That's How It's Done

Morning weigh-in: 174.5#, 13% BF

 

Got home last night and hopped on the singlespeed -- the Turner had a surprise flat -- and rode like a madman down the towpath. Anne was about an hour ahead of me, riding with Deb and Donna and Amy, and when I got to the boat launch I got a message that they were just a little ahead, and heading to Porter's for dinner... I caught up with them at Porter's, where we had a killer dinner and got to hang out with Larry & Kelly-Jo (among others), then we tooled back to Bethlehem together, in the dark on the towpath. Fell into bed around 10:30. What fun!

 

 

Pafko At The Wall

Morning weigh-in: 175#, 13% BF

 

Rode last night over at Sals, a solid ride broken up by the VMB meeting at the lower lot, and followed by a visit to Brew Works to meet the post-knitting ladies. Good news on the heart rate front too: my max HR is back in the mid 170's, a sign that I am no longer fatigued. Now, if only I were not slow...

 

A Sad Synchronicity: I remember reading "Pafko at the Wall" in Harper's when it first came out, and it's still my favorite part of Underworld. I just happened to pick up and start re-reading it the other night, and yesterday I saw that Bobby Thomson, the guy who'd hit "The Shot Heard Round The World," had passed away.

 

 If I don't ride tonight, it'll be a rest day (except maybe some at-home yoga), but there's the lawn, and laundry, and bills, etc so I think it'll be a night at home. Tomorrow is the gym with Dawn, first time since June.

 

Musikfest Recap

Morning weigh-in: 176#, 15% BF

 

Some of the Bands I Saw:

Start Making Sense (3 times)

Zen For Primates

Trouble City All Stars (2 times)

Brother JT3

Los Straitjackets (2 times)

Insidious Rays

The Red Elvises

Philly Funk Authority

Eric Steckel

The Great White Caps

(These include visits to some peripheral venues...)

 

Food I Ate, Beer I Drank: Surprisingly little, unless you count visits to the Brew Works. Maybe Anne's kitchen skills have spoiled me, or maybe I just couldn't see any of the good vendors, but the food seemed especially nasty this year, like the worst of county fair crap, and I had no appetite for the stuff. I got a good meal at the Wildflower one night, dinner at BW a few times, and beer almost exclusively at the Brew Works, even if I had to walk across the entire Fest to get my refills.

 

Weight I Gained Anyway: About 5 pounds (unofficial).

 

Been going to the gym again, riding here & there (towpath last night, Emmaus on Friday), getting back in the swing of things. Tonight is either Sals, or Jacobsburg with Anne.

 

Mba-Kayere

Forgot to note yesterday the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, which got me drifting along Pynchonesque paths... Hiroshima, spared most war damage, saved for a more terrible fate, mba-kayere, "I am passed over," Enzian's mantra as he wonders if he'd been spared in the Herero genocide, or if he's similarly being held in reserve.


Is This The SS Linux? Not really, but I have been playing with the gadgets again lately. What I did was install an app called ConnectBot on my Droid, which lets me SSH into my Freeshell account. I also recently moved a few of my toy programs from the laptop over to the "Super Dimensional Fortress" too, minor changes and they ran just fine -- at least when I ran them while connected from the laptop.

I connected through my droid, tried running the programs, and got all sorts of error messages, "cannot execute binary file," etc. Tried again at home, they ran just fine. No luck on a google search, I just (randomly) decided to recompile the programs via the droid, and now they work from wherever I connect. Go figure...

Skipped the ride last night, then made it a late one with trips to the Wildflower Cafe and the Funhouse. First Friday on Southside, Musikfest across the river, the old town was crowded, though our return up Main Street, after everything was closed, was like going through a desert.

I'll be hitting Sals in about an hour, yo later.

Culture!

Wow, my little hiatus has stretched to two weeks, better get cracking...

 

I've been riding, but they've mostly been easy rides, some towpath, a little Sals, and one longer road ride over Blue Mountain with Anne last weekend. (Last night I rode to the rope swing at Freemansburg, met Anne, Deb, Donna & Liz there, and jumped into the river for a good long swim.) I really feel like I'm in the middle of a slump, the "crash" part of "peak and crash," and I've been fairly happy with that. (Rode up to Lehigh through campus on Wednesday, and was so whooped I blew off the actual ride when I got to the top.) According to my original training regimen, after the peak I should be useless for hard riding for about four weeks, and that time period is almost over. I don't know what kind of regimen, if any, I'll be following after I get back in the game -- I can't say "back in the saddle," because I actually have been getting out more often, lately, than I was while training -- maybe I will use the "just ride" method, it's always worked well before. By the way, it's been weeks since the gym, and months since I went to yoga. Much act needs to be gotten together.

