The Woods in Winter

Greetings from the Topeka woods in mid-winter.

The trees wear their trunks like the faces of craggy old men. There’s ice on the pond, but no snow on the ground. Some days are stormy, but most are sunny and temperate. It’s been a great year to explore the woods on a mountain bike, taking time to smell the (sleeping) roses.

Gene Pool

Alzheimer’s disease floats in my gene pool. It’s the turd bobbing among the lily pads (blue eyes and long legs). Each time I forget an appointment or misplace my keys, I wonder if I should be selecting an assisted living facility while I can still make decisions.

Last week I had to give three media interviews on the same day for work. The first early morning appearance went fine, but I stuttered during the second one. For a moment I couldn’t figure out how to end a sentence. I’ve done this long enough to know that in such situations it’s best to pretend nothing happened and start a new sentence. If you don’t find a way to move on, your thoughts will continue to tumble endlessly, over and over each other, in a pointless cycle that trips you up.

Lunchtime fell between the second and third interviews, so I hopped on the new mountain bike and rode to clear the brain clog. For about 30 minutes, my state of awareness was super-charged. You can’t ride mountain bike trails with a disengaged mind, at least not when you’re a beginner, because you’re going to hit something nasty. Rapid synaptic firing is the order of the moment:

Tree root coming up fast. Yeah, attack it. Hell, there’s a bigger one on the other side. Be aggressive, you can do it. Okay, that’s done. Uh-oh, rock. KILLER ROCK! Hard turn. Tree. No, two trees close together. Too close for the handlebars. Laugh. Hop off the bike and jog.

And that’s the internal yelping for only about five seconds. Imagine what it’s like over the course of a half-hour. This is your brain on mountain biking: a kick ass, red hot, hard firing engine.

The cerebral cortex atrophies just as surely as muscles without exercise. There is strong evidence to indicate physical exertion can stave off a genetic predisposition to Alzheimer’s. According to the director of Mayo Clinic’s Alzheimer’s Research Center, “Regular physical exercise is probably the best means we have of preventing Alzheimer’s disease today, better than medications, better than intellectual activity, better than supplements and diet.” It’s stunning how many diseases and conditions can be improved or controlled by exercise, yet only a small percentage of the population engages in it. There’s no question that exercise is saving my body, my sanity, and my mind. So maybe I don’t need to choose that retirement apartment just yet.

Oh, and that third interview of the day? Nailed it.

My Left Foot. And the Right One, Too.

If you’re reasonably young and healthy, your first visit to a podiatrist’s office will feel a little like a trip to a retirement home. The waiting room will be populated by you and a variety of elderly patients with oxygen tanks hooked onto their wheelchairs. It is an unsettling experience that leaves you feeling simultaneously young and old. I still dread the visits two years after my first appointment, but have learned to treat them as an abject lesson in living: a poor diet paired with a sedentary life means you’ll end up diabetic and unable to cut your own toenails.

The reason I visit a podiatrist is that I have punished my feet rather too much over the years. As podiatry explains it, the padding on the balls of our feet loses its cushioning qualities with age. This exposes the nerve endings to the percussion of walking or bicycling and can cause considerable pain on impact. And that is why my feet feel like they’re on fire during a long day on the bike.

I used to think the pain had other causes. Fellow sufferers on bike forums suggested switching to bike sandals (tried it) or buying different pedals (tried that, too). No one thought to recommend a podiatrist. That’s probably because we associate health problems with weakness and failure. Hypochondriacs–not bicyclists–visit specialists.  Bicyclists tough it out.

Arch pads inside the bike shoes. It's time to replace the pads. Or the shoes.

