Clips. The Push AND the Pull
My bike swayed wildly as I tried to cross the busy road at the bottom of the college. My right foot kept sliding off the pedal. “Ok, now…oooph…dammit! Wait, I got it,,,shit..nope! Dammit!….there it is, now it’s in…. nope! GOOD GOD! What the hell!!??..” I played, toyed, tugged, jammed, pushed until my right calf was tied up like a softball, and my bike was moving slower than a terrapin in November. Let me explain.
The excitement was high. I pushed off and set my right foot into the weird narrow footbed of my new PD-M540’s. ‘Click!’ and I was off. A quarter of a mile away, I realized, I had forgotten my gloves. I cursed under my breath, spun around sped back to my truck, unclipped my right foot and did that weird hobble thing with the left foot clipped in, and wrestled with the truck door. “Lean, lean, LEAN!” I stretched into the truck and with my fingertips was able to tease the gloves from the dash, lock the truck door, and off again, back down that same quarter of a mile. “DAMMIT!” Somehow I got almost a half mile down the road when I remembered my helmet still laying in the back seat.
Strapping my helmet on, it was then that I began to fight the very real battle of learning ‘clipping-in’ to my new pedals. Waiting at stop lights, waiting for vehicles to go around so I can make a turn, literally every freaking time I had to slow to a stop was followed by some three-hundred feet of frustration trying to get my right-foot clipped back in. Hard plastic slid off the pedal no matter what I did. I was learning a whole new level of frustration.
Once clipped in everything was beautiful, except, wait a minute. Why can’t I feel my toes? Oh yea, that’s a thing. “Holy shit! Why are my quads screaming?! New muscle groups were activated and not used to doing the brunt of the climbing work in these damn Arkansas hills. My hip flexors were jamming, my right calf wouldn’t relax, and my quads had ultimately given up the fight.
Despite the fact that I have been riding bikes since I can remember I’ve been learning something new this year. Cycling. Ten years ago, I was pumping out twenty miles a day on my ridiculously heavy, fat-tired Trek Marlin. Now, I’m sitting atop an entry-level Specialized Allez Elite because I want to go fast and keep up with the group rides I am in. So I’m trying to do all the things that fast, strong cyclists do.
Learning new things can be a pain in the ass. No lie. Especially the older one gets. But with practice, in the long-run. Faster, stronger, better is what I hope to be. And I’m not talking about cycling.