Pace-line Harmony, and A Pool of Bonk in Plains, Kansas

Day 2 (Sat, July 10, 2010) – 138 Miles from Springfield, Colorado to Plains, Kansas

• The Joy of a Tailwind
• The Beauty and Harmony of Drafting
• The Misery of a Headwind
• Walmarting Rural America
• Warm and Genuine Concern
• The Art of Bonking

5:25 AM on Day 2 of the Prairie Ride v1, and Dave and I are standing at the c-store in Springfield, Colorado, wolfing down a banana and an orange, filling the water bottles with ice and Gatorade. The wind is up a bit out of the south already this morning, and we’re both hoping for a little more west in the wind as the day wears on. We’re filled with optimism and excitement over our upcoming ride for the day, hoping like crazy that we don’t have to face a headwind again. We will be disappointed on that count.

It’s 63 degrees, and the south wind blowing up a quiet and deserted Main Street has a lonely feel to it this early on a Saturday morning. The sun isn’t up yet as we pedal our way south along 287 to get back to 160. A couple of trucks pass us in that couple of miles, and we’re glad to turn east onto our lonely highway when we get there. We’re even more glad to feel just a touch of west in that wind, and we smile at the hope of tailwinds.

The sunrise this morning is beautiful, and I stop often to take pictures before settling in to a nice pace, listening to the morning birds, enjoying the sunrise ahead, reveling in a glass-smooth pavement, and basking in a slight tailwind. Life is truly good.

This morning Dave and I try a little drafting. Drafting isn’t something that Dave ever feels comfortable with, and I’m curious about whether he’ll get the hang of it and get comfortable with it on this trip. It’s a really smart way to ride on a trip like this, allowing the riders to conserve quite a bit of energy and make better time as a unit. Coming in to the ride, Dave was pretty sure that he wasn’t ever going to feel comfortable drafting someone else, but was fine if someone drafted him. Since Dave is considerably stronger than I am, this seemed like a pretty ideal arrangement to me. I could imagine myself hanging on to Dave’s wheel as he pulled me 700 miles across Colorado and Kansas, and this morning we were going to test whether we could work together going down the highway. Of course, I’d have been delighted to share the load and split the work so long as we rode at a pace that I could maintain, but Dave was just convinced that he wanted no part of riding so close behind someone else.

Drafting on a bicycle is a fun blend of art and science. The science part of it is that you have to be able to ride a straight line at a very steady pace. Wheels are sometimes only inches apart, and tiny little movements and speed changes can bring riders into unexpected and unwelcome intimate contact with the pavement below more quickly than you can imagine. The art part of it is that  you have to develop a keen unspoken communication and “harmony” with the other rider(s) in order for things to work smoothly and comfortably. It’s a really neat left-brain / right-brain integration exercise.

When you’re riding in a paceline with a person or group and everyone’s in harmony, it’s really quite a wonderful experience. I liken it to working with bird dogs with whom you are closely in tune. It’s also a lot like singing accapella with a group of people when everyone is tightly in tune with each other. The difference is that in a paceline, you can never let your concentration and focus slip for even a second – you have to keep both sides of the brain tightly engaged.

So as Dave and I ride along, I find myself working on to his back wheel, looking for a way to fall into that harmony. I figure that if we can develop it with me behind, he might just eventually develop the comfort to share the work.

And I discover something about riding that I’ve never really experienced before – that people can have drastically different riding styles that make finding that harmony impossible. Since the wind is primarily from our right, blowing slightly from the rear, the sweet spot of the slip stream is behind Dave and to his left. I find that spot and settle into it, and it’s really the perfect spot because its far enough to his left that I’m not right behind him, and can see up ahead just fine as we ride. I find the right gear, and settle into a nice cadence. Dave is doing his typical “looking over his shoulder” at me, but I’m used to that now, and figure that as we settle into a rhythm, he’ll become more comfortable that he’s not leaving me behind, and concentrate on holding his pace and watching in front.

But just as I’m feeling like we’re settling in to a nice pace, Dave sits up and drops his speed. It’s not a problem, since I’m off to his left anyway, so I just ease up beside him and glance over at him. Clearly he’s not winded, and I don’t really think that he’s wanting me to do the pulling, so I just ride beside him until he seems to drop back down and start a steady pedaling again, at which time I ease in behind him on his left again, find that sweet spot in the draft, and settle in to a nice rhythm again.

