In the Elevater

The Bicycle ‘Sommelier’

2012-01-25T10:33:00.000-08:00

Frequently when I walk into a store looking to find a wine to pair with my dinner, I find myself confronted with descriptions of flavors like ‘oaky,’ ‘balanced,’ ‘lively,’ ‘peppery,’ or my personal favorite, ‘leathery.’ There are enough words used to describe wine to merit innumerable online glossaries of wine tasting terms. I come in seeking out help in selecting a match to my pork loin, roast chicken or broiled salmon and I end up barely afloat in a sea of words that have as much meaning to me as a discussion of the latest trends in European couture fashion. I even took a continuing education course a few years ago trying to make sense of at least the surface level of the nuances of wine selection. It left me with a few trivia tidbits and the firm understanding that some things are best left to the experts. I will continue to drink and enjoy wine. I will occasionally pick a bottle for no better reason than because I like the label. I will not let the experts make me feel ashamed. And, when the pairing really is important, I will ask the expert to pick me a bottle with perfect faith that they will choose better than I ever will.

‘Good to know, Maddie. Thanks for sharing.’’ You might be saying. ‘But what on earth does that have to do with bicycles?’

When speaking to a customer about potential bikes the other day, I found myself spouting sentences that would put the most erudite sommelier to shame. Mentioning in one short paragraph factors relating to rotational mass, the coefficient of drag, output/input ratio measuring equipment, gear ratio selection and the comparative benefits of aerodynamics versus weight savings in frames, I could see the customer’s eyes begin to glaze over. I couldn’t help but feel like I had become just what I was denouncing in those wine experts. I, Madeleine Bonneville, was becoming an insufferable know-it-all, caring more about proving the breadth of my knowledge than telling the customer what he really needed to know. Luckily for me, I stopped myself in the nick of time and the customer found my sudden case of the giggles amusing.

Now, to clarify, I don’t think there is anything at all wrong with knowing what you’re talking about at your job. I find bikes fascinating. I go home from work and open up cycling magazines and read bike blogs. I catch up on the latest training techniques and technological innovations. You wouldn’t want a 7-year-old whose idea of wine has an ‘h’ after the ‘w’ to pick out the wine for a pivotal business dinner. So why would you want a bike shop worker to tell you to ‘Pick this bike. It’s a pretty blue.’?

What became increasingly clear to me, however, was that it is my job as the salesperson, the expert, to determine what the customer wants to know, what information they need to make an informed decision, not what I think is interesting. Telling a first-time road biker about the difference between the actuation ratio of SRAM versus Shimano shifters is about as useful as telling me that a wine is ‘elegant and masculine with a smoky coffee finish.’ Huh?

Where those wine salespeople had failed me was not in providing the wrong information, but in failing to realize that, to me, the limits of what I needed to know was whether the wine was sweet or dry or other words that functioned for my level of wine education. As bicycle salespeople it is not our job to show-off how much we know. Rather, we are there to do everything within our power to help every customer, regardless of their cycling knowledge and purpose, learn to love bikes just as much as we do. Maybe this time the discussion will be restricted to the basics of fit and how to change gears, but perhaps a year from now that same customer will come in to talk actuation ratios or (even better) bring in a picture of a smiling rider finishing a first-ever century on a bike that is loved just as much as any ten thousand dollar race machine ever was loved. And that, to me, is the real reason we are here.

The Search for Saddle Satisfaction

2012-01-15T14:54:00.000-08:00

We spend a lot of time at the shop attempting to explain to people exactly how integral bike fit is to the potential pleasure that can be derived from a given bicycle. The wrong frame size, too long of a stem, an incorrect seat height: all of these can convert ecstasy to agony in no time. The further you are from your bike fit 'sweet spot,' the further you are from being an efficient, comfortable glorious bike riding machine. We ride our bikes when they fit. We fight them when they don't.

This particular dogma became a part of my life via a personal tale of torment and salvation. I am guilty of entering into the world of cycling on a hand me down bike that would have been more appropriate for a 5'10" man. Though I did get the bike 'fit' by a bike shop tech (who no longer has a job at the shop which shall remain nameless (not ours)), the result was a seat a few inches too high and a top tube that stretched me to the point where time on a medieval rack would have been preferable. My knees hurt. My shoulders hurt. My back considered jumping ship. It wasn't fun. I couldn't make it up hills. I was passed by 90 year old women on beach cruisers. I would have quit and you would be finding some other way to waste your time if it hadn't been for an astute friend who steered me in the direction of a more qualified fitter who dropped my saddle height and recommended saving up for a bike that actually fit. My life had been changed for good.