 

Speaking of "act," we went to the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival this week (at Desales, maybe 15 minutes away), and saw "The Merry Wives of Windsor."

 

This next week, starting tonight, the main part of Bethlehem will be inundated: it's the start of Musikfest. Not sure what I want to see, but there's plenty to choose from. I'll probably ride at Sals tonight; maybe I'll get to hear some of the headliners (in pay-to-see venue, but it's literally across the river from Sals). Tonight's headliner is Counting Crows, a distinct "meh" but even Kenny G sounded pretty decent once, when heard from the Red Trail. Maybe a little Doppler Effect?

 

By the way, the skin thing is a thing of the past. I have a new allergist, and she's really good.

 

Stand Down: Come To A Decision On It

No morning weigh-in: my official weigh-in procedure is to step on the scale before breakfast, just before stepping into the shower, but lately I've been eating breakfast at home, and to save time I do that while the water boils for coffee, ie long before I shower. I'll have to come up with a new procedure...

 

Today marks Day # of the Great Clinton Water Emergency, we can't use the tap water here at work (not for drinking, or washing hands, or cooking) because they found E. coli in the town well. I will keep eating breakfast at home, and limit myself to Diet Coke at work, at least until they give us the all clear.

 

My Decision: The Wilderness 101 is a week from tomorrow, and I've decided that I'm not really ready for it, so I am not going. Last weekend's rides were the final tests, and I felt like death on at least one (the other was too short and easy to really tell me anything); since those results might have been anomalous, I tested the situation again with a Sals ride on Tuesday -- and I felt even worse. I'm kind of disappointed, but I just don't think I'm up for it -- 100 miles is a long ride on a mountain bike, that's a lot further than "tough it out" can carry you and I do not feel like spending $200 or more to suffer for 15 hours -- or worse, drop out before the finish like last year. "Go big or go home," as the saying goes, and I think I'd better stay home.

 

So what about all that training? Some observations:

 

1. I really felt great a few weeks ago. The training guide I followed says up front that you'll crash after week 11 or so, after peaking at around week 8 of the program, because this program will not give you the base necessary to sustain high levels of effort. (The W101 was supposed to be at the end of week 10.) I wonder if I actually peaked a week or so ago, and crashed early too.

 

2. I think I made some real progress on this program, and -- up until a week or so ago -- I was riding much better than I had been when I started. Unfortunately, I think I started too far back, I had too much ground to make up.

 

Anyway, now my time is my own again, that weekend as well as training days. I rode last night with a bunch of friends at Sals, and will do it again tomorrow, and will probably be getting back into yoga and the gym regularly soon.

 

Reading: I am almost done with Pynchon's latest, Inherent Vice. Pretty good read, more like Vineland or The Crying of Lot 49 than anything else he's done, and fairly entertaining if a bit thin by Pynchon standards -- it's practically a beach novel. When I'm done with this I'll probably take up The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, last in Steig Larssen's "Millennium Trilogy," and another fairly light summer thriller. Anne just finished the second book in the series, so I better hurry if I want to stay ahead...

 

Listening: Recent downloads include the Decemberists' "The Hazards of Love," both albums by Neutral Milk Hotel and Titus Andronicus's "Monitor." For some reason, probably just temporal proximity, they all seem very similar.

 

Tonight we're going to the Velodrome.

 

Update: They just lifted the drinking water restrictions! Party!!!

 

A Portrait In Sunburn and Lakewater

 

Oops! wrote this Monday, forgot to post it...

 

Morning weigh-in (Monday): 174#, 12% BF

 

Terrible accident on the way in this morning. I didn't see it happen, just dealt with the aftermath -- they closed I-78 for a while, and I was stuck for more than an hour -- and saw the wreckage when they finally let us through. Three cars at least, one flipped on its side, scene looked like a yard sale littered across the road... People drove carefully for a few miles afterwards, but within minutes I saw the same old stupidity.

