Bike Tribes

by Mike Magnuson

  The casual mountain biker is rarely seen alone—not at the gym, not on the trails. This desire to be with other human beings is something that never should be denigrated because, at its core, cycling is always better when done in groups than in solitude.

  In practical terms, the casual mountain biker’s engagement with cycling makes a lot of sense because (1) there is more to life than cycling and (2) there are few dumber things to do in this world than going mountain biking alone on technical trails with minimal skills. The wise mountain biker always brings someone along to help pick up the pieces. In moral terms, the casual mountain biker scores points for endeavoring to make the cycling experience a group experience.

  From these ranks, few go on to become fanatic cyclists—people whose every breath somehow amplifies a life on two wheels—and few spend vast amounts of money on their equipment. But when they are driving to the trail, people in the community can see bikes on top of cars, and in this sense they are unwitting ambassadors for the sport of cycling. So when on weekends you see these folks on the not-too-technical trails in their baggy shorts and T-shirts and helmets with visors and CamelBaks, you should take heart and say hello. They will most definitely be happy to see you.

  the Weight-Loss Cyclist: CHARLOTTE

  This is fun but brutally hard.

  This isn’t so brutally hard anymore.

  Wow, this is easy.

  This is fun but brutally hard—and brutally fast, too.

  THE SHRINKING PEOPLE

  Charlotte has a lot of explaining to do. She knows this.

  She started going to Spinning class at the gym on New Year’s Day, and after that went to Spinning class 6 days a week, sometimes 7, and sometimes to two Spinning classes a day. She cut cheese out of her diet (along with the rest of the fatty, fast-food trash she had been eating for so many years) and made a habit of recording her daily calories in a journal and closely monitoring the ratio between the calories she took in and the calories she expended. It worked. She began to shrink, little by little, then a lot by a lot.

  Spinning was the key to this. She loved Spinning, and by extension, she thought she might love cycling? So when the weather warmed up, she spent $2,500 on a carbon fiber women’s-specific road bike, which she has since been riding before work, after work, and all day both days every weekend, rain or shine. Six months into this, she’s lost a lot of weight, like at least a couple of tons of weight. People think she’s lost her mind. People think she’s dying. She is certainly not dying, is what she will tell you. She is finally coming to life! She is a new person: more confident, quick-witted, and definitely brighter in every way. In fact, some people don’t even recognize her when they see her out and about in town. If that doesn’t mean she’s a new person, what does?

  So today, after a nifty 35-mile ride, she stops at the coffee shop, still in her sweaty bike clothes, and buys a skim milk latte—no sugar, 75 calories—and takes it outside to drink in the sun. Nice day. Nice table. She smiles at everyone with a confidence she can never remember having, and the people smile back. She jots down her 75 calories in a little spiral notebook she carries in a baggie in the back pocket of her jersey—pages and pages of what she’s eaten on bike rides: energy bars, Gatorade, gels, the occasional turkey sandwich, and so on. What a great system this is for losing weight. She’s proud of the way she’s been sticking to it.

  She looks up from her notebook, and there stands her old friend Melody from high school. Or maybe old acquaintance is a better term. Melody was a popular girl in high school, skinny, on the cheerleading squad, on homecoming court. Charlotte was unnoticed and in the shadows.

  Melody asks, without bothering to say hello, “What’s going on with you?”

  Charlotte knows the drill. People have been asking her the same thing everywhere she goes. “I’ve been riding my bike,” she says and points to it, pink handlebar tape and all.

  “Are you okay?” Melody asks. “You’re not ill or something, are you?”

  Charlotte shakes her head no and asks the question to which she already knows the answer: “Why do you ask?”

  “You’ve lost so much weight!”

  Charlotte allows Melody’s comment to float in the void between them and takes a deep, practiced breath. “Yep,” she says. “I’ve lost 75 tons so far.”

