Taper

BobbieLeave a comment

Tapering is described here (don’t you love Wikipedia? I love Wikipedia. I am totally going to marry it.) I am starting a long taper for the long Ride. This week while my mileage remains the same (112 or so this week), the long distance ride is going to be short — a mere 26 miles on Friday and on Saturday.  This is sad, because I got a new bike and it is really, really awesome. It’s a 2010 Schwinn Fastback, all electric-blue and white, and the only thing that hurts when I get done with nearly 60 miles is my back-end (not my back). I’m getting the seat replaced to help with that.

In an unfortunate turn of events, though, it has come to my attention that due to my nut allergy (yes, I get it, I’m a nut and yet I’m allergic to them) I need to provide my own food.

For two days.

Over 168 miles.

I still have to call the Ride to find out exactly what they want me to do: do I show up with a bunch of Amy’s Organics and tell them to have them nuked and ready? I have no idea how hungry I’ll be or what they will or won’t have that I can eat, nor can they seem to tell me. It’s frustrating, but I get that from a liability standpoint they don’t want someone dropping dead on the Ride.

Kinda defeats the purpose.

Ladies of Leisure

BobbieLeave a comment

I have to take a moment to digress from the Elephant In The Room — that I just bought a new bike with a completely different set-up 2.5 weeks from the actual 2-day ride — to discuss my gym.

I’ve changed gyms recently — I formerly lurked at the LA Fitness in Bellevue, but then between driving home, then to the school, acquiring my son, and driving back to Bellevue, and then driving home again, I was contributing needlessly to the oil crisis (and my budget) and therefore switched gyms at a $10 premium to the one by my house. That’s fine, I have the excel worksheet to prove I’m actually saving money.

I live in what I would call a “bubble”. This “bubble”, called Sammamish, is a neighborhood of privilege and McMansions, of 5-year-olds with cellphones and 16-year-olds with new cars. I know this because I grew up here in what is now the only 1970’s rambler that exists in Sammamish, when it was not Sammamish but was “Unincorporated King County”. In those days, the joke was that if you had an emergency you called Domino’s Pizza, because they’d get there faster than the King County sheriff. (And it was true.)

I do not fit in the bubble — or at least not from my point of view — but I live here for two reasons: 1. it’s the house I grew up in and I have configured it exactly the way I like it and it’s far enough from my neighbors that I can do what I like how I like when I like without worrying about what they will think; and 2. It is in an excellent school district, which is not something you monkey around with when you have a kiddo.

At any rate, I was at the gym this morning, applying makeup to face (this is a very necessary part of the morning regimen because if I don’t I scare people) and was noting the following:

1. One lady arrived at the gym, put all of her stuff in front of the nicest shower, and then went to work out. That is to say, she blocked the shower from use by anyone else for an hour. As I was applying makeup she came in and proceeded to go about her business as though this was perfectly okay, despite pointed looks from the rest of us. (This is all the more important when we note that there are only TWO showers in the ladies locker room).

2. Another lady was pitching her “Staging/Decorating” business. In the locker room. At full volume. She was very very carefully explaining to another lady that she didn’t do any organization, really, she just rearranged the furniture a client already has in order to optimize the functional space and/or make it ready for sale. She’s very good at it, and she charges $100 an hour. Figure it takes her 4-5 hours to do a standard house (that’s her figuring) but you know she doesn’t go through paperwork and all of that, that’s more of an Organizer (her friend does that) and they’re going to go into business together (but still keep their separate licenses) etc. etc. etc. And she has her card right there. So handy. During the course of the discussion, though, it was very apparent that her conversational partner could neither get a word in edgewise nor convince her that she understood the first time.

3. It is immediately evident which ladies work and which do not. Those of us who work are there to work out, get showered/changed/made up and are OUT the door. And it’s great that some ladies do not work and have that luxury, truly: just please do not block thoroughfares with your conversations. Move to the side. It’s a gym, ladies, Starbucks is a block away.

I wonder if they notice anyone or anything around them, I really do.

