Slow Time

TomS and I are hanging in BW3, I'm wolfing down chicken wings (12 of them) along with a coke that would ultimately cost me about 800 calories. I always get a bit worked up when hanging in the presence of TomS, a dude who inspires me on many levels - go figure. I'm trying to talk him into doing a century with me this summer and he's being coy about it. Having run two marathons he's currently thinking "not likely." He's more of the mindset of The Summer of Long Fat Burns.

Fine! So he's not as demented, stupid, crazed as I am... at the moment. I'll wear him down, like the Tour de France dissolves Cadel Evans's resolve. (My current favorite quote from Bike Snob NYC).

A new high on the ol' maxHR front of 172bpm. This was achieved on my pal the StairClimber after a weekend of doing pretty much nothing. I hate this part of the year, the only folk with time off are the banks and schools - my major achievement was finishing Assassin's Creed 2, I just need to figure out the appropriate place to put it on my resume while trying to airbrush over all the help my son gave me. At the moment I'm hanging out in Tuscany in the 13th century trying to get 100 eagle feathers (look, Assassin's Creed 2 is complicated, I'm not sure you could handle The Truth!). Anyway, after all that game play I have freakish thumbs like Megan Fox, I hope they recover - sigh.

With my usual combined feelings of anticipation and dread (I experience similar ones at every performance review) I manned up for the Tuesday HEAT class. Bubbles hurt me long time. There was me, J-TOSRV, speedyGonzales and racketBall. Once again the combined class handed me my ass but I was hanging in there.

During the class I pulled an Achilles tendon which caused me later in the day to overcompensate on my right leg causing that knee to go making me write run on sentences and bemoan my age. It's Friday now and the knee feels better but I worry about both knees - bad knees are no good for biking. SIGH

I caught sight of IronMan on Wednesday looking all relaxed and tanned from his brief sojourn in FLA. It sounds like he had a great trip. I haven't seen him since even though goodMood and I did rackruns in his honor on Thursday hoping to karmicly bring him in. My biceps feel it today.

My mind is turning towards spring/summer even though I'm not through the worst of winter yet. My wife caught me down in the basement carefully peeling the myriad warning labels and other stickers off my new bike. This prompted my son to immediately start teasing me about reducing drag. I chuckled along not wanting to admit the real truth that I just want my bike to look awesome even if the dweeb pedaling it doesn't. This slow time is killing me, soon I'll start licking the stupid bike, I just know it!

So this morning (Friday) I decided to just do a session on the bike at a slow pace setting the bike for thirty-five minutes, fat burn level six. That plan lasted about seven seconds until Mr. Brightside came on the iPod. There are certain songs on my 'Workout' playlist that just motivate me. Brightside is one of them, it's the beat of the thing or something, but the opening riff came on, I smiled, closed my eyes and just started jacking my cadence waaayyyyy up to a sprint. I kept the level down at six which is no big shakes for me but I just wanted fly...

It felt great. I got an understanding of what Le Tour riders are doing when you see them on a bike before a race just hammering the pedals. It felt like a warmup - I wasn't exhausted or anything when I was done but felt... great... and uh sweaty. I was relatively happy with my average cadence of 101 for thirty-five minutes.

I have more to say but no time. I need to post more, it's bottling up now.

Have a fantastic weekend and be well!