It's been too long since I've been on dirt. Months of being a roadie have softened me, stolen my resolve to rip. The hiatus has killed my confidence and robbed me of my dirt legs. I feel vaguely soilsick as I buck over the whoop-dee-doos that used to disappear under my wheels.
But most tragically, I feel slow.
I can still outride my dad and his friends, of course, though not by much. The long breathers I used to take every so often -- long enough for the fog to disappear from my glasses and the sweat to dry on my face -- have been reduced to minor lapses in my suffering. I can already hear tires rumbling toward me on the trail, and I haven't yet grabbed my water bottle.
Conventional wisdom says the person who rides fastest gets the longest breaks. Conventional wisdom forgets that the person who rides fastest might also hurt the most.
Indeed my lungs hurt, my legs hurt, and so does my pride. I'm caught between multiple rocks and at least one hard place. I'm quick enough not to really be slow, but I'm too slow to really be fast.
What ever happened to pounding pavement in the quest of becoming better XC racers? Cadel Evans, once a cross country racer, now has a second career as a GC contender at the Grand Tours. Lance Armstrong can show up to the Leadville 100 and make 14,000 feet of off-road climbing look like a weekend spin in his pancake-flat native Texas.
On the other hand, I approach this 6.5-mile loop as enemy territory, every rock and tree stump a threat to my flow.
Feeling fast isn't just about the numbers on my computer, or the time it takes to complete one lap. Those kinds of metrics can be influenced, favorably or not, by soil conditions and humidity -- even whether I ate Italian or Indian the night before.
Really feeling fast is about being deaf to everything but the whoosh of air in my ears. It's about riding so hard uphill that sweat washes over my top tube, then dropping off the backside and being bone-dry at the bottom. Fast is when smooth banked corners feel like straightaways, and horizontal feels like vertical. It's about longing to session a section of trail I nailed, but knowing it won't be the same a second time.
Today, I have none of that.
It's sweltering, and my breathing is labored at the slightest incline. The soupy humidity nullifies my sweat -- nature's AC, if I could even inert myself to a sustainable cooling speed. No, I move at a snail's pace, but with a hummingbird's heart rate. I sometimes imagine a side view of my torso -- head and shoulders completely still, gliding through space, while my legs and bike absorb the rollers underneath. Today, each earthy undulation murders my momentum, reminds me that I can no more control this aluminum appendage than the sky above and the trail below.
One lap down, zero laps to go. These 6.5 miles took me nearly as long as two laps would have in my heyday. I roll into the parking lot, ready to load my bike and towel off. But I must wait -- my dad has the keys.
I'm still faster than the old guys.
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