  Melody frowns in a quizzical way, and in this pause, Charlotte observes with some satisfaction that Melody—once the object of all the boys’ affections—now looks positively dumpy these days. Twenty years later, Charlotte thinks, and life has a way of leveling out.

  Melody asks, “And you lost this on purpose?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Oh,” Melody says, almost as if she’s disappointed, like it would have been better if Charlotte had said she was dying of a rare disease that causes people to shrink near the end of their lives and wear bicycle clothing and keep journals of the food they eat every day.

  Finally, Melody says, “Good for you, Charlotte.” Then she walks to the parking lot and gets into a minivan, looking like she’s having trouble stuffing herself into the driver’s seat before she turns the ignition and drives away.

  Charlotte takes a reflective sip of her latte and feels an amazing joyful glow spreading through her body. She is really doing this. She is so much smaller than she used to be. Even her gestures are so much more lithe, so much quicker than they used to be. She never could have lost all this weight on a treadmill. No way. Treadmills are a drag. But cycling is totally fun! She is going to do this for the rest of her life, no doubt about it, and her life is going to be amazingly happy.

  She finishes her latte and with huge satisfaction gets back on her bike and begins her ride home. How much you want to bet she’ll take the long way?

  the Weight-Loss Cyclist: TOM

  Jeans are 33 inches at the waist and hanging loose

  Large T-shirt (should be a medium)

  Man, is that really who I used to be?

  Jeans are 44 inches at the waist and fit snugly.

  Man, is that who I can become if I ride bikes?

  Tom believes it’s bad luck to talk about the miracle that has occurred. Last year, he was what you call “280 pounds of heavenly joy” struggling to pedal a bicycle down a flat road, let alone try to lug his guts up even the slightest incline. But look at him now: 175 pounds with clothes on, rolling his bike out of Big Ed’s Cyclery after getting it fixed for free. Only the fastest cyclists in town get that kind of treatment at the bike shop. And you know what this means? Tom is a real rider now.

  He leans his bike against his Volvo in the parking lot and can see his reflection in the shop window. Short hair. Trim waist. T-shirt tucked into his jeans. Is that person really him? Long ago, he used to like the expression “If you met yourself on the street, you wouldn’t know yourself.” He used to think of that as a metaphor, as something that represented a larger truth about self-awareness, but now? He honestly doesn’t know himself when he sees himself. That’s awesome, no? He used to be what people would call “a jolly fat guy.” Now he’s a jolly fast guy.

  A Kia with a bike rack on the roof pulls into the lot, and out pops Bill, whom everybody on group ride affectionately calls The Beast, because Bill is the strongest rider in town—a guy who’s won the state championships a bunch of times. Bill’s in his forties, lean, not too tall, and has hard gray eyes that he fixes on Tom.

  “Hey, Tom,” Bill says. “Fun times on group ride this week, no?”

  Group ride was crazy on Wednesday. Some people from out of town showed up and attacked off the front and ended up getting lost, because they didn’t know what route the group was taking.

  Tom laughs and says the only stupid word that comes to his head. “Awesome.”

  “Bunch of jackasses on group ride,” Bill says and laughs. “You riding today?”

  Tom nods in the affirmative.

  Bill says, “I’m rolling in about an hour. Wanna come along?”

  Tom feels as if a shaft of light
has focused on him on a dark stage, like at last he has been chosen to join the great ones on the local hallowed roads of cycling. He can almost hear music in the background of this moment, a joyful orchestra announcing that the day to matriculate into the ranks of the truly fast cyclists has finally come. Tom says, “Hell yeah.”

  “Meet you here in an hour,” Bill says and heads inside the shop.

  The Weight-Loss Cyclist

  Of all the true fanatics, zealots, and believers in a life lived on two wheels, the person who has lost significant weight because of cycling resides at the top of the list.

  Cycling, you see, is a nearly perfect form of exercise to promote weight loss. For one thing, it’s at least 7,000 times more fun than, say, chugging along on a StairMaster. For another, if a person cycles moderately for an hour or two a day over the course of a summer-pedaling with a high, easy-spinning cadence (this keeps the heart rate lower and burns fat)—and if during this period a person makes sure to ease back on the double-cheese pizzas, the weight will disappear as if it’s an anvil falling off a cliff into the sea.

