slowdad

Hills are Fun

Today I'm calling a truce.  I keep trying to beat my knee into submission and I keep losing the next day. 

No, it's not really the knee, proper, rather its the surface of the knee cap.  It hurts when I put pressure on it. And so, I'll give it a break rather than trying to ride through it.  Hopefully with a couple days rest it'll be better.

That being said, I had a pretty good ride on Saturday.  2.5 hours of frozen toes and casual conversation.  I was riding with CD, who is a great wind shield, and we headed out along the Lakeshore at a civilized, that is, slow, pace.

I struggled on the flats, but not as much as usual, and felt I made a moderate turning point in my life as a cyclist. 

We did a couple of hills, and for the first time I actually felt strongish, while going in a direction other than down.  I did go cross eyed trying to drop my riding partner on the second climb.  I'm confident I would have vomited on the 3rd attempt but we were feeling a bit wimpy at that point and headed home.

I'm thinking that, while I wouldn't call it a strength, I just may be a bit better on the hills at this point.

Ride to the Bridge

After my last post, where I was feeling decidedly un-epic.  I figured that I'd forget about any concerns I had for sharp stabby pains in my knee and head out on a longer than normal ride.

I keep having to remind myself that what's long to me is not long to many.  My twitter feed is filled with people talking about rides of 4, 5 or longer hours.  But whatever. 

And so, with the curiosity of a slightly more long legged Bilbo Baggins I decided that I would explore the edge of my known universe.  Around here my Mordor is known as Hamilton, and it's filled with about as many orcs as well as tall monstrosities spewing smoke.

The day was beautiful, relatively for this time of year, and I basically had a free pass for 4 hours away from the house and kids so off I went.  2 bottles of refreshing "Refresh", $20, and my phone.

I pedaled, I only asked for directions once.  And I arrived at my destination.  The Burlington Bridge that leads to Hamilton. Or else I really did get lost.

(I really need to shave before long rides, and lose another 10 pounds before next riding season.  Or take 10 pounds off my face and turn it into muscle in the legs.)

Satisfied with my accomplishment, and with about 45 km under my wheels I turned around to head back.  I figured that the orcs would get me soon enough if I hung around too long and off I went.

The ride home was somewhat more eventful.

First, I stopped and got a friggin' ginormous butter tart, in order to undo the calories I expended getting here.  And I got a double espresso to go.  I figured that this was the pro move as I had no other cyclists to sit around with and look cool with.

It turned out to be very pro indeed, as I passed not one but two cyclists heading the other way and gave them a nonchalant nod and cheers with the coffee cup.  The wind at my back totally helped.  And, you'll be happy to note, that cup made it's way safely into a recycling container, just for the record.

I was fairly pleased with my pace on the way back despite the knee.  I'm pretty sure the butter tart staved off bonking, and the caffeine didn't hurt either.

I was cruising along, within about 20 minutes or so of home, when some mid '80s Buick decided to pass to closely to me.  I then managed to run over the only sewer grate in all of Toronto that has a gap, around 25 mm wide, running along the road.  And, I managed to hit it head on.  I got my front wheel over it but I felt the rear end sink down what felt like 10 feet, but was more like 3 inches. 

The flat was predictable.  So I was less annoyed than I thought I would be, not having had a flat on the side of the road before.  Yes I know, it's hard to believe.

Luckily for me, I had a spare tube.  And lucky for me that tube had a super short valve on it that I could barely get a purchase on to pump up. And lucky for me that I am incompetent at changing tubes apparently, and that tube was flat the instant I put it on.  

"Ah ha!" you say. "There's more luck in store!" And you'd be right.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was about 300 meters from Gears. The Port Credit/Mississauga Bike Shoppe.

I had $10 going in. I had $0 going out and I still owe them $10 for their services.  I wonder what would have happened if I had just told them I'd change the flat myself, but I figured that doing that would be like walking into a dentists office with a loose tooth and asking him for his pliers to extract it.

So off I went.  Swearing to buy better tubes and to be less bad at changing them.

I managed to get cut off by cars diving for parking spots in the next couple kilometers, swerving around them, but still in my own lane, to avoid them.  Why is this important?  This happens all the time along Lakeshore.  After all the bike lane is considered by many to simply be an Onramp/Offramp/Extra Parking spot.

About 100 meters after my second avoidance of a bumper some old dude in a brown, busted up, wood paneled, station wagon, pulled up along side and started yelling about, "something something you're going to kill someone."

Now I couldn't exactly hear him. He might have been saying "You're going to thrill someone", or "you're going to bill someone" but those are probably unlikely.

And, it's possible the someone he was talking about was me, and he was predicting my own demise but I think he was really angry. 

I should have told him that he should put on his seat belt but instead I just flipped him the bird.  It felt very satisfying and despite his prediction, I did not kill anyone.

Yeah, it was a bad thing to do. But I really don't like those brown station wagons.

Weights and Waiting

I'd love to be inspiring.  I'd love to be putting in epic hours of training while bragging about how great my kids are at school while at the same time being courted by Pro Tour talent scouts. 

My wife is amazing so I can't even imply she's not...

But me?  Not so much.  This week was mediocre at best, for the upteenth time in a row. My knee is hurting at all the wrong times.  I'm hoping it heals up soon.

I did get out to the gym today for a quick session over lunch.  I struggled with my light weights while the guys around me gave me strange looks. I managed to do 3, count'em, 3 chin ups.  This is a tremendous drop from my record of 21.  And we're not talking momentum assisted, 3/4 length pullups, but full hang, pound the bar into your chest chinups.  Sadly the 3 I did today probably wouldn't count.

