Bike Tribes

by Mike Magnuson

  “Listen to me,” Chareesa says. “You’re doing great. And you will finish. Then we’ll start training for the next one and for the next one after that.”

  “And the next one after that,” Sarah says.

  “That’s my girl,” Chareesa says. “Now get back out there and kick your workout in the butt.”

  Sarah puts the phone away and takes a long, refreshing breath of wind, and she does the right thing. She gets back on her bike. It’s not going to be easy, no doubt about that, and maybe it will never be easy, but sooner or later, maybe it won’t be so hard.

  the Fast Female Triathlete: CHAREESA

  Relaxed, almost disinterested facial expression.

  A body so fit that it makes other fit people think they’re out of shape.

  Really expensive bicycle and wheels, also the only bike she owns.

  Chareesa sometimes tires of nurturing people, of bucking them up when they’re down, of making them feel they’re strong enough to achieve what they wouldn’t otherwise achieve.

  True enough, that’s the unavoidable nature of the personal-training trade. She has to be encouraging and friendly and able to design exercise programs to meet the clients’ needs and also to make sure that the clients stay on their programs—because that’s where the money is, with people who stay on their programs—but once in a while she wishes she could tell people to leave her alone so she can do her own training. She’s on a regimen, too. Do any of her clients care about that? It’s all about them.

  Maybe it’s not as bad as all that. She’s off her bike now and having a mellow moment in the gym’s parking lot after riding 15.6 miles at an average of 21.3 miles per hour, which is damn good considering the wind today. Chareesa tries to be honest with herself concerning her performance on the bike. Of all the aspects of triathlon, the bike is the part she dislikes the most. It’s uncomfortable. It’s expensive. It’s unnatural. Not to mention she’s just not a biker and will never be a biker. So for her—she’s laying it out there honestly—the bike is a total drag. The only reason she rides as hard as she does is so she can get off the bike and get away from the bike as soon as possible and get back to doing something she enjoys, which is essentially any form of exercise other than riding a triathlon bike. Hell, she doesn’t even like to teach indoor cycling! Why would she want to ride a bike in a competitive environment like a triathlon?

  She knows the answer: because she’s good at it. But that’s not too much comfort.

  She stuffs her bike in her minivan and takes out a little notebook to record her training. She could easily use her computer to write this stuff down—that’s what she asks her own clients to do—but Erik, her trainer, insists that she do everything old school, writing her numbers down by hand, charting progress on paper, paper being a substance (he’s fond of saying) that you can spread out on a table and analyze. She wants to tell him that’s what she hates, to sit and analyze things for hours on end. She wants to stay moving. Moving makes her happy. Sitting makes her fat. Fat makes her unhappy. But Erik would call her a whiner for talking like that.

  Now she hears her name and sees Jill, one of the other instructors at the gym, trotting across the parking lot. Jill is essentially the same person as Chareesa: active, driven, hyper, easily bored. They both work out all day, 7 days a week, and when they’re not working out, they’re finding ways to relax in an active way: dancing, hiking, playing volleyball, kayaking, et cetera.

  Jill asks, “How was the ride?”

  Chareesa says, “Necessary.”

  “I hear that,” Jill says. “But the bike’s key to the tri.”

  “The bike’s key to my misery, I’m telling you.”

  Jill says, “What are we gonna do? The clients want to do tri, so we have to do tri.”

  “It sucks leading by example sometimes,” Chareesa says.

  “You’re so crazy,” Jill says and pats Chareesa’s shoulder. “So you wanna go for a run? That’ll cheer you up.”

  Chareesa glances at her running shoes in the back of her minivan. “Are you kidding me? I am dying to go for a run.”

  the Guru Triathlete: ERIK

  Numerous stories that prove that if you train like him, you can be as great as he is.

  Confident expression; makes you want to pay him for advice.

  The Ironman logo. He’s got it tattooed several places on his body. If you’d like to see them, just ask.