 

Anyway, good weekend, lotsa biking too. The second Heels On Wheels pub crawl (Friday night) was a smashing success, with the ladies (Anne, Donna, Debbie, Amy, and a few others) out riding bicycles in in their skirts and heels, plus a few tag-along guys like myself who were, um, intrigued by the concept... We started at Brew Works, then hit the Bookstore, then Welcome, then Mach's Gut before finishing with nachos back at Brew Works.

 

Saturday was a bit of a rough morning, but Anne and I got out to Drewstock 2010 (ie the Riverside Bar, just north of Easton on 611), where fellow VMB'er Robin was running the charity road ride. Things stayed rough for me until about the 10-mile mark, but after that I felt pretty good, and Anne and I ended up in the breakaway pack in the "fast group" -- the pace wasn't really too bad, but there were a lot of mechanicals, missed turns etc, and the front group really got winnowed down, just us two and three guys, hammering away on the hot tarmac. Luckily, the entire second half felt like it was down hill... It was a beautiful ride, and an awesome route, and then we dipped our derrieres in the Delaware for about an hour after we got back to the Riverside. They were having bands and a pig roast later in the day, but we took off after the swim, we had plans: we spent Saturday night (after a nap) at a friend's house party, listening to impromptu jam sessions and sampling homebrew.

 

Sunday was a ride in Jim Thorpe. I'd originally planned to do a Twin Peaks mini-epic, a fairly substantial group ride, while Anne rode the Switchback Trail with a few friends, but in the end it was just Anne and Liz and me, so rather than riding alone I tagged along with the ladies. This was another great ride, and again it was followed by a nice dip -- we rode out to the end of the dam at Mauch Chunk Lake and treated the rocks like our own private beach. (I managed to get some "nice color," ie lobster-level sunburn, on my chest and shoulders.) It was a breezy day, and while the water was warm anything above the surface was exposed to the chilling breeze. We bobbed along with just our heads above water...

 

Last night was just hanging out; I brought my photos up to date on flickr -- I didn't take any photos of the Heels On Wheels event, and none to speak of from Drewstock either, but I did get a few good shots yesterday -- and after dinner we met Donna at Brew Works. Now it's Monday, so sad...

 

Remembering Brian

It was one year ago last Friday that I got the phone call from Joe C: Brian had collapsed while out on a bike ride. (He'd heard that from Mike U, another friend and a neighbor of Brian's, who happened to drive past the accident scene.) Did I know anything? Was he OK? I tried calling the hospital, got nowhere -- privacy rules, yadda yadda -- and finally just called his cell phone. His neighbor answered, crying, crying so hard I could barely understand her but I knew what she was saying. I still couldn't believe it, and I made her say it clearly and out loud: "Brian's dead."

 

The first time we met was probably about 1994 or 1995, at one of our first trail maintenance events at Jacobsburg. (This was before I joined the Chain Gang, so it was probably under the auspices of the Jacobsburg Trail Volunteer Association.) Colette was there, a mutual friend, and I was talking to her about biking or whatever, just hanging in the parking lot waiting for things to start, and Brian came up and said hello. I don't think we hit it off right away or anything, I just sort of knew him as "Colette's really tall friend."

 

Over the next year I saw him at a number of races; I remember bumping into him at Lewis Morris just after he bought Tomias's extra-large Super-V. I had my first, normal-sized Super-Vat the time, and I sort of knew both him and Tomias, so though that would be a good icebreaker, and I asked "Hey, wow isn't that Tomias's bike?"

 

He laughed and said "Not anymore!"

 

I remember when the bad news was going around the old Chain Gang phone tree, there was a lot of uncertainty: Who found him, who called 911? Did it happen near home, how did Mike happen on the scene? And (this is the part that still hurts) did they really resuscitate him at the crash scene, only to lose him? At the time I really didn't care about details -- the key fact wouldn't change by rearranging the timeline or whatever, but over the past year I did sort of piece together a timeline, and I am kind of glad I did. Sometimes I think it's important that I know what happened, other times I go back to my original attitude: he's gone, there's not much point embellishing.

 

As the club's perennial bachelors, Brian and I often ended up rooming together on Chain Gang group vacations, and I can say, without fear of contradiction, that that guy could snore!

