Rites Of Passage

Finally got around to reading my latest issue of Bicycling magazine.   They have an article listing 109 rites of passage.  Things sooner or later every cyclist runs into.  Some of my favorites:

6.  Bonking so bad you don’t think you’ll be able to make it home. – I’ve done that one lot’s of times.
10.  When your bike computer registers triple digits for one ride.  – I still remember every 100+ mile ride I’ve ever done. 
20.  You get stuck in your pedels and topple over at a stoplight.  – and usually in front of someone your trying to be cool around.
28.  Getting hopelessly lost – deliberately – I don’t get the chance to just ride off often enough.
32.  When you no longer have to stop to take off your jacket.  – To be honset I’ve never done that and probably never will.
33.  Feeling confident about taking off your jacket while riding – then catching the trailing sleeve in the rear wheel – That’s more my speed.
35.  Planning a riding vacation – Who doesn’t want to spend their vacation sleeping in a tent, getting up before dawn every morning so you can go out and exercise for 6 hours?
38.  In your head, Phil Liggett narrates your ride.  – Bob Roll maybe.
85.  Out sprinting a crazed dog.  – S. Rooney Rd – 1984.  I won.
106.  Feeling super strong and then turning around for the bike ride back and realizing you had a tail wind.

And the one hitting cloest to home perhaps:
81.  Explicating your training in exquisite detail in a blog, then realizing nobody cares.

I’m Getting Old

I’ve tried to really ramp up my workouts the last month or so.  It’s going well, except I’m beginning to feel my age.  For the last month, I’ve been in more or less constant pain.  Not terrible,  more a slow to get up – hard to feel comfortable kind of pain. 

A normal person would take a couple aspirin, and call it good.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t work for me.  I am one of the 5% to 20% of asthmatics who also can’t take NSAIDs (Non Steroid Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (Aspirin – Ibuprofen – Aleve)).   An hour or so after I take one, I become a snot producing machine, can breath and my stomach starts to hurt.  I will literally go through a box of kleenex in a couple hours.  It ain’t pretty.  I can take acetaminophen (Tylenol), but it doesn’t reduce swelling which is really what I think I need most.

The other day I was trying to hunt down some Tylenol.  The office has a cabinet located on each floor stocked with medical supplies, but all they had were NSAID-based drugs – that’s not entirely true – I did find something, but I couldn’t bring myself to take something called PMF – Pre Menstrual Formula.

BTC 2010

I’ve been neglecting my blogging responsibilities.

They have announced the route for the 2010 Bicycle Tour of Colorado.  Gunnison, Creede, Alamosa, Chama (New Mexico) Pagosa Springs, Center, Gunnison.  I really regretted not going last year.  I am going this year regardless.

Did he really just try that?

Back in June, when we headed up to Minnesota, we needed to pick up our rental car (minivan actually) at an offsite location.  It was several hundred dollars cheaper there than renting at the airport location.  We caught a cab, and the cabbie had some trouble trying to figure out where we were going.  Fortuntely I was able to pull out my GPS-enabled phone and show him.  I remember thinking at the time, it must be hard for a cabbie to take a “shortcut” given all the technology out there to help people get where they are going.

Evidentlly I was wrong. 

I had to take a cab from my hotel in DC to the airport.   Let me set the scene for you.  Our hotel is just South of town on the East side of the Potomac river.  Washington National Airport is on the West side of the river several miles farther North.  There are two bridges accross the river, one is just North (literally walking distance) to the hotel, and the other is farther North probably a couple miles North of the Airport.  The cabbie takes the far North bridge.  We get to the airport and the fare is $10 more than the fare I paid going from the airport to the hotel when I flew in. 

I’m usually a pretty easy going person, but this kind of irked me.  I had to ask him (of course this was after I got all the luggage out of the car) why he went the way he did instead of taking the nice shiny new bridge that was right there.  He said something about traffic (yes, there was a language barrier).  Traffic?  Please, it is Sunday afternoon.

I handed him $30 bucks (which was what I paid the first cabbie), it was less that what was on the meter, and just looked at him.   He knew I wasn’t happy.  He took the $30 dollars and left.

