I’ve always had an ability to postpone gratification in the service of building anticipation. As a child, I never went looking for hidden presents in order to get a peek under the wrapping paper to see what was in store for me on Christmas morning. I wanted to be surprised when I opened my AFX slot car track, and not have to feign excitement—I wanted the moment to be real. I would carefully eat my Crunch Berries in a manner that would leave me with a bowl full of red corn flour and maltodextrin treats at the end. Even today, if I get a birthday present in the mail, I will set it aside until my birthday arrives before opening it. I like the suspense of not knowing what is to come. It helps to add suspense to my day to day life. In fact, I’m still sitting on a box of Christmas sausages that was sent to me, waiting for the perfect time to open them—I’m planning an Easter unveiling.

Through a recent largesse brought about through my BH/Louis Garneau team, I was able to purchase a BH G5 frame at a very agreeable price. How agreeable? I cannot tell you, as that would violate team policy—we also aren’t allowed to ride bottomless—which will cause a BIG disruption in my Burning Man plans this year. But now that I have the frame in my possession, I will begin the exercise of carefully deciding which parts will eventually end up on my completed bicycle. And just as I painstakingly separated the Crunch Berries from the plain Captain Crunch cereal pieces, so will I use the building of my new bicycle to build anticipation for my new bicycle.

I am mental, and this, of course, complicates things. I cannot abide having parts on my bike that I find aesthetically unappealing. For instance, I loathe the look of the current Shimano cranks. The arms melt into the spider in what looks to me to be a needlessly bulky and heavy intersection. The cranks are, of course, neither heavy nor bulky, but the visual to me makes them seem this way—and whenever I see those cranks, I cannot help but feel that I am looking into the face of a very sad elephant. The Shimano company has always been on the forefront of technological developments, but I’ve always had the feeling that they give the aesthetics of their components short shrift—maybe all the fancy product design gets monopolized by the spinning reel division. They do have some fetching bass spinners over there after all.

I cannot, of course, use any Campy parts because they’re from a company that’s inscrutable and expensive and absolutely out of any ideas other than "adding gears". This leaves SRAM. Which has an appealing and seemingly effective line of parts, but I am going through a stretch of abject poverty when it comes to the acquisition of cycling products, so I will be left to swap bits (which sounds dirty) from my current bike to my new frame. This will be the fourth swap for these parts, which are now being shuttled from home to home like orphans in a Charles Dickens novel. In the meantime, my new BH frame will be sitting in my basement, still in its wrappings, waiting for parts and building anticipation like a bowl full of maltodextrin.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

I woke early to ride rollers this morning. There’s something about rising early on a Saturday that gives me an extra sense of smug bike racer superiority. I pedaled away secure in the knowledge that I, dedicated bike racer that I am, was able to eschew any sort of Friday night temptations; enabling me to get up and exert myself. Of course, I didn’t ride on Friday at all because I was effectively disabled by drink on Thursday night. I prefer to not dwell on the negatives in this case. It’s the bike racer’s way.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

This is my second day in a row of waking before my family in order to ride my rollers surreptitiously in the basement. I am on such a high of athletic dedication that I rode an extra 5 minutes. And since time effectively stands still while I’m on the rollers, this extra riding time translates to about 4 extra hours of riding on roads.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Like the python that has passed a wayward tapir through its digestive system, so have I eliminated the extra holiday weight from my frame. I am now back to my normative weight of 152 pounds. In essence, I am back where I started. I am so nonplussed that I forgot to record my training data, but trust me, I was awesome. It also seems that my heart rate is not being recorded by my Power Tap. Which means that my strap needs a new battery or I have a malfunctioning unit (once again, see "sounds dirty" reference from above).

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Today is a double workout. Initially, I had planned to do a double workout on Monday but a late evening of football and the desire to act like a normal person conspired to keep me in my bed when my alarm rang this morning. I did my 20/10s dutifully and averaged a regulation 355 watts—which means I’m hitting the same numbers week after week. This can either be considered consistency or it can be seen as a plateau. And plateaus, according to everything I’ve ever read from coaches, are a bad thing. But what makes for a better place to jump from than a plateau? How "coachy" does that sound? I should toss that up on a Successories poster with s picture of a kitten jumping over a goldfish bowl. Then I can start charging people $250 a month to get my emails. I write really good emails.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

I’m starting to feel the accumulated fatigue of two consecutive days of double workouts, but isn’t that what the off season if for? In theory, I should be riding more miles than I can handle. That seems to be the case, as my head throbs with the pain I feel when I’m starting to get overtired, my eyes feel heavy and I can barely muster the energy to mix a medicinal vodka tonic. I know things are serious when my training starts to interfere with my drinking.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Today I looked at the writing on the inside of the elastic band of my underwear and realized that I needed to do my regularly scheduled Thursday workout—2 x 20 minute "kinda hard" intervals. I have to admit that I anticipate these workouts with apprehension due to their long-ish duration and due to the fact that there are two of them. I also really cannot do them properly since my heart rate isn’t showing up on my Power Tap unit. I just changed the battery in the strap, so I am left to conclude that the unit (sounds dirty) is somehow malfunctioning. I just changed the battery in my unit, so it isn’t a power issue. The head unit also is not displaying numerals correctly. It will drop out portions of the LCD, so that it’s hard to tell the difference between a "7" and a "9". So I cannot always tell what my display is saying. Of course, I will use this opportunity to round up any numbers that I can’t discern. All of my sevens are now nines!

My intervals went well, I was down 3 watts (at 258 watts) on my average for the first one, but I was up (248 watts) on my second interval—which means I am now able to spread my mediocrity more evenly over two 20 minutes time spans. In the world of bikes, this counts as progress.