It’s almost 2013 and that means time for reverse resolutions on 2012

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth
Insanity can add up.

Looking behind can teach us a few things about looking at the road ahead.

A couple years ago my cycling took a strange turn in late summer when a series of flats took me out of action day after day. It didn’t take a genius to ascertain that my tires were worn from a summer of riding, but when I put new tires on the bike, two more flats came along!

Bad advice 

I’d taken some bad advice from a guy at the bike store who insisted that some thinner tires would hold up in day to day riding. So I put them on and got one flat from a piece of road debris and another from a pinch flat. Too thin. Too bad!

Repeat performance

There had been a similar series of flats before, and I made the mistake of barking about the constant need to change tires when a buddy noticed my complaint on Facebook and said: “Do yourself a favor. Stop running over shit.”

That is some very…

Good advice. Ranks right up there with the time a college roommate heard me bitching about the pace of our team’s winter training and advised me: “Cud, you just need to shut up and run.” I took his advice and set all my indoor PRs that winter.

Sound off

But there is still something to be said for bitching out loud when things don’t go right, if only to hear yourself whine.

There is also something to be said for listing your complaints so that you can see what has gone wrong as well as what’s gone right.

So here’s a suggestion, make some Reverse Resolutions. That’s right, rather than looking ahead and throwing blind promises at the New Year, take a look behind at the old year and figure out where you went wrong. It can teach you a lot about yourself.

In the spirit of self-deprecation, here is my list of Reverse Resolutions for 2012:

1. No More Bike Wobbles. The bike wobble that sent me crashing to the ditch in September 2012 resulted in a broken collarbone, surgery and physical therapy. It also deeply bruised a hamstring that took months to recover. But having never heard of bike wobble before the crash, I cannot be entirely blamed for those miserable results. What I’ve learned since has convinced me that Bike Wobble is essentially preventable if you pay attention to the warning signs and learn a bit about what to do if it comes along again. Press your knees to the top bar, keep pedaling and loosen your grip. What a great resolution for the old year to take into the new.

2. Don’t train the same stupid pace all the time. It seems simple, but in 2012 I simply did not train hard enough or easy enough at times. Always kind of hammered the middle ground, and had middling fitness as a result. There were legitimate Life Stuff and Events that prevented me from better variety, but looking back at 2012 and ahead to 2013, that is one thing I plan to change. Get up and GO now and then.

3. Don’t forget about strength training. I know bloody well that strength training keeps me from injury and improves overall performance, especially in running. So why do I (and so many others I know) neglect such a simple problem prevention technique? Usually it’s for lack of focus. 2012 was full of that. Which doesn’t mean I hope to be “full of it” in 2013, as in making false promises to myself. But keeping up the strength work would be the nicest thing I could do for my mind, body and whatever else enters the picture.

4. Run and ride like you mean it, not like it’s an obligation. How many of us go out the door with that sodden attitude that we “need” to go for a run or “have” to lose some weight. What a crappy way to live. Instead, we should focus our gratitude and thankfulness toward the fact that we CAN run and ride. If that’s the only Reverse Resolution we all keep in 2013, things are guaranteed to go a lot better.

Tarsnakes are everywhere. And don't you forget it.

Tarsnakes are everywhere. And don’t you forget it.

5. Stay on the lookout for tarsnakes. I’m not the only one who warns you about these things. But I may be the first to recognize their metaphysical meaning.

Tarsnakes are real, and they are also the product of our ignorance and imaginings. That said, there have been several other trip-ups during the year 2012. Wearing a pair of training shoes too long. But there have been positive results and possible averted disasters by paying better attention to riding safety and accepting that the brutally hot weather of last summer in Illinois really did affect one’s ability to train.

Those are my simple Reverse Resolutions for 2012.

Happy New Year to everyone for 2013! Thanks for finding this blog that started up in August 2012 and swings into 2013 with hope and excitement. Best wishes to all of you!

Christopher Cudworth

Monte Wehrkamp

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2012 in review: Facts and stats about We Run and Ride (August-December!)

