As I’ve grown older, I wouldn’t say I’ve become much wiser. I’ve just conditioned myself to avoid unappealing situations or unfortunate consequences. For instance, I’ve learned through a series of stringent collegiate tests, that if I drink a shot of Jagermeister, there’s a good chance that I will immediately launch it back onto someone’s lap. I have had this reaction enough times to confirm a hypothesis that Jagermeister (for me) induces involuntary stomach upheaval—and should be avoided. I’ve finally learned my lesson in this case, but it took burning my metaphorical hand on the Jagermeister stove about 40 odds times or so to bring the lesson home.

 

What does emptying my stomach contents have to do with winter training? Firstly, the thought of a winter full of roller riding turns my stomach in a similar manner, and secondly, winter training involves the same sort of scientific trial and error methodology. Winter training is really just a long plodding trip into nature of your own physiology. Setting aside superfluous hair and prodigious gas in my own case, I’ve come to know a few things about the temple known as my body:

 

• I do not like riding early in the morning – this is more a mental thing than a physical thing. Since I work at home and I have the opportunity to ride midday, I do. Getting up in the cold and dark to slog through a ride is just mental torture, so I just get up early and work instead of riding. This flexibility with my time is one advantage I have over normal working people—besides being able to work pants-free while wearing filthy flip flops.

 

• I don’t have the time or mental fortitude to train for 20 hours a week, so I need to throw in some intensity during my workouts. Doing effort

s also helps to keep my rides from becoming too boring, and if I’m not bored, I ride more. And if I ride more, it’s better than riding less or not at all.

 

That’s it, I’ve learned about two things about training in about 15 or so years of racing. I may have learned more, but nothing else is coming to mind right now, so I will settle for two things.

 

Friday, October 24, 2008

 

Only five sprints today as I felt too tired to do ten sprints, I will really enjoy my day off tomorrow. I’m just not sure how I will spend it yet, but there is a little matter of some volunteer time at my daughter’s elementary school for “Fun Day” to contend with. So I imagine I will be herding elementary school kids for a few hours and then washing away the experience with intoxicants.

 

The sprints were as follows:

1024, 1140, 1081, 1118, 1102

 

 

 

Sunday, October 26, 2008

 

I drove my car to meet my teammates Andy and Chaz at the bridge today. I have, in the past, derided others for doing the exact same thing—driving their cars to ride their bikes, and right now, Brian Gatens is probably spitefully spitting coffee on his keyboard as he reads this. But I didn’t feel like getting up an extra hour early (thanks “Fun Day”—so much pain to wash away), and I didn’t want to ride to the bridge in the dark. It does seems contradictory to drive to ride when you are putting a means of transportation on the top of your car. Plus, you could gain the benefits of the extra riding time to and from the ride. Driving to a ride is like driving to a gym and then running on a treadmill, but it’s more like putting a treadmill in the back of your car and then driving to a gym to run on the treadmill—but that’s just silly—not even Brian Gatens would do that. 

 

But pre-ride transport aside, we were convening for a team ride. This year, it seems that many teams are getting out together for jaunts into Jersey and beyond. I noticed many teams out on the road, rolling together tightly and slowly driving the more impatient automobile based citizens of the Nyack region into a simmering rage. We have had the benefit of some very lovely days for training, so it will be seen who lasts through the dark, cold months ahead, but for now, optimism is all around us—let’s put the thoughts of frozen dangling parts away for the moment. We are all going to have our best years ever!

 

One of the things I love about cycling is that any ride that brings together a group of more than 3 bike racers quickly becomes a study in human behavior. You discover who is your pack’s lead animal or more importantly who thinks they are the lead animal. You also find who is feeling unconfident, who is feeling frisky, who is conniving, and many times—who has been out late the night before and then had a 2AM burrito stop. Personally, I prefer the rider who’s been loaded down with burrito, as I can usually tell where they are. Some rides fall into a mellow and relaxed pace, others come to resemble a focus group gone terribly wrong, with people snatching at free samples as if a nuclear attack were imminent and the only hope of salvation was in hoarding as many free cans of Fanta as you could hold. Today’s ride was somewhere in-between. Andy was his usual inscrutable self; Chaz could tempted; and as for myself; I was riding in my normal state of half-wittedness. 

 

It might be the fact that I ride so many miles alone, or it just may be the fact that I can be incredibly stupid at times; but I was pushing the pace in our little group ride. In October, this is unwise. Being fast in October is like winning a People’s Choice award—impressive to those who don’t know any better. (Though I will concede the Osmond Brothers win for Favorite Musical Group in 1975 was well-earned.) But on Sunday morning, there I was, at the front writing my acceptance speech for dimwittedness. Chaz had dropped out of our group to attend to pressing home duties, and we had picked up teammate Chris on the road home from Nyack. For some reason, the trio of Andy, Chris and I combined to create a triad of misplaced aggressive behavior. We rolled on at a pace somewhere between brisk and pathetically desperate. A pace way too intense for me at this time of year. In a training sense, the ride might have been ill-advided, but if I were to pressed to admit it, I would say the ride was quite fun—plus I had my jersey pockets full of free Fanta—so take that, suckers!

 

 

 

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

 

This is turning out to be a quasi-rest week, as family and worldly duties have come to the forefront in the household here. My daughter’s 6th birthday is tomorrow and a celebration needs to be addressed—we are eschewing the omnipresent Disney Princesses mafia (parents of young girls know what I’m talking about here) for a teddy bear theme. We’re not planning a big party, just a small get together, as the birthday party circuit is really getting old. We’re a little burnt out on parties, and our poor younger daughter will bear the brunt of our malaise—all she can hope for in the future is to have some pizza and watch reruns of “The Hills”— and that will be for her sixteenth birthday.

 

So I rode rollers for the first time this winter training season. I was able to hold 223 watts for 24-ish minutes of my 30 minute goal time. My rear tire rebelled against the confines of the basement man cave and leaked its air all over the roller drum before I could finish all 30 minutes. I took the hint from my tire and climbed off the bike and went back to work and bear party prep.

 

 

 

 

Thursday, October 30, 2008

I took off Wednesday for my daughter’s 6th birthday, and that’s a good enough excuse for me to miss a workout on a rest week—if readers want to write in and tell me when their birthday is, I could take that day off also. I am that committed to leisure.

Today I did another kinda hard interval for 20 minutes, and turned in a respectable 260-ish wattage number. These intervals are getting easier now, maybe next week I go for 140 minutes in my interval, that sounds like a reasonable goal.