Okay, here's the post:
Plasticity or Why I'm not afraid to race That Guy from That Team
If you've been doing the 4/5 races in Central or Southern Jersey, you know exactly who I'm talking about. I'm not going to call him out by name, or even by team - I try to hold myself to higher standards. But yes, he is That Guy.
People hate riding near him. He can't pedal smoothly, and the jerky trajectory that is the result makes him utterly unpredictable. In bike racing, as in driving, as in anything social, predictability is the keystone of safety. Wherever That Guy is in the pack, there's always a wide buffer around him. Nobody wants to ride near That Guy, because you never know when he'll suddenly move six inches to the side. I have, on more than one occasion, stuck my nose into a wicked headwind rather than draft off him.
There are many such timebombs in Cat 5 racing. C'est la guerre, I suppose. I like to call it Schrödinger's Crit; when racing a Cat 5 event, you are immersed in the near-inevitability of being crashed by such an idiot - you are simultaneously racing and bleeding in a ditch - and it isn't until your race is over that you can know if you've been crashed or not.
The guy I'm talking about - That Guy on That Team - is a special case, though. Rumor has it that somewhat recently, he was shot in the torso, and the bullet did damage to his spinal column. Obviously, the spinal cord wasn't completely transected, or he'd be a paraplegic. It is clear, however, that the damage has affected his motor control system.
As I said, I'm not afraid of That Guy on That Team. He's not some jerk who's too selfish to learn how to pedal. On the contrary, he actually just can't pedal smoothly. The Cat 5 jerks simply need to spend time riding, and their "muscle memory", the neural plasticity at the lower levels of control, will retain the ability to activate the muscles in the way that is proper - in other words, enough time in the saddle will make them smoother riders. That Guy on That Team, on the other hand, has suffered damage that interferes with lower-level control.
Fortunately, his mind is made of brains, and brains are brilliantly adaptive. I've already touched on this in the visual system, but the motor system is a little trickier. The best example of this is rehabilitation after stroke - if someone suffers damage to the right side, the right side's responsibilities can be transferred to the left. We know this happens because if a second stroke damages the left side, then all of the functional gains that had been made between strokes will disappear. Like a commuter stuck at rush-hour, That Guy's brain just needs to find a way to bypass the damage.
Easier said than done, but I have faith. For one thing, the adaptive process is accelerated by feedback, such as the twitchiness of a bike ride. Moreover, by next summer, I'll have earned another upgrade and will no longer need to race him ever again.
Elasticity or I hate to see you go but I love to watch you walk away
The way people move has always fascinated me. Consider the quarterback; I sure as hell can't throw as accurately, as far, or as fast, but I can appreciate the difference between Tom Brady and Jeff Garcia. Running gives an even easier example; it is absolutely enthralling to watch Paula Radcliffe break every biomechanical rule in the book as she wins yet another marathon. You just have to know what you're looking for.
It comes as a surprise to many novice biomechanicists that the best way to study motor control is to interfere with it. It makes sense, though... there's only so much you can do with the knowledge of how the average person walks, throws a dart, or whatever. To get any insight into the underlying mechanisms, you have to tease away the familiar.
Why are we so impressed by the "and one" in basketball, when a shooter makes the basket even after being fouled? It's because we know how hard it is to perform motor tasks accurately when some external force has interfered with the normal progression of things. Science can quantify the profundity of these effects, but we know intuitively that perturbations screw with our motor control systems.
While most of my research deals with the arms, I cut my teeth on motor control in the lower extremities, and my athletic leanings are pretty obvious too. What can I say, I'm a fan of the legs. We usually take walking for granted, but there is beauty and elegance to be found if you just look for it.
The supermodel walk. Their long legs cross-over each other, which does crazy things to their hip trajectories. It is a wholly unnatural walk, but I could watch it for hours.
Imagine a woman in high heels walking on a flat surface. Suddenly, her heel drops below ground-level... she's stepped in a pot hole. It's safe to say that she won't fall (if she does, though, feel free to laugh), but the way her body compensates for this sudden dynamical change - the extension of the swing-leg, the stiffening (hehe, yeah) of the stance-leg's joints, the slapstick flailing the arms - reflects the mysterious neural circuitry that feeds the "something is awry!" message into her brain.
It's hard to observe someone's reaction to that sort of obstacle outside of a lab setting, mostly because it's as surprising to the observer as it is to the walker. That's why I'm much more fascinated by the act of walking with an asymmetrical load. Imagine a woman walking with a heavy purse. The hips jut out towards the load, the shoulders lean in the opposite direction, and the gait pattern loses its symmetry and timing... she's never in danger of toppling over, but she's not designed to walk this way, and there is no "right" compensatory approach.
In conclusion, if you see me staring at a girl, please assume that I'm observing her biomechanics rather than leching.
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