February here
Winter tries to poke me in the eyes, but I execute a perfect three stooges block.
3/31 3 hours with 2×15 intense tempo intervals
Last night Laurie fell asleep while watching TV. Baby Siggy slept on top of her, while Ginger laid at her feet. I was enjoying this tableau of domestic bliss when the sound of retching broke the rare silence. Baby S deposited a hairball on Laurie’s blanket and went back to sleep. I swept in quickly enough that Laurie was never the wiser, that is, until she does her monthly check on this journal. Then she’ll be thoroughly disgusted.
@##=#<17,r>@##=#Got the TT bike in race trim last night, hoping for a shakedown ride today. The ride window failed to materialize, so I’ll just have to hope for the best tomorrow. After the race I’ll strip the bike down again to install a set of FSA bars. Hard to believe, but FSA actually sent them to us for testing. I guess we’re starting to fool some people. I had the bars on the bike briefly without cables and it looked so hot I almost wet my pants. Looking forward to testing them.
3/30 1-2 hours easy
Rode with Paul again, did Friday’s hard ride so I could have an easy day before Saturday’s TT at Sandy Hook. I was supposed to do two laps at 280 watts, but ended up at 300 and 302 instead, at about 171 bpm. So, two days ago I could barely do 280 while trying to do 300, and averaged 171 bpm. Today I did 300 and 302 while trying to do 280, and averaged 171. Go figure. At least I’m not despondent any more. Cranking out 300 watts while holding myself back is, for me, pretty good.
3/29 3 hours endurance with 2×30 tempo intervals
Rode with neighbor Paul who has a new (to him) TT rig. In the interest of being social, and since my motivation is flagging, I rode casually, with just one hard lap thrown in. At least I got the full 3 hours in. The hard lap was supposed to be tempo, but I let it go a bit and averaged 293 watts, 157 bpm. The HR number is pretty suspicious, probably due to a lot of dropped signals.
3/28 2 hours with 2 sets of 5×5 threshold intervals
Somewhat demoralized by my pathetic showing Saturday, I really didn’t feel like doing this. The weather was nice, but I only had a three hour window to get this ride in. I decided to just do this on the trainer while catching up on more Roger Federer action.
Big mistake. The trainer and I have a hate/hate relationship, and the first interval just about killed me. I only managed 280 watts (instead of 300), and each successive interval was weaker and weaker. I finally just packed it in and did some one minute intervals, for no other reason than to boost my sagging morale.
3/27 Rest day
Didn’t really feel like I deserved a rest day today, but with no nanny help there was no window for a ride, either.
Toilet training continues, and somehow we managed to change the reward from cookies to star stickers. What a coup. Thank goodness she’s just as happy with a tiny star sticker, ’cause it was hard keeping that many cookies around all the time. Today, while I was on the potty, she rolled into the bathroom on her tricycle.
Sofie: Daddy, what are you doing?
Me: Pee and poop, Sofie.
Sofie: Oh, do you want a star?
Me: That’s ok, daddy’s all grown up, I don’t need a star.
Sofie: You can have a star. I have a lot of stars.
Ginger, the amazing humping dog, is actually a very sensitive gal, amazingly in tune with our emotions. In the past, she would pin Laurie down while we watched the Sopranos. Laurie’s pretty squeamish, so whenever someone got whacked, Ginger would come running and lie on Laurie’s chest and shower her with kisses. You could sense how upset she was, thinking that Laurie was actually in distress. Tonight, while we watched the latest episode, Ginger came running again, only this time she laid in my lap, staying for the whole episode and leaving right as it ended. She wedged herself in with an urgency that was both heartwarming and disturbing. I couldn’t help wondering what she knew that I wasn’t aware of yet.
3/26 4 hours with 2×20 tempo intervals
I had two hours of sleep Friday night, and was a zombie the rest of Saturday. I decided to scrap today’s ride and make up for being useless yesterday. I did manage an hour on the trainer, catching up on the DVR backlog again, a Mythbusters on flatulence. Yep. That’s my favorite show, on my favorite subject. Even so it was a miserable hour.
3/25 Rest day
I spoke to captain Lo mid week about putting in a 2-3 lap cameo, just to whip up the pace. I had my interval to make up anyways. My Hopeful Friday scenario was that I would stay away for a little while and force a quicker than normal early tempo. This being a B/C combined race, I thought winnowing down the field a bit would make the race safer.
The Monday Hangover reality showed how delusional I was. I ran into Rob Kolb a block or two from home, and he nearly made me choke up my Clif Bar breakfast with his speed up 6th ave. I knew right away I didn’t have the legs.
I jumped at the gun as planned, and was handed a decent gap by the field. I knew not to be please with myself, because I was going a whopping 22 mph at Engineer’s Gate, whereas in a TT I’d be pushing 30. Even worse, this is where I’m usually holding myself back, waiting for the lactic acid to kick in. Instead, I was already pushing it, my legs were already burning, and I was barely moving down the road. A rider bridged up, we got caught on the hill, and I went with a couple more moves. I made one more pathetic attack on lap 2, and spent the rest of my 3 laps trying to move up in the field. Unfortunately, the pace was slow enough that the pack stretched across the entire road, and my pack riding skills suck too much for me to move up through the middle of the pack. After 3 laps I hopped off and resumed my photo duties.
3/23 1-2 hours easy
3/24 3 hours endurance with 1×15 tempo interval
50 minutes on the rollers Thursday, nice and easy while watching the end of Seance, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s movie about a psychic who stumbles onto a missing girl, then tries to advance her career by holding the child captive and planting clues that she can ‘psychically’ lead the police to. Love those Japanese thrillers.
Bought my first package of condoms in a decade (I’m married), and my first deodorant stick ever (many Asians don’t need deodorant). And all in the name of this site. We’re starting a regular Friday feature, Hopeful Fridays, and my idea was to shoot a still life of an enormous package of condoms and a bottle of cheesy after shave. Come Friday morning, however, the shot began to feel more and more tasteless, and a quick email to Schmalz confirmed my worst fears. We had a quick brainstorm and came up with our good old standby, Ginger the Humper. So if anyone wants some condoms or aftershave…
Had a shoot on Friday, so no ride. Might squeeze an interval in Saturday morning.
3/22 3 hours endurance with 2×30 tempo intervals
I met up with Schmalz on 9w, right after my first interval. We decided to check out the new Toga in Nyack, since we were riding that way anyways. I knew from our roller sessions that Schmalz’s endurance zone was almost my tempo zone, so, fresh off an interval, I knew I was in for some discomfort. His pace was just enough to annoy me all the way there. The fact that he’s almost 15 pounds lighter didn’t help, either.
Toga Nyack is pretty cool, with an unbelievable fleet of Specialized mountain bikes for testing. We got to play with the Specialized sit bone measuring widgets (my ass is wider than Schmalz’s), as well as generally make asses of ourselves. By the way, they’re having a sale on winter clothing. I think they have tights from 25% to 45% off. We should have a banner ad up soon. (And yes, we sold our souls. You don’t need to point it out.)
@##=#<15,r>@##=#Mike said something to me the other day that I found really interesting. I can’t remember it verbatim, but the gist was that people like to be entertained in their training. We like to feel a burn, get a sense that we’re accomplishing something. But a lot of the work happens in the boring endurance zones, where we’re making our bodies adapt and work more efficiently. As much as I try to follow the program I fall into the same trap, putting more emphasis on threshold intervals than long endurance rides. Many of Smilie and Mike’s clients have done well already this spring, and they haven’t done much or any interval work yet.
Finally, our little Caf