Bike Politics

I'm starting to have the trainer blues already. I don't have the fire I had last year in the offseason which is understandable since I hit a lot of my weight goals and I didn't put on any weight over the holidays. In fact, I took off weight over Christmas, getting back 3 of the 5 pounds I put on over fall vacation and Thanksgiving. So I'm hovering in at 187 and motivated, but not motivated enough to embrace 3 more months of trainer pain.

Part of my problem is what I watch, which is right now ESPN's SportsCenter. I'm mildly interested in sports, and right now you have College Football, the NFL playoffs, and Roger Clemens. But you also have highlights of 94 dunks every morning which is tedious at best, mind-numbing at worst. I tried to watch Shrek 2 last week but that failed miserably. I need to reroute the stereo so I can play music and not have it too loud in the bedroom upstairs or something. Or something. Or...

I think I'm coming up on needing to drop to 4 days a week already. The plan was a long, slow, and steady offseason build but I find that I push pretty hard on weekends then hit Monday tired. That's fine, but Monday and Tuesday mark the 4th and 5th consecutive days in a row for the week and I don't have a lot of juice left, like this morning. It was all I could do to stay on for an hour plus. I'd probably be more productive to have 2 killer pre-work sessions than 3 average-to-decent pre-work sessions. Maybe just get up at 4:30 and sit in for an extra 15 minutes before and maybe 10 after to bump that total up to 90 minutes of hammering, then add in the weekends at 4-5 total hours.

My weekends are already pressing my limits which is good, but like I said leaves me a bit spent for the week. By tonight I'll be a walking zombie of little use to the family. But then today's session wasn't so hard so maybe I'll be so-so. I could tell I was fading yesterday because all I wanted to read was my simple book (Evanovich book #3 in the Plum series) instead of my Environment book.

I dislike national politics but I can't help but be mesmerized by Obama's potential explosion to the forefront of the ticket tonight when the NH primary goes down. This could be it for Clinton which a lot of people were writing about yesterday. It seems Edwards has jumped on the Obama side a hair and decided to stick the dagger in Clinton so she's on a bit of an island. It will be interesting to see if she falls off and if so, how fast she will throw in the towel. If the 2 championship games come down to Obama/Edwards and Guiliani/McCain it can't help but be a really interesting political Super Bowl. But Romney seems to be right there which is throwing things off. A Final Four as outlined above would be pretty progressive for this country, given that the religious vote put Bush back in office in 2004. Yeah, we're still missing a woman candidate but 2 months ago I would have bet my house that a black man would never win eiuther nomination. Now it seems clearly possible. Too bad Condoleeza Rice never threw her hat in since a black woman coming out of the Conservative camp would just be really juicy stuff.

Tuesday is as Tuesday does.