I hear you, Mr. Smith
As Mr. Smith from Lost in Space would say, "Oh, the pain."
Today, Coach Josh was kind enough to give me some hill repeats. I was supposed to do them indoors on the trainer, but due to the effects of global warming, it was warm enough to ride outside on Saturday, February 4th.
Determined to find a hill that would last 4:00, I set off for Marshfield. Sadly, my first candidate, whom I interviewed after riding for an hour and a half or so, was only 2:00 long. Humph. Well, if the first candidate isn't up to the job, there must be another.
Down the road a piece is a short, steep hill off Telegraph hill called "Cohasset Road" of all things. It too was only 2:00 long but what an agony of 2:00 it was. Coach Josh called for 6 repeats up the hill at between 300 and 320 watts.
Since I was shortchanging him on the duration, I made the executive decision to give him some more intensity. I dialed the watts up to 350 or so, applied myself to the challenge, and seriously considered evacuating the contents of my stomach upon the pavement.
The young children who lived in the house at the top of the hill thought there was something wrong with me, as I had crested the hill once, why bother doing it again. By the sixth interval, I was old news and even their trusty Golden Retriever lost interest in the spectacle.
The sensation of doing hill intervals threw me back in time to the geekiest of all geek sports, high-school cross country. For those who must participate in a sport in the fall, for those who are not big enough for football, or athletic enough for soccer, there is cross country, the great catch basin of band geeks, social misfits, and real athletes trying to get in shape for winter sports.
Coach Hersey, who was always accompanied by his righteous mutt Munch, would advise us to stick with a group of our teammates for the first two miles of the race, then if we had gas in the tank, open it up for the last mile. At the finish, we were advised to stretch, jog lightly, and cool down for fifteen minutes.
The top seven finishers of the team counted for the team score. The rest displaced numbers, but were not recorded.
As I was the number five man on the team, a testament to my mediocrity, I was usually somewhere in the middle of the pack. By the time I ran by the Coach at mile two, he with the clipboard would have done the math, and would holler something along the lines of, "Berkeley, get your fat ass in gear and catch five guys, or we're gonna lose. Go, go, go."
Like a diesel motor that is warmed up after eleven minutes of use, I would somehow get it going and reel in those rotten scoundrels with sharp elbows that needed to be caught. At the finish line, I would grab my popsicle stick with the number on it, stumble through the chute, and fall down on the ground, preferably in the fetal position. There was no stretching. There was no jogging. There was just a sad collapse and some dry wretching.
What cross country lacked in dignity, it more than made up for with lack of social status. No girls admired cross country geeks who tipped the scales at 148 pounds. Football guys laughed at us. Soccer players wanted no part of us.
To ready us for the season, Coach Hersey would send us for a long run in the morning, and then give us speed work in the afternoon. We had one hill workout that was very similar to the hill repeats I endured today. Up and down we would go, counting the repeat, how many we had done, how many we had left, feeling the pain in the lungs and the legs.
The only good thing about a hill workout is that when it is concluded, you know you have done some good work and you're too damn tired to entertain any existential thoughts.
My 16 minutes of hard climbing, and three and a half hours of riding had left me spent. I went home and took a shower and a nap. Which is pretty much the same thing I did when I was a middle-of-the-pack, high-school cross-country geek twenty-two years ago.
Today, Coach Josh was kind enough to give me some hill repeats. I was supposed to do them indoors on the trainer, but due to the effects of global warming, it was warm enough to ride outside on Saturday, February 4th.
Determined to find a hill that would last 4:00, I set off for Marshfield. Sadly, my first candidate, whom I interviewed after riding for an hour and a half or so, was only 2:00 long. Humph. Well, if the first candidate isn't up to the job, there must be another.
Down the road a piece is a short, steep hill off Telegraph hill called "Cohasset Road" of all things. It too was only 2:00 long but what an agony of 2:00 it was. Coach Josh called for 6 repeats up the hill at between 300 and 320 watts.
Since I was shortchanging him on the duration, I made the executive decision to give him some more intensity. I dialed the watts up to 350 or so, applied myself to the challenge, and seriously considered evacuating the contents of my stomach upon the pavement.
The young children who lived in the house at the top of the hill thought there was something wrong with me, as I had crested the hill once, why bother doing it again. By the sixth interval, I was old news and even their trusty Golden Retriever lost interest in the spectacle.
The sensation of doing hill intervals threw me back in time to the geekiest of all geek sports, high-school cross country. For those who must participate in a sport in the fall, for those who are not big enough for football, or athletic enough for soccer, there is cross country, the great catch basin of band geeks, social misfits, and real athletes trying to get in shape for winter sports.
Coach Hersey, who was always accompanied by his righteous mutt Munch, would advise us to stick with a group of our teammates for the first two miles of the race, then if we had gas in the tank, open it up for the last mile. At the finish, we were advised to stretch, jog lightly, and cool down for fifteen minutes.
The top seven finishers of the team counted for the team score. The rest displaced numbers, but were not recorded.
As I was the number five man on the team, a testament to my mediocrity, I was usually somewhere in the middle of the pack. By the time I ran by the Coach at mile two, he with the clipboard would have done the math, and would holler something along the lines of, "Berkeley, get your fat ass in gear and catch five guys, or we're gonna lose. Go, go, go."
Like a diesel motor that is warmed up after eleven minutes of use, I would somehow get it going and reel in those rotten scoundrels with sharp elbows that needed to be caught. At the finish line, I would grab my popsicle stick with the number on it, stumble through the chute, and fall down on the ground, preferably in the fetal position. There was no stretching. There was no jogging. There was just a sad collapse and some dry wretching.
What cross country lacked in dignity, it more than made up for with lack of social status. No girls admired cross country geeks who tipped the scales at 148 pounds. Football guys laughed at us. Soccer players wanted no part of us.
To ready us for the season, Coach Hersey would send us for a long run in the morning, and then give us speed work in the afternoon. We had one hill workout that was very similar to the hill repeats I endured today. Up and down we would go, counting the repeat, how many we had done, how many we had left, feeling the pain in the lungs and the legs.
The only good thing about a hill workout is that when it is concluded, you know you have done some good work and you're too damn tired to entertain any existential thoughts.
My 16 minutes of hard climbing, and three and a half hours of riding had left me spent. I went home and took a shower and a nap. Which is pretty much the same thing I did when I was a middle-of-the-pack, high-school cross-country geek twenty-two years ago.
posted by joe berkeley at 5:52 PM
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