Since that fateful day, I have become a fit fanatic. I have my position reevaluated on a regular basis to accommodate for changes in fitness and flexibility. Chris has made tweaks to my angles and cleat position that have made it possible for me to climb without pain for the first time in my cycling career. We're even going to finish dialing my fit in further on the SICI cycle in the next week or so (which you'll all be sure to hear about in detail!). But the one thing that fitting and refitting hadn't solved was the search for the elusive 'perfect saddle.'

Saddles are tricky beasts. The right saddle lets you forget it is even there. It lets the bike become an extension of your body. The wrong saddle makes you fidget around like an ADHD child on a Ritalin break. Your most private of places are punished. All relationship intimacy disappears due to an excuse infinitely more valid than any faked headache. They are bad, bad things. No one should suffer that way. But finding your forever saddle is not an easy task.

For me it took nearly ten years to find my dream saddle with many, many failures in between. The first saddle I rode on has been sent to the National Museum of Torture where it rightly belongs. The second was only marginally better, likewise the third and fourth and fifth. In each case, I would think I'd found love only to be numb and feeling deceived thirty to forty miles later.

For a number of years, I settled on a basically acceptable solution. It was like continuing to date someone you are comfortable with but you know you would never marry. Yes, you like him, but ultimately something is lacking. It's just hard to come up with a reason to change, to risk ending up in a worse situation instead of somewhere better. But when Chris and I started the process of dialing in my new Giant Defy Advanced, it became clear it was time to break up with 'Mister Acceptable.'

As we started making tiny incremental changes to my fit, trying to maximize my power and comfort, I felt like I just couldn't sit on my saddle. My seat bones were floating in no man's land and I was squirming to escape the pressure. Off the bike I came. We tried another one: same result. And another. And another. I soon found myself surrounded by discarded saddles like a prom queen’s leavings at a shoe sale. Was there no saddle on earth for me??

It seemed foolish to continue with the process at that point. If you can't sit, you can't fit. But we had at least made progress. The Fizik Antares had at least stopped my wandering ways. I was stable on the saddle but I still felt like my seat bones were lost in midair. I needed to find a wider platform for that child-bearing width. So we adjourned for further research.

And...TADA! Enter the Fizik Donna.

Since I swapped for this beauty, I have learned what true love means. My seat bones are gently and firmly supported like this saddle was sent down from heaven just for me. I can ride three hours on a trainer and still feel like staying on the bike. I have finally welcomed my long-suffering lady land to the sweet spot. And how sweet it is!

The Unbearable Monotony of Being (in Your Base Phase)

2012-01-11T10:37:00.000-08:00

Ah base building! This is the (supposedly) glorious time of year when races are far in the distance and high-intensity efforts are discouraged. We keep our heart rate aerobic and our course profiles lightly rolling. We chat as we turn over the pedals. Sure we sweat, but only because we're wearing too many layers or spinning in fan-less basements. Our muscles are enjoying a break from being torn to shreds while stimulating the efficiency of slow twitch muscle fibers. Our hearts are growing stronger. We're learning to conserve glycogen stores while burning fat. We're even increasing the number of mitochondria in our muscles, leading to greater power outputs at the same perceived effort. Our choppy pedal stroke is smoothing out and our cadence is higher than ever. This really should be the best time of the year. But, man, does it drive me crazy!

In fact, I finish every ride with a nagging internal voice telling me I'm lazy. Telling me that I will never be fast enough if I consider this training. Telling me other riders I race against are out there charging up the steepest, longest hills and churning out leg burning intervals. “They're going to beat you.” “They're going to beat you.” “They're going to beat you.”

I know that I'm doing the right thing. I know that the miles I put in now will pay dividends when I ramp up the intensity closer to race time. I've done a lot of research over the years, both as a racer and as a coach. There is sound science behind my training protocol. The problem is that I, like a large percentage of competitive cyclists, have a masochistic streak.

Every year I say yes to at least a handful of invitations to participate in things that I know will hurt. I say yes to events where I am 100% certain at some point I will question the logic of continuing. Every winter I go on 20+ mile snowshoe hikes, breaking trail up steep mountain passes in sub-zero weather while my fingers and toes consider going permanently on strike. I say yes to 112 mile unsupported road rides with over 6000 feet of climbing. I even continue to race cyclocross (something which anyone who has ever tried it will agree is an exercise in sanctioned madness). It only really feels like training if it hurts.

