Wednesday, May 2, 2012

The Speed bag

I have attempted to follow a comprehensive training regiment for The Ride Across the Free World. Five to six hours a day on the bike with only three rest days in seven weeks is likely to cause problems I have never encountered. Besides many hours riding, I felt I needed an additional daily upper body routine. I have dabbled with a few in the past and found most to be boring and difficult to maintain. The one exception has been the speed bag, which was always quite attractive as pure visual effect in the many boxing movies I enjoyed.

I first hit the bag  in 1985 when I went to a cycling camp in Cental Florida. In my first Medical Practice, I had a partner who died of melanoma in his early 40's. He had an adolescent son, Mike, who I got to know after his father's death.  We spent some time together and I wound up introducing him to cycling. In addition to training, we went considerable distances to many races. He would ride in the 17 and under Junior category and I would ride in the Masters 35 and older. Each spring we would have a self made local camp with the few other riders in our area who were racing at the time. In addition to conventional riding we would take our road bikes to my pecan orchard. Here we would practice crashing into each other until we could  do it without losing our balance. We initially fell many times, and developed a proficiency for landing without injury, the grass "floor" of my backyard being relatively forgiving compared to the hard road. We were also eventually able to develop the skill of colliding, pushing off the front wheel, and maintaining the upright position.

One year we read in the Velo News about a real winter cycling camp in Cental Florida run by a team from Michigan who had a number of coaches. They had produced many high caliber riders including Bobby Julich who went on to finish third in the 1998 Tour de France. The Michigan team  brought coaches, about 25 riders and allowed entrance of another 30 or so riders for an unbelievably small fee. It would cost us $130 apiece which included 7 days lodging in boy scout type bunk houses, 21 cafeteria style meals and the coaching expertise. After some discussion with his mom, Mike and I were signed up and off to the Orlando area of Central Florida

At the camp, we were able to ride many miles with experienced racers picking up a few nice tips. The program was comprehensive covering  predictable related training and recovery topics. The novel discipline was the introduction to the speed bag. First it takes several days to acquire the minimal proficiency needed to to get any benefit.. Once that is accomplished you can get a nice aerobic upper body work out, ideal for cool winter nights. There are several additional layers of benefit with the speed bag routine. When riding for many hours the upper body absorbs a good deal of near constant vibration. Your arms are essentially shock absorbers, adding  fatigue to the more obvious problems occurring  in the legs. The repetitive punching tones the appropriate muscles to better endure this. The high reps preclude muscle bulking you would have to carry up all the hills.We were also instructed not to look directly at the bag while hitting it, training the peripheral vision to be more acute, a necessary skill when riding a tight pace line. Here the center vision is directed ahead of the front rider(s) in order to anticipate changes in speed and direction. With the newly acquired precision peripheral vision, you can put your front wheel one inch from the back wheel of the rider in front of you and hold the narrow distance steady just like you can better hold a full glass of water while walking when you do not look at it. One inch greatly reduces the drag that would occur at 2 feet.

The last benefit was entirely serendipitous. Once home and able to hit the bag in my barn, I discovered this  to be a great way of taking out some aggression which helps melt away the relentless crashing waves of the daily stress monsters. Besides wailing away at the bag with the enthusiasm of a gladiator, given no one is in ear shot, I can yell out expletives, at great volumes which in conjunction with the punching, exponentially dissipates the demons. So far there have been few complaints from the neighbors and only a rare call from the crisis intervention center.

Mike went on to first become a better road racer than I and later developed a special interest in the velodrome (track racing). Despite commitment to his own family and some sort of highly responsible job, we still manage to go on bike trips together. More on that later.

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