Not a cloud in the sky. The road was a dark line through a white world. With projectile-type intensity the hot Spring sun ricochetted across the landscape adding brightness to brilliance; immolation of winter in a single afternoon. With just our bike shorts and light jackets, we were still overdressed when we flew across the flats on our way out to Middlesex. Wreckage of the long winter was everywhere across the roads –– potholes, frost heaves, and a few sections that seemed entirely beyond redemption. There was a lot of Butt Up time to interrupt our cadence. We didn’t care in the least. Neither did all the other riders who scurried out onto the roads like lycra-clad roaches into the promised land of a greasy city diner.
This was our first ride of the season at the end of a winter that started late and would not quit. The skiing had been wonderful, but we were ready to roll. We had planned the ride as a short jaunt out to Middlesex. We felt too good, and tacked on another five miles out towards Moretown before reluctantly turning around.
This ride was the official launch of our second HAHA season. At that time, I was still in the training cycle for my second attempt at the Vermont City Marathon. This year my choices were harder. There were not a lot of nice days in April and early May, but when a bright day lined up with my wife’s availability, the running shoes stayed in the corner. My DNF (Did Not Finish) in the marathon that year was most attributable to my desire to ‘go fast or go home.’ I had set a target of doing it at 8:30/mi pace, but I had not trained hard enough to sustain it. At mile 19, I dropped out. Blaming my failure on HAHA seduction is an exaggeration, but it was among the factors that got in the way.
Despite missing my goal, I enjoyed the training. A target date and a paid fee as proof of commitment gave me the excuse to move training up on my priority list. Motivation was rarely a problem. ‘Training’ in Vermont almost always felt more like celebration than discipline. If anything ever got in the way (other than weather) it was my own poor planning and prioritization. Email, client issues, parenting logistics, meal preparation and even weeding the garden were all threats that had to be managed through planning and discipline.
Meanwhile, on HAHA Daysi and I slipped smoothly back into our groove we had left at the end of our first season and happily clocked 25 mile rides within just a couple of weeks. We had both spent a lot of the winter out on snow; especially cross-country skiing. Daysi came into the season stronger, but her physical fitness was only one dimension of the change I saw.
My wife showed concerning symptoms of the mental toughness that I associate with endurance. We started that season pushing pretty hard but the comments about her sore ass, hands, and legs only came at the end of the ride and almost always with a smile. Communication about pauses in peddling to shake out her hands or lift her butt off the seat now came as declarations instead of as requests. Likewise, I felt her assertion through the drivetrain when she pushed to raise or lower the cadence in keeping with her needs. This woman was no longer shy about throwing her leg over the bar and clipping in.
Family circumstances had also evolved. Ariel was now 13 and Sofia was about to turn 9. They fought as only sisters can, but leaving them together in the house for a couple of hours no longer felt like gross negligence. Advances in cell phone technology helped reduce our anxiety. We kept Daysi’s phone in the back of my hydro pack. She could answer quickly and easily without even needing to slow down. We were ready to take the HAHA affair to the next level –– from now on we might not always be home before the bus, dinner might still need to be stuck in the oven, and we might disappear for an hour or two on Saturday morning. Other priorities were allowed to slip just a little further.
I began to wonder. As I wondered, I continued to watch the signs. One evening after an especially vigorous sprint on the flats by the creemee stand, she stood and twisted from side to side in a prolonged stretch. “Que rico!” she sighed before landing beside me on the couch. The kids were in bed (or at least in their bedrooms). The time had come for me to work up the courage.
Her hand was on the remote, raised and about to push the button, “Hey, hang on a minute.”
“What?” she squinted at me.
Best to just dive in, “What if we did a century ride together?”
“On HAHA?”
“Of course.”
She dropped her hand. The remote was back on the couch; her head to one side, “What would that involve?”
“You mean other than a lot of time staring at my ass?”
She laughed, “You know I don’t mind that.”
I sketched out the basic outline of a training plan. We would need to ride 3-4 times a week together and start doing at least one longer ride each week; working our way up to a couple of 80 mile rides before the event.
“What about the girls?”
“They seem to be doing okay on their own these days. Maybe we need to get a babysitter for the really big days.”
She thought for a moment. “I am not strong enough to do that.”
I was ready for that one, “Me either. …right now. That’s why we train.”
She sat for another moment. I knew the look well enough to realize that I was being sized up. I awaited the verdict. She smiled, “Let’s do it.”
And so began a great experiment in marital dynamics.
My first instinct was to put my wife on my training calendar. That didn’t work so well. Unfortunately Daysi is not the early morning lover that I am. Nor does she share my hyper efficiency. With the right preparation the night before, I can go from pillow to on-the-road in under 20 minutes. Getting Daysi from the end of breakfast to on-the-bike required an absolute minimum of 45 minutes. Despite these realities she made several honest efforts to roll out of bed when my alarm sounded at 5:00am. No shower. No breakfast. “I at least need a glass of juice,” she protested, and I went to the fridge. I did my best to look busy while she fumbled through 20 minutes with her contact lenses.
“The great thing about being on the back,” I heard behind me one morning, “is that I don’t need to keep my eyes open.”
“As long as the legs are spinning,” I replied.
My unfounded fears of Ariel falling asleep on the trail-a-bike came back to haunt me.
We needed to fit most of our riding into the prime hours of the long summer days and I adjusted my work schedule accordingly. Our most common week-day ride was the same route I used out to Marshfield and up over the mountains into East Calais. At just under two hours we found ways to squeeze it into our days. We always took a break in Marshfield to rest our butts before heading up the three-mile climb. The keepers of the small flower garden at the last bit of level ground managed to produce blooms through the entire season and coaxed more bounty of columbines than I have ever managed. Once saddled back up, I had just enough time to shift us into the absolute easiest gears for the long meander through woods and fields, past ponds, dilapidated barns and a large cemetery. Few cars traveled that section of dirt. The labor of our breathing, gentle chain rattle, and the occasional gossip of leaves chattering in the breeze were our only company. We had strength to talk in a couple of places where the grade lessened but rarely did. After the long climb we fell off of the mountain back onto Route 14 for a couple of moderate ascents before the final hard right onto Town Hill Road. It began with a 90 degree turn that prevented us from carrying in any momentum, and then threw us into a steep grade through open fields that baked in the afternoon sun.
We rode that hill so often that I knew the exact shift points and every quirk of both the pavement in front of me and the woman behind. One hundred feet into the corner where the grade eased I was pretty much guaranteed to catch her muttering the refrain of “Dancing Queen”, I am having the time of my life… and I’d know it had been a good ride.
We had a lot of good rides on that hill. Though it never lost its nemesis status, the pain became familiar and oddly comfortable. It was that last push at the end of a session –– the final moments of any day where we would be so tightly bound, her breathing so close, and our responsibilities so clear – just help each other over a rise.
We persisted. Over that summer and for each of the next two we participated in an organized century ride. None of the events were easy, but they were each a victory lap to celebrate all the work needed to get there. We were always the only tandem. The curiosity, encouragement, and occasional wonder of our fellow riders was endearing. True to what my training experience had already shown me, the events mattered less than the training. In each case I felt like we were just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s of a poem that had already been written.
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