On Easter morning, I had a chance to join an impromptu early morning ride with a casual biking club I recently joined called Viet Velo Northwest. Nhan opted to play soccer with his buddies as they do most Sundays, so I took VV up on their offer. Many of our fellow teammates were attending Easter Mass or celebrating with their families. The three of us who made it that morning didn't have plans until later in the day, so we gamely decided to squeeze in a quick ride in the early morning hours. Bikers don't shirk their responsibilities in favor of biking-- we just kind of shuffle everything else around so that we can ride every chance we get (insert wry smile here).The route today would be from Renton Memorial Stadium to Alki Beach, something like 37 miles, all told. No rain threatened the skies, the sun shined favorably, but the morning started off about 20 degrees cooler than my last ride in The Dalles.
The ride would be led by our Team Captain, John, and joined by me and another rider I call Anh Thu. These guys eat hills for breakfast, and they are cheetah-fast on the flats. They have sexy, high-end carbon bikes that they affectionately refer to as their "girlfriends." You can figure out the endless innuendos for yourself. And then there's slowpoke me with my entry-level Fuji road bike, reeking of amateur.
I appropriately dubbed our Easter ride as "The Tortoise and Two Hares"
Why is John the Captain of Viet Velo? Because he's damn good at coaching riders and at mapping the best tactical routes for training. I'm always intimidated to ride with these VV guys, but biking with seasoned riders is the best way to get better, faster, stronger exponentially because you simply have to keep up the pace. They will ride 30 miles for a cup of coffee, and 20 miles more for a pastry. But these guys never, ever drop a rider either, and they show an infinite amount of patience with newbies like me. No amount of spinning at the gym or novice riding on your own is going to improve your skill set in this sport unless you ride with and glean expert advice from experienced bikers. Just like you can't run a marathon from a treadmill, you can't be a road biker by virtue of spinning on stationary bike at the gym. Both require you to hit the pavement to put in the miles and the work.
Typically, the Captain always includes robust hills in every route he plans, but today gave way to a lazy Sunday feeling, since he promised us this ride would be "flatter than a pancake." Anh Thu ended up being the sweeper for our little group, so that put me in the middle for most of the ride.
We warmed up our legs on the lush Duwamish River Trail to the Green River Trail before crossing over short bridges, through industrial areas, urban neighborhoods, and sleepy Sunday business districts. The early part of our route passed under countless canopies of cherry trees along the trail, standing like reverse umbrellas showering loose petals on us as we rode underneath. It's early spring, and every cherry tree is still adorned in pink and white pom-poms; the cloyingly sweet smell of blossoms filling our lungs with just the kind of precious fresh air that mainland Chinese citizens are paying through the nose (pun intended) to sniff out of jars. It's a real thing, says The Huffington Post!
The next stretch involved going through kind of a rough neighborhood in the South Park area, but John assured us that "no one will bother us." Not trying to make any blanket socio-economic statements here, but it's the kind of neighborhood where if you run into another biker, it's usually a grown man on a small dirt bike wearing baggy jeans and a flannel shirt, know what I mean? As we passed through the area on our way back later, a enormous pit bull on a tight leash barked viciously and lunged at us. Luckily for us, the dog had a metal muzzle over his jaw, and his owner was dragged only a few short feet before getting his dog under control. Yeah, I pedaled pretty hard through there and my heart rate had nothing to do with my cadence.
The neighborhood gave way to an industrial area that seemed eerily abandoned on a Sunday morning, post-apocalyptic-style. On a crumbling street, we had to navigate our bikes dexterously past dozens of water-filled, bike-swallowing potholes to avoid taking a mud bath. We cruised past high chain-link fences capped with barbed-wire, enclosing storage yards full of rusty tanks and barrels of every size and color by the hundreds. It looked like a scene at "Terminus" from The Walking Dead. Amid the all the urban decay and the industrial ugliness, there was still raw beauty to be found. A massive wisteria-like vine spanned almost the entire side of a vacant warehouse, spreading its branches, adorning with its leafy embrace-- an emblem of life and vibrant greenery on a cold metal host. Another beautiful thing about biking is that it puts you at eye-level with everything you might miss when zipping by in a car. But it also allows you to explore these unknown avenues that you might never have a conceivable reason to drive through otherwise.
I frequently get lost in my own thoughts while riding, so before I knew it we had already reached Alki Beach! The beach was a sight for sore eyes after coming out of that eerie warehouse row. We were greeted by headwinds coming in off the Sound, but the path was devoid of the typical throngs of people on a weekend, probably because it was still early on Easter Sunday.
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Really couldn't have asked for a prettier spring day to ride along the beach. We pedaled on, checking out all the expensive high-rise condos and looking out across at the city skyline, people-watching while cruising on our bikes.
We had a mind to get some coffee, so we stopped and parked our bikes. The haphazard way this photo happened makes me happy.
After a good cup of coffee and even better conversation, we mounted our bikes and headed back, stopping only once for a photo.
A lady took this picture for us, and that's the moment I realized that we had inadvertently showed up all matchy-matchy in black, white, and red on all our clothing and our bikes today. A friend later commented on this pic, "Two ducks and a swan!" Unless I get to be the swan, maybe it's more like, "Duck, duck, goose!"
John ordered us into a pace line, maintaining a consistent 17 mph to take advantage of drafting. Being about a bike length behind the rider in front of you gives you approximately 20% draft benefit, and being 6 inches behind gives you 80% or so. It helped reduce our energy expenditure and increased our overall speed under the windy conditions. We needed to stay close together on the busy thoroughfares so that cars could easily see us too. As long as the rider in front maintains his cadence, the other riders can safely follow at close distances if everyone remains vigilant for changes in speed or direction, and calls out hazardous road obstacles to avoid.John must have bored himself to tears on the flat pancake route, so he decided to throw in a 12% grade hill off Martin Luther King Blvd for shits and giggles. Anh Thu must have gotten a second wind, because he took off like one, up and away he went.
I love to hate hills, or do I hate to love them?
I labored, spinning slowly up at 5-6 miles per hour in my lowest gear like I always do, breathing loudly like a Mack truck. Captain John, always the helpful tactician, stayed right with me the whole time and told me to sit up straighter to let more air into my lungs, sit further back on my saddle to give my legs more direct power on the downward pedal push, and to hold my handlebars in the middle for more control. And that is exactly why he's the Captain. I always hate hills in the moment, but I love them after I finally make it to the top. Viet Velo's team jerseys are aptly emblazoned with the motto, "No Hills, No Thrills"
I usually favor riding with Nhan simply because we started out biking together and we have our own thing going-- there's a certain comfort and sentimentality in that, and the gap in our skill levels are not as pronounced as they are with Viet Velo. But I do credit VV with enjoyably filling in the gaps when Nhan and I don't have a chance to ride together, and for imparting an immense amount of expert and practical knowledge about the sport. Nhan has never actually had a chance to ride with VV before for various reasons and plenty of excuses-- some legit, some not. They always ask me why he never shows up to ride, so I'm sure they are starting to think that I have an imaginary biking buddy.
Even Nhan is in on the joke now, calling himself "The Unicorn," that mythical creature that is never seen, but often discussed.
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