  When this happens, when the weight comes off, there is no greater joy on this earth. It’s even better than being in love! Not only has this person lost weight, but in the process, invariably, this person has gotten incredibly faster on a bike. If a person can apply the same power to the pedals with 40 or 50 or 60 or even 100 fewer pounds on the bike—wow, look out! This word may be overused, but I’m going to use it anyway, because it’s the most precise possible word to apply to a person who successfully lost weight through cycling: woohoo!

  Can I say it again, just because it’s so true?

  Woohoo!

  Thank you.

  And that’s exactly why weight-loss cyclists are so fanatical about cycling. They know the sport has helped them lose weight and, in the process of losing weight, they have acquired a newer, skinnier identity, and what else would that identity be but fanatical cyclist!

  There is a price to losing weight through cycling, of course, but it’s a price most weight-loss cyclists are happy to pay. Or maybe it’s an ironic price. For the overweight cyclist—and we’re talking in the range of 50 to 100 pounds overweight—there are extremely limited options with respect to clothing and equipment. This is because cycling, in its elite form, is a sport for extremely skinny people, people who are bones with leg muscles attached to them, people who look sort of like an upside-down chicken drumstick. And the way equipment is sold to regular people who ride bikes seriously is by association with the skinniest, freakiest, fastest people in the sport—we’re talking about 145-pound men who race in the Giro d’Italia. If a 300-pound person even sits on some of this stuff, it will crumble beneath them. Same is true for the clothing. Jerseys and bike shorts and undershirts, the very same items of clothing that make cycling more comfortable for professional riders, are not available for heavier riders.

  So if you’re way overweight, you apparently don’t get to ride comfortably till you’ve lost the weight. This is a sad variation on the old adage “You can’t get a job till you already have a job.” And honestly, it sucks. Heavy cyclists often have to ride on rear wheels designed for tandems and wear XXX T-shirts that feel like they’re made out of World War II tent canvas. Nevertheless, those who persevere through the weight-loss period are rewarded when they find themselves able to buy the nice equipment designed for skinny people. This may cost thousands of dollars—new bike, new wheels, all new clothing, et cetera—but you will never see a happier human being than someone who has lost a bunch of weight and gets to buy a whole lot of new stuff.

  the Slow Triathlete: BRETT

  Abrasions on right knee from numerous parking-lot crashes that occurred while practicing transitions.

  Eternal grimace: This is not fun; this is work.

  Handlebar-mounted water bottle, with straw.

  ONE PART OF THREE PARTS

  Tuesday evening, Brett experiences some confusion.

  He finished swimming 72 lengths of the gym’s pool and toweled off and pulled on his bike shorts and jogged to his car and removed his bike from the roof rack and changed quickly into his cycling shoes and—bam!—he’s on his bike and on the road, immediately hunkered over his aero bars and holding his speed steady at 17.1 miles per hour toward the countryside. He’s going to ride a circuit of 21.2 miles and then do a 5-mile run, and after that he should be about ready to go to bed.

  He’s pedaling evenly, he guesses, and is making sure not to drop below 17 miles per hour, which should mean things are peaches and cream. But something’s eating at him: Did he really swim 72 lengths? Maybe he lost count somewhere and either jumped ahead by a couple of lengths or, worse, did only 70 lengths or maybe even only 68, which would mean he’s not doing the full workout by four full lengths of the pool! Will this mean when he does the triathlon on Saturday it will be a disaster?

  Dammit. How could he have spaced that out? He keeps running the lap numbers and the calamitous permutations of the lap numbers and is starting to become angry with himself and suddenly, his speed has dropped to 16.2 miles per hour. What an inexcusable lapse of concentration! He pushes a little harder and gets the speed back up to 17.2 and takes a sip from the straw that’s attached to his water bottle that’s attached to his bike. No hands, of course. He needs to stay in his aero bars at all times because the slightest lift of the head, the slightest instant when he is not stretched over those bars, will cost him seconds and more likely minutes during the actual tri.

