Bullet and a Target: When Our Athletes Stay Too Long

Michael Phelps got smoked by Ryan Lochte and two other guys in the 400m Individual Medley swim final at the 2012 London Olympic Games, completely missing a medal.  You saw it.  I saw it.  The whole world saw it.  Lochte put four seconds on him by the end, on the same guy who owns the world record in the event.  I didn’t get to see much of the Sydney Olympics, being a college kid without ready access to cable TV at the time, which was the last time Phelps failed to medal in an event.  Watching this Olympics, this Michael Phelps, I couldn’t help but think that the writing was there on the wall for all of us to see, but as usual, hindsight tripped my reckoning.  The bright comet we cheered for in 2004 and 2008 had vanished, trailing nothing more than the dust of a vaunted career.  That dust emerged from the pool the other night with the shocked look of a man who didn’t see it coming.  Silly, really, if you stop to think about it.  By his own admission, Phelps hadn’t trained nearly as much for this Olympics as he had for Games in the past, his motivation was a bit lacking, he wasn’t going full-bore on his swim schedule this time around, and Lochte had beaten him in the 400 IM up and down the pool ever since the Beijing Olympics.  Still, Phelps thought he had it in him to stand on the podium once more.

This is not an isolated occurrence among Sport’s elite.

There’s this Texan named Lance Armstrong who is a pretty good cyclist.  Good enough that Trek Bicycles probably owes him a lifetime annuity for the amount of revenue he’s generated for the company by riding its product offerings.  All he’s done is win 7 consecutive Tour de France overall titles, a feat unmatched by anyone else in history.  In 2005, he retired on top, securing his final title in the French grand tour, riding off into the sunset of unmatched, forever remembered as being at the pinnacle of road racing’s best… and then he came back.  Almost immediately, the acrimony between him and his team’s new hotshot, Spaniard Alberto Contador, flared up.  Leading up to the Tour de France, the speculation around the cycling world was Lance was going to take the fight to Alberto and ride for himself.  On a mountain stage in 2009, the type of stage Lance was famous for, he tried to do just that.  He set a pace intended to crush the soul of Contador and all the other hangers-on in the pack, the same thing he had done to the Jan Ullrichs and Ivan Bassos while in his prime.

Alberto rode away from him.  And then he did it to Lance again in 2010, riding for a different team.

How about Michael Jordan and his stint with the Washington Wizards?  Who else remembers that?  Truth be told, I really remember only three things about His Airness during those two seasons, and if I hadn’t watched him play in his prime- all those scoring titles, MVP’s, and championships- I would have wondered why this guy was such a big deal.  Recollection number 1- Watching him in a Wizards uniform for the first time, seeing the bags under his eyes, noticing he was a little thicker in the waist and thinking “When did he get old?”  Number 2- Hearing an ESPN announcer refer to him as “Floor Jordan” in reference to his diminished leaping ability.  Number 3- This really ties in with Number 2, but seeing Michael blow a wide open dunk because he had started his jump too far out, the ball clanging on the back iron and ricocheting back out to nearly half court.  I remember him smiling after the miss, but it seemed as if Jordan was flabbergasted the dunk didn’t go down unlike thousands of his dunks from seasons before.

This brings us to the crux of the matter; why do the best athletes not quit when they are so completely ahead?  Phelps has 14 Olympic gold medals in his hip pocket, Lance has his seven Tours, and Michael his six championships.  To a man, all of their returns signaled nothing more than getting old is inescapable and youth is fleeting.  So why do it?  The only thing I can figure is it’s a combination of a winner’s competitive ego and an extremely short memory.  Ego is obvious.  Each of my athlete examples possesses the drive to not only want to win, but to want to win big.  They’re used to it, they love the feeling of domination, and they don’t think it’ll ever end.  When they decide they’ve had enough, the short memory comes into play.  All three athletes basically took the same approach to making their comebacks: Shut it down for a couple seasons, work themselves back into shape, announce their return.  The problem is, being the best of the best in a profession is hard, and the game is always changing.  That's where the lack of memory comes in.

