• What’s your name and where are you from?
• Why did you sign up to do this race?
• What was your goal for this race before you started?
• Now that you’re racing, do you think you’ll reach that goal? If not, what has your goal changed to and why?
• What’s the hardest thing about this race?

It’d be interesting to see how answers change as I get later into the race and people are at different stages in the racer’s mood cycle. And then, when I get back, write up these mini-stories. Abracadabra — a composite profile of endurance cyclists.

Good idea or dumb? If, during a race, would you resent someone handing you a recorder and asking you a bunch of personal questions?

One Little Problem

I can envision one potentially fatal flaw in my idea right off the bat: my own attitude. As the day goes on, there will be times when I’m unlikely to want to talk to anyone about anything. So, at some of the most important stretches of the race, I’d be likely to go completely dark, or — worse — possibly throw the recorder into the bushes as an expression of my disdain for the race, myself, other riders, and the world in general. Hey, I can get like that.

Anyone got a digital recorder they don’t mind lending me? I promise to sweat all over it and get it real dirty.

Today’s Weight: 165.6

• We should be able to make the house payments
• We liked all the trees
• We liked that our neighborhood isn’t on the way to anywhere else — local traffic only
• We liked the nature trails in the neighborhood
• Um, that’s about it

And so I cannot claim any foresight or genius planning on my part for the fact that my neighborhood is right at the mouth of a portal to what I am discovering is a road cyclist’s paradise. Redmond Way / Hwy 202 connects me up to one great ride after another, and I get the feeling that I’ve only scratched the surface.

Why the enthusiasm? Well, I got up this morning and went on an early ride. I cruised along farmland, through mossy evergreen forests, up a couple challenging hills (my personal trainer is still insisting I seek out hills — idiot), past the Carnation city golf course. It’s a beautiful ride on great road surface, with very little traffic (at least at 6:00AM). Nice.

One thing I noticed while riding the RAMROD last week is that I’m — finally! — comfortable riding in the drops (ie, holding the lowest part of my handlebars) again. My legs don’t squish against my stomach — at least, not very much — and the lower position helps me be a little more aerodynamic. Well, I feel more aerodynamic anyway.

There’s just one problem, though. When you ride in the drops, you are heads-down. You are pretty much committed to looking at the road and not much else. And that’s a shame, when you’re riding such a scenic route.

Still, I was happily spinning along my route this morning — riding in the drops – when I got to the Carnation Marsh. There, I sat up for a moment, stretched, and looked around.

And that’s when I saw the bald eagle, sitting in its nest. Sitting atop a large dead tree, the nest looks like it’s about 5-6 feet in diameter.

I pulled over, grabbed my phone — with its cheesy little camera — and tried to get a shot. By the time I did, the eagle had taken off, but you can — just barely – see the nest. It’s right in the middle of the photo, and looks like a really bad shot of the space needle.

I’m sure thousands of people have seen this nest — and thank you, Audobon Society of Seattle, for maintaining the Carnation Marsh so beautifully, by the way — but it was a first for me, and I was fairly amazed. I watched the eagle fly ’til I lost sight of it, then looked at the nest again for a minute — it’s incredible how big it is — and then I got back on my bike and finished the ride.

So, note to self: riding in the drops is cool, but if you don’t sit up and look around once in a while, you’re missing a big part of what makes cycling great.

Today’s weight: 166.2

• Haphazard diet that came too late: My trainer has known since this time last year that I wanted to be back into racing condition by now. So what did he do? He did nothing until May, by which time I should have already been light and fit and ready to race. And then he gave me only vague parameters for my diet: "Eat lots of fruit and vegetables, and don’t pig out on chips when you watch the news at night." No wonder I’m still 17 pounds overweight.
• No organized schedule: My trainer would often wait until I was actually on my bike before deciding what kind of training I would do that day, and even then he was incredibly vague about what my objectives were: "You rode hard yesterday, so take it easy today," he’d say. Or, "Why don’t you go out and see where that forested road out by Snoqualmie Falls leads to? It looks pretty."  I swear, I don’t think he had me do a day of intervals or a recovery ride the whole season. He just sent me out on one medium-effort ride after another.
• Reactive, not proactive: After my trainer heard that I had a tough time in the hills at the RAMROD last week, he started having me do ride nothing but hills for the past couple of rides, and it looks like he plans to keep that up for who-knows-how-long. And the thing is, we both know that it’s too late for me to be a good climber at the Leadville 100, since it’s only two weeks away.

• I’m still recovering from my cold
• The Nyquil I took an entire week ago is still slowing me down
• Climbers are stupid. I’m more of a time trialist.

"We beat skinnier people with shaved legs and more expensive bikes, and that is the main thing."

"Hairy fatties with cheap bikes RULE!"

1. The quality of your sense of humor. Everyone knows that startling someone who is two feet away from heavy rush hour traffic without any protection whatsoever is simply brilliant. I only wish that you had videotaped it to show to your friends — I must have looked so stupid! And the thing is, this joke’s got legs. I can imagine how you might get a similar effect by suddenly screaming at people as you walk by them in hallways, or perhaps at the dinner table. How about in business meetings — or, in your case, during your lunch break while you sit with the others in your work-release program?
2. The originality of your sense of humor. I haven’t conducted a survey or anything, but I’m pretty sure you are the absolute first person to ever scream at a cyclist from a moving car. And I’m sure other cyclists will verify that they, like I, have never:
• Had a car swerve at them as a joke
• Had a car honk at them as a joke
• Had someone throw a beer bottle at/in front of them as a joke.

As a fellow humorist — though of course my sense of humor doesn’t compare with yours; I just write jokes and "amusing" anecdotes — I would again like to thank you for taking the time to share your unique and stylish brand of comedy with me.

Finally, I would like to share with you that since you weren’t going that much faster than I was, I had plenty of time to memorize your license plate. We were both going in the same direction on E. Lake Sammamish Parkway, so our destinations can’t have been too different. I’d say it’s almost inevitable that I will find your green SUV parked and alone someday. At which point, I look forward to continuing our tradition of sharing practical jokes with one another.

Kind Regards,

The Fat Cyclist

Today’s Weight: 166.8

PS: I wrote a followup to this post called "Both Sides of the Windshield," responding to one of the comments a person left. Click here to read it.