And again, just as I’m feeling like we are finding that nice steady pace, Dave sits up again and drops a couple miles an hour. Again, I ease up beside him and we ride side by side for a while, and after a couple minutes he drops back down and we do the whole thing over again.

After 3 or 4 rounds of this, I decide to just keep the same pace when he sits up, and I ease around him on the left, and pull over for him to fall in behind me. While I can’t keep Dave’s pace up for a long time, I figure maybe I can hold it for 30 seconds at a time to his couple minutes, and we can develop a nice pattern that way.

But looking in my mirror, I see that Dave is not sitting in my draft. So I drop the pace back figuring he’ll pass. Eventually he does pass, and then I drop in behind him, and we start that whole yo-yo process again. We go through this pattern several times, as we turn northeast and have a really steady wind at our back, until we hit some new chip seal surface and we’re riding apart because of the bad surface.

At first, this is really frustrating to me, as I can’t figure out what it is that I’m doing that is making it hard for Dave to find that rhythm. Funny how our mind does that – it’s always trying to figure out why it is that the other person doesn’t think and act just like we do. By the time we crossed the Kansas state line, I’d come to grips with a really simple truth that I’d just never really given much consideration to before.

People take really different approaches to riding, and their approach is usually the one that works best for them.

In my case, I love to find a sweet spot of exertion and a gear where I can hold a steady cadence, and just go and go and go. I love that steady rhythm and that perfect spot where the heart-rate, respiration rate, and cadence seem in perfect tune, and once I find it, I feel like I can go for hours like that. To me, that’s nirvana on a bike.

Dave, on the other hand, likes to change things up. He likes to vary his cadence, and his position, and his effort. He likes to vary them pretty often. This feels good to him, and allows him to maintain interest in the pedaling.

So as you can imagine, this difference in style would drive each of us nuts if we let it. What we settled on early on was that it works best if Dave gets ahead on the road, and varies his pace however he wants – just taking care to stay within sight when possible. I find a steady pace, and just hold it, knowing that Dave will yo-yo somewhere out in front of me, but will generally stay 100 or 200 yards ahead of me.

As we got a couple more days into the ride, I would discover that Dave’s style has an inherent advantage on multi-day rides like this, in that it seems to leave him less prone to saddle sores. My style has me spend a great deal of time in the same position, meaning that if, (and in my case on this trip when), saddle sores develop riding will become very uncomfortable, as my body has about 3 positions that it wants to sit in, and each of these positions has saddle sores intimately connected to it.

On this second morning of riding though, saddle sores are nowhere on my mind as I glide along a pavement that is generally glassy smooth with a wind at my back. The highway continues ENE as we make our way across western Kansas toward Johnson City. We’re feeling the wind shift a bit now, so that it is directly against our right shoulder as we continue down the road. We both know that this means once we angle back directly east, we’ll have a quartering headwind again – not something that we’re looking forward to.

By the time we roll into Johnson City, the wind has picked up to a steady 20+ mph. We stop at the only diner in town, and have a double cheeseburger for breakfast. We’ve put in 50 miles this morning before breakfast, and averaged 20 mph over that 50 miles. We’re feelin’ good right now, but we know we’re about to feel a lot worse once we start facing a piece of that wind.

I learned a lot about wind on this trip. Having grown up in Kansas, and ridden a lot in my younger days, I felt like I knew it pretty well, but I still had a lot to learn. For starters, a dead crosswind is a pain in the ass for sure, and certainly slows you down significantly, but the tiniest little slant to that wind into your face makes it a whole lot uglier. You can get down low into the drops, or onto aero bars if you have them, but that only cuts you through the forward wind – the profile you present to the crosswind stays the same. By the same token, a tiny little bend of a crosswind onto your back is way more help than you’d think it would be, but on this particular morning, that doesn’t happen to be the lesson that I’m re-learning…

By the time we hit the 75 mile mark for the day – in Ulysses – the wind is a pretty solid gale. I’m guessing a steady 25 – 30 mph, with gusts higher. When we ride into the wind shadow of the grain elevators coming into Ulysses, it feels like the weight of the world is lifted from my shoulders for just a second, as I can suddenly hear something other than the gale in my right ear, and can ride the bike upright again rather than leaning several degrees to the right. That shadow doesn’t last long though, and we’re back in the wind. We stop at McDonald’s in Ulysses for ice cream, and fill our water bottles with ice and liquid before leaving town. It’s worth noting here that this is the last real “food” that we take in during the day – this ice cream in Ulysses. We have many more hours to ride, but for some reason our brains just kick off here, and we forget to keep calories moving toward the engine room.

