Friday October 15, 2010

There are a lot of training metrics (for those of you new to training terms, "metrics" is a fancy word for "things") out there. There’s wattage, speed, cadence, belligerence and chastity (which is a by product of belligerence), but I’m thinking of adding my own metric to the oeuvre of training knowledge. I’m thinking that there should be a metric for baseline emotional state, or "BES™" if you will. I already have a marsupial-based metric for keeping track of my weight, but emotions are harder to pinpoint. Take today for instance, I awoke to find that my weight was a marsupial metric exceeding 155 pounds. That sent my BES™ plummeting. I felt bloated and lazy, and that in turn affected my mood, training-wise for the day. I needed to make up for my transgressions (damn you, lasagna!), and therefore I trained accordingly. 

I have to think there’s a way of scientifically plotting these moods, perhaps a scatter plot would be effective here. Maybe I could plot spite on one axis, with joy on another and then bisect those with self-loathing (can you tell I don’t know much about scatter plots?). A color wheel might be nice, but seems like a bit of a cop out. It’s a conundrum, if you know anything about graphs and would like to help graph my feelings, please let me know.

Meanwhile, on the training front, as penance for my kangaroo busting moment on the scale this morning, I decided to start once again include intensity in my training rides. I started out slowly today, doing five sprints with the following maximum wattages: 935, 970, 1014, 916 and 1052. These are not very impressive sprint numbers really, and checking last year’s training log, I find I didn’t do any sprints in my workouts until November 20, and those sprints had higher max wattages. This doesn’t bode well for the winter, let’s downgrade that BES™ number to melancholy, shall we?

Monday October 19, 2010

I awoke this morning to find that my BES™ was hovering near the “disgusted” point. An overnight trip to my wife’s college reunion weekend saw me drinking beer like a fallen bible college transfer student, and that, along with dietary choices unfit for a plutonium powered goat, conspired to set my weight at a very doughy 155 pounds. It’s never great to get disappointing news first thing the morning, and my dismay at the weekend’s dalliances would only be dissipated through rigorous athletic penance.

In my pretend career as a bicycle racer, I like to think that I am a dedicated participant. But honestly there’s no reason really for me to show any sort of dedication. If I stopped racing, I wouldn’t forfeit a lucrative contract. In fact, if I ended my racing career, I would probably make more money, as I would have more time to devote to my actual career—and I wouldn’t have to buy all the equipment necessary to maintain my rolling masquerade.

But I fear I cannot stop, as my pretend bike career has become one of the ways I separate myself from the herd of the non-racers (also known in the US as "people’). It’s how I make myself feel unique. So I hit the road today, not just to ride my bike, but to maintain a firm grip on the delusion that keeps me playing in traffic.

Tuesday October 20, 2010

When you live your (imaginary biking) life by the BES™, the emotional pendulum has a tendency to swing back and forth. Especially when you allow your emotions to be determined first thing in the morning by standing on your bathroom scale. As a rule, I try not to let my delusion affect other areas of my life (I don’t require any of my neighbors to address me as General Bonaparte, for example, I only ask that delivery persons do that). I do not take my failures or shortcomings out on my wife or kids or even our dog Happy, as he’s pretty preoccupied with coating our kitchen floor with urine every night. I try to hide all evidence of my BES™ (particularly when it’s trending towards crotchety) as best I can, but today there was no need to hide my BES™, as there was good news delivered from between my toes this morning. It seems that my weight has shrunken to a more manageable 152 pounds.

I should take a moment here to explain my strategy for weight maintenance and/or weight management. Since I have neither the patience nor memory for complicated weight loss systems based on the diets of fellows who cavorted with mammoths or convoluted programs consisting of drinking odd concoctions and then having other odd concoctions "interjected" into my um, piping; I keep my eating plan simple. I weight myself every morning (post "pipe siphoning"), and if I am over my koala-esque goal weight of 152 pounds, I don’t eat anything between meals and I don’t drink any alcohol—which seems immensely punitive—but that’s the price you pay for a koala-esque figure. 

And koala-esque is how I began my day today, sending my BES™ soaring, I hit the road today with vigor (my average wattage was 16 watts higher than yesterday). I am left to conclude therefore that if I want to perform admirably  during my racing season, the two days preceding I will have to ingest the following: a Subway sandwich, hot wings, biscuits and gravy, nachos, KFC and about four gallons of Guinness. It’s science—there’s no point in arguing the conclusions.

Wednesday October 20, 2010

My body can do some remarkable things. It has produced lovely offspring, created artworks for hire and it manufactures extraordinary amounts of revolting gases. And despite its many shortcomings, I must admit there are times when I really do enjoy my body—and I’m not talking about the dirty ways, either, perv. Today was a day that I set aside for enjoying what I can do when I’m on a bike. 

The monotony of riding and training has already set in, and I was not very thrilled at the prospect of grinding away another day on the roads of Bergen County, so I set my self free to do the things I enjoy on a bike. I like going down hills and pedaling big gears. I like finding the quickest line possible through high speed turns. I like coasting in a aero tuck to see how far I can go. I enjoy all of these things and I did every one of them today, as I am an old person (in the realm of athletics at least, I’m a baby when compared to the Supreme Court or the Rolling Stones), and as an old person, I realize that my rolling days are finite. It won’t be any time soon (hopefully), but injury or infirmity will one day keep me from riding the way I do today. I will eventually slow down, but not today. Today I was fast, and I worked to wring every last bit of fun out of my body

Thursday October 21, 2010

I had a late night last night as I happened to stumble upon the finale of the John Hughes/Molly Ringwald trilogy Pretty in Pink on the We Network . I was taken back to the days of lumpy, pastel-colored clothing, James Spader wearing a suit to high school and Annie Potts exploring her new wave side. All of this was wedged in between ads for creams used for a lady’s unmentionable region and pills that help regulate your lady time. I suppose it’s a sign that you’re aging when the movies you consumed as a teenager show up on a network designed to eliminate hot flashes. Naturally I coped in the only way I knew how—with red wine and Pringles.

This indulgence isn’t the sort of thing a dedicated imaginary athlete should do when undertaking a strict regimen of training. But to be honest, I’ve tired of the perfect, sunny autumn days we’ve had as of late, and I needed a diversion from the roads near my house. So I descended to my basement and began the weight bearing portion of my winter training.

I usually do all of my weight training to a tabata beat. For those unfamiliar with tabata, it’s relatively simple. You do any type of exercise you would do in a gym (or in a public park, if you are one of those people who insist on making everyone watch you grunt), except you do it to a specific pace—20 seconds worth of exercise (done briskly) followed by 10 seconds of rest. You do 8 of these 20 seconds efforts consecutively. It takes exactly 3 minutes and 50 seconds. The duration of the repetitions is supposed to have something to do with VO2 max and also is rumored to allow you to speak to the dead. I enjoy it mostly because it makes me feel tired and it’s mercifully brief, two things I look for in any training scheme.

I did a set of tabata lunges in between stints on my rollers, I also did a set of schmalz-bata (my own branded type of exercise combining pylometrics, tabata timing and apprehension) pogos, which involves standing up straight and hopping using only your feet. I managed to finish 40 minutes on the rollers with these sorts of diversions. I also threw in some dumbbell presses, as I am concerned that all of this bike riding has given me a chest that resembles that of Molly Ringwald (in Sixteen Candles, not Pretty in Pink).