  70. 72. 74. 68. 66. He can’t get his mind off it. He may be going crazy.

  Up ahead, there’s a stop sign and traffic on the cross street, meaning he’ll have to roll to a stop and his average speed for the bike workout will be shot to hell. Is anything going to go right this evening? He stops and fumes and waits for a couple of cars to pass, then he’s pedaling again, in the aero bars, and thinking maybe if he can hold 19 miles per hour for a while he’ll be back up to the proper average speed. He strains and breathes hard and grips the bars with all his might, but he can barely hold 19 miles per hour. His speed is 17, always is, and if he can’t hold that, he might as well stay home and watch TV.

  But he might be in luck. He sees three people on bikes a ways up the road, and this gives him motivation to keep pushing hard till he can catch them and pass them. Doesn’t take long, either—seems like he’s pulling up on them in no time flat. The riders are three skinny guys in matching Big Ed’s Cyclery uniforms, riding three abreast and apparently talking with each other with considerable emotion, riding their bikes with one hand and gesticulating with the other. Brett keeps his effort dialed in and whizzes by them and feels really strong about it because, if you think about it, shouldn’t bike racers be riding a whole lot faster than those guys?

  He hears this behind him: “Jackass.” But he’s not sure that’s the word. Then he hears a whistling noise, and one-two-three the Big Ed’s racers fly past him. The third one in line says, “Don’t take yourself so seriously. You’re slow.” In seconds they are at least a hundred yards up the road and looking smaller and smaller, in exact proportion to the way Brett’s self-confidence on the bike is feeling smaller and smaller.

  Those guys, Brett thinks, are assholes.

  the Beginner Triathlete: SARAH

  Look of confusion and/or terror.

  Pedals with toe clips.

  Unused aero bars, because it’s just too darn hard to ride a bike holding on to aero bars.

  Sarah keeps one word in her head: Saturday.

  That’s her big day, the culmination of her exercise goal for the last 10 weeks, which has been to compete in her first triathlon. She knows the tri is going to be really tough and that she is going to have to ask effort of herself that she’s never asked before. But she’s hoping the triathlon experience will be fun, too, because that’s what exercise is supposed to be about: fun!

  At the moment, after work on Tuesday evening, she’s not exactly having the most fun she’s ever had in her life. Sh
e’s riding her hybrid on the bike path outside of town, and the headwind is so horrible she can hardly pedal into it. One more gust and she might tip over. What if there’s a wind like this on Saturday? Oh my gosh, she may not finish. Wouldn’t that be embarrassing?

  Here’s a bench along the trail, perfectly placed and coming at exactly the correct time to allow Sarah to get her positive attitude back. She decides to take a break and call Chareesa, her trainer, and ask for help.

  Sarah takes a seat on the bench. Thirty-four years old and calling her trainer like she would call her mom! The wind howls over the path and shakes the leaves and bends the trees. Sarah dials and shields her cell phone from the wind.

  When Chareesa answers in her rough, gravelly voice, Sarah immediately feels ashamed about calling.

  “Chareesa,” Sarah says, “I think I’m going to cry.”

  “What’s the matter?” Chareesa asks. She has a jock’s voice. A voice that yells at people a lot.

  Sarah says, “It’s really windy and I’m having a hard time riding my bike out here, and, gosh, I’m just so nervous about Saturday.”

  “Sarah, are you listening to me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll do fine on Saturday. It’s your first triathlon. You don’t have to set the course on fire.”

  “But what if I can’t finish?”

  “Sarah, what did you just say?”

  Sarah gazes up and down the path. The wind whips the leaves. Dirt blows over the path. But the sun is out. This is a nice enough day, really. So she says, “I’m just nervous about Saturday, I guess.”