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog. I wanted to share it with you because it says things about what readers of this blog want to see, where they come from and more. Because that’s important to me. Ifyou have any comments leave in the space below or send to Christopher Cudworth @cudworthfix@gmail.com. Thanks and Happy New Year! Looking forward to running and riding in 2013!

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 7,600 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 13 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

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Saturday artwork: Photoshop watercolor of fall runner

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth
You know the feeling. The temperature is right. The day is bright. Just cruising through a forest preserve with your own thoughts.

You know the feeling. The temperature is right. The day is bright. Just cruising through a forest preserve with your own thoughts.

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Physician, heal thyself

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth
Marathoner Bob Kempainen, now a physician, ran through stomach illness to win the Olympic Trials marathon. A physician's gift for physical and mental discipline? Likely so.

Marathoner Bob Kempainen, now a physician, ran through stomach illness to win the Olympic Trials marathon. A physician’s gift for physical and mental discipline? Likely so.

“Physician, heal thyself” is a quote of a Proverb spoken by Jesus in the book of Luke 4:23. It means, quite simply, that people wanted him to do miracles in his hometown like those they had heard about in other places.

But Jesus didn’t fall for such tricks, demanding proof of the miraculous. And neither should we.

The meaning of this bit of scripture hit home as I was riding the elevator at a hospital with a physician who wore a stability boot on his ankle. “What’s up with your foot?” I asked.

“Achilles,” he said.

“Do you mind if I ask how it happened?”

“It was progressive,” he replied. “Started with a torn plantar fascia and sooner or later the achilles went.”

Ignoring the warning signs

Many of us have been there in our running and riding. Ignore the warning signs and pay the price. Favor one injury and pick up another. That’s called a compensatory injury. Trying to compensate for one ache can lead to another, sometimes worse problem.

Compensatory injury 

I once strained the achilles on my right leg pretty badly by refusing to use crutches when I was rehabilitating my left knee after surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament. Humped all over a soccer tournament on one leg basically, and by the end of the weekend, trouble sprang up in my right achilles. Dopey, I know. But we all try to heal ourselves the wrong way sometimes. Hoping for miracles. Or acting like they’ve already happened.

Let healing occur

You have to allow your body to heal. Even doctors are prone to forget that when it is their own bodies they are trying to heal. One orthopedic surgeon I know tore his ACL and had it fixed by his surgical partner, staying awake to watch the surgery while it was in progress. Talk about ‘physician, heal thyself!’

Yet he tried to come back too soon from surgery and tore the other ACL in the process. So his partner fixed that one too, while his fellow surgeon stayed awake again to watch.

Doctor, doctor, gimme the news…

My family doctor is a runner. Or at least he was. He cherished running the Marine Corps Marathon each year, for at one time he was a physician in the Marines.  But as he aged the training got tougher to take, as did pushing away from the table. His increased load along with a slight weight gain around the middle added up to trouble. First his knee went bad, then a hamstring. He hobbled through 26.2 miles nonetheless. But that was that. His lower back went out, and a disc slipped a little too. “Now I just spin on the bike at the health center,” he chuckled. “I was too damn dumb to know when to back off.”

We’re all human

We’re all human. Even our physicians. That same doctor didn’t quite make the right call on my own knee and hip problems a few years ago and deterred me from getting physical therapy that probably could have identified some weakness problems. With the right PT, I might have prevented even the ACL tear.

Defying human limitations

Yet I also know many physicians who seem to be able to defy the common limitations of the typical athlete. An Ironman doctor I know rides his bike like a maniac, dialing it up to 26 miles per hour for miles at a time. He can’t climb hills for shit, but he sure can go on the flat.

Running with him was an interesting exercise as well. His stride is forceful, not elegant. Yet he covers those 26.2 miles with determined steadiness. As a runner, he’s a grinder, not a glider. Whatever works, right?

