Rise of the Phoenix

While everyone else was having fun in the Frozen Hog, Bp, Toni, Kim and I went whole-hog on a cycling vacation near Phoenix in Fountain Hills, AZ.

This was the first vacation Kim and I have taken without the kids since we had Scott, which was less than 1 year after we married. GoGrammyGo came to stay with the kids for the week. I think she was more tired after the week than we were:)

Have you ever flown with four bikes and luggage for a full week? Originally, we were going to take both road and MTB bikes, but we thought better of it. As it was, we pretty well hit the practical limit for amount of baggage -- hard to move through the airport, and rented minivan totally full.

Instead of taking the MTBs, we took a tour of the Titus factory, and they loaned us a couple of bikes. Titus makes all of their titanium bikes there in house. I talked with their engineer and their welder for a few minutes., too, which was fun. If you want a bicycle that is carefully made and will ride great forever, those TI Racer-X bikes would be the way to go. Titanium welds are pretty, too.

The first couple days were chilly, so we rode in leg and arm warmers. After the weeks and weeks of sub-zero C highs we've been enjoying here in SLC, it was a welcome break. By Saturday temps were hitting the high sixties and it was perfect riding.

We did a couple rides past Saguaro Lake with the girls. This makes a nice loop that has some rolling hills, and then a jaunt through Mesa. Kim improved considerably during our first ride to the lake. She has good fitness from her many spin classes, but very little experience riding a real bike. Drafting and downhilling have both been tough for her, but she got it down this time. She also learned the importance of eating during long rides. Now she knows what the bonk feels like. As we were riding I thought about when we first got married and I took her into the parking garage of our condo complex so she could practice starting and stopping. It scared her every time she had to do either. I grew up riding bikes in the fields (even in San Jose) and trying to see how many white, five gallon buckets I could jump (sweet jump...can I try it?), so it was a total surprise to me that someone could grow up never really riding a bike.

For me the highlight of our trip was an out-and-back ride of just over 103 miles ride to Bartlett Reservoir. The 6800 feet of climbing wasn't crazy, but plenty to keep the ride interesting as we rolled thought the cactus strewn desert. Bp and I rode it as fast as we could, and it left its mark on us for the rest of the trip. Besides the fatigue, a ride like that just leaves you with this feeling of accomplishment and adventure that is hard to describe, but you just keep thinking about it over and over.

I did all this riding on my new ride -- a Cannondale System Six with the SRAM Force stuff. This bike is awesome. I really like the Force shifting system, which took less time than I expected to get used to. The frame has super lateral rigidity and solid at speed with no sense of shudder. The aluminum rear triangle pedals stiff, but the bike doesn't feel clunky.

Near the end of our second Saguaro ride, Bp got a flat for which we didn't have a functional pump (no CO2 on the plane is a silly rule, but that is another topic). As we stood there trying to figure out what to do, another guy rode by on a System 6. He kind of rode past, looked back, and then returned to help. I noticed his bike had sticker instead of the normal head-badge, and asked if his bike was some kind of pre-production model. Turned out he is a mechanic for Cannondale, and knows R Keating from his Cannondale wrenching days -- small world.

This vacation gave me some (a little) perspective into the life of a pro cyclist. It is easy to see how an athlete could improve his performance significantly without the stresses of a full-time job and benefiting from the additional recovery time. It is a lot easier to put in some efforts on the bike. I might add, however, that I was surprised at how little we got done besides training, eating, and going to the library to use the internet (our condo was supposed to have wireless internet, but it didn't).

On the flight home, Bp and Toni were running late, so Kim and I each took a seat on either side of the isle and saved the seat next to us for them. This left an empty window seat on our rows.
It didn't take long for an opportunistic male to snatch up the seat next to where Kim was sitting (mine didn't go so fast). After the Pillings showed up, I moved over next to Kim, and a conversation ensued with Kim's new neighbor -- Wally Joyner. He was friendly and interesting to talk to. I'm not an avid baseball fan, so I didn't immediately know who he was, but he looked vaguely familiar, so I asked if he was from SLC and what he did, which got the conversation going. We talked a bit about steriods in baseball. Any clean pro athlete should feel cheated. When I got home I read about his confession to having tried steriods himself -- three pills. This admission of course led to much speculation as to whether this was the real number (Philip Meirhaeghe claimed his pre-olympic preparation was his first time for EPO, despite his 1997 hematocrit test failure), but I'm inclined to believe him, partly because his career seemed to flow like a natural athlete. He didn't hit a sudden growth spurt in his mid-thirties, etc (check out this site on McGwire and Bonds, it is simultaneously humorous and sad). So, a clean athlete is supposed to be competing for Rookie of the year against this? No wonder he was tempted.

Someday someone will invent a "make-you-smarter" pill, and all of the sudden, software hackers, engineers and lawyers will be faced with the question -- "should I dope?" Lots of people already try it with caffeine, ginseng, etc. Fortunately it doesn't work very well, but it suggests how common it will be if something "better" ever shows up.

In the meantime, hard work will have to suffice. This training camp was the first of its kind for me, and it was great. Will it make me faster? Probably a little. If it doesn't, was it worth the time, money and effort? Yup. Big Fun.