Author: Tom Saccone

I left the office with the same sort of anticipation that I do every Wednesday.  It matters not that it is the middle of Winter.    The ritual doesn’t vary much and the day accelerates as 5 p.m. draws closer.  Tonight I was greeted by calm air and a warmish 39 degrees.  A setting sun forced long shadows from the fir trees lining the parking lot as I trotted to my car.  I was dressed and wired for lights in no time, clipped in and descending through the golf course anticipating the ride.  It was colder than I thought as I picked up speed on the descent.  My teeth hurt from the wind chill and my eyes watered.  I blinked hard to clear them.  I was hoping for some companions but was bracing for a solo effort tonight as I traversed lower Cascades.

I had some time to think as I warmed up and decompressed from the work day.  I remember thinking how lucky I was and how much I have to be thankful for.  My family and friends, good health, fulfilling employment.  A chance to make a difference.   A lot of things I sometimes, selfishly take for granted.  I was grateful to have the capacity to endure a ride like this.

At 5:45 I turned one last time at the Southern end of Cascades and headed out on my own.  Through the light, up Audubon and North on Old 37.  It was dark now as came up to Bethel Lane.  I could turn here and stay close to home – the smart thing to do-or, I could continue North, every pedal stroke taking me further from my origin.  I thought of the early explorers and how they must have felt as they lost sight of land for the first time.  I put my head down, shifted in the large chain ring and descended toward the forest.   A waxing moon was off my right shoulder just a couple of clicks and rising as it followed me on this familiar course.

I turned down Anderson and headed for Bean blossom.  It was completely dark now save for a red tinge in the Western sky and my light traced the rhythmic sway of my bike on the road ahead of me as I turned a gear slightly larger than I should be in December.  I was in the drops and my head was down, but I was looking forward with my head nearly motionless.   I remember sub-consciously counting pedal strokes and focusing on my breathing, three revolutions to one breath.  It became trance-like through the flat farmland.  I couldn’t see my speed readout but I reckoned I was doing about 27 mph.  And then it happened.  The perfect ride.  That moment where power and speed and cadence and breath and life all intersect for one brief, magical moment.   I wasn’t riding any longer. I was flying.  The small banks of snow illuminated on the shoulder passing like a picket fence, the curve of the road smoothed out before me, the farmland a blur in the shadows.  I felt the goosebumps raise down the back of my neck.   Maybe it was the darkness all around or the tunnel-vision, or lack of oxygen and food that brought this on.  Nothing mattered at that moment.   At the turn I paused, never stopping but listening to the intense quiet all around.   I took a deep breath and headed for home.   I couldn’t recapture the feeling on the way back, but I kept trying anyway.

Tom

I had “one of those days” at the office today so I was glad to check out a little early by saving 15 minutes from lunch and using it at day’s end.  It’s not a requirement in my job but it makes me feel good about the hasty exit, and good karma is hard to find these days so I take it when I can. The sun was still up as I gathered my things and headed for the door. I was greeted by a a snap of cold air and within a few steps had sized up the temperature (high 40s), wind direction (SSW 4-9) and potential for inclement weather (nil).  I met big Bruce Miller at Bloomington North High School just after 5PM.   We were suited up and on the bikes in 10 minutes, easing down through the golf course to lower Cascades.  Our warm-up consisted of several out-and-backs on Cascades waiting for ‘the group’ to connect with us from Sample Gates.  We expected them to arrive at 5:40. As dusk drifted into night we turned on our lights.  Bruce didn’t know it, but I was sizing him up at the time with small accelerations and some minor half-wheeling, just to see what I was in for tonight.  He was equal to the task and responded effortlessly to my lumbering cadence.  We were soon met by a light coming toward us.  It was Myron Lewis.  We headed north on Cascades to old 37.  We had a chatty ride through Audubon, catching-up, politely pointing out pot holes and alerting to traffic, etc.  This is great, I thought.  Just what I was hoping for.  It was a beautiful night, with the stars just making themselves known.  I imagined that I was navigating at sea, choosing my direction based on Orion’s place in the sky, Mars prominent in the West.  My friends had different, less celestial  plans, however and I was soon pulled unceremoniously from my dreaming.  I’ve said this before, cycling at night has a different feel to it.  Distances are more difficult to judge, speed and topography are three-dimensional, road vibration translates into a sense of where you are and comes from areas of the brain once reserved for prehistoric survival.  I was third in line as we hurtled down Anderson toward Beanblossom.  We had all taken a few pulls and I was clearly the weaker of the three and knew that I would soon be mercifully selected out if this kept up.  I couldn’t see my computer in the dark but was counting pedal strokes to take my mind off of the pain.  Bruce was setting a ferocious pace and trading off with Myron for monster pulls at scary-fast speeds, both showing great form and depth for late-November.   I was realizing-like I do every year about this time-that excelling in this sport requires dedication and discipline-year around.  It would be very easy to rest on our laurels from a great season and bask in the glow of those memories we’ve made.  But we’ll have plenty of time for reflection years from now.  When we look back on these days (and nights) make sure that you can say that you gave it your all and left nothing on the table. Train with a purpose and don’t settle for mediocrity.  2008 is only a heartbeat on these dark roads away. I was grateful when we turned for home at the base of Beanblossom.  I knew that it wouldn’t be long before we were racing on these roads again in earnest.

