Thursday, February 19, 2009

The only thing worse than riding the trainer...

Is flatting on the trainer. It has happened to me twice this winter. I have ridden the trainer like eight times. I finally realized why. All of my tubes have patches on them. All of them except the tubulars do. Everything else is a training wheel. That means the tube gets a patch when I flat. Patches apparently melt when my heart rate hits like 170 for the 20th minute.

True dedication would be fixing my flat tire in my attic while pouring sweat all over the place. This has only happened once of the two flats. When will winter end?

Honestly though, all of the crap weather might actually make me faster. No seriously. I am riding less junk rides and more focused rides. Yesterday for instance, was a 45 degree rainy day. If it were 60 and sunny, I would have gone out for four hours and just had a nice ride. Instead, due to the crap rain, I did 10 minute hill repeats until I couldnt do them anymore and just rode home. Is one better than the other? Probably. Which one, I really dont know. Im hoping its whatever I am doing.

I have a powertap coming. Power measuring devices are the mirror of mediocrity. The powertap will give me an accurate reading of how average I actually am. I am very excited for this.

I havent eaten peanut butter in 3 weeks. I was up to 2 pounds per week and wanted to test myself. This is like fasting for normal people, or withdrawing from heroin for junkies. The first week was the hardest. I would open the jar in the kitchen and just smell it. God I miss it.

Here is a good article in the New York Times about stair climbing. A few weeks ago I was at the Cathedral of Learning doing the stairs. I was going at a steady pace, nothing crazy fast and I passed an obese couple walking up the stairs maybe 5 times. It was a single time up for them. This means they took about 30 - 40 minutes for a single time up.

I wanted to talk to them and see what they were up to, but it would have been kind of weird. I didnt want them to think I was looking down on them or anything. They both easily weighed 300+ pounds. Part of me wanted to tell them how much I respect what they are doing and how it makes me so happy to see people trying to make a change for the better. Instead I said hello.

3 comments:

Gregg said...

Glad to see you have the will power to quit peanut butter. The question is what are you substituting? Nutella? Clif Shots?

Burt Friggin' Hoovis said...

Do you think the 300 pounders were thinking about trying to catch and eat you?

Thanks,
Burt


P.S. - Stair climbing is super gay. Way gayer than triathlons.

samlikesbikes said...

As a fellow PB-aholic I once went a week without pb. It was horrible. It was all I thought about.