The amazing example of marathoner (and doctor) Bob Kempainen

I think back to the Olympic Trials where then-resident physician in-training Bob Kempainen threw up during the race yet went on to win. The only way I can figure he had the toughness to puke and keep going was the discipline learned in residency. Physicians spend 80 hour weeks on barely any sleep taking care of patients. When it comes to taking care of themselves, life seems like a cinch. And so he ran through sprays of his own Gatorade to win the Olympic Trials. Gutsiest performance I’ve ever seen. Pun intended.

It’s a unique perspective our physicians have on the world. We can be grateful for their expertise, their specialty training and their amazing collaboration to help us all get through life, and hopefully heal us as we run and ride. I’ve always admired their ability to serve in their practice far beyond what most people can take. Long hours. Difficult, draining time at the operating table. Long lines of complaining, sick patients. We should all be thankful for doctors. Sure, there are a few pompous pricks among them. But maybe, just maybe, they’ve earned the right.

But most of them are kind and considerate. Except when it comes to their own injuries. Then they can be too tough on themselves. It’s hard to pull off miracles so close to home.

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No fear of darkness, nor fear of cold

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth
As darkness settles, our senses often heighten. But we need not always fear.

As darkness settles, our senses often heighten. But we need not always fear.

Somewhere along the way, well into my 30s, I walked into a basement and stood there in deep darkness. And was not afraid.

Most of childhood and beyond was filled with trepidation at the thought of being left in a totally dark room. My brain had been filled with the idea that danger lies in darkness. That bogeymen or evil spirits might somehow get you.

Yet there I stood. Alone in the dark. A quiet clock across the room kept ticking. And nothing came to get me.

Nothing ever has. There have been many moments perhaps where something could have jumped out of the dark woods, for example, to knock me down or rob me. There have been many nights running down dark paths where strangers or thieves could have attacked. Yet none ever has.

I count myself fortunate in that regard. One should not take for granted even the basic safety of hot having been assaulted in the night. Yet even when I lived in the City of Chicago and trained through the dim passages of Lincoln Park and the lakefront, I stayed alert.

We generally fear what we do not know. This photo of a windmill at night seems like an evil creature. But it is not.

We generally fear what we do not know. This photo of a windmill at night seems like an evil creature. But it is not.

But basic fear of darkness is about more than fearing circumstance. That haunted feeling that something is near, about to get you, is a phobia that is not easy to cure. Yet mine did. Cured itself?

Not exactly. Some fear of darkness is inherent to our human condition. Anxiety might magnify it, and I’ve had my tussles in that category.

By contrast, human faith often fights the notion that there is anything to fear in darkness. I have grown in that category. Yet the lack of fear of darkness seemed a pragmatic realization as much as some spiritual release.

Now it is the cold I no longer fear as well. The cringing reaction one instinctively has when emerging outside to be hit by chill air is vanishing. It is not that I no longer feel the cold. It is that I suddenly have started feeling it differently. It is, after all, just cold air. We all know our limits in dealing with that.

Those limits vary widely from person to person. I have often wondered at the sight of an urban fisherman standing on the concrete walks along Lake Michigan on a 35 degree day dressed only in a tee shirt. I might be jogging by wearing two layers of running gear to fight off the lake breeze, and here’s this stolid fisherman, not even shivering in the wind.

People who exercise outdoors with any frequency build up a tolerance for cold over time. The 50 degree day you dread in September is welcomed with a tee shirt come spring. It’s all relative.

IMG_8216Something in our head changes, and our bodies go with it. We overcome our sensations, and with it go our fears. Sometimes we make a mistake and wander into a dark place where we should not go, or get caught on a run with too little clothing to fight the chill rain, or on the bike when sleet starts cutting across the open fields. Then you realize you’d better be smart and get home right away.

It’s going out into the dark or rain that marks the moment where your fears don’t rule you. That’s the hallmark of someone who has moved past their superstitions and fears to become one in control of their own mind.

