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04-07-04, 11:37 AM
One of the things I really enjoy about commuting is the time it gives me to think and put stuff in perspective. It can be a pretty humbling experience as well, I've learned not to sweat the big stuff, and that's helped me with my job. There are nights that the miles also are therapy, giving me time to decompress and work out the night on the job.
And then there are those nights when my mind wanders and I start thinking about my biking, how the bike is working, how I, it's engine is performing. Last night I was riding hard in some cooler weather, and wondered about muscle performance, since watching the Tour on DVD and always hearing how on the backside of a mountain the pros worry about their leg muscles getting too cold on the decent. I wasn't worried about it, I was just contemplating the effect of mid 40s on my legs, feeling my ham strings tention and release as my legs made revolution after revolution. As I contemplated this, I became cellular, or as Steve Martin once put it, "I got small." Actually it wasn't really cellular, but muscular, contemplating the flexing and relaxing of each of my muscle groups in concert to propel the bike through the darkness. I suppose because I almost lost my legs I do a lot more contemplating about such things than the average person. But as I thought about the muscles working together it seemed I got a little more out of them, as if thought were a stimulis to push them a little more, to find that extra umfff. That thought surprized me, and I came out of the cellular to check my speed under an overhead street lamp, sure enough, and I could feel my legs tighten slightly as I turned my thoughts to other things. I smiled to myself, as I found myself on an extremely straight flat piece of the Greenway, with nothing but time and miles to ride, I put my head down, got in the drops and started to mentally milk my muscles for the last bits of whatever I could to the end of the Greenway, where I would join the street and have to contend with lights, and traffic. It was incredible. I was pushing the mid 20s on my fixed gear (48x15). The night zoomed by, and I was on the streets, wondering if I could continue this "meditation" and get home in record time.
I did.
And then there are those nights when my mind wanders and I start thinking about my biking, how the bike is working, how I, it's engine is performing. Last night I was riding hard in some cooler weather, and wondered about muscle performance, since watching the Tour on DVD and always hearing how on the backside of a mountain the pros worry about their leg muscles getting too cold on the decent. I wasn't worried about it, I was just contemplating the effect of mid 40s on my legs, feeling my ham strings tention and release as my legs made revolution after revolution. As I contemplated this, I became cellular, or as Steve Martin once put it, "I got small." Actually it wasn't really cellular, but muscular, contemplating the flexing and relaxing of each of my muscle groups in concert to propel the bike through the darkness. I suppose because I almost lost my legs I do a lot more contemplating about such things than the average person. But as I thought about the muscles working together it seemed I got a little more out of them, as if thought were a stimulis to push them a little more, to find that extra umfff. That thought surprized me, and I came out of the cellular to check my speed under an overhead street lamp, sure enough, and I could feel my legs tighten slightly as I turned my thoughts to other things. I smiled to myself, as I found myself on an extremely straight flat piece of the Greenway, with nothing but time and miles to ride, I put my head down, got in the drops and started to mentally milk my muscles for the last bits of whatever I could to the end of the Greenway, where I would join the street and have to contend with lights, and traffic. It was incredible. I was pushing the mid 20s on my fixed gear (48x15). The night zoomed by, and I was on the streets, wondering if I could continue this "meditation" and get home in record time.
I did.