
At that point, I was down to one bicycle. It was an antiquated, clapped out, decrepit steel road bike. I had long since dubbed this beast the “Iron Eagle.” It was heavy, ugly, and not very capable. But it was honest and (mostly) reliable. And so, gradually, I re-entered the world of cycling.
After a year of struggling to recover some kind of condition, I was starting to feel pretty good. The weight was coming off, and the wind was returning. Along the way I’d started paying attention to the cycling world again. I quickly noticed that, while I’d been away, things had changed. By that, I mean that things had really changed!
There was all plethora of the new in the world of two wheels. New kinds of clothing. (No more itchy, smelly, wool shorts.) There was a lot of new equipment. There were new kinds of bicycles. New Drivelines. New frame materials. New accessories.
Possibly the most startling new thing was that training had changed.
Back when I was pursuing racing, we’d trained. That meant getting on the bike and riding as hard as we could, for a long time, as often as humanly possible. There wasn’t a lot more to it than that. Now things were different. The exercise physiologists had got into the act. Periodization and heart rate training were now all the rage. I started paying attention.
The first training “tool” that I acquired was one of the, then brand new, “cyclocomputers.” This little gadget was, by today’s standards, pretty basic and clunky. But it was electronic. It ran on batteries. It told me how fast I was going, how far I’d gone, my average speed, and it had a stop watch. Cool. It also ate batteries for breakfast, and it broke after about a year of use.
By then my “stable” included three bicycles. There was the old Iron Eagle, the latest in a string of mountain bikes, and a brand new, shiny, road bike.
My research had uncovered a new and wonderful bike computer. This gadget had a lot more functions than the old one. It could be used with an optional second mount, and could keep track of data on two different bikes. It included a heart rate monitor. It came with one bike mount, and a wrist strap that let it be used as a watch.
By today’s standards the thing was primitive and clunky, but at the time it was a marvel. Of course the heart rate part of it told me two things. The first was that my heart was beating. The second was the heart rate in beats per minute. Cool.
Fairly early on I discovered that this gadget had other wonderful talents. It was a really good detector for police radar, RF perimeter security systems, high-tension lines, and Ham Radio operators. When it was in the presence of almost any kind of electrical interference, it would just shut down. The first few times this happened were kind of disturbing. (I was climbing, working hard, and seeing a fairly high heart rate, and suddenly… ZERO!?)
For all its faults and shortcomings, the thing was a marvel, and I loved it. For the fist time in my life, I was keeping accurate training logs. I was able to adjust training in an intelligent and productive fashion. This was great! I even wore the thing, and kept track of my heart rate while I was doing yard work.
There came a Summer when we decided to take a real honest to goodness vacation, and to include cycling activities in it. We went up into the Smoky Mountains. We took the mountain bikes. My daughter and I were really excited. We had planned to go to a “Mecca” of the mountainbike world. We would have a day to play and ride at Tsali.
I last saw my wonderful heart-rate-monitor-two-bike-cyclocomputer on the Thompson Trail. We’d come around a bend in the mountain, and were approaching the deepest part of the “cove,” when we had to make yet another abrupt and rocky stream crossing. It didn’t look too bad, so I went for it. I dropped the front wheel into a deep hole, and the bike pitched up. I didn’t quite endo, but it was a terrific jolt. I clearly remember seeing the computer come out of its mount and float in the air in front of me. I was a little too busy to grab it.
PLOP! That was the sound it made as it hit the water. Then the thing demonstrated another, up until then unknown, talent. It could float. In fact, it could float so well, that the rushing stream carried it away, and over the side of the mountain. That fast, I was computerless and without heart rate monitor.
Fortunately, the “Industry” was ready for me. There was lots of new stuff on the market, just waiting for me.
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