So while I will continue to up my weekly training hours, scrupulously restrained to Zone 2 efforts, I'll be dreaming of the days soon to come when I will once again hate my life. When my lungs will burn and my breakfast will threaten to revisit the outside world. When a ten minute recovery seems like an instant and every hill a torture device. God, I can't wait!

On Madness and Motivation

2012-01-07T13:57:00.000-08:00

I spent the last year making a concerted effort to lose all the fitness I had gained over the first 30 years of my life. For any of you who have suffered through a similar period of injury/scheduling difficulty/just plain laziness, you realize just how much easier it is to lose than to gain. Gains come in tiny increments, in miniscule dissatisfying iotas of improvement eked out over millions of miles, through countless climbs and intervals. Losses, on the other hand, are catastrophic in their magnitude. I have effectively Hurricane Irened my once admirable fitness. And, ladies and gentlemen, this is where it stops.

To be completely honest, I came to this conclusion a month or so ago and I've already started working on climbing out of the 'beer and pizza' pit I've dug myself. But winter is far from the best time to get motivated. The race season is too far away to be seen by even the Hubble Telescope and it's dark almost 24 out of any given 24 hours. It's hard to convince yourself that exercise is preferable to hibernating with a bowl of beef stew and a pint of porter. It's easy to tell yourself that forgoing an hour or so of base miles in December or January is hardly going to knock you from a prized podium position 5 or 6 months in the future. But forgoing one ride leads to another and another. You know you should move, but knowing it's true doesn't clip your cleats to the pedals. So how can I force myself to move through the doom and gloom of the Northeast winter?

Luckily this has been a mild winter so far and many of us nut-cases are out putting in hour after aerobic hour in the time snatched from daylight or donning lights and pedaling through night black forests. But sometimes I just can't get outside. Perhaps it's too cold, too dark, too lonely, too snowy or rainy. Perhaps my leg warmers and shoe covers have gone AWOL. Whatever the reason, eventually, every year I am forced kicking and screaming to the dreaded indoor trainer.

Riding a trainer sucks. All the glorious pleasure of biking is gone. Gone is the feeling of sun on your face as you pedal past a field of newborn foals in the spring. Gone are the mid-ride coffee stops. Gone is the sting of the wind slapping your cheeks red as you scream down a twisting descent. Gone. Gone. Gone. You are going nowhere. Your once bragged about perfect saddle rubs you raw in the first minute of a 45 minute session. Nothing feels right. You start to wonder if it's even your bike you're riding. There's got to be a way to make this tolerable. After all, the principle of training specificity dictates that to ride my bike better and faster, I must ride my bike better and faster. Though cross-training helps, ultimately to ride a bike, ride a bike.

Luckily, after years of struggling through mind numbing hours of going nowhere, I have found the motivation for my madness:

I, Madeleine Bonneville, am going to make the nicest ride graphs.

This year I have the decided advantage of training with a Cyclops Power Beam trainer. Earlier this year I took the Cyclops Power Certification training and exam to supplement my USA Cycling coaching license. Like the good little nerd I am, I was instantly hooked on the benefits of training with power. I like concrete numbers and visual results. I like graphs and charts. Math was one of my favorite subjects in school and I haven't lost that love.

So I will ride the darn trainer. I will coach my classes and help athletes benefit from our facilities and expertise. I want everyone to be given the opportunity to get the most out of their bike, no matter what their goals. But, gosh darn it, my peaks will be the peakiest. My intervals the most consistent. Each section of my workout will be beautiful to behold. None of the jagged dips and climbs of other people's workouts. I will maintain my cadence and wattage with neurotic precision. Sure we'll all be getting stronger. But no other rider will have nearly as perfect a graph to prove it. And that, for now, will keep me riding.

Welcome to the Elevater!

2012-01-03T14:46:00.000-08:00

Hello and Welcome!

We've been having so much fun lately that we wanted to get everyone else involved. To that end, welcome to the 'Elevater.' We're planning on using this blog to keep you up to date on what's happening in the Elevate world: the shops, the team and any other random thoughts that come into our heads. Whether sharing a photo and a write up about a bike that has us excited or a tale of racing triumph and tragedy, we hope you'll enjoy this window into our world.

Cheers from your friends at Elevate Cycles!