What is the `baseline?'

I started getting serious about cycling around 1996, as a way to not get too unbalanced with my job. 

Periodically I'd complete a training or competitive event and feel sore, beat up and fatigued.  I'd wonder if my `age' (50, at the time) caused me to be less resilient and to experience limits and physical consequences that I would have shrugged off 20 years earlier. 

I'm no further down the road with this question, sixteen (16) years later, now that I'm 66. 

As I increased the challenges and cycling demands on myself I'd feel the `consequences' from these efforts.  And still I'd wonder: "Would I feel this beat up if I were 25?"

Last Wednesday I rode with a group of really great people through some exceptionally demanding Arizona terrain.  Eighty-one miles (out-and-back) and 7,100 feet of climbing.  This was difficult but the distance and cumulative climbing didn't cause me to have to reach deep into my physical resources.  However, there was a ten (10) mile section on the return leg that was nothing but uphill, grades between 4% and 11%. 

Kirkland to Bagdad, AZ

This `blog' is entitled `Training Blog' because that is how I approach my cycling.  I'm not a recreational cyclist.  My deficiencies in life include being somewhat of a hermit, somewhat of a `driven' personality with enough insecurities that scare me into having to `prove myself' at almost everything I do.  Cycling, for me, is an almost `ultimate' form of staying sane and not letting the demons overtake me. 

So, on that ten mile stretch of road I demanded that I `pound' it, climbing at the highest gear and wattage sustainable.  There were several times when I said to myself `prudence suggests that you not `redline' it, Dan.'  But then there was `Bad Dan' who said `you HAVE more so you must GIVE more.  Otherwise you're just another old fart on a bike ride.' 

And I did give more.  I could literally feel it coming from the marrow of my bones.  And I heard that little homunculus inside of me was saying: "If this is the last thing you do you have to do it." 

Still, I was passed by two riders.  I rationalized being passed by discounting those two riders: "Classic cycling bodies: lightweight, thin and experienced.  One of them weighs 80 lbs less than me and is riding a `feather' bike.  You're `the Man,' Dan.  You're training on your 28 lb, loaded up fwd recumbent.  THEY couldn't do what you do!"

But that isn't the point.  The point is "why, when you know this is going to deplete you, are you letting yourself be so unwise?!"

Today, the third day after that ride, is the first day I feel like I'm among the living. 

Would I have been able, at age 25, to do what I did last Wednesday and not feel completely drained?

I don't know. 

But I DO know, that at age 25 I was still `over the top,' doing things that were way too demanding and unwise. 

So .. the more things change, the more ....

- d