Cycling for Women: It's Never Too Late

It’s Never Too Late

Race Across America, August 1996. About 2:00 a.m. on the sixth night of the race, somewhere in Tennessee, heading east on a narrow backwoods two-lane road, illuminated only by the headlights of the support van. A vertical climb with steep switchbacks slicing through overgrown summer vegetation and crickets so loud I was hallucinating that they were an entire extraterrestrial population. If I rode any slower, I’d tip over.

The inner voice hissed at me: “This is horrible. Quit. It’s ridiculous to waste time at this pace. Get Celeste (my teammate) out here.” Then out of that nowhere state of mind came an audible thought: “You didn’t even say goodbye to me,” and I burst into tears. In the middle of the night, slogging up a mountain on my bicycle, I was experiencing a flashback of emotion repressed from my mother’s death, 36 years earlier. . . .

Up ahead, Celeste rested in the other van, waiting to take over for me. For the last 3 hours we’d been spelling each other at 45-minute intervals. We had another hour to go before our other two teammates would take over and let us get some rest. Theoretically, Celeste and I were linked by two-way radios and cell phones, but they didn’t work in the mountains. And if they did, it wouldn’t have mattered because only death was a good enough excuse for stopping. No kidding. We’d actually discussed it as we planned our strategy for this nonstop, 2,905-mile race called RAAM that had started in Irvine, California, and which we hoped to soon finish in Savannah, Georgia.

The headlights of the support van encased me in a forward-moving cocoon of light and ensured my safety. Somehow this engendered a mental state I came to think of as “bike as psychiatric couch”–a sort of free association of the road. Perhaps so much energy is used to keep going physically that there’s none left to maintain defense mechanisms, so all kinds of bizarre thoughts and feelings bubble up. Maybe a solution to an old problem, maybe expansive feelings of blessedness, maybe long-repressed emotions, like the memory of my mother. The effect is cathartic, and you just keep on crankin’ as hard as you can until you see the other van waiting up ahead or, most beautiful of RAAM sights, the motor home where you can finally get some sleep.

Who, Me?

This was not exactly what I’d envisioned 30 months earlier when Chris Kostman, then director of Team Race Across America, dangled the “you could set a world record” carrot and enticed me into trying to form a first-ever women’s 50-plus senior team to compete in RAAM. My ego had been so happy; it waved flags at the very thought. After all, how many chances do you get to be first at anything? Besides, I’d been searching for years for something to inspire me to finally quit smoking forever. As I investigated RAAM, I realized that this was a serious undertaking that would change my life. Although I’d never competed in any sport, I believed that somewhere inside me was an athlete. RAAM was just what I needed, just when I needed it.

In reality, my transition from nice Jewish girl to endurance athlete had begun 11 years earlier, in 1985, with my father’s death from cancer. My mother had died in 1960, also from cancer. During my father’s illness, I kept hearing from doctors that I had to be “careful” because I was in a “high-risk group.” What the doctors meant was frequent testing. To me that conjured up negative images of a waiting game. Instead, I resolved to be as healthy and physically fit as possible. It was not so much about living long as it was about living strong.

I had been doing aerobics and playing racquetball for years, but now I was on a mission. It didn’t take long to learn that cardiovascular workouts are just part of the fitness picture. My first discoveries were weight training and nutrition.

Though progress with weights is slow, the rewards are amazing. In the first year you get “the look,” but later there are deeper benefits of stress relief and a sort of physical confidence–a gut feeling that “this is a good body.” Nutrition became important because it was obvious that what I ate one day directly affected my workout the next day.

Spinning Your Way to Fitness

It was inevitable that Spinning–an indoor cycling workout that’s set to music and led by a trained instructor–would catch on. Why? Because it’s an effective workout almost anyone can do. If you’re a cyclist, Spinning is an innovative training tool that could improve your outdoor riding. For noncyclists, it can provide stress release, weight control, and a beneficial cardiovascular workout.

With Spinning (and similar programs that have cropped up) there’s no impact, no age limit, and no competition. Everyone works at their own pace, yet with the energy and benefits of being in a group. At the core of the workout is a stationary bike originally developed by Johnny G for his own Race Across America training and now made by Schwinn. Four main features set it apart from other “exercycles.”

M The seat and handlebar adjust up and down, as well as fore and aft, to put the rider in a proper cycling position, allowing maximum body efficiency and comfort.

M A fixed gear lets the rider stand and pedal, as on a real bike. Because the fixed gear prevents freewheeling (coasting), the nonstop pedaling action enhances the value of the workout.

M The bike’s design (which incorporates a 38-pound flywheel) allows quick, smooth, lifelike pedaling in every cadence.

M A resistance control knob lets the rider simulate outdoor conditions such as climbing and descending.

During a Spinning workout you might hear pulsating drums for mountain climbs, racing guitars for steep downhills, and ocean waves for recovery. Music becomes the terrain. Instructors use heart-rate monitoring and visualization techniques, as well as the music, to motivate and coach riders toward their individual fitness goals. The basic workout is 40 minutes long. Most facilities offer a variety of classes from beginner to advanced.

After several years, I began to wonder what level of fitness would be possible if I really got dedicated. Going to bed early and getting up at dawn to train for 2 hours before work became the best way to start the day. I was training like a pro–except I was still smoking. I had stopped many times, but I’d always started up again.

Heartbeat Account

That’s when I happened upon Johnny G’s Spinning Center in Santa Monica, California. Driving by, I saw the sign, a neon wheel with the word “Spinning.” Thinking it was a weaving store (a new shop!), I stopped in. Imagine my shock to find an indoor cycling workout in progress. Fifteen glistening bodies on stationary bikes were crankin’ it to the pounding music. A wildly energetic and studly Johnny G, with his shoulder-length curly hair, was urging them on.

