It’s 7 PM. We roll out.
Me: 48 years old, 86 kg of carefully distributed enthusiasm between muscle and a very respectable beer belly.
My friend Max, on the other hand, turns into a steroid-fueled mountain goat the moment he sees a climb.
Same story every time.
On the flats, we chat.
Then the climb starts.
I look up…
Max is already a tiny dot on the horizon.
No mercy.
No remorse.
Not even the courtesy of pretending to wait.
Zero respect for an aging man.
If I wanted to be alone, I’d just stare at a construction site.
Halfway through the ride, my heart rate monitor decides to give me a small existential crisis:
181 bpm.
For a moment I think:
"It’s been a pleasure, gentlemen…"
Back home I download the data and discover a much less dramatic reality:
Over 53 km, 448 m of climbing, more than 3 hours in the saddle, and an average heart rate of around 135 bpm.
In other words: my heart wasn’t trying to quit… it was simply filing a formal complaint against Max and his brutal, soul-destroying climbs.
And then there’s the mud.
At first, you carefully avoid puddles like you’re driving a Ferrari through a minefield.
You zig-zag, you brake, you try to keep the bike clean.
Then, after a couple of hours, something in your brain snaps.
You see a muddy puddle, look at your bike, and think:
"Well… it’s already dirty anyway…"
And straight in you go, like a vacationing wild boar.
By the end of the ride the bike weighs about 3 kg more, the drivetrain sounds like it’s grinding cement, and the tyres have basically collected half the countryside.
But let’s be honest…
If your gravel bike comes home clean, did you even go gravel riding?
So what’s the moral of the story?
My heart seems to be working just fine, the sports doctor cleared me, the beer belly is still firmly in place, and Max keeps vanishing uphill as if gravity simply doesn’t apply to him.
The real challenge isn’t hitting 181 bpm.
It’s managing, at least once in your life…
to see Max in front of you…
but not stopped waiting for you
by kerberos_78
3 Comments
Max still hasn’t waited for me yet. I’m starting to suspect he’s part mountain goat.
Two things..
1) To go fast, you must learn to go slow (i.e. HR in zone 2)
2) The only way to get good at hills is going up hills… keep hitting the hills and it will come.
Time to get rid of that beer belly. Simples.