On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 12/1/2007
Riding the Wind
Is there a cyclist alive who doesn't
love a tailwind?
Is there anyone among us who doesn't hate a headwind?
Pick almost any cycling scenario and you will find opinion divided.
Some love to climb...the steeper, the better; others dread it.
Some fear a cliff-hanging,
hairball descent; others hurl themselves off the summit with wild abandon. Some
say they can't handle the heat; others say, "Bring it on!"
But when it comes to the vagaries of the wind, there is something approaching
unanimous accord throughout the pedal-powered world: we all like it when it's
blowing our way, and we all suffer and moan when it's slapping us around.
What is it about a headwind that brings us to our knees? That causes us to gaze
upon the world with such bleak despair and wallowing self-pity? There isn't
anything inherently painful about a headwind, after all. Pushing into a headwind
is not as brutal as trying to claw one's way up a 20% wall, with lungs on
fire and heart about to explode out the earholes. Nor is it as miserable as slogging
home in a cold rain, with frostbitten fingers and toes all screaming like angry
little babies.
The headwind is just there. It might be chilly or it might be hot, but unless
it's a full-blown sandstorm or a sleety blizzard, it really carries no unpleasant
baggage with it. The only thing that makes it such a torment is the context we
bring to it: that we have some preordained notion of how fast we ought to be
able to go, but because of this invisible force, we can't live up to those
expectations, and so we beat our heads against a wall of frustration, rail at
the fates, and generally give ourselves a major ration of grief over our misfortune.
There's nothing quite like a headwind for turning a normally sane cyclist
into a neurotic basket case.
When we come to a hill, we expect to slow down. We may not all look forward to
it, but it's a given, and we accept it. And the hill is always there. Every
time we do that road, the hill is there, and we slow down. Besides, every hill,
no matter how long or steep, does eventually end, and in most cases, there is
then the other side of the mountain to look forward to...gravity candy...payback.
So we take our hills in stride and are mostly rather stoic about them. We do
the best we can and muddle along.
But the wind is seldom as constant as a mountain. There may be prevailing weather
patterns that we can watch out for and plan around, but most of the time in most
parts of the world, we can't say for sure what the wind will be doing on
any given day. Ride the same road three times, and you might find yourself with
a tailwind, a headwind, or a calm. It's the capricious nature of the wind
that causes us such psychological turmoil; that the wind gods have today dealt
us this cruel, unlucky hand...something we didn't expect when we were eating
breakfast and getting ready to hit the road.
And then there's the "unseen enemy" aspect of the wind. You can't
see your adversary the way you see a hill. You only see it's effects: the
grasses bent over; the flag snapping in the breeze; the frangrance plume off
the road kill. And of course the most important effect, from your point of view:
the resistence to your own forward motion, like one of those dreams where you're
running in slow-motion through wet cement, straining every muscle and not getting
anywhere.
The solution to the headwind problem is simple: get over it. Slow down. Give
up any front-loaded notion of how fast you ought to be going, and forget about
whenever you thought you were going to get to wherever. Accept your fate. Play
the cards you've been dealt. Move on...slowly.
Easier said than done, right? Too true. But think about it: what's wrong
with slowing down to the point where your energy expenditure is the same as it
would have been going faster on a calm day? Most of our rides don't have
a time constraint, or at least shouldn't have one. (One of my cardinal rules
of cycling is to never set out on a long ride with some sort of deadline looming
later in the day...a plane to catch; a dinner date; a business appointment. Don't
box yourself in that way, because you never know what's going to happen
out there, from flats to mechanicals to bonks to headwinds.) If you're in
some sort of event with a time limit, then maybe you've got a problem with
a speed-killing headwind. But how many rides are like that? Most of the time,
we can afford to take the extra time to slow down to where the headwind ceases
to be such a brutal obstacle.
Most of the time, when you find you've turned into the teeth of a stout
headwind, you simply have to readjust your priorities and your game plan for
the day. It may not be much fun--not nearly as much fun as a tailwind--but it
needn't be a cruel torture to your spirit or your body.
I have a little mind game I play when I find myself slogging into the wind. (My
friends out there are rolling their eyes right now because they've heard
this old chestnut before.) First of all, I get over it and slow down, as noted
above. Then I imagine that I've just come in from outside, into my bedroom
on a warm afternoon. I've been working hard. I'm tired. I want to rest.
So I flop down, face-first, on my bed, sinking softly into the folds and billows
of a thick down comforter. I lie there, feeling the cool cotton pressing against
my face and chest and legs, the feathery cushion of down keeping me sort of floating
on a cloud...it's so relaxing and restful...ahhhhhh... And that is
how I try to make that wind feel...that wind that is pressing against my face
and chest and legs: like the soft caress of that cotton comforter. I lean into
it and relax and take a little pretend snooze, while the legs keep spinning their
slow, patient circles and the wheels keep going round. And as the song says, "Every
time that wheel goes round, bound to cover just a little more ground."