  The bald man under the lights and in front of the camera is Erik.

  He’s super fit, monstrously fit, brutally fit, fitter than he has ever been in his 48 years on this earth, fit-like-a-wild-beast fit, fit-like-his-life-is-perfectly-balanced fit. And considering that he was once a collegiate swimmer who almost made it on the Olympic team in the 400 individual medley, his current level of fitness says a whole lot about just how amazingly fit he is. He knows about sacrifice and struggle and hard work and intelligent work. He has completed the Ironman distance 37 times, including 10 straight years at the real Ironman in Hawaii. He has raced Olympic-distance triathlons and duathlons and has competed in masters swim meets more times than he could ever remember.

  “Look at me,” he says into the camera, with a huge, confident grin. “I’m 48 years old and not only look great but feel great. With my training system, you will, too!”

  He stares into the camera and gives a thumbs-up and maintains an exaggerated smile till finally he feels the strain of the smile. He shifts his eyes to the bored, sloppy-looking kid operating the camera. “That good enough?” Erik asks.

  The kid, who is 23 and chubby and a TV-production whiz at the community college, says, “Looks great. You did awesome.”

  Erik says, “All right then.” He rises from the table and runs his hand over his chin and keeps his eyes on the kid.

  The kid is soft and pasty, with dark circles under his eyes—probably only goes outside at night, if at all.

  “You’re a businessman, right?” Erik asks.

  The kid says, “I guess.”

  “That means you have good business sense, right?”

  The kid stares at Erik and doesn’t say anything.

  Erik says, “So everybody says you’re the best video guy in town.”

  Erik lards it on a bit more, talks about the kid’s magnificent reputation and how he’s so honored to have the kid working on the project and how he’s sure the final product, this kick-ass promotional video, will be the deal maker for his coaching business and how when this thing hits the Internet, Erik will have so many clients that he’ll have to hire a number of coaches and probably buy a corporate building and maybe even set up offices in New York and Los Angeles.

  “We’re talking about a vast international business,” Erik says, “and you will have been part of it from the ground floor up.”

  The kid’s face doesn’t even twitch.

  Erik says, “So what about this? I can offer you, free of charge, 2 full years of coaching, the deluxe package, with the 24-hour e-mail and text-message help line, and I guarantee you, within weeks, you’ll feel better, you’ll lose weight, you’ll be more popular with the ladies, and hey, what’s not to like about all that?”

  The kid: implacable.

  Erik says, “So in trade for that, you can comp me the video production costs. You’ll be coming out, value-wise, at least $3,000 ahead! Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s what I call a bargain.”

  The kid’s head finally moves. “Twelve hundred for the video,” the kid says and shrugs and starts taking the camera off the tripod.

  “That’s it.”

  For the first time in a long, long time, Erik honestly doesn’t know what to say. Could the kid with the camera be that stupid?

  The Triathlete

  Triathletes are made, not born.

  Nobody emerges from the womb with an express desire to swim over open water in a large pack of other swimmers and get kicked in the head and elbowed in the ribs, only to emerge from the water and then ride a time trial bike for up to 112 mi
les in a swimsuit! And then, in the case of Ironman races, run up to a full marathon! It’s crazy. It’s insanity. It’s foolishness. But still, according to triathletes, tri is one of the greatest experiences a person can have.

  Maybe they’re right. True enough, if you consider what kind of commitment it takes to train for and complete a full Ironman distance—2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, 26.219-mile run—you can’t help admiring the guts and determination and moxie it takes to do it. You have to tip your hat. Within the group of tri people themselves, in fact, there is much tipping of hats. More than any other sport involving cycling, the triathlon community supports its own and is incredibly encouraging to even the slowest, most meager members of the community. They all tip their hats to each other, in other words, and it’s wonderful to see.