Still, I feel better for having gone, and I hope that the effort will pay off a smidge over the winter while skiing.

I can't wait till the snow flies.  It's gonna be awesome!  Low impact, long workouts, with hot chocolate at the end.  Woo Hoo!

There and back again

Wow, I managed to get outside today and go for a run.  The shock of which gave me a burst of adrenaline that had me hammering down the main drag like I was running a 1500 m race against a Kenyan.

I was planning on going for an hour run, as that's what my randomly generated schedule called for.  It had also called for a lunch time workout but that got dropped so I could stare at columns and formulas over lunch and into the afternoon.  Hate is a strong word for that activity but swear words were uttered.

Anyway, in my crazy, tedious project induced, delirium I forgot that it was only two days ago that my knee stopped hurting after dropping every last ounce of my weight on it on the sharp corner of the stairs.

LIke some bizarre punishment, that I no doubt deserve, my knee started hurting at exactly the turn around point of my 1 hour run.

I ran back like sort of like a one legged person who had to go to the bathroom, but more like a guy with a f'ed up knee who had to go to the bathroom.

Onward and upward. Tomorrow's another day.

Cool Pic of the Day

It's hard to find nice running pictures.  They're all of people suffering through the local marathon, or worse, triathlon. But here's a nice one.  Thanks to Matsugoro.

Large size available on his flickr to spruce up your desktop wallpaper.

Asymmetric Pedalling

Today, in the interests of remaining slow, and because the schedule conspired against me, I didn't go for a run but instead sat on my bike while it was perched on my trainer. Not much else happened except Cunego won a mountain stage in the 2004 Giro on the TV.

While I was there I turned the pedals over.  

During the time I was pedaling, trying, desperately to turn my square pedal stroke into something more shaped like a lopsided egg, I had the sensation that my feet were going around side by side, instead of being on opposite sides of the stroke.

Actually it was more like my left foot was closely following my right but you get the point.  It was rather weird and I don't write this imagining that this is a good thing.  The sensation didn't last just a few seconds.  More like 10 minutes.

I demand the internet provide me with an answer.

Cool Pic of the Day

This is what's currently on my desktop.  An awesome high res image of Jens Voigt in the Tour of California.

Oh, and there's a guy wearing a Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop hat in there as well.

Head over to renroublard's flickr page for the download down low. Some rights reserved by him.

Flopping Around

This past week was one of those weeks. The training plan is fairly random at the moment, with the thought that I've still got a couple of weeks before I really start putting in effort at getting in a bit of shape for skiing my 100km weekend at the end of February.  And hurting my knee which is just now feeling better didn't really help.

Still, I got out on the bike 4 times in the past week and feel that there's at least a glimmer of hope that I can become a respectable, back of the pack, occasionally takes a pull, rider.

On Saturday, to rid myself of some parental unit induced anger, (my parents have lost their minds and become Fox News parrots), I headed out to High Park to indulge in some hills the way a commuter indulges in potholes.

The ride was uneventful.

Except for the 4 times that some guy from the Lapdogs cycling club, who's name was Christian, and who was a super nice guy, rode me off his wheel like I had training wheels on, as soon as the road turned up.

Strangely, he seemed to take some joy in taking the longer route around the park, passing me, and then riding off again, calmly lifting away like some kind of glider riding a thermal.

I only puked in my mouth once trying to catch him, and I blame the chick peas I had prior to riding.

Still, I produced a moderately pretty graph, and that's really what counts.  Perhaps next time I'll have the energy to get around a few more times and start riding for real.

Geronimo Stilton and the Mouse Island Marathon

  My first introduction to Geronimo Stilton was quite a surprise.  RAAM isn't all that well known out there in the public and finding a kids book about it is like finding a your kid knows about currency hedging strategies.

Soon after I posted about that, I received a tweet from the mouse himself!  Yes, that's right, in between crushing competitors on the bike, and running a newspaper, Geronimo is on twitter. Well, at least a fan of his is.

Regardless, this tweet directed me to this book, The Mouse Island Marathon.  Not only is Geronimo a beast on the bike, but he's got a big engine on the run as well.  I'm not sure if he swims well but I see Kona in his future.

As fast as my fingers could fly, I waved them around and my wife went and paid an extortionate amount of money to have this book shipped to us, and while she was at it, bought a whole lot of other books as well.  Like The Time Crunched Cyclist, but that's another post.

If you want to scare your kids off of running a marathon, this is it.  This epic journey puts Geronimo in harms way so many times you'll wonder why Mouse Island doesn't declare a national state of emergency.

The book starts out similarly to the RAAM book.  A reluctant sign up, and a training regime that sounds about as fun as being water-boarded by the CIA. But Geronimo responds well and is fit as a fiddle by the start of the race.

I won't give it away, but Geronimo hits on a few girls, saves several lives, goes off course multiple times, meets a few really strange people, including a guy who is hoping Geronimo will die, gets dropped by the entire field, and still manages to pound out a pace at the end that would make Haile Gebrselassie look like he was an overweight Republican. The ending is predictable but at the same time probably the strangest marathon finish since Godzilla beat Mothra at Boston.

All in all, the kids loved this book.  And they were kept enthralled throughout the 45 minutes it took me to read it to them.  That's what's important.

Cool Pic of the Day

Check out Joe Sheffer's Flickr Stream  or better yet head over to his blog and check out his epic journey down the Silk Road by bike!