It’s hard to talk about western Kansas without talking about wheat. We started running into wheat country just west of Pritchett, CO. Back at the western edge of wheat country, the harvest was just getting underway, and most of the wheat had not yet been cut. At first, it was primarily dry-land wheat, but by the time we’re in Ulysses, it’s clear that most of the land is irrigated, and the combine crews have already been through the area.

There’s something magnificent about wheat. Maybe it’s because I come from Kansas, but I think it’s more than that. The graceful feel of a bright golden field of wheat when it’s ripe, rolling in waves under the wind, gives the world a feel that’s big and bright with soft edges. Even after it’s been cut, it has a warm feel to it. Riding through this part of Kansas during the wheat harvest would be an ideal time in many ways, letting the feel of the wheat and the harvest seep into you as you ride.

About 12 miles east of Ulysses, we turn due south for a bit, directly into the teeth of ferocious wind. It’s a 10 – 12 mph slog in a down position, but once you accept that you’re going to crawl along at this pace, it’s not that bad. At least it’s not that bad most of the time – every now and then you realize just how hard you’re working for those measly 10 – 12 mph, and it seems that bad… After a few miles, the road turns to the SE. For a couple miles, we have ripe corn on our right, and it is amazing just how much wind-break that corn gives us when it’s there.

I also begin to notice smells more. The smell of the ripe corn falling on us from the wind as it blows over the top of the field is strong and sweet, and if there were a couple more weeks of ripening on those plants, I might be tempted to pull an ear and enjoy it – even field corn is good if its fresh enough. The increased humidity as we work our way eastward across the state enhances the ability of the nose to pick up scents, and I begin here to notice the many rich smells that work their way through my nostrils as I ride.

Reaching Satanta, we’re grateful to have a very brief respite from the headwind as we follow US 56 for a mile or so through town toward the NE before turning straight south again into the wind. At this point in our ride, we’re feeling like Meade is our target for the day. It’s another 50 miles of riding, and we’re a little over 100 miles into the ride already. Although the wind is a bugger, we’re feeling good about another 50 miles. I know that I’ve been working fairly hard, but I’ve been watching my HR monitor, and I’ve been careful to keep myself far away from my lactate threshold. What the monitor has been telling me doesn’t measure up to the amount of work that I think I’ve been doing, but I just attribute that to the fact that I’m working now at about 2000 ft above sea level, and I live at 6000 ft above sea level – I must be able to generate a lot more power with a much lower heart rate.

A word about HR monitors. I thought about putting a new battery in mine before I left, but the one in there was less than 6 months old – I figured I was fine. (You can see already where this is probably going can’t you?) When the battery in most HR monitors starts to go, the symptom is that the HR that gets registered is something slightly less than the actual HR. As the battery winds down, the registered HR continues to drop. So, when I thought I was generating 135 bpm, I was generating something more than that – who knows what. This is what my body was telling me, but I was paying more attention to the HR monitor than I was to my body.

Now, had I known that I was working as hard as I was, I would have paid a lot more attention to taking in more calories. Since I thought that I was keeping my HR very low and controlled, I figured there was no way I was putting myself in calorie deficit. I had some gels in my bag for emergency, and could easily have been using those up to fill this deficit.

So, when we pulled in to a C-Store in Satanta, food wasn’t really high on my list of needs. I thought about some cookies, but since they didn’t have what I wanted, I just picked up a tube of chips for Dave and I to split. Really – that’s the extent of what we ate – split a little tube of chips. Liquid we were pretty diligent about – we were hot and thirsty so took in lots of water, but food just didn’t sound good to us…

The c-store was what I call the typical “rural” c-store, with a few tables to sit at. This is an interesting phenomenon that has developed in recent years – this evolution of the c-store in rural America. It’s evolved in parallel with the destruction of the small-town culture – the walmarting of America as I like to think of it. (notice that I don’t capitalize walmart here – I view it not as a proper noun referring to the actual company, but more a verb describing the trend that the company has been on the cutting edge of. Not flattering I know, but I think it’s a well-recognized trend in America.)

