Cyling in Middle Age

I am forty-seven years old and before now I was never an athlete. Growing up I was more interested in poetry than sports. I was a member of the literary club in high school snubbing anything as physical as soccer or running. People ask me all the time, so what sport did you do before cycling? I look sheepishly and say, “none.” Before now, I was an avid couch potato without the slightest interest in anything that could be called exercise. I spent most of my time up in my head. I had well developed intellectual muscles but physically I was out of shape. For me, it is a unique experience to be developing my body as well as my mind.

In my first year of cycling, I rode over 6000 miles. It was a thrilling year of fast learning and improvement. I went from barely making it 25 miles down a bike trail to riding 200 miles a week during the summer months. I went from being scared of drafting with my partner, to riding with a club. My body changed too. I developed muscles I didn’t know I had in my legs and knees.

However, becoming an athlete at 47 is a different experience than becoming one at 27 (and even that is old in athlete years!). My body is aging and I have to be mindful of that even as I push it to find its limits. However, if there was ever a time to become an athlete now is the time. Before I started cycling, I was on the verge of developing a number of health problems, including elevated blood sugar and high blood pressure. Both of those conditions have resolved because I lost some weight and improved my health with riding. Cycling also helps me deal with my depression which (as I have written before) is critical for my well-being.

I also feel good about venturing into something new in middle-age. There are times, especially when I am riding with the twenty-something women of my team, that I wonder what AM I doing here? But for the most part, I feel that cycling is a new and exciting learning opportunity for me.

I have learned a lot about my body and what it means to be athletic, but most importantly I have learned about who I am and what I am made of. Cycling has caused me to be more disciplined (although I am still working on this). It has pushed me to be competitive when I am usually cooperative. It has allowed me to be cooperative when I work with other riders in a pace line, or teach riding to beginners. It has pushed me to overcome the years of “girl conditioning” which taught me that I am not good with mechanical things. It has made me think about what is important to me as an athlete and as a person.

As an older but newer rider, I do bring the experience of my life to the endeavor. I bring a perspective of having lived through many trials and come out the other side. I know I may never be the fastest racer or the top winner, but that is not important to me in the bigger scheme of things. What is important is that I am learning and growing and sharing with others the love of cycling.

Riding with the Blues

In this month’s Psychology Today there is an article which profiles four people who live with depression. I am one of them. In fact the article opens with a picture of me and a paragraph which reads: “Last Summer, Pata Suyemoto rode her bike from Boston to Cape Cod, 125 miles in one day. An educator who has taught everything for art to English, to Reiki, she’s funny, she’s intense, and she is passionate. Never a jock, three years ago she became a relentless road warrior, riding more than 6,000 miles the first year she took up cycling. But she would not say she has conquered depression. Instead, like many people who experience major depression – and there are roughly 15 million Americans who do – she has achieved a kind of delicate détente with it.”

Although it is a bit odd to be famous for being depressed, I figure the article might help someone else and I believe silence around tough issues is never the way to go. Cycling, as the article touches upon, has helped me cope with my chronic depression, but the relationship between my cycling and my depression is more complicated than the article reveals.

Depression is the backdrop of my life right now and has been for many years. It is a constant, although varying in degree depending on the day, the circumstances, the moon and the stars. Much of what I do is to cope with my depression. However, when I got into cycling it was not with the purpose of helping the depression. I got into it at first because my partner was a big cyclist and then I made it my own because it was challenging yet fun. However, a benefit of cycling was that it helped stabilize my mood and improved my overall health.

Cycling helps me relieve stress and anxiety as well as sends those well-known endorphins into my system. It also has given me community and friends who support me as a person and an athlete. This support is critical to my healing. It also gives me a sense of purpose as I train for racing and teach bike riding to beginners.

Although cycling helps me deal with my depression, the depression sometimes makes it harder to cycle. When I am in a deep funk, it is very hard to train and to get motivated to go out. My energy is low and my ability to ride well diminishes. I know at these times, I need to ride anyway, but it is a monumental task to get there. My depression also can make my outlook less positive than is usually is, which affects my perspective about goals and training. I can fall into the “what does it matter” trap and feel like what I am doing is not productive or meaningful.

I know that there will always be a dialectic between my depression and my cycling. I know that to help manage my depression I need to ride. I also know that I have to overcome the negative thinking that goes with the depression and hinders my cycling. I am working on this and realize that it is a process of learning and growing. I also have to realize that there are times when I need to stop and rest and attend to the depression. It is not always the case that I should push through it without addressing what I might need at the moment. It is a delicate balance between the yin and the yang, and I am learning to listen to my needs. Sometimes what I need is to ride and just feel how I am feeling. There has been more than one time when I have ridden and cried, but still ridden on.

I feel fortunate that cycling is a way for me to grapple with the pain of depression while being a vehicle of growth in my life. And at this point, riding is not only for pleasure but it is an imperative. I need to ride to live.

Riding on the Margin or What Money Can't Buy

I grew up in an affluent suburb of Boston. We had good public schools and libraries. However, my mother was divorced and a single-mother. We were lucky – we had a home, plenty of food, and clothes. What we didn’t have was a vacation house on the Cape or ski trips at Christmas, or designer shoes, or a fancy car. I always felt a bit out of step in school where I was not only different because I was Japanese-American in a primarily white community, but I also was not able to keep up with the Jones – not that I even tried.

Now I am in a couple of cycling clubs. One in particular has a large population of competitive racers. (I am a racer wanna-be.) I was at a social event with this club and found myself feeling like I did in high school when my friends talked about their European vacations. At this social people were talking about their powertaps and coaches and VO2 testing. Things at this point I can’t afford. I felt a bit out of place. I have a nice bike (more than one if the truth be told), but I don’t have all the high-end expensive accessories. I wondered if I belonged there? I wondered if I could compete without these tools?