  However, the bicycle is a means to an end for the triathlete. The bicycle is one part of three parts, not an activity unto itself, and other cyclists—roadies in particular—regard triathletes with rather pointed disdain, a disdain that is never lost on triathletes when they come into contact with roadies. The reason for this disdain is quite simple, really, starting with the tri bike itself—a time trial bike—designed obviously not to be ridden in groups but ridden alone; and, in fact, if you draft off another rider in a tri, you will be penalized (that’s in a race, not on a random Tuesday night). What happens, then, is triathletes tend to train all the time in a manner that simulates race conditions—alone, with their hands on the aero bars, trying to maintain a steady-eddie speed. Not surprisingly, because of the highly individual nature of people in tri and because they ride bikes at all times as if they were riding in an official event, tri people often have a tough time interacting with roadies, whose very nature is to be interactive, to ride in groups and speed up and slow down and draft and attack. If a triathlete shows up at a local group road ride, the tri person will invariably receive earful after earful from the roadies, especially when the tri person is trying to ride in the pack with hands on the aero bars (which is dangerous, we must admit).

  So what’s a tri person to do? Most roadies will say that all the problems will be solved if the tri people just spend more time riding a regular road bike and not pretending all of life is a race. Most Ironman triathletes will say, hey, the only way to prepare the body for an event of that magnitude is to train at the steady rate the event requires.

  Whosoever solves this conflict will hold the key to world peace.

  the Strong Century Rider: KEN

  Relaxed position on the bike, hands on the tops, grinding it out.

  Mustache, because Magnum, P.I. has never gone out of style.

  RIDERS OF THE CENTURY

  Fifty-five miles into the Orchard Century, not far past the aid station—where he didn’t stop to pee and fill his bottles with fresh sports drink because he just couldn’t afford to lose the time—Ken wonders who the unknown rider is up the road.

  The unknown rider has been up there for 20 miles, a few hundred yards in front of Ken, in a red jersey, a hazy form pedaling along the road, and Ken just can’t seem to contact him. When Ken pushes to get closer, it seems as if the rider senses Ken’s approach and then pushes harder, too. Ken is beginning to think either the guy has ESP or he’s wearing a helmet mirror.

  Not to worry, though. There are 45 miles left in the century, and in Ken’s experience, unknown riders up the road almost never stay up the road. Ken will catch that rider eventually, because all unknown riders wear down sooner or later.

  The day is perfect for a century ride. Seventy degrees. Cloudy. No wind to speak of. Ken’s legs feel great, even though this is the 14th organized century he’s done in 8 weeks. Usually he does one on Saturday and one on Sunday. This is a Saturday century, and he has one coming up tomorrow and should probably be taking it easy during this one, but he figures if he’s got the gas in the tank, he might as well use it. He will eat like a horse tonight and again tomorrow morning and won’t have any problems with the next century. That’s why he rides all these centuries in the first place—so he can eat as much as he wants. And make no misinterpretation of the facts of Ken: He wants to eat it all.

  So the unknown rider up the road? Ken’s going to catch him, or at least he’s not going to call off the chase till the bitter end, but Ken doubts it will take that long. Besides, there’s somebody behind Ken, too, somebody who thinks Ken’s an unknown rider and is surging to catch Ken with the same confidence that Ken has been surging to catch the rider in front of him. Ken is so sure somebody’s trying to chase him down that he doesn’t bother looking backward. At this point in every century—just past halfway—the riders are strung out to hell and gone and are chasing or being chased. Ken isn’t sure why this happens, but for Ken, between mile 50 and mile 80 or so, the strategy is to pull himself together and push himself forward, not stressing about how other people are feeling but only concentrating on how he is feeling.