Giddyap

BobbieLeave a comment

You don’t change horses in midstream…unless the horse dies. Then you can either sit atop a stinky horse or get a new shiny horse to remove you from the stink and hopefully find you a good saloon… I digress…

I was riding the ol’ Cannondale along the Sammamish River trail Friday morning when I stopped about ten miles in. I had been doing awesome, pacing in the rain at 15mph (hey, for me that is good!) and not minding (well, not much) the puddle of water in my clippy shoes (note to self, get shoe covers). I got water, took off, heard a “wsh-chunk!”, and then a “scrape scrape scrape scrape”.

“Scrape scrape scrape scrape” is not what you want to hear on your bike, in the rain, 10 miles from your car, on a relatively deserted path. “Scrape scrape scrape scrape” kinda sucks. An untrained investigation showed that my rear wheel was out of true, it was scraping against the brake. With no prospect of rescue I rode the thing with a scraping brake in 10mph headwinds in the rain (not uphill but you get the idea) back. My pace slowed to 11mph.

At the earliest opportunity I deposited it with much angst at Mr. Crampy’s.

I am awaiting guidance via phone from Kyle “Mr. Crampy” of Mr. Crampy’s Multisport in Redmond. He called and left note that my bike, my lovely fourth-hand Cannondale, has died. It has died of a dead spoke, a need of wheels, messed up shifters, and the only good thing on it is its frame. I am going to need to purchase a new bike, because it is not safe.

When a man who does Ironmans each year for FUN and is ex-special forces is telling you not to do something because it is not safe, you listen.

I’m a bit nervous though: my old bike was a road bike with mountain bike tires (because skinny tires scare fat girls like me) and there’s this whole budget thing. Also, I have only ONE more long ride in training before the Big Day, and that is this Saturday. Ergo, I need to purchase, fit, and ride this bad boy within the next week.

It’s not as though I had a lot of other things on my plate — my brother got married this weekend, bought that new car, shifting jobs, school and PTA is wrapping up, and all of the myriad of normal life-things that waft in and out of my responsibility cloud. I’m actually quite glad I finally took the bike to someone who alerted me to all of this: I went to the local bike shop (we will not print their name, but they are VERY close to my house) and TOLD them I’d be on this thing for 2 days straight and they charged me 20 bucks and said good enough.

I won’t be going back there. I’m going to ride into the very orange sunset with something from Mr. Crampy’s.

Weighty Issues

BobbieLeave a comment

Getting a body fat scale may not have been a morale-engendering idea.

I will not publicly post my body fat percentage, but I even ran it by my doctor and my personal trainer and both flatly refuse to believe it. Both of these ladies are no-nonsense, non BS types (hm… now who do they remind me of?) so I’m going to assume that for some reason, it’s not working correctly.

I have lost body fat according to it. But 1% off of a bajillion percent is a small bps change, you know?

I was chatting with a coworker the other day (he finished an Olympic in 2:22, which is pretty damned good) and he teased me about how he wasn’t quite at the level such that he could “charge” for events. Well, technically I’m not charging, I’m raising money for cancer research, and I doubt that I could finish an Olympic in 2:22.  I’m half tempted to see how the Danskin turns out and then sign up for the Black Diamond Olympic, because then I’d have a challenge (only on the swim and run side — somehow, biking 24 miles is just so not really challenging anymore).

I have guilt. I have guilt that I’m somehow projecting athleticism or fitness that is not verified by my scale (or my figure, no matter what you say Jeff). I work out just enough to train for what I’ve signed on for, and to be able to eat whatever/whenever/however. The only reason I don’t weigh 120 pounds and am not rocking a size two is that I enjoy food and am not so good at the pushing the plate away thing. I do not match the visual standard of someone who does the things I have signed on to do (or even have done — If I told you I have run 3 half-marathons, and a triathlon, in the last two years, you would call bullsh!t on me). It is discomforting.

But as Sophia Loren said, everything you see I owe to pasta.  And I loooooooooove to carboload.

PS — by Saturday I will have spent 112 miles on a bike this week. I chafe. That is all.

Home Stretch

BobbieLeave a comment

Considering that I’ve only been in training 4 and a half months, I can call the next five weeks the home stretch. I’m following the training guidelines, and am on a first-name basis with my local bike fixer dude, as my derailer isn’t quite sure if it wants to derail my chain appropriately or derail my ride inappropriately. I blame poor nomenclature for its inadequacies and overcompensation.