Cycling, and racing in particular, is an expensive sport. At a minimum, you need a racing bike, a cyclo-computer, a kit, and a helmet. This alone, would cost you around $3500, at a minimum. Then there is the cost of the race entry fees, the racing license, etc. . . This all adds up to quite a bit of money. And from this point, there are many other tools that one could purchase to help with training and competing such as a heart rate monitor, a powertap, a coach, a bike fitting, VO2 testing, race wheels, and more. The sport really caters to people with a lot of expendable income – which is not me.

I ride. I ride a lot. I ride hard. I am training with the guidance of books and friends. I am lucky to have what I do. For instance, my partner bought me race wheels for the winter holidays. It was a wonderful gift and I am looking forward to riding them when the weather improves. But I have to ask myself can someone like me be accepted into a club where it seems most folks have a lot more resources to spend on cycling?

I know for me, I have to get over the feeling that I am not quite good enough because I don’t have enough. This is my baggage. What I have is not a reflection of my worth as a person, or cyclist. What I have does not reflect my ability to ride. What I have does not make me a good team member. I have to remember that I bring to the club my skills as a rider and teacher and I think that there is a place for me, even without a powertap or a coach. I know that part of my task is to make that place for myself. It is a personal challenge to confront my own sense of inadequacy to realize that a lot of what I am comparing myself to is window dressing. What is at the core is a love of riding and a drive to be the best cyclist I can be. This is what I share with the other club members.

In this life time, I know that I will always feel on the margins of the mainstream. Being a mixed heritage Japanese-American woman alone, makes me feel that way. However, I don’t really mind and know there is a kind of power on the margin. From the margin, I can speak a different truth and walk my own path – the one less travelled. I can know that I am enough and bring my strengths to the team and the club, without apologies. What makes a good cyclist, is not the extras. It is combination of ability, tenacity, discipline and drive that makes a good cyclist – and none of these things can one buy.

The Sin of Dirty Bicycles

Although I am a confirmed roadie, I have a good friend, who is a mountain bike racer. She likes to be in the woods. I like spending time with her, so I decided to buy a low-end used mountain bike. The bike I bought has a solid frame and reasonable components, it was, however filthy. I don’t mean just a little dirty. I mean gritty, nasty, hair from the drain, filthy. I am pretty sure it had not been cleaned at all in its two year life, although the woman told me she lubed it regularly. My guess is that she kept dumping lube on it and never cleaned it. Here is a picture of the crank we took off before cleaning.

I can’t quite describe how gross it was to take apart the pulleys, cassette, chain, derailleurs, and crank. I couldn’t touch it with my bare hands. I don’t quite understand how she could have let the bicycle get that dirty.

Here is the clean crank:

During season, my partner and I wash our bicycles weekly. We always wipe them down, including the chain, after each ride, adding fresh lube only after the old stuff is cleaned off. Basic maintenance goes a long way toward making the bicycle ride well. When there is grit in the drive train it wears the components out and can feel rough. Not only does the bike last longer and ride smoother when clean, it is also a matter of pride.

I have pride in and respect for my bicycles. They are a reflection of me and what I value. I would not go to work with dirty hair, and I would not ride a filthy bicycle (especially in a group or with the club). When I am riding with my team, the state of my bike reflects not only me, but the team. I want people to know that I love my bikes and care for them well. Other riders have asked me if my bike is new, when really it has about 10,000 miles on it. I say no, it is just very clean.

When we brought the filthy mountain bike home, my friend say she heard it sigh a sigh of relief to be in my house because now it would be cleaned and cared for. I think I heard it too. Now that bike is being cleaned, and lubed, and re-cabled and will be ready to ride come spring.

Mindfulness, Acceptance, and Winter Riding

It’s January and I am finally getting back to my neglected blog. During my absence, the season turned and it is fully winter in Boston. Today the high was in the low twenties with a wind chill factor of five degrees. On days like today, I stay indoors and work on the trainer; however, if it is thirty or above, I will venture out on my bicycle.

Winter riding is qualitatively different than riding in more temperate conditions. It takes a kind of mindfulness that riding in summer does not. For one, in cold weather, you have to be more prepared. When I get ready to go out it takes me up to a half an hour to get ready. The other day when I went out I wore a base layer, a heavy jersey, a down vest, two jackets, and shorts under a heavy pair of riding tights. On my feet I wore two pairs of socks, one neoprene and the other wool, heated insoles and heavy winter riding boots and my hands hand two pairs of gloves and hand warmers inside. To top it off, I wore a baklava, a hat, and my helmet. I looked like my daughter the first time we dressed her to go out in the snow. The snowsuit was so heavy and she was so bundled we had to prop her up against the fence to take a picture. She could barely move. I looked like that – but not as cute.

For me, winter riding reminds me that I have to accept that there are things I can’t change in life to which I just have to accommodate. If I want to ride in January in the Northeast, I will have to adapt to the winter elements. I went out on my bike to a party the other night and it started to snow before I left. When I got on the road there was a thin coat of icy snow crystals that shimmered under the streetlights. I rode very, very slowly home. Had there been more snow, I would have walked. Winter riding also teaches me that I have limitations and sometimes it is best to turn back or walk. I respect Mother Nature for her powers and her beauty.

And beauty is easily found when riding in the winter. Personally, I love the stark snow covered trees and the frozen ponds. Even the bike trail is quiet – unlike in the summer months when people and nature are busy and active. There is a peacefulness and stillness that gives me pause. Winter riding teaches me to see the beauty in bareness and reflect on my place, as small as it is, in the cycle of things.