 

Brian and I were sharing a room with Eric once, on a weekend trip to race the Vermont 50-Miler.  We had an early start planned, so we went to bed not long after we arrived at the hotel. (The room had twin beds for Eric and me, but Brian, at 6'-7" brought his own extra-large folding cot.) Some time in the middle of the night, Eric and I were both awakened by Brian sawing logs  -- and it was so incredibly, ludicrously loud that we both started giggling. This woke Brian, and he sort of mumbled "Oh, you guys couldn't sleep either, huh?"

 

The heart stuff started maybe five or so years ago, at least as far as his bike friends knew: he'd been having some chest pains, went for a checkup, and the doctors sent him to the hospital to get a stent, to alleviate the "blockage" they thought they'd found. That didn't work, he really didn't have any blockage -- which Brian took as a vindication that he didn't have "couch potato disease." Next diagnosis dealt with possible valve damage, possibly caused by a virus, and they put him on some kind of medication that limited his maximum heart rate, like a governor on a car. (This was probably the start of his  withdrawal from the bike scene.) He seemed OK for a while, then had more problems; this time the doctors diagnosed some kind of neuro-electrical cause, and he had a procedure to cauterize certain locations on his heart that were screwing up the synchronization. He didn't tell anyone about this procedure until a few weeks afterward... At the funeral someone told me that his heart troubles actually started in the eighties, and now I remember how he once told me about some EKG monitoring he had to have done years ago. At the time (long before his final heart trouble), it was just a throw-away part of some humorous story he was telling, and I didn't think anything of it until his funeral.

Doug and Brian and I used to like hanging at Weyerbacher back when it was a brewpub, and we each secretly thought we'd corrupted the other two babes in the woods -- this came out one night, and we were all very surprised when we finally compared notes on our pasts.

 

Allamuchy: 1996, 1997, 1998 (teammates), 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 (teammates), 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008

Canaan: 1998, 1999

Slatyfork: 1998

Staunton: 1999

Crested Butte: 1999

Moab: 2000, 2002, 2004, 2008. The general plan was to go every even-numbered year.

Downieville: 2001

PPRAC: 2003, 2005, 2007

 

The last time I saw him was at his surprise 50th birthday party, just a few weeks before his death.

 

Standing Six Foot One

Morning weigh-in: 175.5#, 10% BF

 

Not bad, considering I had a chicken cheese steak and a couple of Black & Blues for dinner last night...

 

Yes I am back on my cheese game, and also my wheat, milk, egg, and soy games; new, more accurate allergy test results were negative for what seemed (in earlier tests) to be problem foods. I still have to deal with whatever is the root cause of my skin issue, but at least I can eat normal foods again, including my favorite: pizza. Pizza! Ahhhh, life is good, even if the scale doesn't always agree.

 

I found this out last night at the first visit to my new allergist, who was highly recommended by a friend, and I think she's going to live up to the recommendation. I was there for about three hours (the skin tests take a while) and the woman conducted a friendly & personable, but very intense, consultation/interrogation: general health, past history, current problems, things that work and things that don't. She seemed very on top of her game, almost knew ahead of time a lot of the nuances of my case. I was very impressed, and now we'll see how things pan out.

 

 Tonight is a training ride, something shorter and a little different: an hour of "endurance miles" with some intervals of high-cadence pedaling thrown in. I'll probably bust out the singlespeed and do this on the towpath, rain or shine. Gotta work these new calories off somehow.

Counting Down

Morning weigh-in: 174#, 12% BF

 

Pretty good weekend. Friday was a rest day, and an evening out at the Velodrome. Saturday was an impromptu rest day because it was pouring out, so we stayed home and made beer, and in the evening we hit an art opening in Easton. Yesterday Anne and I rode with Donna, and another couple Anne knew from work, up on the Broad Mountain loop. Total fun! Last night was Paul & Mary's Heritage Day party, also very fun.

 

This is week 8 of my training regimen, the final week building week (there another several weeks of workouts, but they are all for maintenance, I am supposed to be at my peak at the end of this week). We shall see -- Anne's heading out of town to visit Ben this weekend, and I may do a road century, or some long offroad ride, just to see how things stand.

 

In Memoriam: Brian passed away a year ago Friday. It's strange, so many of the things we did this weekend (the Velodrome, biking on Broad Mountain, Mary's party) were things I did, many times, with Brian over the years --  I spent a lot of time thinking about him this weekend. Hard to believe he's been gone a year.