Back before walmarting, small business was the lifeblood of rural America. Every 20 miles or so of every highway in America, a small town existed that supported the needs of the folks there in town, as well as the rural folks living close to the town. There was always a diner, a “general store”, a hardware store, and usually a few other small stores to support the population. These weren’t super-stores, but they carried the items that folks needed, and charged a fair price. Folks depended on one another, and supported one another. There was a web of interdependency and support that was the very fabric of rural America.

When the big-box superstores came into existence, they seemed to have targeted centers of rural activity – medium sized towns that could draw from a pretty good rural radius. They set up their stores, and marketed to the rural folks within their radius. Slowly but surely, folks stopped supporting their friends and neighbors in the small businesses in town, and started to support the super-store instead.

Nobody really gave this much thought, like sheep we just started doing what the advertisers told us we should want to do. Slowly but surely, the economies in the small towns in America shriveled up and lost the critical mass necessary to sustain themselves. Like a drug addiction that creeps into our life, slowly but surely taking hold of us, we became addicted to whatever it is that we find walking up and down the aisles of the super-store.

I’m not sure what it is that we find in those aisles. Sure, sometimes the prices are a bit better, but generally they’re not. In my life, I work hard to support the remaining small business people in my town, and I find that the big-box prices are really no better than the small business price. Sure I might save a few pennies on the items that are on the end-cap, but on all the other stuff I buy, I spend as much or more at the big-box.

I have a good friend who owned a hardware store in a small town for many years. He bought it from his dad when his dad wanted to retire. His was the sort of business that small towns were built on in the pre-walmarted America. He knew everyone who walked in the door, and knew their kids. He was an employer to folks in town, and knew his employees, and did right by them. He made money at his business, but he understood clearly that his business, his profit, and his future was tied to the prosperity of the town. While the prosperity of his business was important to him, it was only important within the context of the prosperity of the community. If the community went down, he went down with it.

My friend is retired now, and has sold his store to someone else. I don’t know the details, but I suspect that his kids could see the handwriting on the wall regarding the viability of a small business in a small town today, and maybe they didn’t have an interest in buying him out like he bought his dad out. Or maybe they just didn’t see a future for themselves generally in small-town America. The reasons aren’t important – what’s important is the result.

And the result is stark and sad.

Maybe in Satanta there’s a diner where a person can sit down and enjoy a conversation. Maybe there is a “lunch special” in Satanta, where the proprietor brings you the menu, fills your water glass, then goes back into the kitchen and helps the local kid who he’s given a job to grill the burger you ordered. If that diner is there, we didn’t see it – all we saw was the c-store, so that’s where we stopped. For the record, our preference was a diner, but we didn’t see that option. And also for the record, the c-store also employs a local kid, who stands behind the cash register and rings you up.

But in and around the town, like warning bells that just won’t shut off, are people who still long for the diner that they lost some time back. They still long for a place to sit and visit – to strengthen the ties that hold the community together. Their town was built years ago with these important places integrated into the fabric of the town, but now those places are locked and boarded.

But the people still long for this place – this place to sit and share.

All across rural America, c-stores have responded by adding a couple small tables or booths along the window in front – a place for people to sit and chat. I’m not sure whether the c-store adds those tables before the diner closes, or in response to the need. My gut tells me that adding the tables is actually something that contributes to the demise of the diner, making me wonder whether c-stores pump the same drug into their air that the walmarts pump into their air – addicting people to these aisles that destroy their town…

In Satanta, Kansas, the c-store was hoppin’ the day that we pulled up to the hitchin’ post and swung out of our saddles. It was full of folks who were older than us, (and that’s sayin’ something)! For the most part, these folks could have been our parents. They were gatherin’ at the place where they gather these days, and I’m sure that we became the talk of the town for several days following.

We chat with a couple of the old guys, learning about one fella’s brother who used to ride bikes, and somebody else’s nephew. They ask us about where we’re from and where we’re headed, and they have plenty of good advice about the road.

But most of all, the thing that strikes both Dave and I most is their concern – their genuine concern – for our safety and well-being. They ask lots of questions about whether we have plenty of ice in our water bottles, and if we’ve been drinking plenty of water.