“Come on,” he said to me, “you have to try this.” I went home, changed into workout clothes, and went right back. Little did anyone know that this was the first of many Spinning Centers that would spring up across the country, introducing a popular new workout technique for the 1990s.

Johnny’s total training program incorporated a variety of studio and outdoor activities–cycling, hiking, martial arts, stretching–that revolved around a series of heart-rate intervals to increase fitness and endurance. While working out, everyone wore a heart-rate monitor, so that over time they could see their progress. In Johnny’s terms, this meant “more performance for less heartbeats.” Johnny has a dramatic spiel about heartbeats being like money in the bank: You have only X amount in a lifetime, and you surely don’t want to waste them.

Johnny’s resting heart rate, I learned, was 32. A resting heart rate in the high 40s or low 50s is enviable. Mine was in the high 60s. I was using up my precious heartbeat account twice as fast as Johnny. I signed on.

Nearly 5 years later, after working out religiously 5 or 6 days a week, Spinning and weight training, I was in the best shape of my life. I was over 50 years old and fitter than I’d been at 35.

Still, the smoking demon controlled me. And what a stigma that was, especially in California. I couldn’t smoke in my kids’ or friends’ houses, and they didn’t even like coming to mine because of “the smell.” And every time I tried to quit, I’d gain 5 or 10 pounds, despite all of my training.

The Showdown

That summer, Johnny introduced Super Saturdays, a series of 12-hour endurance workout days that included bike rides, morning and afternoon mountain hikes, stretching sessions, Spinning, running stadium steps, and mile runs. Being 10 years older than anyone else in the group, I was sure that this was out of my league. But Johnny worked on me. I owed it to myself to try, he insisted, and he would help me and let me go at my own pace. I agreed to try.

As it turned out, at the end of the day, bone tired, with blisters on all 10 toes, I’d done it, thanks to Johnny’s coaxing and cajoling and an endurance I didn’t know I had. And there to see me going through that profound breakthrough experience was a guest participant, Chris Kostman–like Johnny, a former RAAM solo rider. When he popped the Team RAAM question I said yes. After all, I’d broken a mental barrier and now everything was possible–even the Race Across America.

Victory

Armed with the decision to do RAAM and a 3-month supply of nicotine patches, I quit smoking on Christmas Day, 1994. Two weeks after the patches ended, my resting heart rate dropped 10 beats. After 6 more months of training, it was 52. By Christmas 1995 it was 46. This was the most powerful incentive to never smoke again. I’d been squandering my heartbeat account and was finally rebuilding it.

Meanwhile, as a result of an article I’d written in Silver Streak, a newsletter for 50-plus women cyclists, I met Dr. Arnie Baker, San Diego physician, author, and nationally recognized cycling guru. He agreed to be our coach, and the RAAM team came together: Jeanette Marsh from Mississippi, Sharon Koontz from North Carolina, Celeste Callahan from Colorado, and yours truly from Southern California. For the next year and a half we turned our lives over to the organizational challenge of training and event logistics–all done by e-mail. (Just imagine four women debating the design of a jersey using personal computers!)

Arnie created an overall team training program, adjusted for our differences in experience and climate. The program focused on endurance–piles of miles. As Arnie advised, our first goal as RAAM rookies was to finish. From September 1995 our five or six weekly training rides increased 10 miles each week, all the way up to a 600-mile week in mid-February 1996.

From then until June, high-mileage days alternated with speedwork days–interval training done in three or four short rides per day to simulate the shifts we’d be riding in RAAM. In June, as the last leg of my distance training, I did an organized 3-week ride called PAC Tour, which went from Chicago to Santa Monica on Route 66, averaging 110 miles per day at touring pace. Celeste joined us the first week. By July our team was tapering down, counting down, and nerving up.

A Ride for the Record

Everyone said it was the most temperate weather RAAM had experienced in years. The California desert had been only 100 degrees, the top of Wolf Creek Pass in the Colorado Rockies was not below freezing, and the headwinds in Oklahoma weren’t devastating. So we couldn’t really complain as those Tennessee mountains tapered into an all-day driving rain on excruciatingly deep rollers in Georgia for the last 400 miles. Georgia: the last day, the last state. Six and a half days so far–156 nonstop hours for this team of four riders and 16 hard-working crew members–and they had passed without serious casualty.

Even as we robotically continued our final shifts, the tiniest celebration neurons (that we thought might be dead) began to spark. I started envisioning the finish line. A crowd would be there applauding; this is a magnet that pulls you in. At around 4:00 a.m. on Monday, the ESPN2 video car pulled alongside to film our finish–concrete evidence that there truly was an end.

The official finish this year was in Pooler, just on the outskirts of Savannah. Solo riders or teams had to wait here and serve time penalties if they had broken any rules (we hadn’t). It also allowed teams to put all of their riders on the road at once for a parade ride to the finish line in Savannah, where the full elapsed time for RAAM would be recorded.

Monday, August 11, 5:30 a.m. For the first time since our training camp 5 months earlier, our team rode together. The beautiful Savannah riverfront appeared deserted and glowing under streetlights, creating a surreal effect, as though the city had come to a halt to welcome us. In a few minutes I would see my son and grandson holding the ribbon across the finish line, as about a hundred friends, family and RAAM officials cheered us in and congratulated us with a thrilling award ceremony. Exhausted and joyously triumphant, we stood with our crew on the podium to receive gold medals and wonderful hand-carved RAAM plaques. Seven days, 17 hours, and 50 minutes had passed since we left California. No 50-plus women’s team had ever before entered RAAM. We did it! We set a world record.