When you can stand in the dark. When you can brace for the chill. And not be afraid. Run on. Ride on. Your mind leads the way because you can see into your own soul, and not be afraid. And your body leads the way because it can sense the limits of what you can do, and deliver a sane response. That’s a great place to be. Without fear.

And why is it important to conquer fears of darkness or cold? Because fear operates within us on ignorance of our true circumstance. When we get a grip on one set of fears, it enables us to move past fears of other kinds, like outlandish nervousness before a race, or fear of a hard training ride with superior cyclists. You move past your fears and move into the zone where you can sustain and compete.

These are aptitudes transferable to other circumstances in life. When disease or illness strikes. When relationships blow up. When faith abates. When failure, stress or disppointment lurk in your mind.

Learn to work with your fears, and even overcome them, and life makes more sense overall.

And that is how you learn how to best run and ride.

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The tarsnake of running and riding over Hump Day

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth
Hump Day is a gravel road with little traction and a 10% incline. Keep on running and riding. You'll get through it.

Hump Day is a gravel road with little traction and a 10% incline. Keep on running and riding. You’ll get through it.

You know the feeling. Wednesday. Hump Day. When will Friday come?

Sure, sometimes you face a weird week with Christmas on a Tuesday and all. So let’s have compassion on those who are already back in the office, staring at the steep gravel hill of Hump Day. Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Lucinda Williams sings it best.

We all face the same situation sooner or later, it seems. People run or ride up the hills of Monday and Tuesday only to find that the road ahead is a switchback over a steep incline before reaching the descent days  of Thursday and Friday.

The Bell(y) curve

If your week too often looks like a pregnant Bell(y) curve with a giant bellybutton sticking up where you once had an ‘innie’, well, take heart. We’re all out here rooting for you.

There are good weeks…

Some weeks are just like a great run or ride. You hit the ground running on a Monday and before you know it, Friday’s over and you’re sailing home with everything completed on time so that you can do your long workout on a Saturday morning with a clear mind and a hopeful heart.

And bad weeks…

Then there are those other weeks. Days when you feel like you’ve been shoved into a black hole or a time warp. The minutes drag and the seconds eat away at your soul. That person with the annoying whistle while they work, or who talk too loud on the phone or hold whispering conversations right outside your door that you try to tune out? Well, sometimes they just can’t be avoided.

Then there is jealousy and envy…

You glance out the window and wouldn’t you know it? There goes a runner in bright shoes and matching top, trotting along happy as can be. Or you head out for a quick break at lunch and grab some sort of fast food you should not eat, and on the way back to the office, a sleek-looking cyclist on a $5,000 bike wearing the coolest kit you ever saw passes you by on the side road. You think to yourself: “I suck. Here I am a fat slob eating crap and there goes the guy who will kick my ass at the next criterium I race.”

Temptations and obligations

It’s not easy being a working workout lover. Temptations and obligations are everywhere. Some are things you want to do. Some are things you have to do. Some are things you wish you could avoid and can’t. Some are things you wish you could do and never find the time.

Hump Day Thoughts

These are Hump Day thoughts. Stuck in the Middle With You thoughts. Not quite there and not quite gone, you cling to the hope that somehow, someday, your schedule will be yours to decide.

We all wish that dream of personal freedom and Hump Day ignorance could come before retirement. Before the body is too old and the will too comfortable in its objectives.

Of course when you’re running a marathon, Hump Day really doesn’t arrive until about Mile 20. That’s when your glycogen is due to run out and The Wall lurks for many people. In cycling the same effect hits you at about mile 80 of a Century Ride.

So you have to use a combination of wise replenishment and mental strategy to prepare yourself for potential events such as these.

There is hope

But you make your own way in this world, and sometimes, with the help of God or a dying relative perhaps, you finally get the time you need to train without constraint.

Behold your own dedication!

I have a friend who finished the Madison Ironman last year. Joined him on several workouts. He’s a hard working physician who’s done well in life. Yet his work still calls him loud and clear. Watching him focus on his workouts was a pleasure that recalled the time when I actually ceased working full time in my early 20s and just ran. Ran like hell for a full year and set all my PRs, won some races and pretty much ignored the fact that the working world of 8 to 5 (it used to be 9 to 5…how’d that happen) even existed.