More Santa Than Unabomber

Morning weigh-in: 176#, 10% BF (Nice bounceback. Boi-oi-oing!)

 

Well, the hot weather's supposed to be breaking up soon, but we broke first -- we dragged some room air conditioners down from the attic last night, installing one in the bedroom and one (the bigger one) at the bottom of the stairs. The one downstairs is still struggling to cool the entire ground floor, but last night was the best sleep I had all week.

 

Speaking of "Boi-oi-oing" Scientists now know how giant squids copulate. Ewwww! And speaking of cephalopods, meet Paul, Germany's most famous soccer-loving psychic octopus. (And speaking of ScienceBlogs: Pepsi?? WTF were they thinking??)

 

Got a haircut yesterday, another winner from Eskandalo. I've never had a bad haircut there, not even a mediocre one. There seems to be a uniform vision when it comes to men's cuts, nothing radical or crazy -- though they can do that too if you want it -- just a really well done haircut. ("Clean lines" is the phrase that comes to mind.) Dude did a great job, especially on my beard -- and especially considering that my instructions to him were to make it "more like Santa Clause than the Unabomber." I was thinking, like, "Miracle on 34th Street," but he'd never seen it. Sheesh, kids these days...

 

Went home after the cut, and when Anne got home we did the AC thing, then escaped to the already-chilled air at the Brew Works, where we met Ann & Lois, and Lois's daughter Phoebe who's visiting from Missoula. Dinner was some chili, then we went back to a considerably cooler house.

 

Anyway, tonight is another peak-fade interval session on the towpath, and now that the house is cooler we'll probably be staying in tonight.

More Analysis: Stuff From Last Year

I thought I'd look at how I stand compared to last year at this time, at least with two common rides I do: Sals and the towpath. (I didn't start doing the Bloomsbury route until 2010 so I can't include it here.) Unfortunately, many of my rides last year were on the road, or with other people, or generally did not match the criteria I used in my previous analysis, but here are a few rides from last year for comparison.

 

Sals:

There was really only one Sals ride in June or July of 2009 that fit my previous criteria, the first one shown here.

 

Date     Avg Speed

7/7/09   6.0

7/8/09   5.6**

7/27/09  6.5**

 

The two starred rides were somewhat shorter, between 8 and 9 miles, while my previous analysis only looked at rides between 9 and 12 miles. Even so, I see that I am faster this year, by a little bit at least, for all of them.

 

Towpath:

There was only one ride that matched my previous criteria in June or July, nothing else even came close to matching.

 

Date      Avg Speed

7/10/09   15.5

 

This was a ride I did the day after Brian passed away, and I did it in his memory, and I may have worked out some emotional issues through the pedals... It's close to yesterday's pace, so maybe I can say that my general aerobic pace is comparable.

 

In terms of general mileage:

 

         Mileage in...

Month    2009   2010 

April    261    260

May      276    230

June     251    296

 

So the low mileage I was worrried about last year has repeated itself this year, but I expected that -- I have the same life this year that I had last year, and it's a different one from my lonely but higher-mileage past... We'll see if this year's more effective use of my time brings better results than last year.

 

 

I've Always Been Obsessed With Eastasia

Morning weigh-in: 171.5#, 9.5% BF

 

Nice! But I know that the missing weight is all suppression weight: dinner, after yesterday's "hot lap" in the 100-degree-plus heat, was just a Greek salad and two beers. Today is a rest day, and even if I watch what I eat I should see those numbers come back up, sigh...

 

This Old Bike #1: I suspect that we'll be doing quite a bit more bike/camp touring soon, so I am now into my next project, which is to get the Iguana up to snuff, or at least a more reliable level of snuff for these kinds of rides. (Old Paint is in good shape for the most part: other than the chain, the only old or substandard components are the wheels. Shifters, derailleurs, brakes, and cables are all relatively new.) I got a new rear wheel and new 7-speed cassette last week, and tonight I'm hitting Cutter's to pick up a new front wheel, chain, and sundry items like rim tape etc. I'll probably be slapping those things on over the next few days.

 

This Old Bike #2: The BB overhaul and general repacking/relubing project failed to eliminate the squeaks and creaks coming from the Turner, so I guess it's time to replace the crank/BB assembly; I think the rear shock is starting to act a bit funny, so that also needs to be looked at, and it's probably past time to replace the pivots. The shock probably needs factory work (I suppose that'll take forever, so I suppose I'll be buying a replacement as well as getting my original overhauled), and I really don't want to do the pivot replacement myself.... Tonight's Cutter's visit might include a long consultation.

