Sunday, April 22, 2007
Why Cyclists Ride with Gritted Teeth...
It's been a while since I've written as things have been even more hectic than usual at work, and at home... However, I've been managing to take advantage of the wonderful English climate (who needs the Med!?) and have been training fairly regularly. Time constraints are still limiting me to mostly short 10-15 mile rides, but I'm please with the frequency and growing intensity of the workouts.
I cycled to meetings at one of my company's offices near Ipswich the other day. It was a 40 mile round trip and was a good test of my recovery time. The outbound trip was almost entirely uphill, and although I never climbed much higher that 150 feet, the continual rising of the route was great for my stamina building... The ride back was a breeze in comparison and even though I'd "rested" in a series of meetings during the day, my legs felt fine and I could have continued riding further. It's great riding in the countryside when the sun is shining and there's a little, cooling breeze. It really affirms the reason for dressing in ridiculously tight and brigtht clothes and jumping on a two-wheel jumble of metal, oil and rubber...
Tonight I did a 11.8 mile ride around "the block" here in rural Suffolk. I pushed myself hard as I'd promised to get home in time to take my little girl, Abi, to bed. I managed to reach 27.3 mph on the home stretch along North Entrance (the old, pre-bypass A12 to those in the know) into Saxmundham. It's almost completely flat (i.e. not downhill), so that's no mean achievement and the adrenalin buzz I got as I pumped the cranks, rocked the bike in my attempt to break the 30mph speed limit on that stretch, was fantastic. Try it sometime...
Finally, the reason for the title of this post. Have you often wondered why the professional cyclists in the Tour de France and other races always look like they're in intense pain when riding? Their teeth are so tightly gritted you'd think they might grind them away to stumps... Well today I had that Eureka moment and found out why teeth are so ferosiously gritted. I was riding along, through a lovely wood, the birds were singing, the sun was getting ready to slowly drip behind a burning scarlet curtain of thin cloud hoverring above the horizon in the West. It was idyllic. Except the airforce were on a mission of D-Day proportions, constantly swooping down out of the blazing sky, bombarding my face and helmet like the most determined of Dambusters on a do or die mission to save the civilized world... Some of them were fitted with the latest satellite navigation aiming technology as they constantly managed to fly into the best source of liquid despite speeds of 40mph plus - my mouth... One such creature, lord knows what it was but it was ugly, flew straight into my open gob and lodged itself in the narrow gap between two of my molars. Yuk. Gallons of water and energy drink couldn't shift it, and I was spitting like an old coal miner, but it wouldn't budge. Worse thing was, it was probably fresh from its dinner and wanting to slurp some fresh human saliva to wash down it's main course of fresh, steaming cow doo-doo or worse still, that bloody, stinking Bugs Bunny I just saw spread messily across the tarmac, 30 million bluebottles buzzing around it, fighting off a desparate crow trying to fill its boots. Yuk, yuk, yuk.. Anyway, you'll be glad to know that ten minutes and a few miles later I managed to disloge it and, thankfully, it turned out to be nothing more than a bit of roast chicken, left over from my own evening meal consumed only an hour earlier.. Although where the creepy-crawlie ended up I dread to think!!!
Right, to the point. Why cyclists grit their teeth... Because you can't breathe properly if you don't open your mouth, and the flies and bugs and god knows what will just fly straight in there and lay their maggot eggs all over your epiglotis at the first chance.. So what's needed is a filter. Your teeth. So the next time you see le Tour, look for the gritted teeth and the little black specs of the remains of some furry flying creature, it's bug-eyed head sticking out from the gap between the cyclists teeth and smiling for the cameras...
Speak to you again soon...
I cycled to meetings at one of my company's offices near Ipswich the other day. It was a 40 mile round trip and was a good test of my recovery time. The outbound trip was almost entirely uphill, and although I never climbed much higher that 150 feet, the continual rising of the route was great for my stamina building... The ride back was a breeze in comparison and even though I'd "rested" in a series of meetings during the day, my legs felt fine and I could have continued riding further. It's great riding in the countryside when the sun is shining and there's a little, cooling breeze. It really affirms the reason for dressing in ridiculously tight and brigtht clothes and jumping on a two-wheel jumble of metal, oil and rubber...
Tonight I did a 11.8 mile ride around "the block" here in rural Suffolk. I pushed myself hard as I'd promised to get home in time to take my little girl, Abi, to bed. I managed to reach 27.3 mph on the home stretch along North Entrance (the old, pre-bypass A12 to those in the know) into Saxmundham. It's almost completely flat (i.e. not downhill), so that's no mean achievement and the adrenalin buzz I got as I pumped the cranks, rocked the bike in my attempt to break the 30mph speed limit on that stretch, was fantastic. Try it sometime...
Finally, the reason for the title of this post. Have you often wondered why the professional cyclists in the Tour de France and other races always look like they're in intense pain when riding? Their teeth are so tightly gritted you'd think they might grind them away to stumps... Well today I had that Eureka moment and found out why teeth are so ferosiously gritted. I was riding along, through a lovely wood, the birds were singing, the sun was getting ready to slowly drip behind a burning scarlet curtain of thin cloud hoverring above the horizon in the West. It was idyllic. Except the airforce were on a mission of D-Day proportions, constantly swooping down out of the blazing sky, bombarding my face and helmet like the most determined of Dambusters on a do or die mission to save the civilized world... Some of them were fitted with the latest satellite navigation aiming technology as they constantly managed to fly into the best source of liquid despite speeds of 40mph plus - my mouth... One such creature, lord knows what it was but it was ugly, flew straight into my open gob and lodged itself in the narrow gap between two of my molars. Yuk. Gallons of water and energy drink couldn't shift it, and I was spitting like an old coal miner, but it wouldn't budge. Worse thing was, it was probably fresh from its dinner and wanting to slurp some fresh human saliva to wash down it's main course of fresh, steaming cow doo-doo or worse still, that bloody, stinking Bugs Bunny I just saw spread messily across the tarmac, 30 million bluebottles buzzing around it, fighting off a desparate crow trying to fill its boots. Yuk, yuk, yuk.. Anyway, you'll be glad to know that ten minutes and a few miles later I managed to disloge it and, thankfully, it turned out to be nothing more than a bit of roast chicken, left over from my own evening meal consumed only an hour earlier.. Although where the creepy-crawlie ended up I dread to think!!!
Right, to the point. Why cyclists grit their teeth... Because you can't breathe properly if you don't open your mouth, and the flies and bugs and god knows what will just fly straight in there and lay their maggot eggs all over your epiglotis at the first chance.. So what's needed is a filter. Your teeth. So the next time you see le Tour, look for the gritted teeth and the little black specs of the remains of some furry flying creature, it's bug-eyed head sticking out from the gap between the cyclists teeth and smiling for the cameras...
Speak to you again soon...