It wasn’t the wisest career move, I must say. But it was wise in terms of understanding what time allowed for that sort of existence. Pretending I was a pro athlete (I did have sponsorship) was both a fantasy and a reality at once. Sure, I found out eventually I was not a world class athlete, but I also found out other things about myself as well.

Surprise: There’s more to life than work

Like knowing that when you’re not working, you really do still exist. And that not everything in the world revolves around work so much as work revolves around you, hemming you in, cutting off your passage to contemplative existence. Fortunately or unfortunately, that’s the way of the world. Blame it on Adam and Eve. The first human f’ups.

For a while there for me, Hump Day ceased to exist. It was living out a fantasy that maybe I should not be so quick to regret. I once lamented to my own mother that the time spent racing and training was self-indulgent and she interjected: “Oh, I don’t know. I rather like you then. You were so focused.”

On anything but Hump Day.

It can still happen for all of us if we apply some basic principles of commitment and discipline in our training.

How to Wipe Out Hump Day (WOHD)

Heading into the New Year,  the best thing you can do for yourself to wipe out Hump Day and ride over those tarsnakes of negative thoughts about lack of time for training and learn to forgive yourself.

It’s just like downshifting to get up a hill on your bike or running in place at a street corner to catch your breath and gather your thoughts. You need to keep moving, but use the time to gather yourself and move on. Just don’t stop or go backwards. That’s the goal of personal momentum.

Momentary lapses are sometimes the worst

Forgive yourself those moments of weakness by being patient enough to avoid gorging on food at night the minute you get home from work. Settle down a bit from your day of work or commute and you just might  get out the door for a run or a ride.

Beseech your spouse and say something like, “You know, I need this for mental health, and if the chores can wait a little while longer, I’ll be a better person to live with.”

If all else fails, you can still do something simple and healthy like taking the dog for a walk! It all adds up in the end. Who knows, your dog might find something to hump and that always makes Hump Day a little more exciting, for the dog least. We heartily recommend that you yourself do not actually hump anything in public. Despite all urges to the contrary, that is not what Hump Day ever means. Not for us human types anyway.

Smoothing over Hump Day

You’ll be amazed how quickly Hump Day starts to smooth over when you realize that its just another hill, of the metaphorical––or is that allegorical type––of course. I think it’s both.

You’ve crested many such hills both in  in your day, and you will crest many more.

Godspeed, and watch out for those cinnamon rolls on the counter and bottles of cold beer in the fridge. They are the tarsnakes of diet and determination. Run past them first and you will have the willpower to only sample them later, and that is good. Your salvaged will is your best hope. It will help you past Hump Day and beyond.

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On some Christmas mornings, we run into mysteries

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth
Coyote in snow photo by Max Waugh, Maxwaugh.com

Coyote in snow photo by Max Waugh, Maxwaugh.com

On Christmas morning for the last 25 years, I have taken a run on the same golf course north of the in-laws’ house in Addison, Illinois. The course was once privately owned and about 10 years ago was sold to the DuPage County Forest Preserve.

A changing Christmas tradition

Over the years the weather on Christmas morning has fluctuated greatly, as you can imagine. There have been mornings frosty and cold, 12 below zero and bundled up. Also mornings of 65 degrees, strange and springlike on Christmas day. And all points in-between.

The ski alternative

A few of my “runs” over the years have turned into cross-country ski trips when the snow was too deep to run on the golf course. Making your own trail in 12″ deep snow is no treat. Yet when you get a mile track down and start skiing a few loops there is great beauty being up on skis. It is also a lot less hard on the knees.

Strange patterns

About a decade ago on one of these skiing mornings there was not a soul to be seen around the course. I skied about 5 miles and was turning back to the parking lot when I noticed a strange pattern in the snow about 50 meters away. There were no ski tracks leading into the pattern, which was shaped like a wagon wheel with spokes. There were about 6 spokes as I recall, and a line of tracks leading in one side of the circle and another line of tracks leading out the other side. Otherwise the ‘wagon wheel’ in the snow was not connected to any other type of trail in the newly fallen snow.

