On the bike, one must always suffer

… or as the great Jacques Anquetil put it, “on ze biceecle, you ‘ave all-ways to soffeur…”

I’m on the slow road to getting fit again after a two-year (or more) bout of getting out of shape for various bad reasons. I’ve been working out in the YMCA gym for a few months, but that’s isn’t the same as riding the bike.

So three-four weeks ago a friend asked me to ride with him on a 70-mile trip through the Santa Cruz Mountains. Maybe 5000 feet of climbing. Now only a few years ago I used to do this ride all the time, but that was when I was fit. OK, gotta try it again at some point…

So we start grinding up Page Mill Road, to the highest ridge-top we’re going to hit, about 2000 feet. By the time we’re at the top, I am hurting a little, but now there’s a long descent. Down Alpine Road to La Honda. Yeah, it’s all downhill, but that doesn’t mean a chance to relax. The butt is still on the bike seat, the hands are still bearing weight on the handlebars, and the feet on the pedals. A boy can get a few cricks doing this. And before we get to Pescadero, there’s Haskins Hill and then a few little sissy hills to pedal over.

We stop for lunch in Pescadero, eating a big fat sandwich at the deli. It cuts the fatigue. Then it’s Stage Road to San Gregorio, a couple of 500-foot climbs, and we’re at La Honda Road, ready for the grind back to the ridge-top.

Half way up, the pain begins. First it’s fatigue, then it’s soreness, then (baad news) muscle cramps. We stop in La Honda to sit and cry and buy liquids from the Bandit Store and guzzle them down. But then we still have to grind on up to the summit. More pain, more cramps in the thigh muscles. Ugh.

Finally, after what seems like hours of soffeureeng, the summit. At this point we’ve been in increasing traffic (it’s Labor Day Weekend) for quite a few miles, and it’s a stinking two-lane road with shitty shoulders, and did I mention that it it’s HOT? Oh yes, hot. Plenty hot. But now it’s downhill all the way to Portola Road. Nothing to soffeur about except having a string of 15 SUV’s on my tail, and having to find a place where I can slow down and let them pass without getting run down in the process. About five times on the way down.

And when I got down to Portola Road, where there were no more mountains to climb before getting home, but my thighs were still cramping, it occurred to me that if there were a nice van or truck to pick us up and drive us home, that would have been fair. But there wasn’t.

So now it was just a few miles to home, over little wussy slopes no one would ever worry about, except that we were deep into soffeureeng by this time, and we hurt all the way home and it seemed to take hours. But at last I got home, drank a whole lot of liquids, I mean a whole lot, and lay down and went to sleep.

I lost six or seven pounds doing that.

Fast forward a few weeks, and the same friend (oh yes) is running his annual Ride Up Mount Hamilton, which he organizes for the benefit of his friends so they can all ride from about 400 feet to 4000, in 18.5 miles, then turn around and come down. Oh, and there are a couple of shortish descents on the way up, which become longish climbs on the way down.

By the way, this is a beautiful ride. I mean it. The mountain is wonderful and wild. At certain magical moments, you get your glimpses of the objective: the lovely domes of the Lick Observatory on the tippy-top of the mountain. Then they disappear again, to reappear if you endure a few more miles. I’ve seen deer, bobcats, tarantulas, and wild pigs by the road. The views out over the Santa Clara valley are gorgeous and terrifying, because you’re looking down off a vertical precipice with no shoulder and no guard rail, from a road built for mules to haul telescope pieces up to the observatory.

Anyway, by the time I hit the last five miles — where it actually gets steep — I was hurting again. I fell in with a young woman after helping her with a flat tire. Well, I thought she was young. It turned out she was 39, just fit and healthy. Well, 39 is still young compared to some of us. But we kept each other company up that relentless mountainside, and although at two miles from the top I felt like I was fixin to die, I made it without stopping.

On the way down I did have to stop twice, to uncrick my neck and massage the sole of my poor left foot which has some kind of problem with the pedal. But I enjoyed the descent nevertheless. Got to the bottom of the mountain and found all the folks who came down way faster than I did.

Getting my strength back is a long and arduous process. But I can’t afford not to do it.