A few things to babble about today but I don't feel like typing the whole way on the train so not sure how much I'll get through. I'm going to start with Coach G again since biking is more important than the other stuff.
ChrisG"Cool. I assumed a 5 minute rest interval would be a good choice. Since you're time-limited, how long do you warm up before the work begins? I find I can't get much accomplished on the trainer w/o at least a 10 minute warmup, and I usually do 20, particularly for high-rpm, intense stuff."Warm up has been a battle over the years but last year I finally, finally, finally understood the value of it. I'm sure you know that already. But for the other guys out there - Steve, Jake, Walter - who may race this year let me say that warming up before a race was 1 of the 3 main reasons I made such big progress towards the end of the season. If everyone in the field warmed up properly I believe there's no way I come in top 10 at Ringwood. That's how important I think it is and most of the guys I see out there don't warm up enough.
To answer your question, it depends. On the 3x20 days I warm up 15 minutes. On the tempo days it's only 10, but the first 10-30 minutes of those tempo rides are on the lower end of tempo so it's sort of an integrated warm up where I slowly press up based on how I feel. On high end days it's 20 minutes and even that doesn't seem like enough as usually the first few intervals are sometimes really tough. But it's hard to set aside 45 minutes to really warm up properly on those beastly days.
I might say that being able to jump into the 20 minute block after 15 minutes of warm up might suggest I'm not going right up at threshold. But I will also tend to start at a bit of a lower cadence at the start, say 85-87 and try and drift up to 90/91. I know now from experience that "toughing it out" and warming up at full speed is a sure way to toast your legs and crush motivation.
On to other things. Damn, it turns out I have too much to talk about today and not enough time. There are at least 2 more things I wanted to get in but may not have the thumb-cycles to bang it out. So instead I'll go with this one.
I have a saddle sore the size of Saturn right now. I woke up this morning with rings and moons and NASA satellites around my butt, it's that bad. This must be the first one in about 6 months so that's good. Incidentally, this may correspond with my getting back on the trainer regularly. Or it may have to do with wearing the diaper-shorts on the trainer Tuesday. If you've ever had diaper shorts you know what I mean. They're not really called anything different they just have a chamois that could buffer your head against the windshield in a high-speed car accident. Thick, soft, and not ergonomically sensical at all. I think I may opt out of my diaper shorts on the trainer for a while and see if things get better.
In reading the environment book I came across some good stuff yesterday. You may have heard the assessment that we as a world are losing 40,000 species a year, or that in 50 years we will have wiped out 50% of all currently existing species. It's an interesting number, this 40,000, especially when you look at the data to support it. The man who made this claim does have field experience and is a trained scientist, like Batman. I'm going to now present some of his data.
On average this is how many extinction events he observes every year:
1
The most extinction events ever witnessed by this man in one year:
4
Extrapolating from this, here is how many we should assume:
40,000
Solid science. Actual data and models suggest that in the next 50 years we will lose .7% of all existing species. This is a number much higher than what "should" be dying out. But it's significantly lower than Greenpeace, WWI, or the Sierra Club would have you believe.
The point here is that man does infringe upon nature and that it is a problem that needs to be addressed. But it is not a "holocaust" as some institutions claim.
The more I read this book and the more I follow the election process the more I see govermnent and politics as a white elephant of a burden to society. People wonder why this or that world event takes place and nobody cares. I'm starting to understand why. This is because so much of what you read and what you are told is bullshit. In the end it seems that almost everyone who gets 1 minute of Andy Warhol's fame becomes a politician. They cannot hold any sense of morals and somehow feel the need to lie and push an agenda. People seem to convince themselves this is done for the "common good" so that they can sleep at night. I see it in all walks of life, from the top of the country down to a personal level. I wonder if it is possible for man to exist and not lie in order to reach some personal aim that they have deemed more important than being honest.
This is funny in light of the fact so many people believe in god and feel that god is guiding their actions. If there is a god, and I have no idea if there is or not, how can this god entity be anything but disgusted at the collection of nearly 6 billion liars that this world has become? Or is this part of the process? Is this god reading my blog and thinking, "Well looks like human being #435,123,456,997,000,001 learned a lesson this week. But what's all this me-in-vain shit going on?"
Yes, this turned into a rant. My train broke down and now I'm in Secaucus waiting for another train to pick up a few thousand stranded passengers. So it goes.
We had layoffs yesterday further destabilizing the already unstable work environment. I think we lost roughly 2 out of every 7 people in the department. Not a morale booster but these things never are. I'm not going to say much more than that. I honestly had absolutely no idea if I was going to get called in or not. Job security is at an all-time low. Like the broken down train, so it goes.
I had a Brooklyn Chocolate Stout last night and it was good. In the 4/3 scheme I have now Wednesday or Thursday are OK for beer. Those days give enough time for recovery from Tuesday's morning ride without compromising Saturday morning's ride. It was 1 big beer though, and that was plenty. I figured I deserved it since I hit 185 yesterday. When we sat down for dinner Julia said out of nowhere, "Daddy...beer." Like Homer Simpson, don't mind if I do!
I made some homemade trail mix yesterday which was your standard nuts and raisins and chocolate chips but I cut it with Kashi O's cereal to bump up the carbs and the volume. The biggest downer about trail mix is that you can take 200 calories in a small handful and not even realize it until your bathroom scale says 245 a few months later. As the day wore on, however, I worried that it might be too good but...
Alas that wasn't the case as the scale said 184 today. Look out 181 here I come. I hope.
Labels: bike, pointless, politics, training