  For the time being, he’s together. He’s pedaling well. He’s mostly happy. He’s 45 years old and loving the cycling lifestyle, which for him means centuries on the weekends and 50-mile rides every morning before work, except Friday, which is his day off the bike. That’s a lot of miles and a lot of time alone riding a bike. Once in a while at this point in a century, when the unknown riders are up and back for miles each way, he wonders what would happen if the unknown riders in his vicinity were to slow down or speed up till they joined together in a group, not necessarily a huge group but a group of maybe five or 10 riders. Would they laugh and talk about bikes and long training rides? Would they introduce themselves and tell stories? One time, Ken thinks. Just one time he would like to see that happen. Because sometimes he gets to feeling lonely out here.

  the Good-Time Century Riders: FRED and ELLEN

  Food in hand, food in bag-why ride 100 miles if you can’t eat as much as you want?

  Happy faces, because this is supposed to be fun, not a day of suffering.

  Cycling sandals with socks, because comfort is key, and mellow is as mellow does.

  Fred and Ellen have reached the 55-mile aid station in the Orchard Century and leaned their bikes against a nifty shade tree.

  Now they are examining the goodies available for the participants: a long table piled with homemade cookies and fresh fruit and peanut butter sandwiches, along with a 5-gallon container of sports drink and another container the same size full of water.

  “And what’s this?” Fred asks. “Coffee?”

  Ellen laughs because, sure enough, on the ground behind the table she sees a Thermos with a strip of masking tape that has “COFFEE” written on it.

  Behind the table stands a pleasantly plump lady in her fifties who seems to be handling her aid-station duties as if she were placed in charge of a goodie table on the planet Jupiter.

  The lady says, “The coffee is for the volunteers.”

  Fred winks at the lady and says, “My wife and I are volunteers.”

  Ellen says, “Yeah, we volunteer to drink coffee wherever we go. And we have relatives in Tennessee.”

  Fred says, “Tennessee Volunteers. Get it?”

  The lady appears not sure whether to laugh or be angry or come out and say what’s probably on her mind: Why on earth do you people want to ride 100 miles in the first place?

  On the road, riders roll by individually or in occasional groups of two or three. A few of these riders roll into the aid station and set their bikes down and make their way to the chemical toilets or over to the 5-gallon containers to refill bottles.

  Ellen asks, “Please? Two little cups of coffee? They can be small.”

  The lady finally smiles and says, “I suppose it won’t hurt anything.”

  A minute or so later, Fred and Ellen are leaning against the shade tree next to their bikes, with coffee and brownies and their shoulders pressing together.

  Fred asks, “You having a nice time?” Ellen says, “The best. What a beautiful day!”

  An old man—maybe in his seventies—pedals by wi
th his head down and with his body rocking. The old man’s got the proverbial bit between his teeth.

  Fred says, “See that guy? That’s who I want to be when I grow up.”

  Ellen says, “Good luck with that.”

  “Looks like that old fart’s going to beat us soundly to the finish today.”

  Ellen takes a reflective sip of coffee and says, “Good for him.”

  “That’s right,” Fred says. “Good for him.”

  They lean into each other, and anyone who might see them would immediately know the truth: They are really happy.

  the First-Time Century Finisher: MARK

  Fist pump. For the rest of his life, he will remember this moment.

  Mark is going to make it.

  All 100 miles of the Orchard Century. In the bag. Wrapped up. And ain’t nobody can ever take it away from him that he rode his bicycle 100 miles in 1 day.

  He can see the finish line now—can’t be half a mile away, maybe closer than that—and he tries picking up his speed but can’t muster it. His body’s cooked in every imaginable way. His lower back hurts, his neck hurts, his stomach’s sour, his calves have been cramping for the last 50 miles, and honestly, he’s been wanting to quit since mile 15! He holds up his head as best he can and aims for the line and tries not to let anybody know how much he’s hurting.

  And what a festive line it is! There’s an inflatable arch stretched over the road and a couple of party tents set up in a huge parking lot past the line. He can hear rock music blaring and can smell barbecue, and everything on the road begins to take on more meaning, as if he’s ridden through this 100-mile crucible of misery only to arrive at a sort of joyful county fair that has been set up personally for him!