Big Bikes

Let me Take You on a Musical Journey

I'm going to let you in on a little secret; I'm not a mathematical genius. Not like this guy or this guy. And I'm definitely not a big numbers guy, like this...um, guy. Hold on a second before I get down to VERY SERIOUS BUSINESS. If you have a friend or know someone named "Guy" and you say something like "Hey do you know that guy Guy?". Spoken it wouldn't look so bad...because you can't see words (unless you are really, really high) and because the name can be pronounced "Gee" like Guy Picciotto. In print it looks kind of mentally challenged (I'm from Boston, I'm very P.C.). It looks like you're talking about someone who's a real guy guy. Meaning someone who watches every mainstream sport while drinking Bud with his hand down the front of his pants and won't eat Tofu or listen to The Smiths.

Yes, numbers...where was I? Where am I? Are those my feet? (can't take credit for the last one, Father Ted Reference). Warning, the following may get pretty technical. I let you in on the little secret of my mathematical ineptitude, now I'm going to let you in on a little training secret of mine. It has to do with loading your ipod for a 4 hour training ride. You didn't see that one coming eh? Bet you thought I was going to lay down some science, some crazy knowledge about power meters and heart-rate monitors and EPO dosages. But no.


So! You want to do a four hour ride with 3 X 40 of Tempo riding worked in. You don't want to be staring at the clock the whole time because you will go so nuts that you will freak out and come back from the ride wearing some random person's face as a mask. Here's what you do.

1. Total up your ride time in minutes, 4 hours = 240 minutes
   
   
2. Say you want 30 minutes warm up before your first really rockin' interval. You start dropping songs into a playlist until you see the the total at the bottom of the itunes window hit 30. I warmed up with almost the entire Bon Iver album today for example. My buddy Sully uses that stuff to rile him up during solo 24 hour races. That would not work for me. I find it hypnotizingly beautiful. I am not a guy guy. Big secret there.
   
   
3. Then add 40 minutes of REALLY ROCKIN' SHIT! Until you see the total reach (dur) 70. My first block today was fueled exclusively by dance re-mixes of New Order. Although I prefer their earlier, more "New Joy Division"rockin' stuff, this stuff works really well for keeping your Tempo up.
   
   
4. Again, 30 minutes of mellow stuff until you hit 100. I meant to grab David Byrne's excellent new album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, but I grabbed David Byrne & Brian Eno, My Life In The Bush of Ghosts. Which is amazing, but I was hoping to spend some more quality time with the new album. You can listen to the whole thing for free over on Byrne's site. I'd recommend it.
   
   
5. Now add another 40 minutes of The Rock, or whatever gets you stoked to pedal. Taking you up to a total of 140 minutes. For this block I went with a combo of The Pixies, The Mountain Goats, and The Stooges. The Pixies "Manta Ray" coming on just as I started up the Whitcomb Hill climb out of Littleton center. Timing. That hill is perfect for doing intervals on. About ten minutes of sustained climbing up a reasonable gradient. Almost unheard of in these parts (short of riding the access road on Route 2 between Route 60 and Park Ave.) . The Mountain Goats might seem like an odd choice (if you're familiar) for getting your Tempo on. Most of John Darnielle's stuff is not so motivational; much of it recorded on a boom box, the tell-tale hiss omnipresent throughout the songs. His latest album is pretty rockin' though. It's his third album with much more polished recording artist, John Vanderslice as producer and the first album to add Electric guitar. Like Dylan at Newport, without the controversy...because four people listen to the Mountain Goats. Darnielle's stuff was always kind of chuggingly rhythmic so it translated well into the electric form. Songs like Heretic Pride, Sax Rohmer #1, and Autoclave get my legs turning. The lyrics you have to hear to believe.
   
   At the end of this block I took it up several notches with The Stooges to finish STRONG.
   
   
6. Time to cool it out again. Add 30 minutes of smooth jams, taking you up to a total of 170. Kenny G will work. If you've had a botched lobotomy. Me, I went with some Laura Veirs. Nice Indie-singer-songwriter stuff. Then a little CTA . That's right, Chicago Transit Authority. Singing along to "Beginnings" while riding down country roads with no one within earshot is awesome. And then (I'm not kidding) some Cat Stevens. Hey, I'm trying to share here, you probably listen tot some stuff that I would think is totally re...differently-abled.
   
   
7. Time to pick it back up for one last chunk of Tempo. Add 40 to your 170 and you got 210. Hopefully you've been eating on the bike and you're still feeling motivated and strong. I started this one off with some Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!. The idea being that they are very rhythmic and upbeat, albeit not super-frickin'-rockin'. Like The Mountain Goats, they are an acquired taste. From there, no longer messing around, I threw in a few AC/DC tracks (early stuff, Bon Scott only). I always thought it would be fun to develop a completely contrived character quirk where I said "Hi" to people like Bon says "High" in the song "High Voltage". "I said High!". After that it was some Clash, "Police on My Back" always gets me cranking. To finish this one off strong I went for Metallica. Life isn't too bad if you have The Stooges "Search and Destroy" and Metallica's "Seek and Destroy" on the same playlist. Yes, the same playlist with Cat Stevens. Demented playlist.
   
   
8. And then we cool it right down for the 30 minute spin home. Actually went back to The Clash. "Straight to Hell" off Live, From Here to Eternity. My favorite version. "Sing in tune you bastards!". Then some Wilco and Billy Bragg Mermaid Avenue stuff. Inside my feeble brain somehow this doesn't qualify as Hippy crap. At least it's not all jam bandy.I finished off the set with a couple tracks by 13 & God. The great collaboration between The Notwist and Themselves.
   

And that's how you get through a hard four hour ride without losing your shit. In my case that's particularly important because I wouldn't know what "my shit" looked like if I found it.

Thom Parsons is the author of The Mountain Biker's Training Book of Satan and several other imaginary books.