 

Meantime, last night's ride... That was a fun and fast ride, and my intervals went great -- I think "peak and fade" sort of emulates how I kick it in a real ride -- but in one sense I'm disappointed in myself: thinking yesterday about pace and speed, I kind of pushed it on the ride back, and looking at my stats I see that my heart rate was pretty high for what I was supposed to be doing. The workout is geared around high intensity intervals alternating with intervals of rest, but all that is embedded in an "endurance miles" workout, where pedal cadence is kept high and heart rate kept relatively low. I can make noises about how pushing the pace is a form of event-specific training, but that's what the intervals are for, and the slow stuff is for endurance, and my fun ride last night was actually somewhat counterproductive in terms of endurance.

 

Anyway, today is a rest day, and tonight I'll be hitting Cutters, and also getting a long-overdue haircut, then maybe doing the lawn. We broke down last night and decided to put an air conditioner in the bedroom, so I'll probably be doing that when I get home too. It's another hot day.

Quick Training Analysis

I was wondering what (if any) measurable benefit I managed to get out of my recent training regimen -- I mean I feel like I'm riding better and faster, but can I see or quantify any benefits? I decided to look at three standard-ish rides I'd done relatively frequently before and during the training period.

 

Bloomsbury:

This is a loop in Hunterdon County starting from my office; it was my go-to road ride especially in the spring, when I could just hop on the bike and make the most of the remaining daylight after work. This is a table of every Bloomsbury ride I recorded.

 

Date     Avg Speed

4/5/10   13.4

4/14/10  13.9

4/20/10  14.6

4/28/10  14.5

5/5/10   14.4

6/29/10  15.0

 

The first two rides were fairly slow, maybe because I was trying to figure out my course or maybe because I was not yet acclimated, then I "got all the slack out of the rope," and had a fairly consistent 14.5 mph average for the next three spring rides, just before I started the training. Fast forward two months, and the last ride shows a 0.5 mph jump in average speed -- nice, but probably not statistically significant, I need more rides.

 

Sals:

I have a bunch of Sals rides of all kinds, so I filtered this to include only those solo, daylight rides, between 9 and 12 miles in length; this would put me on one or two fairly standard routes, and hopefully would reduce the effect of the 1.25 mile road ride over (and back) on my offroad average. I also removed some snow rides from the sample, which left only three rides.

 

Date     Avg Speed

3/20/10  6.1

6/8/10   7.0

6/30/10  7.0

 

There's a pretty good jump, 0.9 mph, between the first ride (pre-training, in fact before the pre-training base workouts), and recent rides.

 

Towpath:

I narrowed these these rides to solo, daylight rides, longer than say 17 miles, that do not include anything but the towpath (and the short road ride to/from the Sand Island trailhead).

 

Date     Avg Speed

4/19/10  12.9

5/24/10  13.3

5/25/10  13.8

6/2/10   13.9

6/18/10  14.1
7/6/10   15.4

 

These rides included my main training routines, so they show what I would have expected: a progressive, gradual improvement -- 1.1 mph over the period shown. (I didn't count tonight's results, awesome though they were, because I'd just overhauled my bottom bracket, and was running a higher tire pressure, and the towpath surface was hard-packed by the heat, and so  felt unusually fast, and also because I was consciously thinking about my speed, making tonight the time trial that the other rides were not.)

 

So there you have it! I'm not sure of the statistical significance but I would say that there has been improvement. Would there have been even more improvement with a different training regimen, or even just randomly riding a lot like most summers? No clue.

Back So Soon?

Morning weigh-in: 173.5#, 10% BF

 

Scorcher today. Yesterday too, and tomorrow will be just as hot, then it looks like some fronts will blow through: chance of thunderstorms and slowly dropping temperatures for the rest of the week. Yee-ouch! Hitting the towpath tonight for intervals, this is going to be difficult.

 

I'm trying to get back into the training groove. Last weekend, and the weekend before, I fell off the wagon with some non-training rides -- no biggie, the rides were longer/endurance, or at least aerobic, "vacation rides," and the training program that I'm on is OK with taking those kinds of opportunities when they come along -- but I'd also been doing a bit of experimenting with my training routine, or at least the routes, trying to do interval-style workouts at places like Sals & Lehigh. Things didn't work out, workouts collapsed to "I'll just ride hard and see what happens," and I am now back to the structured environment known as the towpath for the majority of my riding.