I have, as of last week, made the minimum amount of money raised ($2,500) and am aiming to get my goal of $3,000 in. At this point, my goal is to stay on the bike for the two days of riding and hope my rear end doesn’t fall off.

Or maybe I hope it will. Since starting training in January I have gained — wait for it, wait for it — seven pounds. SEVEN. POUNDS. This is insane.

Ok, let’s put this into perspective: I weigh X.

At my lowest weight at this height, I weighed X-19.  At my highest weight at this height, unpregnant, I weighed X+40ish. (Yeah, I’m putting the “ish” there. I wasn’t proud of it, and it was a long long time ago). I am on the slighter end of this sliding scale but it doesn’t make me happy.

I have ordered a body fat scale (hello, whole new heights of things to obsess about!) and I’ve downloaded an app for that, and an app for this. I would really like to get back to at least X-7, which is where I was in the New Year and fine with that. I’d like even more to get back to X-19, or even perhaps X-25; but let’s not get too carried away.

That said, I have a new job 🙂 Perhaps that will help burn some excess calories?

Troubleshot

BobbieLeave a comment

Ok, so, first, I just have to get this off my chest: something I really really really really really really wanted, I got. I can’t talk about it just yet, but I got it, and I’m really happy about it, and no it’s not a pony.

Wow, I feel so much better. Don’t you? Ok now on to the real post:

You know when you are at the copy machine and you put your little papers in the feeder and you press the little green button and it goes “whrr…whrr..whrr” just fine and then it goes “splllllllltchunk”? You know that’s bad, right? This is when the copier has managed to take originals 2, 5, and 7 and accordion them quite neatly into some recess you didn’t know existed. You spend literally hours, HOURS, looking through all of the nooks and crannies of the machine, patiently following the screen’s unhelpful, generic tips.

“Lift flap A, remove paper”

(There is no paper under flap “A”).

“Lift partition “B”, remove paper”.

(There is no paper under flap “B”).

“Return all documents to the document feeder”

(You do that, but you ain’t buying it”)

“Whrr…whrrr…spltchunk!”

And you’re back to fiddling with flap “A”, again, aren’t you?

This is much like my back. I inherited my back from my father, along with my unibrow, an acerbic sense of humor, and an intolerance for bad italian food. My back does not do well with ordinary things.

Yesterday I threw my back out, for instance, whilst removing items from the clothes dryer. My clothes dryer is actually on a six-inch platform so this was even less strain than the average person has to subject themselves to. And I was only removing a load of sheets, not a load of lead weights. It is never when I am moving 50-pound pots of roses or helping move sofabeds that I throw my back out. No, I throw it out doing laundry.

This morning I woke up twice as stiff and in need of something to make it go away, so naturally I went to the gym and got on the bike. I usually see a chiropractor and a massage therapist for the back, but they are both out of town, and I am left wishing that I had even the crappy guidelines most copy machines give you in order to fix my back.

Reach

BobbieLeave a comment

Man is a creature who, having given up on an efficient way of dealing with daily traffic, aspires to go to the Moon — and then Mars. On a shoestring.

People are generally goal driven. The nobility and value of those goals are generally subjective; if your goal is to spend the rest of your life as a couch potato far be it from me to dissuade you. Just leave some of the Cheet0s for me.

Of late I find myself searching for, and adding to, my goals. In doing so I find I do *better* if I pick ones that, while not completely unattainable, are quite difficult. E.g., signing up for a 160 mile, 2-day bike ride after having successfully ridden 12 miles.  I find that if I set myself up for a challenge– a not-impossible one, but one that I can’t really flake on, either — I will rise to meet it. This strokes my ego in some sort of way I’m not going to be able to articulate clearly, but that’s ok: I still get the oxytocin release.

I find that this tendency to set challenge and then meet (or get close) breaks down into smaller pieces of the overall goal: to wit, mileage. Each week now we are to be riding about 55-65 miles in addition to our long ride, and our long ride has to fall within a given Min and Max. Being paranoid that I will not make my goal I have been advocating the Max (so, last weeks was 47 on top of 60 miles which would put us at 7miles over goal for weekly mileage– and we made 41. Go ahead and do the math, I’ll wait).