There are other ways to beat the wind; to duck under the turnstile without paying
the fare. In Sonoma County, we have a great mix of hills and valleys, ridges
and flats. It's possible, with a little creative route planning, to hide
from the worst of a headwind by dodging around in the steep folds of the hills,
maybe even picking up a friendly eddy or thermal along the way. After having
covered enough ground in this sneaky, sidewinding way, we can hop out onto a
flat valley road, turn the other direction, and sail home on the wings of a booming
tailwind.
Then of course there's plain old cheating. There have been many times when
I found myself out in the Penngrove gap, heading southeast from Valley Ford,
riding a big fat, afternoon tailwind toward Petaluma, living large and loving
it. But I don't live in Petaluma. I live in Sebastopol, and I know that
eventually I will have to do a one-eighty and turn back into the wind to get
home. So far, I've always turned for home and paid the piper, but I've
often fantasized about riding that freight-train tailwind all the way to Petaluma,
then calling the wife and saying, "Honey, throw a set of clean clothes in
the car for me and meet me in Petaluma. I'm taking you out to dinner!" Seriously,
you can luck into rides like this when on tour and moving from Point A to Point
B. Loop rides usually involve headwinds and tailwinds in equal measure, unless
you get creative with the hills, as described above. But tour stages can often
be all tailwinds all the time. Of course, they can also be all headwinds all
the time, and guess which ones are going to be more likely.
That brings up one other aspect of the headwind-tailwind equation that makes
the wind wars seem so lopsided and unfair: it isn't only headwinds that
are adversarial for cyclists; most crosswinds are too. Out of the whole circle
of compass headings, there is just a small pie slice of winds more-or-less directly
behind us that can be counted on to be user-friendly...maybe slightly more than
20% of the total. Not a real good deal, any way you slice it.
A lot of those crosswinds can be almost more trouble than a straight-on headwind.
At least with a headwind, we can set up a fairly workable paceline (assuming
we're not alone), and the dynamics of it are going to be simple: get in
line, take your pull, get off and hide. With a crosswind, you get into echelon
country, and that can be tricky. We see the pros doing it on the Alto Plano in
the Vuelta or through Brittany in the Tour, with riders strung
out from one side of the road to the other in a long, ragged diagonal. It's
cool to see from the helicopter, and it's cool to be riding in such a formation.
But it's not so easy to set up on a recreational ride, with only one shoulder
of the road to work with and traffic whizzing by.
And if the crosswind is strong enough or is coming at you in gusts, there is
the very real possibility of getting batted about like a badminton birdie...even
getting blown into the ditch or out into traffic. A couple of years ago, on the
ridge-running Sunrise Highway in the Laguna Mountains, I had a sudden side wind
smack me so hard from the right that I was blown left across both traffic lanes
and found myself riding down the left-hand shoulder with cars passing on my right...all
in about three seconds. Nobody hit me and I didn't stack it, so in the end
it was mostly funny. But it could have been ugly.
Headwinds, side winds, quartering crosswinds...they're all out there, waiting
to have their way with us. But every so often, if we plan things right or just
get lucky, we find ourselves in that little pie slice of zephyr heaven: the perfect
tailwind run.
Bike speed and wind speed match one another so that it feels as if there is no
wind at all...gliding along at an effortless 30-mph and it's as calm and
quiet as if you were indoors. All you hear is the whisper of your tires on the
pavement and maybe a little fuzzy buzz from the chain and cogs. (This is when
you find out if your chain needs lube.) Throw in some silky pavement and maybe
a 1% downhill grade, and it's dream time. Peaches and cream time.
I'm sure each of us can recall numerous wonderful rides where we surfed
the wind like a breaking wave for mile after mile. No doubt we can also dredge
up horror stories about long, long days spent grinding into the gnawing, growling
teeth of a headwind. When I began thinking about this topic, I planned to trot
out several of my best anecdotes from each category. So far, I have refrained
from doing so (except for that little crosswind item). In the end, I've
decided to leave all the anecdotes up in the attic, except for one: a ride down
the Unknown Coast where we caught one of those sweet-spot tailwinds. Or the wind
caught us. On this particular day, there were little cotton-ball clouds placed
just right in the sky, so that their shadows fell upon the road. And as we and
the clouds were all being blown along on the same fair wind, their little shadows
were skimming down the road right alongside us, in amongst us, keeping us company
in a dance of light and shade. Gliding along with the cloud shadows that way
made it seem as if we were indulging in a blissful bit of low-level aviation...just
the thinnest, hissing kiss of tires on tar to remind us we were not quite flying.
We and our consort clouds were one within that still, timeless place; in the
quiet eye of our own private whirlwind. Those moments are precious, because they
are so perfect and because they are so rare. When they do come to us; when we
find ourselves dreamily drifting downstream on that windigo river, we may almost
forget--if only in that moment--those many other days when some brick wall headwind
ground us down and made us whimper and whine. I guess, all things considered,
if a nasty headwind now and then is the price I have to pay to enjoy those rare
and precious tailwind runs, then yeah...I'll pay that toll.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net