The Domane, and What COVID Took

I sold the cyclocross bike to a kid going to Phoenix and went back to riding the crit frame. It's a fun bike, quick, responsive, the kind of bike that reminds you why you started racing in the first place. But it was a placeholder and I knew it. The trails had put me back on the roads, and the roads had put a new problem in front of me.

People on roads are distracted. Some of them, for reasons I have never fully understood, actively hate cyclists. I ended up buying a Garmin Varia RTL510, a rear radar that tells you when a vehicle is coming up behind you. It changed how I rode on roads. I'll write more about that in the Gear section. For now just know that riding amongst humans requires a certain amount of tactical awareness that riding a trail does not.

I knew the crit was temporary. I needed a new bike.

The Trek Decision

I had always loved Cannondale. Part of it is the bikes themselves. Part of it is that when I bought the Schwinn, Cannondale was out of reach, they represented something aspirational that I never quite got over. The crit frame was vintage from roughly the same era as the Schwinn. There was a continuity there that felt right.

On the wall of the garage hang Jamie's two Treks, bikes she chose herself, bikes she rides. I designed and 3D printed the mounts that hold them there. In the basement, alongside the Domane on its trainer, sits a Schwinn Black Phantom that belonged to her father. I never knew him. I think I would have liked him. I keep his bike because some things deserve to be kept.

Jamie is a Trek girl. Her father bought his bikes from Danny at the Lincoln Bike Shop in Goshen, and that shop had become part of how she thought about cycling. So when it came time to choose a new bike, she pointed me toward Danny. I went in skeptical and came out converted.

Danny is a great dude. I mean a genuinely great dude. The whole shop was that way, the mechanics, the bookkeeper, all of them cyclists, all of them advocates. It reminded me of Yehuda Moon. That kind of fervor deserves to be recognized and rewarded.

So I jumped ship. I became a Trek rider because of a bike shop and the people in it. There are worse reasons.

On the garage wall, alongside Jamie's Treks, hangs a bike that belonged to her father. I never knew him. I think I would have liked him. I keep his bike on the wall because some things deserve to be kept.

March 12, 2020

I fell in love with the matte black with gloss black decals of the Trek Domane SL. I bought it on March 12, 2020.

I had been sick on Valentine's Day that year. Back when COVID "wasn't here yet," except it was. My doctor couldn't figure it out and treated me for pneumonia. It took about a week and a half before I felt close to normal. I had been to the Chicago Auto Show at the end of January. I am certain that's where I got it.

I ended up getting COVID three times, even with the vaccines and boosters. My doctor told me that all the riding and being in good shape is why I'm not dead. I believe her. I would have just as soon been dead on the second round.

I picked the Domane up in March and started riding. Forty degrees in March in northern Indiana is the beginning of summer.

I could tell immediately that something was off.

It was like I had never quit smoking fifteen years before. I couldn't fill my lungs to capacity, and what air I got in had to come right back out. Holding my breath was impossible. Ten miles into what was supposed to be a thirty miler I was toast. I called Jamie and told her she might need to come get me. Which worried her, I was usually gone for hours. I had been gone sixty minutes.

I told her to wait. I made it home. But it was rough. No energy, no power, no endurance. My lungs were burning the way they hadn't burned since the China Bike.

The Lincoln Bike Shop Ride

Danny and the crew at Lincoln started up their weekly group rides. Comradery makes riding better, that's not an opinion, it's a fact. They run several groups: race, ride, and parade. Different abilities, everyone welcome.

I went with the racers. Of course I did.

The route that day included one of the few genuinely steep hill climbs in the area. One of my favorites. The hill shows up around mile fifteen or sixteen. I attacked at the start of the climb the way you do, then settled into the grind.

Every stroke made my muscles scream louder. I was having trouble breathing. Was that light-headedness? I looked up and I was only halfway. I had been dropped. Like a hot potato.

I pushed. And pushed. And I could hear Danny's son at the top of the hill, he had stopped to wait for me. I think because it was so irregular. With his encouragement I made it to the top.

And immediately stopped.

That was new. What the fuck?

Heart rate 174. Panting like a St. Bernard in July. I could not catch my breath.

I finished the ride. That was the last Lincoln Bike Shop group ride I went on.

In hindsight I should have just dropped to a slower group and kept going. But I was so deflated. I couldn't believe what I was experiencing in my own body. This was long before anyone was talking about long COVID, long before there was even a name for what was happening to people like me.

The Slow Fade

Four rides a week became three. Then two. Then once every couple of weeks. Time slipped by the way it does when you're not paying attention to it.

At the end of that fall I brought the Domane inside and set it up on the trainer. Jamie said: just ride for thirty minutes. Don't worry about how far or how fast.

So I did that for a while.

Zwift opened the Alpe du Zwift, a replica of the famous Alpe d'Huez that the Tour de France riders climb. 12.2 kilometers. 1,036 meters of elevation gain. An average gradient of 8.5%.

I finished it. My avatar stopped forward motion about four times, I never stopped pedaling, just couldn't keep up with the climb and had to work harder to get moving again. But I finished. All the way to the top.

I was proud of that. I still am.

Then even that waned.

Until I was just playing disc golf.

The Domane Is Still Here

The bike is in the basement. On the trainer. The Garmin is still mounted to the bars. The water bottle is still in the cage. The shoes are on the floor next to it, socks still in them from the last ride.

I bought the best bike I have ever owned at the peak of my riding life. COVID arrived three months before I picked it up and has been tangled up with this bike ever since.

The way I untangle them is to ride.

That hasn't happened yet. But it will.

The road back runs right through this basement.