Like a white cassette tape of the J. Geils Band repurposed (you tape over the holes, dude) to hold a Def Leppard mix, I have upgrade my training circumstances from unsatisfactory to mediocre. This may seem like a parallel move athletically, but it’s really a sign of hope, as we’ve just made it through birthday season at our house. Growing up, the three most important birthdays in our house were those of my brothers and I. My older brother’s birthday was on October 29th, my younger brother was November 10th and I was November 14th. It was an anticipated run of get togethers (we never had birthday parties, we usually just had a few relatives come over to eat cake), and every year, fatigue would set in by the time we made it to my birthday, because, really, how much left over cake can you eat?

As we grew older, the importance of birthday season diminished. (After the age of 21, adults should celebrate their birthdays every ten years. I’ve never understood why anyone would have a big party for their 34th or 41st birthdays, as the importance of birthdays seems to lessen as you collect more of them.) But birthday week is now having a small revival in our house due to an odd set of coincidences. You see, my daughter’s birthday is the same day as my older brother’s, my wife shares the same birthday as my younger brother, and my birthday remains unchanged. The circle of birthdays has come full circle, and we now find ourselves celebrating on the same days as I did growing up.

Friday November 12, 2010

Today was a sprint day, much like the Friday before it. My wattages were nothing to speak of, yet I am typing about them right now, fulfilling my imaginary obligation to myself to blather on and on about riding bikes in the wintertime on the internet. The wattages for the sprints were: 1066, 972, 1070, 1065, and 959, which is a bit inconsistent, but the weather hasn’t turned cold yet, so I was dodging cars full of park people and the taut leashes of the dog park denizens as I frightened them with my grunts and groans.

Sunday November 14, 2010

The wonderful thing about training season is that there are no pesky races to dispel any of the delusions you have built up over the winter. Certainly, you can go out on a group ride or head to the Rocket Ride or the Gimbel’s ride to test your mettle, but these are of course unsanctioned, upgrade points-frees affairs, and as such, they don’t really "count" as far as "real" racing goes. Another way to gauge your fitness is to ride with other people. For the majority of my training, I ride alone, as I have an unconventional schedule and it’s hard to find other riders who can find the time to get away for an hour in the middle of the day to transverse the Saddle River Bike Path. Occasionally, I will ride with a partner, and inevitably, before such rides we will both agree that a relaxed pace is paramount, as it’s wintertime and the training advice of the eternals says to ride easily in the wintertime.

But today I rode with Brian G., a rider who knows not the easy pace. I was feeling a bit logy this morning. I had been out the night before, and my weight had blossomed to 156 pounds due to spreadable cheese ingested after midnight and the availability of beer. I was not prepared for a Brian G. ride, but he said that he needed to take thing easily after racing the Staten Island Cross race the day before, so I figured he would be partially hobbled. I was confident, so much so that I "pre-gamed" and rode thirty minutes before meeting Brian to get in some extra minutes, as Brian could only ride an hour or so. We met up and rolled out of town together.

I could tell right away that we would be in for a day of pacing brinksmanship. Every time I pulled even with Brian’s front wheel, his speed would increase slightly, as he sensed that his pace might be slipping. Since I was still carrying a cargo of soft cheese and lager, this could not stand. I needed to formulate a plan. It’s bad form to attack your training partner repeated to try and wring the life out of them, what you must do is apply pressure slowly and carefully, like boiling a frog in a pan. If you add the frog to boiling water, he leaps out of it; but if you put the frog in cold water and put the pan over a flame, the frog stays in the water until the water boils and he’s turned to stew. In order to preserve my own dignity and delusion, I needed to turn Brian to stew.

On the climbs, I was careful to not go ahead of Brian, staying either right beside or just behind him. Occasionally, I would simmer him a bit more by subtly surging forward. This "cooking" of a friend and riding partner is an activity that borders on the unscrupulous, but I was in desperate straits—spreadable cheese is a harsh taskmaster. And so the ride went, with Brian chatting affably while I worked to maintain my self-esteem. We parted after about an hour’s pedaling. I’m not going to say I am proud of my deception, but, as the rat said before snapping the trap—the cheese made me do it. 

