Time is Relentless

“The thing about time, Dominic knew, was that it was relentless.”  That is how my favorite author, John Irving, describes time through the eyes of his main character in his new book, Last Night in Twisted River.  I am getting a lot of reading done lately.  I have a lot of time on my hands as I have been forced to step off the bike and wait out an injury.

The pain came on slowly, a nagging little ache at first.  Two weeks ago I couldn’t bend my knee to swing my leg over my bike after finishing up my ride.  Everybody who is not an elite athlete says how elite athletes are so absorbed in their sports that they ignore injuries, push through all the warning signs, and push through the pain.  I have to admit that this is true and that I am no exception this time.  The last few weeks riding I was feeling  in the best shape I was ever in.  I was loving it and it was hard to not keep pushing on, seeing just how far I could go.  So I didn’t stop.  And now I’m paying the price.

These have been a frustrating past two weeks as I have been forced to admire my bike, which is such a big part of my life, from afar and to imagine my body undoing all the internal improvements I trained it to do pre-injury.  The time keeps ticking away, getting closer and closer to the goals I should be training for, but yet it moves so slowly as I spend boredom hours doing little when I would have otherwise been training and getting closer to reaching those goals.

During some of my boredom hours this morning I was watching coverage of the winter Olympics.  The topic was of Olympic athlete Lindsey Vonn’s shin injury and how it could put her Olympics in jeopardy.  The host described those goals of elite athletes as “fragile Olympic dreams.”  Could it be more true?  I am at least grateful my injury is occurring now.  There are three months until the qualification procedures for the 2012 Olympic Games begin for my sport and over two years until the goal actually arrives.  But, as Dominic and I know, time is relentless.

www.kimgeist.com

Win or Lose, It’s All in the Details

At a certain level, excelling in sports becomes really detail-oriented. When I was younger, I was always amazed by ABC’s Wide World of Sports television program that showed the dramatized inside look at the lives of athletes, especially into the lives of Olympic athletes since I have been obsessed with the Olympics for as long as I can remember (I originally thought I would go as a soccer player. Kudos to the 1996 U.S. Olympic women’s soccer team for inspiring many!). It was awesome to me to see how the lives of these successful athletes were 24/7 about their sport and then to see how after a bunch of blood, sweat, and tears later, everything finally came together in the end and they were successful, at the very least in their own eyes.

The past two months I have been traveling all over the world training and racing my bike. I have reached that point where it feels like my life could be a fairly engaging documentary. One of my training partners and I actually had a conversation based on this fact a few weeks ago. We discussed how we get up early, we ride to the track with our backpacks packed with the day’s necessities, we have a discussion over who’s iPod contains the most motivating playlist, we put that iPod on the stereo system, we ride efforts to the point of nausea, we adjust equipment to try to get the most speed out of ourselves, we try out the new and supposedly most technologically-advanced and fastest equipment, we discuss video feedback of the efforts we just did, we push ourselves even harder on the next efforts, we play cheerleader for our training partners and teammates who are just about on the point of not being able to do any more, we head out of the road for more hours of training, we come back to housing in the late afternoon and eat ridiculous amounts of food, we stretch and try our best attempts at recovery technique some of which include unique inventions of tight pants or humidity, we sleep, and then we start the same process all over again the next day. Some days we crash, and doesn’t that add even more to the appeal of a documentary?

The most interesting part of the actual documentaries to me was what happens after all the training and after the competition. No matter if training goes well or not, if the athlete meets the goal during competition or not, there’s always a reevaluation period. There’s always a flurry of questions as to what went well or didn’t? What could have been better? What can be improved upon next time? When you get to the point where your sporting life seems like documentary material, finding answers to these details consumes more time and effort than I thought was possible from watching the documentaries.

These past two months I took part in two national team camps and competed in two World Cup competitions. The camps went fairly well but my performances at the World Cups were not what were expected. Turn on the cameras; there have been some serious periods of reevaluation. There have been consultations with many people, the stuff ABC eats up. I have had to question all my preparations all the way down to the most basic, even where I live. I’m at that level now. There are checkmarks next to 24/7 and the blood, sweat, and tears boxes. Is there a checkmark next to the successful box? Only time will tell. For now that depends on the details.

www.kimgeist.com

Cyclists keep coming back for more

(Ed. Note: Cyclist Kim Geist is a member of the Pretty Tough Team)

I think cyclists are one of the most interesting types of athletes in the world.  This is because not only is skill very important to the cyclist’s success, but it is vital that he or she must be in the absolute best physical shape one can be at the time of the big event.  It is not like other sports where a good majority of the time is spent in “practice.”

I will admit I am prejudiced, but most of our American stick and ball sports have their athletes spend their time “practicing” how to dribble the ball more efficiently, how to scan the field for the open teammate, or how to implement the best new formation.  Cycling is not without its practice, but it rarely comes in a controlled environment.  A cyclist never says he or she is going to “practice.”  Cyclists go to “training.”

Cyclists definitely have to acquire skills like the ability to place a front wheel just inches away from another cyclist’s back wheel, the ability to change gears properly with varying terrain and speed, and the ability to make the best decision on during which part of the race it is smartest to spend energy.  It is just that these skills, unlike typical American sports, simply can’t make the whole game.

Unless the cyclist is fit enough to maintain the pace of the other cyclists whom he or she is racing with, skills acquired during “practice” will never help the cyclist to win the race.  So, right off the bat, being a good cyclist becomes almost all about training and the “practice” becomes all about covering up where training is lacking!  We cyclists ride in the draft behind another rider and shift gears at certain times – we use our skills – to make riding as easy as possible until the moment comes in a race when we can use the strong points of our fitness to make the right move at the right time and to win.

It did not take me long to figure out why many people call cycling the hardest sport in the world.  It is all about the question:  just how hard can you push yourself?  And, if a cyclist can answer that question in training, competing becomes just another day in the saddle.

Finding an answer to that question was the point of my latest venture.  I recently returned home from a national training camp held at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs.  There were six of us female cyclists invited.  We each had different goals we were working towards for the near future such as competing in the road world championships or the elite national track championships (that’s me), but our common goal was to push each other as hard as possible in training in order to bring out the best in each of us individually.  The group was perfect for the task; among the resumes of the riders were an Olympic gold medal and multiple world championship and world cup medals.  We obviously were a group of competitive women!

So, needless to say, I can describe our week together as training.  Was there practice of the nuances of team pursuit, an event that requires pure precision in exchanging in and out of the draft of other riders to cover a distance of three kilometers as fast as possible?  Sure there was.  But it was done at mock speed.  The quickest way to learn the finer points of the event is to make a mistake when you are already on the rivet physically.  Mess up and it is curtains.  You won’t make that mistake twice!

It helped to be at the training center where the athletic lifestyle is on center stage and all the external stresses of life are already taken care of.  Comfortable and convenient housing, tasty and healthy food (there are labeled nutrition facts for everything) and a great medical and recovery staff make concentrating on the training as easy as it can be.

Then after a week of training that would leave most people in bed for the week after, we cyclists ask, “When’s the next camp?”  We keep coming back for more.

You can follow me at my next major race, the elite national track championships at the ADT Event Center at the Home Depot Center in Carson (Los Angeles), CA September 30-October 4.  Then, yes, I will be back for more at the next national training camp in October.

www.kimgeist.com