Cycling season's here; are you road ready?

SOMEWHERE IN SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON — We had entered the annoying zone.

That part of STP (the Seattle to Portland Bicycle Classic) where you're well past the halfway point but still have like 80 miles to go. That part where, even though you've already pedalled 125 miles, you're nowhere near finished and you begin to feel a bit brain-loopy as well as body-dead.

In fact, you can't remember your life before this ride. Can't remember a time when your derrière wasn't planted upon what must be the most uncomfortably hard and narrow torture device known to mankind. Can't remember a time when the thought of ingesting one more high-energy gel or bar or cookie or wafer or wrap or hydration product didn't induce an involuntary projectile-vomit reflex.

But at least my buddy Jim and I weren't riding one of those things. One of those ancient 35-pound, rusted-out, single-speed cruiser bikes with big fat tires, the kind of bike usually seen lying by the sidewalk with a free sign thrown on top. Among the 9,000 riders we saw pedalling last year's STP, we must have seen a couple of hundred people riding these kind of rigs. Many, like the rider I pulled alongside just outside the Riverside Park food stop near Castle Rock, riding all 205 miles in one day!

"How are you able to do this?" I asked him from the relative comfort of my 18-pound aluminum-and-carbon 18-speed with lightweight, aerodynamic wheels.

His face was beet red and sweat gushed down from beneath his helmet like a personal mini shower. His unbuttoned shirt flapped behind him like a Superman cape.

"I'm in the zone, man," he said wearily without looking over. "In the zone."

Suddenly, Jim and I didn't feel so bad. Sure, we were in the annoying zone, but that's temporary. Soon enough, we crossed the Longview bridge into Oregon and after 40-some miles of ... OK, maybe not the most scenic stretch of highway along the Columbia River (folks call this section of Highway 30 the "Dirty 30," and with good reason), we arrived in Portland. We'd made it — Seattle to Portland in one day. Woohoo!

(Though we never saw him again, we can only hope that our Superman friend stayed in the zone all the way to Portland and was able to claim one of the 2,230 One-Day Rider patches that were given out.)

STP is premier event

STP is the biggest (9,000 riders) and one of the longest, but it's by no means the only organized bike ride coming up in the next few months. There's RAMROD (Ride Around Mount Rainier in One Day), which celebrates its 25th anniversary this July. There's the Ale Fest Bike Rides, a tri of loops from 25- to 75-miles on the east side of the Cascades by Lake Wenatchee. There's Ride 542, also known as the Mount Baker Hill Climb, wherein some 700 riders will race or casually meander the 24.5 miles from Glacier to Artist Point above the Mount Baker Ski Area. And lots, lots more.

If you've penciled in one or more of these rides on your calendar, now is the time to start preparing your bike, mind and body. To get psyched (that would be the "preparing the mind" bit), head to this weekend's 2008 Seattle International Bicycle Expo being held at Cruise Terminal 30, just south of Safeco Field. The 20th annual Cascade Bicycle Club event celebrates all things bike-related and, along with last month's Chilly Hilly ride, serves as the unofficial kickoff to the cycling season.

There'll be 150-plus features, exhibits and presentations, including mountain bike stunt riders such as Ryan Leech, talks by triathlon legend Sally Edwards, and presentations by Chris Carmichael, who coached Lance Armstrong to his seven Tour de France victories.

Dedication and preparation

Carmichael will present slides and video detailing his working relationship with Armstrong and showing what it took for Lance Armstrong to become, well, Lance Armstrong.

"He was just meticulous about everything he did, from training to his equipment to nutrition to selecting his team to everything," said Carmichael, during a recent phone interview.

"As an example of how meticulous he was, in his seven Tour de France victories, he had only one flat tire — and that wasn't by luck. It's just an example of his approach."

Carmichael also offered tips for us mere mortal cycling enthusiasts planning to ride some of the area's upcoming centuries and long rides such as STP, RAMROD and the like. The most important thing, he says, is that cyclists should be riding now and riding often.

"A lot of people tend to start training for these events kind of late, and they panic because they're trying to cram it all in during the weekends in the last six weeks," Carmichael says. "You need to be consistent throughout the week."

Finding extended periods of time to ride during the week can be tough, Carmichael says, so it's important to focus on being efficient on those weekday rides.

"Make sure you're doing workouts that really matter," he says. "If you've only got 40 minutes to ride, make sure you're doing some sort of interval workout that's at a higher intensity level. You'll burn more calories and get much greater benefit from it."

Sage advice from a dude who would certainly know.

Mike McQuaide is a bike-obsessed Bellingham freelance writer and author of "Day Hike! Central Cascades" and "Day Hike! North Cascades" (Sasquatch Books).

He can be reached at mikemcquaide@comcast.net. His bike-centric blog is mcqview.blogspot.com.