 

In other bike news, this year's 24 Hours of Allamuchy has been canceled, and I have a feeling that there will be no more in the future. The end of an era: I've raced every one since 1996 (except 2007 when I was in Florida, and 2000 when I was on injured reserve, and served as a race volunteer). This has been a long time coming, race attendance has been dropping, steadily at first and then precipitously in the last year or so, and the promoters have never really addressed the biggest racer complaints: camping and parking hassles.

 

Busy, Busy, Busy

Wow, July 4th already... too busy, these last few weeks, to even drop a quick lunchtime post from work.

Some highlights were a trip to Washington DC (met Anne who was there for a conference) last weekend, and our self-supported overnight biking/camping trip to Bull's Island this Friday and Saturday. (We also managed to try that Hashing thing too, a few weeks back.) I've been good with with the photos though, so you can check out the happenings over at Flickr.

Weekends have been packed, and the weeks have been full of all the chores/errands normally done on weekends, and work's been busy as well.
 Training takes up a lot of time too, but I have to say that it's been going really well lately: I'm starting to see some real improvement, both on and off-road. I'll tell you all about it, as soon as I have a spare moment...

Last Chance For Catch-Up

Morning weigh-in: 173.5#, 12% BF

 

A quick recap of last weekend:

 

Friday night was the "Heels On Wheels" pub crawl, and a good time was had by all -- and my photos are now posted on flickr. We started at Brew Works: Anne, Donna, and Heidi in their heels and skirts, plus Ben on the recumbent trike and me on the Iguana, and Mike, and Kevin and a few of his friends; one brew at the Works and off we went. Emmi and Jen joined us at the Bookstore, and Deb and Liz joined us at J.P McGrady's where it all devolved into arm-wrestling matches... We also hit Welcome, and ended the night back at Brew Works; strangely enough, it was a fairly early night.

 

Saturday night was the homecoming party for Ben, and the day was mostly taken up with party preparations. Pretty nice party too: lots of people, friends, relatives, and we managed to kick that keg of homemade "Hoppy Homecoming" ale.

 

Sunday was trailwork at Trexler. I met Kenny, Jeremy, Scott, Doug & Lori, and Mike over there, as well as Rob T, and we bench cut about a half mile of trail. Brutally hot day for that kind of work. Anne joined us about noon, and we (me, Anne, Doug & Lori on the tandem, and Mike) did a ride on the emerging trail system. Verdict: the place has a lot of potential, but I thought things were a lot further along than they turned out to be, and there really isn't much more than, say, 4 miles of finished trail in place. I went in thinking the place was ready to ride, but had to downgrade it back to "has potential." We got home and totally crashed, while some serious rain fell.

 

Next up: this weekend. Stay tuned...

 

 

A Sudden Silence

Morning weigh-in: 175#, 11% BF

Happy Bloomsday! Unless, of course, you're an Apple customer... (Update: they blinked.)

Anne's taking Ben back to school today (an overnight trip), and, in an unrelated show-the-flag gesture, half my department went to some prospective customer's meeting somewhere down near Houston. Suddenly it's very quiet at home and at work...

I did a "steady state power intervals" workout tonight, or at least I tried to: the first two intervals were fine and I felt pretty strong, but the third (out of a total of six) was a dud -- I had nothing, heart rate wouldn't go up, nada, zip, zilch. So, I bagged it, and cruised on home. I suspect that it's because of yesterday's ride, which was an easy spin but I pushed the schedule (ie I rode instead of rested today) so tomorrow could be a bike rest day and I could hit the gym. Oh well...

Yesterday was Brian Hahl's birthday, by the way; he would have been 51 years old. Hard to believe that surprise party was only a year ago, hard to believe it's already been a year too.

Full House

Morning weigh-in (Thursday): 172#, 11% BF

Morning weigh-in (Friday): 172.5#, 10% BF

 

Did another "Steady Effort Power Intervals" workout last night, this time on the towpath -- things went way better in the "controlled environment" department than they did at Sals the other day. Bonus: on the way back I ran into Doug , and we got to ride and chat.