What I’m getting to is, much like the person who “games” their watch by setting it 5 minutes fast, if we set the weekly goal to X+Y where X is the minimum required effort and Y is WWLD (What Would Lance Do), we are typically achieving X and sometimes achieving Xb (you know, halfway between X and Y). This is not bad on the whole, but I wonder at the psychology of it. If I was just “honest” with myself and said “ok, we’re doing 47 because that’s the minimum required this week (and it is)”, would I do the 47? Or would I suddenly cramp, or hit a wall, or fling myself over bicycle tracks?

There is a certain amount of fear in setting goals that may be just beyond your reach. But we got to the Moon on analog technology that is less sophisticated than items you use everyday. Stretching is good.

I Mutter the Body Eclectic

Bobbie2 Comments

This is a perfect example of the sort of conversations one’s body parts get in to when one does things that one doesn’t normally. Our ride last Saturday was in 13mph headwinds. I looked it up — each 5mph is equal to an additional 1% grade (in terms of effort) and will take your normal pace down 7%. So, yeah! It sucked.

THE SCENE:

A girl (ok, ok, woman) runs frenetically through her house, having loaded her bike into the back of her car she is doing the needful, e.g., filling water bottles and packing Cliff bars.

BACK: Uh-uh, no way, I am *not* doing this. See? *TWEAK*

ME: OW! What’s that for?!? All I was doing was filling a water bottle.

BACK: (smugly) Now you can’t go.

ME: Oh yeah? (grabs Ibuprofen bottle) Think again, punkin! I have 800mgs of ibuprofen that is going to chill you out. (takes ibuprofen and washes it down with water, and then more coffee).

Fifteen minutes in the car and BACK is silent.

ME: Oh yeah! Who’s the man (well, not me). 

(Gets on bike)

THE SCENE:

It is 22 miles into the ride. Somehow, in a 36 mile course that is a U-shape along the top of the lake and back, we have succeeded in riding into HEADWINDS the entire way. This is disheartening and some of the constituency is starting to complain.

KNEES: Damn, we are sore! Where is that ibuprofen the doctor told you to take when you do this?

ME: I took it. All 4. I was good, but I can’t take any more for like 6 hours.

BACK: I commandeered it. I have the higher need you know: spinal column and all that.

KNEES: Oh no you Di-int! That was mine, beyotch! I have doctor’s orders!

BACK: Oh yes I di-id. I make this body function, punkin, so don’t give me your “oh I’m so important” routine. Nothing’s more important than the BACK!

BRAIN and HEART (in unison): Um…

BACK: well at least KNEES aren’t.

KNEES: STFU! I am the one that keeps you mobile, which the doctor also said is GOOD FOR YOU. You wanna hog my drugs, fine, but at least half of that should’ve been shared and now I’m going to show you just how hard *your* life gets when I don’t share.

BACK: Bring it!

ME: HEY WAIT! WAIT! I did what I was supposed to and..

KNEES: Tough cookies, sister. (KNEES start to ache petulantly)

STOMACH: I’m hungry.

ME: Now, BACK and KNEES you guys really need to… what?

STOMACH: I’m hungry.

ME: You just ate a Cliff Bar. Technically you’ve eaten 1.5 Cliff Bars.

STOMACH: And…?

ME: That’s enough food for you.

STOMACH: Look, apparently the BACK is the appreciated person here, and I’m not, I get that. Especially as it was ME who had to sort out that ibuprofen on not perhaps the most comfortably full stomach. So I’d appreciate it if YOU’D back off and feed me. Mkay?

ME: Ok, ok. Fine. Here’s the other half of the Cliff Bar.

KNEES: OH, I GET IT NOW. All I have to do is bitch properly, is that it? Well fine (KNEES  start to really ache)

BACK: FINE! I’m tired of being the scapegoat. I’ll show you what it’s like when the ibuprofen wears out. (BACK starts to tweak and ache)

BUTT: I’d just like to say…

KNEES, BACK, STOMACH, BRAIN, HEART, ME (in unison): SHUT UP!

BUTT: Oh, it’s all fine for you to have an opinion, I get it. But last I checked, I don’t get a special doctor. KNEES gets the Sports Medicine guy, and BACK gets Dr. Cat and Massages, and all I get is wedged on this hard plastic seat.

KNEES: Well you should be used to that, what with work and all.

