I’ve just realized that the training log is past the halfway point and I haven’t submitted any long-ish blowhard-y recollections from my past—I will have to remedy that situation.

 

Lately, I’ve been riding over the same roads and routes in my daily training. If I had to, I could probably lie flat on my back, close my eyes and recount each turn and twist and climb on each route in what would be one of the dullest monologues imaginable. I’ve committed many different routes from many different locales to memory in the same fashion. I can recall my training routes from my days in Kansas City, the rides out to the park, and the route I took to the old airport in downtown to meet up with the Tuesday night ride. I have parts of Fairfield County in Connecticut lodged indelibly in my mind. I know the hills of Riverdale and points north along the river in lower Westchester. But the first route that I placed into my memory, as many others have also, was the path that I trekked when I walked back and forth to school. 

 

My brothers and I started walking the mile to Holy Trinity School when we hit the first grade. I can’t remember if my mother woke up with us when we were that young, but I do know that by about 2nd or 3rd grade; it was up to us to get up in the morning and get ourselves out the door. I think my mom kept an ear out to make sure that we were up and moving, but she usually didn’t rise before we were out the door—she was no fool. To wake us in the morning, I had a second hand electric alarm clock with a faded yellow face. It was backlit and it came alive and glowed with an electric warmth at night. I spent a lot of time staring at that clock in the drowsy moments before falling asleep, and I can still picture the slow, reassuring crawl of its second hand sweeping its way through the night while perched on the white doily my mom had crocheted—preserving my night stand’s finish from the rough punishment doled out by my Miami Dolphins helmet coin bank. I kept my best treasures in there. My booty amounted to a few silver dollars and a collection of match books that had been thrown from the side of the paddle wheeler Delta Queen as it went through Lock and Dam Number 11 by passengers that were either too cheap to throw money or had been informed by the boat’s staff that throwing coins from a distance equal to the height of a four story building at small children running along the boat as it passed through the locks was indeed, a bad idea.

 

Each night I carefully checked the slim hand that indicated the time my alarm went off before I went to sleep, as I was the first to rise in the morning, and was responsible for waking my two brothers, who both slept like sacks of wetted sand. The clock would go off in the morning with an alarm that sounded like someone trying to hum a polka into a pillow, but it was enough to rouse me from my sleep. I would get up, pull my NFL PJs down over my stomach and shuffle over to my brother’s beds and give the lumps curled in the covers a sharp poke—it was never too early to start fighting with your brothers. I was careful to not stand too close to my older brother’s bed when I did this, as he had a tendency to swing back blindly in the morning, hoping to catch me with a quick backhand, but he was usually too slow, and was left swatting at the air like a cat learning the backstroke. 

 

We would dress ourselves and amble downstairs to feed ourselves from a selection of the many boxed cereals that included a combination of any or all of the words “crunch”, “pop” or “sugar” prominently in their titles. In the mornings, we were all business, as we had to be out the door in time for school, but on the way home, we were able to take our time and savor the trip home. If there’s a better moment in life than when your feet hit the sidewalk as the last reverberations of the school bell echo away into the waxed surface of your grade school floors; I haven’t come across it. Other moments such as witnessing the births of your children or eating really good doughnuts can come close, but the pure optimism and promise of a freshly minted grade school afternoon are hard to beat. Our foray home started by amassing on the sidewalk. We would sometimes linger after school in the parking lot, continuing games or settling scores that had been started at recess, but eventually we headed towards home. 

 

My school was surrounded by tidy, well kept houses placed on lots and arranged in a perfect perpendicular grid. Many of the houses were square, one story boxes with a four corner roof that peaked in the middle; cutting a silhouette like the lowly green houses that you place on a Monopoly board when the game is still in it’s early stages—the innocent phase before the cutthroat times of gaudy red hotels and desperate borrowing ahead. The first two blocks of our walk home were filled with these homes. After two quick moving blocks, we arrived at Roosevelt Street, which led up the hill to a cluster of farms at the top. The Roosevelt Street kids had a reputation for being a rough, tight knit group. They moved in packs, and whenever they assembled it seemed that a meadow burned or a bike disappeared or someone’s collarbone got broken. We never took the turn up Roosevelt Street on the way home from school, because as tempting as those nefarious activities were; they time, and we had cartoons to watch.