It was Michael Sylvester who first suggested a podiatrist at my Sweetpea fitting. I later asked my physician for a referral, and the first humbling visit followed soon after. It was eye-opening and revolutionary in way I hadn’t expected. Until I saw a specialist, I didn’t realize how much my feet hurt every day. I was in discomfort walking down the hall at work, standing at the kitchen sink, even sitting at a desk. Naively, I thought the prescription for change would be specific to the bike, but that first conversation involved a long list of don’ts affecting everyday life:

No heels,
No flip flops,
No sandals,
No walking barefooted around the house,
Ever again.

Wisely, the podiatrist did not try to talk me out of bicycling. Instead, she focused on minimizing the pain through changes in foot care. No more cheap shoes. The focus would be on quality rather than quantity. She handed me a list of sanctioned (and expensive) footwear brands, and said to buy a couple pairs twice a year and throw them away at the end of each season. Oh my God, it was my husband’s dream come true–a closet with just two pairs of shoes.

Heel insert mounted to the underside of the insole.

After she had addressed what to do off the bike, the podiatrist turned to my time on it. She insisted on platform pedals–no egg beaters that concentrate pressure from the downward stroke onto the weakening fleshy pad of the foot. The bike shoe had to be as wide as possible, with plenty of room in the toe box and a really stiff sole (I now wear Specialized BG mountain bike shoes). Over several subsequent fittings, she created custom orthotics to support my arches and lessen the impact on the ball. To counteract pronation, she added pads beneath the insoles. The pads must be replaced every 1,000 miles of riding, and the shoes replaced once a year.

It’s been an adjustment, but the payoff has been real. My feet feel better than they have in a long time, both on and off the bike. I still have foot pain, but it occurs farther into the ride and doesn’t tend to last as long nor be as severe. I still walk around the house barefooted sometimes, but being pain-free much of the time has made me notice discomfort when it occurs, and I look for the built-up shoes before my feet hit the floor most mornings. If you’re a cyclist having problems that can’t be resolved by switching shoes or pedals, perhaps you should consult a podiatrist. Though it pains me to admit it.

On Skills Technical and Social

“What you want is a Trek Wahoo,” the store clerk said emphatically.  We were standing in a west Wichita shop, small but full of bicycles hanging from the ceiling and leaning along the walls.

“I’ve already ridden a Wahoo but it didn’t suit me,” I told him.  “Can I try your Felt hardtail 29er?”

“Treks are the best mountain bikes on the market,” he replied, his hands jabbing authoritatively in the space between us.  It was as though I hadn’t spoken at all.  ”You just need a good fit, and I’m the person to do it,” he continued.  “People have come all the way from New York to be fit by me.”  No kidding, man.  Were they your relatives?

He talked and for the next 15 minutes I was forced to listen, mainly about how Treks had the best geometry due to the Gary Fisher legacy.  Whenever he stopped for breaths I would ask about test riding the Felt, and eventually the lecture stopped long enough for him to bring out the bike.  I rode out of the shop into a mild sunny day, relieved that I was no longer being preached at.

I didn’t buy the Felt.  When we got into the car afterwards, Mr. Spoked and I dissected the clerk’s sales technique.  It probably works on the 90% of customers who know little about bicycling and only want a machine for light exercise.  But I had been reading forums and studying websites for over a month.  I knew I wanted a hardtail 29er and needed to test ride different models to find the best one for me.  I’ve been through a custom fit and understand how micro-differences in frame geometry result in macro-differences in comfort.  All I want is to be taken seriously.  “That guy’s problem is that he talks too much and doesn’t listen,” said Mr. Spoked.  In other words, his social skills stink.

Technical skills are mandatory in mountain biking.

And that brings me to the technical skills part of this post.  The day after Christmas I bought a Specialized Rockhopper Comp 29er, not from the Wichita shop but from Capp’s here in Topeka.  Chris Armstrong sold it to me, and he’s got great social skills–the kind of salesman who listens to you and wants you to ask questions. Mountain biking is my 2012 challenge.  I’ve been on three rides this week and am stunned by how much I have to learn. Technical skills, indeed.  It’s going to be an interesting year.