BUTT: Hey, it’s not my choice that they sit on me, okay? It’s just what I do. And I try to do it without complaint. I’m just saying I’m feeling a little sensitive now and would appreciate some of the ibuprofen next time, is all.

BACK: Oh yes we get it, it is *SO HARD* to just sit around all day.

KNEES (to BACK): That’s pretty much all you do, BACK, except vertically.

BACK: SHUT UP! I’M MORE IMPORTANT AND I WILL TAKE YOU DOWN!

KNEES: BRING IT!

HEADWIND: SHUT UP BOTH OF YOU! Guess what, I’m going to ramp up a few miles an hour because I’m the freaking WIND and I can’t hear myself think for all of your complaining. KNEES, you’re going to have to concentrate on what you’re doing because this is going to be like one long hill. BACK, you’re going to have to use yourself more and crouch forward because otherwise the BODY will make no progress. And if EITHER of you want to see the comfy inside of the car today (and possibly a nice hot shower) then everybody needs to SHUT IT and get to work, mkay?

ME: (to HEADWIND): I kind of hate you, and love you, for that.

I’m Back in the Saddle Again

BobbieLeave a comment

Doot doot doot doot doo…

My lack of progress was apparently not as awful as I thought it was. One of the advantages to going with a formalized, large ride like the Ride to Conquer Cancer is they give you a handy-dandy training plan. That training plan states clearly that by the end of April (which I count as this weekend, in terms of long-distance-ride) I am to be able to ride 41 miles on the long ride and go through  another 60 miles in 2-3 rides during the week. This I can do and have done (I did it last week) so: guilt assuaged!

What is going to be more difficult is that as training progresses, that long ride, and the interim rides, get longer. I was not-so-secretly elated at stopping half-marathoning because, to my way of thinking, running just took so much time — long runs in training would take like 2 hours!

What I wouldn’t give for a simple 2 hour divot in my weekend these days. The long rides are taking 4 and 5 hours, and by the time we get to June I can expect 7 hours of riding in one day. This is, of course, nothing compared to the actual ride days, which I can expect to be 9 hours each day, back to back.

My speed needs to increase as well: in chatting with my boss (who is a cycling hobbyist– you know, rides his bike everywhere) I should have no problem doing 20mph on the flats. I have no problem doing 20mph on the flats — in the gym. In the real world, I’ve been doing as good as 15 and as bad as 10 given the day. Clearly, I need to get my cogs looked at. Further, I’m going to have to deal with some real hills and not the teeny climbs involved on the Burke Gilman, and this has me… apprehensive. Hills + clippie shoes = whups, splut!

Still. I only have 8 weeks to go, and then it’s over… until the Danskin Tri 🙂

Travel Fail

Bobbie1 Comment

Ok, tomorrow is the beginning of the rest of my life. Or something.

I write to you from the relative comfort that is the Embassy Suites in Jacksonville, where I am having massive guilt and am a little scared at my dearth of progress. Having lost two weekends of bike time I rented a bike here in Jacksonville.

A bike that I was not able to pick up.

To be fair, the weekend was to be packed with wedding-related activities (and it was) but I thought I’d be able to squeeze in a couple of hours on the bike. Having lost my luggage twice though (enroute to Geneva and coming in to Jacksonville) and not slept for 24 hours upon landing in Jacksonville (I was a zombie), I decided that getting up and getting on a bike was going to be unlikely.

Someone had reminded me when I rented the bike that it would be no problem to get around, as Jacksonville is all flat. This is so very true. Jacksonville is all flat. In the section we were in, this means you can get your car up to a hefty 50mph in the 30mph lane and since there is no official bike lanes anywhere that I could see, I could just imagine my tired-jetlagged-rickety self on a borrowed bike getting smucked thirty or forty times by the varying products of Ford or Chevy. 

Therefore, the bike was never picked up. Off to plan B, which was to abuse the recumbent bike in the gym. However, in this particular Embassy Suites we had a Mary Kay convention and a Fish and Wildlife convention and some sorts of sport convention, and the gym was packed both mornings. I had to settle for a run, which does not compare to the mileage I’m supposed to have done. I’ve got ten weeks left to get from the 51mi I was at to the 120mi I need. That means I need to increment by 7miles per week– this is suddenly getting very very real.