 

After Roosevelt Street was a stretch of older homes that were Victorian in character. My friend Fred lived on this block in a large old house that looked like it was covered in corn flakes as its yellow paint was peeling off in large clumps. He lived two doors away from the house with the mysterious cage made of netting next to it. The back wall of the cage had a metal target in the middle, and it would be years later until I learned that the woman who lived there was a professional golfer and that she used the cage to practice her swing. I just assumed it was some sort of dunk tank practice cage, or maybe a device for perfecting ring toss skills—I had a tendency at that age to equate everything with bettering your skills at county fair games of chance.

 

As we moved closer to home, the landscape began switching over from residential homes to the combination manufacturing/residential zoning that my childhood home enjoyed. The railroad tracks crept closer to the street as we neared our destination. And we had a few obstacles to overcome before getting home. Most notably, we had to get past Doppler’s (not his real last name, as he is another of my childhood acquaintances that is doing jail time) house. Doppler lived in a dark house on the corner that was next door to a gas station and one block away from our house. His front door usually hung open, and in the dark recesses of the house lurked Doppler. He would appear out of nowhere, and do the regulation grade school bully stuff: knocking books out of your hands, menacing, and most egregious of all, he would expect us to listen to him as he droned on about one thing or another—a punch to the shoulder I can bear—as it is over quickly; but having to stand and feign interest while your tormentor brags about his canoeing aptitude is an especially awful torture. We eventually altered our route and walked home on the railroad tracks so we didn’t have to pass by his open front door, as there’s only so many times you can hear about deftly paddling a canoe.

 

On the homestretch to our house we passed a chain link fence that we always swatted with sticks in order to rouse the fury of the Pomeranian contained within. The little orange puff would come rushing towards us, and in its yipping fury, it would forget that it was chained to the clothesline in the backyard. The tiny dog would come to an abrupt cartoonish stop. As we were grade school age boys, watching this never failed to amuse us, and we would wind that little dog up almost every day. We would collect ourselves and make the final push home past the few remaining homes on our block, one of which had reportedly spent time as a brothel during my dad’s youth. My father was unaware of the fact that he grew up on the same block as a work-at-home cathouse, then again he was never a customer (I suppose they had a strict “10 or older” age limit); so you can imagine his surprise when years later a neighbor told him that it was common knowledge that the red ranch style house two doors away from ours had a brisk business in the flesh trade. The house had been retired for decades before we ever walked past on our trips to school, to us it was just another slightly shabby residence on our journey.

 

After passing the old cathouse, we were home free; the sidewalk turned to dirt and we were home.

 

The training ride descriptions this week will be brief as I used up a lot of words already, and I’m a little sick of describing training rides right now.

Friday, January 2, 2009

 

Today I added a bit of schmalz-bata before mounting the rollers. I’ve been neglecting my strength/explosiveness training, so I’m hoping doing an exercise or two before I have to ride rollers will keep me honest about hopping about my basement. Today I did lunges with one 45 pound weight and calf jumps.

 

 

Monday, January 5, 2009

 

Today was just a ride outside, nothing special. It was unusual in that it was outside for a change. I did nothing athletic over the weekend save for watching 4 football games. This was the last weekend of the girl’s Christmas vacation, so we had many activities planned. I tried to rally and ride early Sunday morning, but I couldn’t find anyone else interested on going out early. So I didn’t ride. Getting up and riding for me is very difficult when I don’t have anyone to meet, and if left to my own devices, I’ll just sleep in.

 

 

Tuesday January 6, 2009

 

I rode outside today and did 20/10s. 

 

 

Wednesday January 7, 2009

 

Today I did a few sets of schmalz-bata, some squats and calf jumps; and then I planted myself onto the rollers for two 20 minute tempo intervals.

 

 

Thursday January 8, 2009

Just a ride outside today, a plain old normal ride.