Friday, December 5, 2008

 

I’m in the portion of my winter training where I’m looking for a little novelty in my workouts. I’m about 8 weeks in and I need a change of pace to hold my interest. Therefore, I’ve taken a page from teammate Jeff King’s playbook and started to incorporate some plyometrics into my training. What are plyometrics? Well, they are like the lost child of Jazzercise and calisthenics. The best thing about plyometrics is that you can do them almost anywhere, excepting, of course a court of law or a delivery room—too many things to trip over in there. All you need to do plyometrics is a bit of space and some loose fitting clothing, the “Flashdance” type leg warmers are optional, but I wouldn’t dare do any plyos without them. Yes, I am a maniac.

 

I’m staring out slowly with these exercises. Today I did some calf jumps—where you try to jump as high as you can just using your calves and feet; I also did some knee drops, which are like doing a one-legged squat. I stand in front of my stairs and put one foot up behind me and do bends to 90 degrees with my front leg. I did both of these exercise today, but not a lot of reps because I want to ease into it. I will incorporate jump squats into the routine later into the week, I think I may even combine the plyos and tabata training into the same workout, creating a new hybrid workout that will soon take the exercise world by storm! How about Tabatalos! That sounds like a new menu item from Taco Bell. Maybe Plybata? Hmm, that sounds like a gland. Oh, wait—what about schmalz-bata! That sounds like a kick ass form of Israeli marshall arts, doesn’t it? I may have to consider a copyright search here.

 

I also rode my bike and did some sprints today. They were: 1009, 1054, 1090, 1105, and 1051

 

 

Sunday December 7, 2008

 

I did 90 minutes on the rollers today, with 2 sets of 20 minutes at kinda hard tempo. 90 minutes is my new limit for rollers riding, and I was only saved from a descent into madness by being able to watch live football. This may be the first instance from the last few years of the Miami Dolphins actually preventing a regrettable act.

 

 

Monday, December 8, 2008

 

The funny thing about sweating is that it causes you to lose weight. Shocking, I know, but after hovering around my sausage-aided weight of 155 for a few weeks; I had resigned myself to slowly turning to a large pile of pasty fleshed goo. But after just 90 minutes of sweaty roller riding, I’m back to a manageable weight. All my worry was for naught. And this previous paragraph serves as evidence that I am not aware of the relationship of sweating and weight loss, or more succinctly put, I may be an idiot.

 

 

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

 

Tonight I have to coordinate and work at a series of indoor races inside of a bar, so today was a day of schmalz-bata. I started with calf jumps, then moved to jump squats and finished with knee drops. Total time for the workout was about 15 minutes or so. That’s one of the benefits of schmalz-bata—it’s brief.

 

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

 

Today was a day inside on rollers due to the rain outside—it may have been warm out, but miles of wet misery outside was not getting me out the door. Instead I tried to ride for 90 minutes on the rollers today. To those uninitiated on the nuances of riding rollers, let me tell you what I think about 90 uninterrupted minutes on rollers—it’s awful. It’s a daunting, monotonous grind into the recesses of willpower and a test of tolerance for (in my case) midday television.

 

Today I found myself playing the mind games I usually conjure up to get me through the roller session. The first fifteen minutes go by very quickly, and after they’ve passed I allow myself the chance to briefly get off the rollers and turn on the fan—it’s a sad statement of the monotony of rollers when getting up to turn on an appliance is seen as an event, but alas, in my roller dungeon it is. It is also my chance to put on my headband—another pathetic highlight. The next 30 minutes go by in a grinding fashion. It’s during this time when I indulge myself in considering getting off the rollers early, and maybe only doing 45 minutes. After the 45 minutes mark, I start to make bargains with myself—just do one more minute. This mental bartering takes up about 10 minutes or so, until I’m at the longest 5 minutes of the rollers session—from minute 55 to minute 60.

 

You see, an hour is the magical turning point. If I make it to an hour, I can officially consider my roller ride to be worthwhile, and I don’t feel like a useless loafer. I can ride this wave of euphoria for about ten minutes, and then I come to my senses and decide to do a 5 minute cool down—to ease my transition back to the real world and to pad my rollers time. If you look at my power tap file, you’ll notice that I usually hit the time right down to the exact second, that’s because I know that my power tap will roll down for 8 seconds after I stop pedaling and I use those 8 seconds to relax and hit my goal time down to the second. I consider those 8 seconds to be “me time”, and I’m perfectly aware of how pathetic that sounds. I just can’t wait for February!

 

 

Thursday, December 11, 2008

 

If I had to rate the two consecutive roller days I’ve had, I’d say that today was as tolerable as yesterday was miserable. I’ve broke down and I’ve brought my laptop down to the man dungeon so I can watch DVDs while riding the rollers. I’m not sure why I resisted using my laptop to watch movies, but I’m guessing that it has something to do with laziness. Today’s Netflix selection was “The Big Lebowski” which I haven’t seen in a while. All in all a very enjoyable way to spend 70 minutes. I won’t bore you by reciting lines from this very recite-able movie, but I will say that schmalz-bata is at the very least, an ethos.

 

I did two 20 minutes kinda hard intervals, and they weren’t unpleasant.