I decided to investigate and skiing closer to the wheel I began to wonder who had made the pattern in the snow. I had seen no human footprints the entire morning of skiing. It would have been heavy trucking through snow that deep. You would have seen a trail of footprints leading somewhere, either entering the golf course property at some point or commencing at a vehicle.

But there were no traces of human footprints anywhere. I skied up next to the deep track leading into the wagon wheel shape and noticed that the tracks in the trough were all made by coyotes. Coyote tracks.

A coyote ritual?

I skied round the wagon wheel shape (not disturbing it…) studying the tracks within the trough in the snow and saw absolutely no trace of human footprints. The trough itself was narrow enough for a coyote to pass but a human would have had to point their toes and keep their legs moving in a very straight line to avoid knocking divots out of the side of the track in the snow. I saw no divots. There were also no uneven points in the base of the track where human bootprints compressed the snow. It was just coyote prints. Everywhere you look.

But the coyote tracks did not veer off anywhere from the wagon wheel. There was not one solitary animal that took off on its own, the way you might think one would at some point in the snow.

Then the reason for the convergence on the center of the wagon wheel became clear. A Canada goose lay mostly eaten at the center.

There was a little blood around the goose and a fairly loose circle of tracks where the coyotes had spun in a circle while eating the goose.

Mystery meet

It was mysterious. Had the coyotes carried the goose there and then eaten it? Or had they arrived when the goose was dying in the snow? Yet there were no goose tracks leading inward toward the wagon wheel either.

I stood there on my skis trying to figure out the scenario of the coyotes and the goose. We have seen many coyotes in my in-laws backyard over the years. We know they’re around because they have stood looking at us inside the house from the woods in the back property.

That didn’t help me figure out whether these coyotes were really smart or simply ran around in a set of human tracks until they covered up all traces of homo sapiens.

A haunting memory

So I arrived at the conclusion: the coyotes did this themselves.

That is what I chose to believe at the time, sort of on faith, but the experience and the physical evidence of those narrow snow troughs still vexes me. Haunts me in a way.

Because I know for sure there were no human beings or tracks around on that Christmas morning, especially that early in the morning. There were no footprints leading from the road around the fence and into the golf course. I checked. And no chance that a vehicle had parked in the lot, for there were no tire tracks to be seen.

I ran by that spot this morning where the coyotes had executed their wagon wheel ceremony and feasted on a goose. It still gave me a little chill.

Conversations (with myself, mostly)

Only a skiff of snow covered the ground this year. There were dozens of Canada geese wandering around the golf course on foot. They stopped and stared when I stopped to tie a shoe. I wished those geese could talk. Or I wish that those coyotes could tell me what their ritual was all about. Because it has mystified me all these years, and mystifies me still.

Unsolved and accepted

And one must accept there are not going to be answers for everything. Some things you have to take on some sort of faith, even if they don’t really provide you any life lessons, or directed answers.

Sometimes it is just a wagon wheel of coyote tracks around a slaughtered goose in the snow. We aren’t meant to know the source of the scene, or the outcome. Nature speaks and we listen, but the answer is of a different type than we have come to expect. Yet it is a good answer still. ”

“You don’t know everything. And you probably never will.”

It may seem like a strange thing to say, but I think that realization is a great gift on Christmas Day. Some things really are best left a mystery.

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With admiration for the bicycle commuter, and why I’m not one

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth
Over the River...

One of the benefits of a daily bike commute is being part of the scenery, and admiring it.

Commuting by bike is a really sensible thing to do. If you know how to do it. And don’t live too far away from your office. And have a safe route to get there. And don’t need to leave the office much for your job. And work for a company that supports bicycle commuting. And have a place to store your bike when you get there. Perhaps even a place to shower. Bike commuting really isn’t as simple as it is made out to be. But that doesn’t mean you should not try it.