Tom

We rode together up to Morgan Monroe on this beautiful Spring day. We met at SOMA at 10 AM on Sunday and meandered through bits of campus on an unseasonably warm but welcomed morning. I counted seventeen riders ready to get to the start line of the first local time trial of the season. Some of the Tortugans included Tim Heffner, Mike Brauner, Myron Lewis, Adam Fryska and Adam Rodkey, Isaiah Newkirk, Patrick Garner, Geraint Parry, Taylor Gaines and me. The mere acceptance of participation in a time trial is a major philosophical and psychological event. No other cycling activity is so final, so desperate, so utterly poignant as is the time trial. It’s you and the clock. The poets of cycling call it the race of truth. If that’s so, then the lot of us would be placing our front wheel squarely on the line that separates who we are as cyclists and how deep our well of pain and suffering truly is. I knew that we would end up riding about 55 miles that day, out to the Forest, do the TT then ride back. The TT was only 10 miles. Only 10 miles along the newly paved Forest road. In general terms a good cyclist, trained, fit and race ready can dig deep enough to manage an average speed of 25 mph for this distance. Some more, some less. But it’s early in the year for an effort this demanding and many were just testing their fitness, seeing where they were, establishing a baseline. But it’s hard to be ambivalent about an event that has you puking at the turn around and your lungs filled with acid with 3 miles to go. Most of us would go as hard as we could for as long as we could then just try to hang on until the end. Yeah, we suffered. We all rode well. Some faster than others. You can read the results in the IRS posting soon enough. The time stamp is just another data point for our training journals. But I have another story to tell. A story about one of our Juniors, Taylor Gaines who had the misfortune of getting sideways on a patch of bad road on Cascades. He went down hard on his right shoulder taking Tim Heffner with him. Tim escaped injury save for some road rash, but Taylor wasn’t as lucky. Now we’ve all crashed at some point and many of us have broken bits along the way. Some more than others. I remember separating my shoulder in a race in Long Island in 1988, the tears of pain rolling down my cheeks as that paramedics cut away my jersey. Our boy Taylor would have none of this. Of course, we all stopped to see if he was OK. We helped him pick up his bike and sort out his gear, straighten his handlebars. “Is any thing broken?” “Can you raise your arm above your head?” I recall asking. He rode on. He rode on up through the climbs of the Forest to the start of the time trial. I know that he would have ridden the TT if allowed, but his parents were there at the start to intervene. The power of adrenalin is incredible. But the power to overcome pain like this is a gift. Say what you want about him, but when Tyler Hamilton fractured his collarbone in the Tour a few years ago in Bayonne, France his coach Bjarne Riis was asked if any rider was capable of enduring more suffering. He said, “If there are, I haven’t seen any.” Yeah, we suffered out there on the smooth paved roads of the Forest. But we went home and raked our yards and picked up our kids and drove to the store, while Taylor was in the ER with an ice pack on his shoulder, planning on how he was going to get back on the bike. We all know he’ll be back. Crashing is part of bike racing. It’s part of the price that this high performance sport sometimes requires. In the old days, they would say, “Get back on that horse.” Taylor is already on it and my money’s on him.

Tom Saccone