It takes an incalculable amount of work behind the scenes to perform above all others with millions watching throughout the world, and that level of stress is ultimately unsustainable.  It has to be.  If it wasn’t, Michael would have stayed with the Bulls and won a couple more championships after the lockout season, Lance could have made it eight, nine, or perhaps ten Tours in a row, and Phelps wouldn’t have got photographed smoking pot (no big deal in the grand scheme of things, other than it was an early indicator that he wasn’t in the right headspace to continue his ownage of his opponents) and done that whole Hamlet-esque “Is this really still for me?/ Should I or shouldn’t I?” routine.  Meanwhile, others were stepping up.  Kobe Bryant realized his potential.  Ryan Lochte buckled down so hard on his training that he looks like he could chew nails and shit steel.  And Contador?  Well, I told you about him.  And while these new superstars are putting the world on notice, the old guard is sitting in a gym, or on a trainer, or in the pool, convincing themselves that their natural talent and competitive drive will overcome gaps in their conditioning and rust from their sporting hibernation.  They’ve forgotten what freeride mountain biker Darren Barrecloth put so eloquently in the action sports movie Seasons: “It takes a little bit of talent and a whole lot of determination to get to where you want to be.”  That determination manifests itself in Lochte flipping 650lb truck tires, Contador flying up a hill, and Bryant working endlessly on both sides of the court, even as it fades in Phelps, Lance, and Michael.

Time waits for no man, but these three champions would swear it waits for them.  As fans, I think we fall into a similar trap by almost irrationally expecting generational superstars to remain at the top even as their prime wanes.  I’m probably guiltier than most.  I certainly couldn’t have foreseen Phelps missing the podium in a discipline he once owned, and I believed it was very possible Lance was going to put time into Contador as soon as a mountain stage came about in the Tour.  Ultimately, the signs of an athlete’s diminished greatness are always there, but we have to choose to read them.

Here’s hoping Phelps takes it to Lochte and the rest of the world one last time anyway.

Scotty Mac

"But what you've done here/ Is put yourself between a bullet and a target/ And it won't be long before/ You're pulling yourself away" ~Citizen Cope

Finding a Groove on Chaparral

It has been a while and a half since I posted last!  For the handful of you who follow this blog, I'm sorry.  Time slips before you notice it's gone.  Oh well, lament over, on to new stuff!

My riding buddies will know this feeling, but pretty much anyone who has played a sport or has a hobby can relate as well- sometimes you have a good ride that stays with you.  During and after the time spent on the dirt, it just feels different, and it's worth remembering.  That was my experience at Chaparral Open Space trail the other day.  It's not an epic trail by any means, but everything just sort of came together.  Below are my recollections of the ride, written the day after as that good feeling would not leave me alone.  Enjoy!

The best thing about riding at Chaparral Open Space on June 4^th, 2012?  The weather conditions.  There was only a slight breeze that morning and the temperature was comfortably in the low 70’s.  What I don’t get is why I would feel better there, where no shade can be had, than under the exact same conditions on Falcon Trail the previous Friday, where one rides beneath the trees for the majority of the lap.  I guess it’s true when they say the day makes the difference.  Or something to that effect.

I did 5 laps of the 2(ish) mile loop, and my times were as follows: Lap 1 – 10:57, Lap 2 – 10:53, Lap 3 – 10:10, Lap 4 – 10:02, Lap 5 – 9:40.  My goal on the first time out was to do around a 12 minute lap, in order to get the blood flowing.  Even though I felt like I was taking it easy, I still came in under 11 minutes, which I took as an indication that I was feeling good and the trail wasn’t as loose as it sometimes is (thanks to a quick rain shower the night before).  I decided on the fly to make each successive lap faster than the opener, and as stated above, I met my goal and then some by going “negative” on each lap.

Lap 2 was hampered slightly by hikers, joggers, and their dogs, forcing me to slow down and/or move off the trail until they passed.  My rhythm was thrown off just enough that I was unable to clear the last switchback on the backside climb, the only time that happened, and I’ve got the nasty scratch on my left arm from a stubby branch on the inside of the turn to prove it.  That anomaly aside, I have to attribute my newfound ability to clear that switchback as having come from the time I recently put in to doing track stands at Gunnison last week.  Working on my balance by doing track stands makes tight turns like that seem less daunting.