This is a recurring theme that I’ll talk more about I think – this theme of genuine concern that people across Kansas and Colorado have for our well-being and safety. You grow accustomed to the way most metropolitan folks say the words of caring without the true underlying and deep concern. I do it myself – ask folks how they’re doing but I really don’t want any long answers, tell folks to take care but it’s just the polite thing to say.

On that hot and windy afternoon in Satanta, Kansas, there was a group of old folks gathered at the c-store, and they really cared about how Dave and I were doing, and where we’d been, and where we were going. And they were truly concerned for our safety and well-being.

And I felt very good about that.

We swing out of town and head straight south again into the wind for a few miles, then back to the east, then south again along US 83 for several miles. The wind has shifted just a bit, and is mostly straight south now, with an occasional leaning slightly west or slightly east. We pause before heading east again as we leave US 83, Dave eating a granola bar and taking liquid, me taking liquid and eating… nothing at all…

17 miles later, I notice what feels like bonk storming down on my system like a horde of emptiness. I’m glad when Dave pulls over for a quick drink, and I eat a couple crackers I have in my bag. Did I mention that I had some gel in there too? Notice that I don’t take that in here though…

Dave’s feeling it too I think, but not as bad. We’re only a couple of miles from Plains, and we both agree that if there’s a motel in town, we’ll stop here for the night rather than pushing on the next dozen or so miles to Meade.

If you’ve never discovered the joys of bonking, congratulations. If you’re a runner, you might know this as “hitting the wall”. In either case, it’s a really sad place to be. It’s happened to me twice now, and I’ll do all I can to avoid it in the future.

The short story of what “bonking” means is this, (note that this is my synopsis, and might or might not be exactly accurate…): Your body uses this thing called glycogen for two things – making your brain work and delivering high-octane anaerobic fuel to your muscles when they are pushed to that point called the lactic threshold. (Lactic threshold is that point of exertion where your muscles start to burn – the lactic acid that makes them burn is the byproduct of the high-octane “combustion” that is occurring with the glycogen.) You’re body stores about 2000 calories worth of this glycogen – evolution having determined I suppose that this is plenty to fuel the brain and allow for the average bursts of high energy required to throw spears or run from bears. If you’re riding a bike for 8 hours, it’s likely you’ll burn several thousand calories. If you are spending any significant amount of those 8 hours exerting heavily, you’re probably dipping further and further into that 2000 calorie glycogen tank. When the tank’s empty, then shut-down mode commences, and it feels like self-destruct mode.

Remember when I said that the brain runs on glycogen? I guess that this is the one and only fuel that the brain can run on. When the glycogen tank runs out, the brain is out of fuel. It’s bad enough that your body is shutting down on you, but it’s even worse that you seem to have no ability to think. You really, really, shut down.

The good news is that if you can stop working and start taking in calories, your body starts to fill the glycogen tank right away. An hours’ worth of rest and food, and your brain is powering back up.

I’ve often wondered about the glycogen equation. I mean, guys like me who seem averse to using our brain on a regular basis, (remember I had a double cheeseburger and ice cream cone today – that’s all), should have more glycogen to use for riding, right? And since we seem to be able to operate with so little of our brain engaged, it seems that we wouldn’t notice much difference when the brain runs out of gas. But I’m here to tell ya’, it’s just not a pretty site when that tank runs out.

So, riding into Plains, Kansas late on a hot afternoon, my body is shutting down, and my brain doesn’t even know how to wonder why it’s suddenly so stupid. Downtown is deserted. We stop on a corner to get out our little cheat-sheet with all the hotel numbers in all the little towns written down. We must look way worse than we feel, (which says a lot right now), because a lady goes out of her way to drive up to us and ask us if we need anything. She points us to the motel (a block away – if our brains were working we would have seen it…), and tells us the one and only place to eat in town. (It’s a good thing it’s Saturday night, because that’s the only night that the local bar serves steaks in addition to the regular bar food – and the local bar is the only place in town to eat.)

We ride to the hotel, and as I apply the brakes and come to a stop, I notice that my arms are shaking uncontrollably, and my vision is getting pretty squirrely. I sit in the chair, and am delighted that Dave has the presence of mind to go in and get us booked.

A shower, some steak, potatoes, and beer, and lots of liquid transform the rest of the day into quite a pleasant evening. It didn’t hurt that the waitress at the bar was quite easy on the eyes – that seems to help significantly when the brain is recovering.

That’s my theory anyway.