Crankology

Hitting the deck

Hitting the deck

Another season has come to a close, which means we’re done with the carefree days of summer. But let’s face it – this summer was hardly carefree. There’s been plenty of doom and gloom to go around since covid-19 hit us back in spring, so perhaps you are yearning for some optimism and light as we head into the darkest part of the year. But come on. You’re reading this column, so you should know better than to expect any false cheer from me.

This was a lousy year for me on the bike. In part, that’s due to me diversifying my exercise regimen. Years ago, I was fully committed to cycling at the expense of all other activities except eating, sleeping and that other thing that I like to do with Mrs. Cranky at night. I rode about 2,000 km a month and I raced my bike every chance I could get. When I wasn’t riding my bike, I was cleaning it, tuning it up and writing sonnets to it.

But with middle age and the realities of work and parenthood, my ability to commit 99 per cent of my physical and mental energy to cycling was compromised. I began to scale back, and that trend has continued year over year for the past few seasons.

This year, determined to stay in shape, I continued to ride at a reduced intensity while supplementing my cycling with running and strength training. Until a few months ago, this worked extremely well. I built muscle, which meant that I no longer had the upper body of a 10 year old. I could actually do more than one sit-up (or push-up) in a row. I maintained great cardiovascular fitness. I started to look so good naked that I considered divorcing my wife and marrying myself.

But a couple of months ago, I got badly injured, forcing me to stop all activity for about seven weeks. It’s amazing how much fitness I lost (and how much fatness I gained) in that period, and how these injuries came to define my near lack of a cycling season this year.

How did I hurt myself? By doing something that, in retrospect, I should have known would end in tears: I took up skateboarding.

Now, before you decide that I’m clearly deranged (assuming you haven’t decided that already), let me explain. My daughter Amelia, who is far more agile and fearless than I will ever be, had been pleading for a skateboard for about a year. Right before the pandemic hit, I bought her one. We went to a hipster skate shop. I got her a board and a full set of pads, and off to the local skate park we went. She took to it amazingly fast, in the way that only young kids can do. Unafraid of falling, she stayed supple on the board. By our third visit to the park, she was carving turns and getting genuine compliments from all the teenage skate rats (who, behind the marijuana smoke and tattoos, make up an amazingly kind and supportive group).

As I watched her build her skills, I noticed something else: there were a lot of “skate dads” rolling around the park. They ranged from rank beginners to people who’d clearly been doing this for years. They all had one thing in common: they were having a ton of fun skating with their kids.

“What the hell,” I thought. “I know I’m 52 and I’ve never been on a skateboard in my life, but how hard could this be? And what could go wrong?”

Within 72 hours I would have resoundingly clear answers to both questions. I went back to the hipster skate shop and spec’d out a board. I picked up a set of pads, but the shop didn’t have any wrist guards, so I had to order them online. As I waited for them to arrive, I got straight to practising my balance on the carpet in the basement, where I was confident the board would not slip out from beneath me.

I learned fast. By the end of the evening, I was balancing on the back wheels and turning the front of the board a full 90 degrees. Clearly I was a natural. No wonder my daughter was so good at this. She had the benefit of my amazing genetics.

The next day, I repeated my indoor training and got even more comfortable. Now I could balance on the front wheels, too. I could jump up and down on the board and move my feet around. My confidence was through the roof. I was ready to take it to the streets.

So off to the skate park we went, minus the wrist guards that were still in transit. Again, what could go wrong? Everything was fine for the first 30 minutes or so as I slowly cruised around the park. My carpetinspired confidence was somewhat diminished now that I was actually on concrete, and in motion, but the longer I rode around, the better I felt.

And then hubris caught up with me. I learned that turning a moving skateboard 90 degrees on cement is not as easy as it is on shag carpet. As I swung my shoulders around, I lost my balance and the board skidded out from under me. I fell sideways and backward, and I hit the ground with a dull thud. On my way down, I instinctively stuck out my hand, taking the full impact on my left wrist. A searing pain rocketed up my arm. I lay there for a moment before struggling to my feet.

Later that day, an X-ray confirmed that nothing was broken, but I couldn’t use my left hand for anything, let alone grip the handlebar of a bike. So riding was out. I had also bruised a rib, so I couldn’t run. With both of these injuries, any kind of strength training was impossible. In the end, I’ve been unable to do much exercise for the past two months. The only people more disappointed than me are my kids, whom you’ll recall from the last column were working their way up to a 40-km bike ride by the

“What the hell. I know I’m 52 and I’ve never been on a skateboard in my life, but how hard could this be?”

end of the summer. And of course Mrs. Cranky, who is now patiently waiting for me to heal so that we can get back to our – ahem – horizontal athletics.

So what have I learned from all this foolishness? You might think I would conclude that sticking to less risky activities would be a smart decision. But again, you should know me better than that by now. All I’ll say is that I’ve been binge-watching base jumping videos on Youtube. After all, I already have a helmet. What could possibly go wrong?