2/21/13 Phone
Good consistent ithlete readings again today, 8 point gain. Put in another 110 minutes with two five and one seven minute interval, don’t ask me why.

Phone is your classic supernatural horror flick, where someone gets haunted and has to right the wrong suffered by the ghost to get it off her back. The gimmick this time is the ghost possesses people through a flip phone by screeching in their ear.

Rollerflix Rating
Not much to say here, pretty standard stuff: good time killer, utterly forgettable movie. The Netflix stream dropped out and buffered several times. On one of those occasions the audio got all messed up and came through as loud high pitched squeals in my bluetooth headphones. It sounded just like the screeching ghost and I freaked out, almost falling off the bike.

"Why’s this phone so evil?"

"Oh, now it all makes sense."

2/22/13
Yesterday’s intervals must’ve been good, dropped 13 points. I wanted to do a long ride as the weather was good and the weekend looked to be rainy, but I decided to obey the ithlete and just ride easy. I took the mountain bike up to Highbridge Park but found it way too muddy for my lack of skillz.

2/23/13 Howling
My second ithlete reading this morning was a whopping 17 points higher than the first, so I took two more. The next two confirmed, sadly, the lower number, which was still 12 points higher than yesterday, so I was cleared for a hard ride. I watched the Ompoop in the morning then flew through two hours feeling great.

Schmalz has a theory that you should do your intervals late in the ride, since that’s when races heat up. I rode endurance for an hour and then did two five minute intervals followed by ten minutes where I went up ten watts every minute. Don’t ask why, I just pull these intervals out of my butt.

I chose Howling ‘cause Kang-ho Song, a regular of Chan-wook Park movies, is on the poster. If that sentence made you say ‘whaaa?’ then check out Old Boy or the other two movies in his vengeance trilogy, Lady Vengeance and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.

Back to Howling. A bunch of cops are investigating what appears to be a spontaneous combustion. The chief dumps the low profile case on a sad sack detective, at the same time telling him his new partner is a (gasp) woman. The detective is annoyed to be given a pointless case that won’t help his chances for a promotion, and, being a chauvinist, is even angrier at being assigned a female partner.

Needless to say the case isn’t open and shut, and of course the female detective turns out to be one who breaks things wide open.

Rollerflix Rating
Another utterly forgettable movie, but absolutely perfect for the rollers. There’s lots of twists and turns in the plot to keep you interested, and just enough depth in the characters so you can root for them without feeling cheap and manipulated. I’ve never done two hours indoors so effortlessly.

Bonus observation
These cops are incredibly randomly armed. Sometimes they have a taser, sometimes a gun, and, when they raid a crime syndicate’s stronghold they show up with nothing but…BATONS. The suspect gets away.

Put that baseball bat down. Don’t you see we have these badass telescoping batons?

2/24/13
I followed up yesterday’s hard ride with two hours of tennis, a late dinner and drinks, and minimal sleep. This morning’s reading was a whopping 17 points lower – I think clinically that means I’m dead. I’m still in the yellow zone, which means I can ride easily. Did four very gentle hours.

2/25/13
Got 9 points back, did intervals outside. I started with three five minute intervals and then did ten minutes where I went up ten watts per minute. To make things interesting I didn’t mark each minute as an interval, instead I tried to raise the average five watts per minute so I’d end up right between my start and end wattages after ten minutes. Made things more interesting and dangerous, what with me staring at the Garmin the whole time.

2/2613
The ithlete killed another 2032 battery this morning, so I had to dig one out of a speed sensor I had laying around. Then I get an email notifying me of a new Bluetooth ithlete HR strap with…wait for it…significantly longer battery life. Bite me, ithlete. If you’re contemplating trying this I’d suggest waiting for the BT strap, as you won’t have to buy the receiver or a gross of batteries.

Down five points, taking a day off as I’ve ridden nine days straight. I highly recommend the ithlete slavedriver as well as a public shaming training log as motivational tools. I only wish I’d started this at the beginning of winter, I’d be so much more fit now.