There are a number of reasons we decided to move to Portland, but the thing that sealed the deal for me was riding with the Portland Wheelmen Touring Club on one of our reconnaisance trips. I bought a bike box and took my bike with me when we returned to Portland in early October for Monique's OD conference. I did two rides through some of the most beautiful countryside in the Tualatin Valley and one ride partway through the Columbia River Gorge. Portland has hills galore and has been voetd the top cycling city in the nation for the past two years. From a cycling standpoint, it was a no-brainer.
The holidays came and went and in between Christmas and New Year, we found the house we would eventually buy. It is situated in the West Hills of Portland along some of the best cycling routes on the West side. Oddly enough, the day after we came home from that trip, we got an offer on the Roseville house. Both deals were done by mid-February.
By then I had been hearing about a July cycling tour called "Seattle to Portland". It's a 205-mile event and can be done over one or two days. I had never done a double-century before and the only one I had heard of was the Davis Double Century. I gave it some thought and then called Adam and told him I wanted to fashion my training to doing STP in one day. My intermediate goals were to do at least one century a month beginning in March. He got to work on my training schedule; according to him, I would have to eventually work up to doing two 5-6 hour efforts back to back in order to be properly overtrained for STP. This meant long hours on the bike and hence, long hours away from home, even on the weekends.
Monique and I sat down and talked about it - she had been my biggest fan and supporter up to that point but I was afraid that, given we were moving to a new city, that so many hours on the bike would be hard on us. She told me that she supported my goal and that she would try to find things to do to fill the hours I would be gone. My commitment was to start my long rides early in the day so we could have the afternoons and evenings together on the weekends. During the week, I would try to fit in my shorter rides during the work day as much as I could so once she was done with work we could spend time together.
This arrangement worked well. I found breaks during the day to ride for an hour or two and complete my interval assignements. I planned my longer weekend rides around club rides and events and was able to get up to the 5-6 hour back to back efforts by May. I accomplished my goal of at least one century a month. I was in the best shape of my life, I had dropped 35 pounds since the previous July, and I was stronger than ever on the bike. My performance in field tests steadily improved. I felt the transformation from slug to hard-core cyclist becoming complete.
I was able to ride quite a bit with the Portland Wheelmen, and that helped me meet other cyclists as well as learn new routes and roadways. By May I had developed a staple of rides I could use depending on what my interval assignments were for the day. I would do my Steady State and Climbing Repeats on Thompson Road, I would do my field tests at Sauvie Island. When I needed a good hilly route, I could shoot up Skyline to Johnson, drop down to Helvetia and do a loop of rollers. When I needed flats, I would go down to Hillsboro. Its everything I've ever wanted in cycling, and the only place that could rival - and even surpass - my old Bay Area routes.
I found that motorists are a lot nicer to cyclists here than anywhere else I've biked. People will slow down and move around you, often using the opposite lane to get by on two-lane roads. I guess that's another reason why Portland is so well know as being bike friendly. The consistent exception to that are BMW drivers. They tend to be the biggest pricks on the road. Whenever I've almost gotten hit by a passing motorist, 99% of the time it's a BMW, even when there's no traffic coming in the opposite direction. Maybe they feel like they own the road, being in such a fancy fast car. Maybe they're just wired to be jerks. Whatever, I can surmise that most of them have never been on a bike. They'd never do the things they do if they understood what its like to get clipped on an open road.
By the end of May, I was getting burned out. I think it was a combination of the fatigue and the bad weather - March and April were spectacular, but May was wet and dreary. I'm a California boy by nature and long strings of cold damp weather can get me down. One day, I had a 2-1/2 hour ride scheduled with some climbing repeats. I looked outside and it was raining. The day before, I had overdressed for the rain and ended up exploding on a group ride. For the first time, I abandoned my workout, opting instead to do some yoga. I was concerned, but I talked it over with Adam and he could tell I was getting low on gas. So he adjusted my workouts for the rest of the week to be lighter. It's times like those when it's great to have a coach.
The other thing I noticed around that time was that I would get really crabby when I got hungry. That never happened before - I could go hours without eating, be hungry, but be happy as a clam. Now I noticed (and so did Monique) that my moods would swing wildly when I was hungry. We talked about that too, and how I needed to make sure I didn't go without nourishment. Not only because of my moods, but also because it meant that I was down on fuel for training. On a positive note, the high-intensity training tended to stimulate testosterone production. I actually started growing hair on my previously-bare chest (okay, its still relatively bare, but you can now braid 3 hairs together!). That had other effects as well, but I am not at liberty to discuss that here.
<- Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7->
Author's Note: I wrote this article in the Fall of 2004 and since then I have received great feedback and a request to make it more available. Since then, I've lapsed into some old (bad) habits but I'm on my way back. A new "Re-Reinventing the Cyclist" is in the works. For now, I hope you can find some nugget of usefulness from this archive. - Carlo