Monday November 15, 2010

After yesterday’s aerobic battle of the titans, I was feeling less than stellar for today’s ride. In fact, I rode today like an empty birthday balloon. This feeling of deflation was compounded by the fact that I awoke to see my weight was holding at 156 pounds. This the the heaviest I have been in a long time, perhaps ever. This will require desperate measures, namely, I will eat less and try to limit my intake of Halloween candy (yes, it’s still around) to less than two servings a day. If I fail to succeed in this endeavor, I may be forced to seek dietary deliverance through any of the many fad options available currently, perhaps a vegetarian take on the paleolythic diet where I have to hunt and kill every vegetable I eat.

Tuesday November 16, 2010

I adapt my training according to the weather, therefore I claim to be coached by God, as he makes the weather—and apparently reality shows about the Palin family. Today my coach chose to have me ride in my basement, as it was raining outside. My weight is still off my marsupial scale, which has caused some alarm. I am hoping that today’s indoor ride and the sweatiness that it will produce will serve to melt some of the excess cheese weight from my frame.

I have also invested in a medicine ball, in order to add variety to the exercise phenomenon known as "core work". I do core work whenever I can stand it. It keeps me less doughy and allows for a better transfer of power from my abdomen to my groin. I have done research and found some exercises which I can do with my new medicine ball. I must say the novelty of exercising in such an "olde tyme" fashion does help with my motivation, and if things don’t improve on the weight front, I may have to consider investing in a vibrating belt machine, which was the Shake Weight of its day. 

Wednesday November 17, 2010

On most days when I go out and ride my bike, nothing unusual happens. The days tend to melt together in a fondue of sameness and uniformity. I ride the same routes. I wear the same clothes. Save for the occasional ride on the top of a Jeep’s hood, my rides can be pretty monotonous. That is, of course, the way of winter training, as the main goal is to simply ride and pile up some miles while trying to keep corpulence at bay. Today’s ride had an extra degree of difficulty and excitement, as the wind was blowing in blasts tossing leaves, dust and squirrels about in swirling gusts. Normally such obstructions would be an unwelcome addition to any ride, but I’m so weary of the tedium of training that I would rather be hit in the face by a flying squirrel than ride the same old route again.

It seems my sojourn to my basement yesterday and the sweatiness that ensued helped to bring my weight back into the marsupial range. Now begins the time of year where racers can justifiably starve themselves in order to lose weight, as denying yourself calorically is frowned upon during the race season. So raise a baby carrot, obsessed ones! I would join you, but I still have about 4 pounds of my daughter’s Halloween candy in my office closet.

Thursday November 18, 2010

Today I made plans to ride with Gary S, which normally is great, because it’s an opportunity to trap someone into listening to me as I go on and on about myself and all of my theories. My latest one is my theory about track racers feeling special about themselves because every track meet involves so many different races and formats that almost everyone, if they race long enough, ends up with a medal or a championship of some sort. It must be very fulfilling. But today’s ride wasn’t going to be just a recount of my recent dream journals and other compelling stories about myself, today I planned on sending a pipeline pig through my pipes by doing a 20 minute "kinda hard" interval—something I usually do alone.

Doing intervals with someone else along in tow is a lot like undressing in front of them in the gym locker room—embarrassing and chock full of butt in the face. I was intimidated to unleash all of my "power" in front of another. Would Gary judge me? Would he be impressed? How would he react to having my rear end in his face for twenty minutes? Would there be towel snapping? We met at my house and set out for interval country. 

As we hit my interval start line, I launched into my effort. I was hoping to not embarrass myself, so I admit that I was going a bit harder than I normally would. Gary seemed nonplussed. I was riding at my limit, hoping to perhaps make him vomit or beg for the sweet release of death, but he was able to hang on quite easily. This taught me two things: I will not be able to drop Gary in any races in the upcoming race season and the sight of my butt is not enough to make any vomit (in the daytime). Lessons learned, I took my leave of Gary and headed home.