Friday, July 09, 2004
Le Tour de Paul
In the summer of 1980, I worked in a bicycle shop in Harvard Square. There we would gather around and listen to Robert, the French expatriate, translate the race coverage from the French papers he would pick up at Out-Of-Town News. After work, I would "time trial" against myself on the way home, dodging potholes and bad drivers through the streets of Boston. Or I would ride for hours through the suburbs: Concord, Belmont, Lexington, Newton. Later that summer, I headed out with two co-workers for a ride across the country. I spent the next two months on my bicycle.
This summer, Le Tour has US coverage that's hard to avoid, including the option of watching the stage live, or on one of several tape repeats during the day on the OLN cable network. Inspired by all that coverage, and finding it hard to sit still during the motorcycle shots that feel like you are in the peleton, I set up a bike on a training stand I have in the basement. Today, thinking to use the TV coverage for motivation, I climbed aboard for my first cycling workout in probably over a year.
OW! OW! OW! Not good. Not good at all. In the first 30 seconds, my legs were burning, and after 5 minutes I gave in. It's hard for me to believe that these are the thighs that, in years past, raced through the streets of Boston, or cranked over the Continental Divide five separate times. I finished my workout walking on the treadmill. I joked to myself that now I could claim to be cross-training. Not a very funny joke.
OK, so, like, I know it's been 24 years, and I know that since that summer, I've fought cancer twice and developed cardiomyopathy. It's not like I forget that awful time when my weight fell to 113, and I had legs that looked like a chicken's. Or that just over 4 months ago I was in the ICU. And I was never as good a racer as the worst guy trailing off the back of the peleton in Le Tour. But it really upsets me that I can't even spin the pedals for a few minutes on a trainer in my basement. I feel disabled. Cycling used to be second nature, and now it's gone. Just gone. I can't believe it. Well, except that I felt it, and it hurt like real, physically and emotionally. I feel like I'm broken.
So, yeah, the plucky Paul is saying that if I keep doing 5 minutes at a time, then maybe I can build up, and really, I'm going to have to, because thighs as wimpy as these are unhealthy and maybe dangerous. And I'm smart enough to figure out a training schedule that will build me up. But to that part of me that remembers riding for hours on end, day after day, a training schedule that starts with a rather challenging goal of five minutes just feels so pathetic. The one positive aspect is that it's probably less complicated than learning to swallow again. Heh.
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OK, so now that I've had a good cry, I guess it's time to get on with it already. This is where I am, and moaning has never seemed to fix it in the past. (Though it did manage to fill up a blog post.) Still, five minutes? Sheesh.