Technology and Travel

Spending the week at a technolgy conference in DC.  The resort I am staying at is several miles South of the main DC attractions, and as I type this, I am on a bus headed downtown.  This reminds me of how much technology has changed the way I travel.  To make this trip,  I google Earthed all the sights I wanted to see and place marked them in relationship to my hotel.  I checked out my bus and subway trip on the internet and I am following my progress on my GPS enabled phone. If I get lost, damn sure I won’t admit it.

I’m the Lantern Rouge of the Family

So I was going down the elevator with one of the attorneys the other day and he asked me if I had been riding any.  I told him I had, but not as much as last year.  I told him Jessica was starting to ride more and we had chosen to do some shorter rides so she could ride on her own.  He commented how she will be keeping up on her own before I knew it.  I agreed and we went our separate ways.  Then it hit me, I’m going to be (at least on climbs, and there are a few of them in Colorado) the Lantern Rouge of the family (for those of you who missed the reference, the last rider in the General Classification at the Tour de France is referred to as the “Lantern Rouge” or red lantern. It is a reference to the red lantern on the last car of a train). When it comes to passes, I can’t keep up with Marcie the way it is and Jessica so far has a classic climber body. Becca hasn’t started riding yet, I can only hope is that Rebecca has some sprinter in her. I’m going to have to start rides two hours early just to finish with the rest of the family.

The Return of a Classic

According to this article in Velonews, Lance Armstrong and Colorado’s Governor Bill Ritter have been talking about ways to bring back the Coors Classic – although maybe with a different sponsor (Molson-Coors-Miller Classic just doesn’t have the same ring to it, but, they did may “Invesco Field at Mile High” Work). Maybe we can get all the micro breweries in the state (Denver ranks first in the nation in per capita beer production, that’s according to Colorado.com) to pitch in and just call in the “Race for the Beer”. Competitors would have to chug a brew after they cross the finish line. Beer and high altitudes – that would be a real challenge.

Seriously, they are shooting for a come back in 2011.  I caught three stages of the 1985 (I think) Coors. I remember seeing Greg LaMond and Bernault Hinault race. If they manage to pull it off, I would seriously consider taking some vaction time and being a cycle groupie. Any one want to join me?

Not exactly Good v. Evil, but…

On TV, when they want to show someon.e having a moral crisis, they show them with a little angel on one shoulder, and a little devil on the other shoulder. I totally understand that. For me, its not when it comes to issues of conscience, but when it comes to issues of exercise. I have two distinct inner voices. One is very logical and rational. He makes very rational arguments on why I should stop and rest (you don’t want to push yourself too hard, pace yourself…) or quit (you’ve done enough today…) or not work out at all (you’re tired, you can always do twice as much tomorrow…). The other voice in my head is more of a drill sergeant. He just yells at me a lot. I consider myself a very logical person who likes to question authority. That’s not a good combination.

HTFU

HTFU – that is my new mantra.
I’ve been working on getting ‘it’ all together over the last month or so. By ‘it’, I mean I’ve made a conscience effort to identify my goals in life and work up a plan to accomplish them. That said, I haven’t been able to get everything firing on all cylinders all at the same time. I can get most things going, but there is always one or two things (usually diet and exercise) that get left by the wayside. I’ve entertained the possibility that I’ve taken on too much, but I don’t think that is it. It mostly seems to be laziness or some bad habits I can’t seem to break myself of. To over come this hurdle, I’m taking a page from the Stuart O’Grady book of motivation. He bought black wrist bands for his team one year during the Tour de France. They had four letters on them HTFU. I’ll let you google it yourself. Well if you will excuse me, I need to HTFU and get my ass to spin class.

Blah, Blah, Blah

I went to spinning Monday night.  There was a girl (I do mean girl – she looked like she was in that awkward early teen stage of life) that was really starting to get on my nerves. She talked endlessly and not about anything interesting. I just wanted to tell her to shut up.  I feel a little conflicted though.  A few weeks ago, there were a couple of women who walked out over the instructor’s music selection. Some of her music had a strongly implied sexual theme – one of those songs that sounds very sexual until you actually listen to the lyrics. I guess these two women found that offensive. I remember thinking at the time that if they are paying that much attention to the lyrics, they aren’t working hard enough. Another class tonight, guess it is time for me to work harder.