 

Dinner at home, chicken stir-fry, with Anne, and Ben, and Emmi and her college friend Jen. Jen and Emmi (and Emmi's dog) are staying at Emmi's dad's place, but that's close by, and we have Ben until he goes back to school next week. Things are very hectic right now, but it's a good, fun kind of hectic. Speaking of hectic: we went out last night to Brew Works, and ran into Doug & Lori, Donna with Erin & Rick, Deb & Kevin, Rob, etc etc... I was totally exhausted when we got home.

 

Meantime, I see that they're still mapping the Mountains of Madness. Tread lightly, fellas!

 

Tonight is the Heels on Wheels pub crawl.

Homecoming

Morning weigh-in (Tuesday): 176#, 11% BF (uh oh)

Morning weigh-in (Wednesday): 173#, 11.5% BF

 

Happy Birthday, Dad!

 

Gym Monday night, then I came home and downloaded a few new albums & ripped a few old CD's. Dinner at home: bacon-potato-spinach fritatas and some ginger beer, while playing with the computer and the other gizmos, and hanging with Anne.

 

Media Time: One CD I ripped was my old favorite, Fu Manchu's King of the Road. I got it in 2000 or thereabouts -- I remember listening to it at the 2000 24 Hours of Snowshoe --  so it must have come out some time before that, like back in the stone age, before DVD's/videos and MP3's -- or at least that's I always assumed. I knew that there were a few "bonus" MP3 tracks, which magically appeared when I first played the CD in my new car, but last night was the first time I ever put the disk into a computer, and I found a bunch of videos to go along with the music. How cool is that?

 

So I'm checking out the one particular music video, and it reminded me of one of my favorite teen movies, Over the Edge (which isn't too surprising: there's a song "Over the Edge" on the album), and the video, which was actually for a different song, looked like a 3-minute homage to the movie, plus concert footage. That gets me thinking: a little googling, and I find out that the movie was based on actual events that happened in 1974, to the kids at this middle school, in Foster City, CA (which reminds me quite a bit of Fangoso Lagoons). I'm not surprised that it's reality-based, I liked the movie for its realistic take on early teen life in the still-developing suburbs.

 

A bunch of us were talking the other day about "Blue Velvet," probably because of Dennis Hopper, and I was the only one who said I didn't really like the movie all that much. I guess I'm belatedly defending my position here, but what really bothered me was that whole "our hero discovers the seamy underside of his wholesome apple-pie town" thing -- there were plenty of creepy psychos like Frank back in my own "Over the Edge" years, they were the ones who sold drugs (wholesale, ie in bulk) to schoolkids; the only difference between Frank, and David the ex-football player in "Dazed and Confused," my other favorite teen movie, is about 5 years, and the least believable character in the movie was Jeffrey, back from college, or maybe from living under a rock.

 

Reading: Speaking of Pynchon, I just started on Inherent Vice, the next on my to-do list of Christmas/birthday books; it seems to be in the Crying of Lot 49 or Vineland mold, maybe even a cross between the two, a 60's-era California detective story. Pretty good so far.

 

Last night was "steady effort power intervals" at Sals, followed by Two Brew Tuesday. The ride was OK, but as I expected, actual trails are much less suitable to heart rate-based interval training than, say, the controlled environment of the towpath. But, I was heartened to see I that rode better and faster there than previous efforts: typically the "warmup" ride from home to the bottom lot on Constitution takes 31 minutes, and even though I dialed it back a few times, I did it yesterday in 28. I've suspected for a while that most of my recent problems in the technical stuff were actually fitness rather than skill issues, but even so, I was more than a bit worried that since so much of my training was on either the road or the towpath, I was afraid I might have been busting my ass only to be going backward. (I also went up the short climb on Public Rd at 9.5 mph rather than 7.5 mph, with the same level of perceived effort, so I can see that things are starting to work. But that's road.) Things took a wrong turn when I got a flat tire, knocking me off my schedule (running late already, since I started late), and I ended up racing the last of the sunlight to get out of the woods.

 

Home, shower... I caught up with the crew (Anne with Emmi, Donna with Erin & Rick, Rob, Larry, Debbie & Kevin, and Mike) over at Brew Works. Good times, but it was a later night than I planned.

 

 And Ben's coming home today -- I got the dates wrong. Anne and I swapped cars for the day; she's going to pick him up at JFK. He's been gone a year, hard to believe.