Laps 3 through 5 were within 30 seconds of each other and would have been a bit closer had I not decided to go for broke on the final lap just to see what I could do.  I focused primarily on not coming into the corners too hot, and staying smooth so as not to have to push my single gear unnecessarily.  The Open Spaces lap rewards fluidity much more than it does violence in all mountain biking aspects: braking, cornering, accelerating, climbing, and descending.  In other words, your “tiger style” is good, but my “dragon style” is better. 

When I pulled off a 10:02 on Lap 4, I knew I would go harder on 5 to break the 10 minute barrier for my first time this year.  I was still relatively fresh, so I knew I was capable of going sub-10.  I attacked the opening climb section, since other than a couple corners that require some braking, it’s fairly straightforward.  Cresting the ridge, I added a little more speed than the first 4 laps, but not a lot because of the loose, off-camber turns.  Flowing down off the ridge, I stayed in control, and passed the marker on the back side where the switchback climb begins and is also where I take my time “hack.”  I was approximately 30 seconds ahead of my Lap 4 time at that point, and felt good going into the climb.  The climb itself is pretty short, but the switchbacks add an element of difficulty, exacerbated on a singlespeed.  The first redirection is pretty benign, but they grow increasingly tighter until the last one, a left which requires you to come to almost a dead stop before making the turn.  On a geared bike it’s not hard; you simply click to a gear you know you can spin up and out of the turn.  With only one gear though, the situation becomes a “grunt and gasp” sort of affair.  With two agonizingly slow pedal strokes, I left the switchback behind for the last time.  Topping the climb and crossing over to the front side descent, I was still 25 seconds ahead of my Lap 4 pace, so I settled into the run.  It’s a short one, with a hard, scrubby left robbing most of the momentum right before the bottom.  From there though, it’s a fun series of corners and kinks of varying arcs which really let you practice digging in, leaning over and understanding what your bike feels like when it takes a set.  It also serves the purpose of letting you recover from the backside climb.  The final 300-400 meters is a climb back up to the start point, but excepting one corner it’s wide open; you crank as hard as you want.  When I saw 9:40 on my stopwatch, as stoked as I was, I was also a little surprised.  I knew I was ahead of my Lap 4 time the whole way, but I had figured that my penultimate lap was about as clean as it was going to get.  In truth, it was cleaner than my 5^th lap, as I had to dab a foot on the 3^rd switchback due to an error in judgment. 

Knowing the shape (for the record, round is a shape) I’m in now, and knowing how blown out that trail can get, I’d say that was about as good as it’s gonna be for me until I improve my conditioning.  That being said, on a singlespeed at least, I think the ceiling for lap times for me is going to be somewhere around 8 minutes, though I’d love to prove myself wrong on that score.  Because of the sandy, off-cambered nature of some of the corners on the flats and downhills, there aren’t many spots I can go much faster, so time will have to come off the climbs.  As I get stronger, I’ll be able to hammer that one gear on my Kona much more effectively, and the time will fall away on the opening climb (Climb 1) and the finishing climb (Climb 3).  The switchback climb (Climb 2), however, will be the most difficult of the three to improve upon, as it requires hard, energy- and soul-sucking accelerations out of each switch to really do damage.

I was happy that I cleaned the last switchback on the backside climb more often than not that day.  The trick seems to be to stand up slightly and then let the front wheel clear the switch, which is probably not rocket science, but it finally clicked for me there that day.  After getting through the hairpin, I put the power down and got my singlespeed moving, back to the ridge.

Chaparral Open Space is most definitely a non-technical, fitness lap, but I think it’s also a much underrated “flow” lap.  So much of the 2 mile loop requires a deft touch that maintaining smooth inputs throughout is the key to being quick; less effective is going after a fast lap using a “hammerhead” approach.  If I can keep that frame of reference, this easily-accessible trail from my house and my bike shop will hold a ton of value for me in the years to come.

Scotty Mac