A major mojo bike commuter

My best friend commuted by bike 30 miles one way for a couple years. His 60-mile daily commute put him in awesome shape. Combined with 80-100 mile fast-paced group rides on weekends, he got in the shape of his life. Rode with the fastest of the fastest that summer, the Tuesday-Thursday group ride averaging 25mph for 30-40 miles and a pace over 30mph with some regularity.

That summer he went to France and rode the Alpe du Huez and Mont Ventoux, to name a few. He had a very bikey summer. Now he commutes to the city by train. Easier, no doubt, but he misses that fitness.

Naive hopes

I had just started serious riding about that time, and had little knowledge of how fit he really was. It was everything I could do to ride 30 miles at 18mph on a group ride.

At the same time, I flirted with bike commuting. Nothing dramatic. Just 7 miles one way. Uphill going to work. Downhill coming back. Vertical rise of 173 feet. Surprising how much that costs you some days, especially against the wind.

I also fell down the first day riding to work. It was a temperate spring morning, beautiful for riding, really. Had my pants leg tucked up and my backpack on. Turned onto a wooden bike ramp leading from the road to a bike path through a park and quickly learned the ramp was covered in a thin layer of greenish moss. Flomp. Down I went. My dress shirt was smeared with greenish-brown goo, shoulder to waist. My wife brought me a change of shirts that morning.

Admiring the experts

I’d commuted by bike before and since, but I remain envious of those whose routines and planning exceed my own abilities.

There are quite a few folks in our area who commute to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Physicists around here make good particles in the commuting universe. They bundle up year-round and ride to work. One even invented and built a huge wooden show shovel he uses to clear a one-lane commuting path through the snow here in Illinois. He’s a local legend. Faithfully makes a way through the snow so that he and his commuting partners can cruise through the Tri-Cities on the way to work. Now that’s a real bike commuter.

Gotta go

My trouble with commuting has always been the need to go places during the day. Places I cannot go by bike, like sales calls and presentations. You have to work in the right profession to be a bike commuter.

Also I get really hyper sitting at a desk all day, and need to get out and move around during the lunch hour. That’s possible by bike if it’s not raining or snowing or sleeting or hailing or hot or windy or so damned busy with traffic that you can’t get anywhere.

So I take a car.

Guilty as charged. I’m a wimpy bike commuter. I’ve seen the good ones in action, and know to what I aspire. But for now I’ll hold them in high esteem just as I hold other cycling greats.

Which makes me wonder. Have any bike commuters been accused of doping?

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Sunday revelation: Hard to discern difference between riding and writing

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth

Headed into church with my wife this morning, accompanied by my son Evan who is home from NYC, we paused to greet the pastors at the door to the sanctuary.

“Good morning,” our associate Pastor (Rich) said to my son. “Where are you living now?” he asked.

“New York City,” Evan replied. “Lower East Side of Manhattan.”

“It’s nice to see you again,” Pastor Rich said. “I’m riding buddies with your dad. Do you ride?”

It was noisy in the chancellery. My son did not quite hear what the pastor said. He thought he’d heard “writing” rather than the word “riding.”

“Yes, I try…” he smiled. “But it’s hard.”

Pastor Rich smiled, welcoming my son into the club of people who know that riding is hard work.

Later after church I asked my son, “Did hear him say ‘riding’,” I asked, “or did you think he said ‘writing?’ ”

“Writing,” my son laughed.

“Well, just the same,” I replied, laughing as well. “They’re both hard if you think about. At least to some people.”

 

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Saturday artwork: Running Texas Style

Posted on December 22, 2012 by Christopher Cudworth
This poster-style work was originally created in watercolor by Christopher Cudworth for the Brazosport Run for the Arts.

This poster-style work was originally created in watercolor by Christopher Cudworth for the Brazosport Run for the Arts.

Available in reprints and canvas form at: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/running-texas-style-christopher-cudworth.html?newartwork=true

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