Justin

Intervals

Life works in intervals for me.  For those that don’t know what an interval is as far as cycling is concerned, it is basically a routine in which you combine periods of easy efforts with periods of hard efforts.  The point to them is to push yourself harder than you can maintain for a long effort on these shorter intervals in order to increase your top speed a bit.  I have a hard time with a long steady effort.  I can go really hard for short bursts.  I’m pretty adept at bearing down and honing my focus for minutes (when it comes to an interval on my bike) or weeks (when it comes to intervals in my life).  On the bike I can do multiple hard intervals and recover pretty quickly in between them.  In life, however, it takes me awhile to recover from my hard efforts and I have a hard time getting the next interval started.  One of the most important things I have learned so far in all of the reading I have done since I got my PowerTap is that your training should be set up as a set of intervals.  From your daily training (where you may do 5 – 5 minute hard intervals with 5 minutes of easy spinning in between) to your entire training schedule (where you may plan 5 week cycles where you do 4 hard weeks and then 1 easy week) you need the periods of rest for your body to recover and heal itself from pushing it so far.  That may be why I enjoy teaching, by the way.  We get 10 months of intense work with 2 months to recover.  Unfortunately, this current “rest” period has gone on too long.  Maybe it is the fact that this is the most hectic time of year for me.  Things are wrapping up at school and the kids are getting restless, the club I run has two field trips and a banquet in the span of two weeks, and my job teaching classes online runs at a steady pace with constant deadlines.  Again, I am still doing my best to maintain at least a part of my training schedule.  I am still getting up early 3 to 4 days during the work week to get on the elliptical trainer or run and I am getting in at least 3 good rides a week.  But I am having a hard time getting the diet back on track.  On the bright side, I know I will end this interval soon, I’m just hoping that starting the next “life interval” doesn’t hurt as bad as some of the intervals I do on the bike.

Today’s weigh-in = 247.5

Saturday's Club Ride:  2:11, 34 miles, 60 min. 287 Watts or 2.64 Watts/Kg, 5 min. 385 Watts or 3.53 Watts/Kg, 5 sec. 890 Watts or 8.18 Watts/Kg

My bike is in!

My bike is in!  My bike is in!  I’ve been in a bit of a funk for the past couple of weeks.  My ribs continue to ache from my mountain bike crash.  If you’ve never injured your ribs, don’t!  (Wow, three exclamation points in 5 sentences!  Look, there’s another!)  I hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep in three weeks.  I could only sleep in one position fairly pain free and every time I turned in bed a jolt of pain shot through me startling me awake.  This would happen about 5 to 6 times a night, every night.  Training has been tough.  I still got up early to get on the elliptical trainer but couldn’t really go too hard as every deep breathe would hurt.  I’ve been on the bike a few times but that is an exercise in my ability to withstand pain rather than any real training.  Worst of all, my weight has crept back up a bit.  Needless to say, I needed a pick-me-up.  Well, I got a call from the guys at Banning’s last week that did just that.  After a month and a half wait, my Salsa Chili Con Crosso frame had finally arrived.

Ain’t she purty?  John did an outstanding job of building her up and Banning was able to do a short fit session with me after the club ride on Saturday to get me up and running (or is that spinning?).  If you’re in the Orange County area and looking for an outstanding shop, these guys know their stuff.  With a brand new cross bike, cross season is going to be fun.  Which brings me to this:

It was easy to convince my wife that I needed a second bike when I only had one.  It was a bit more difficult to convince her I needed three when I only had two (but it was a $50 beater chained to a post in Portland so it didn’t take too much selling on my part).  I knew she loved me when she allowed me to buy a fourth when I only had three.  The question: how in the world will I convince her I need a fifth?  Now, I know that both cyclists and non-cyclists alike read this blog.  The cyclists know you can never have too many bikes (which is an indisputable fact).  The non-cyclists ask, why do you need more than one bike anyway?  So let’s address the arguments against having multiple bikes.  First, “you’ve only got one butt, why do you need two bikes?”  Easy to rebut.  These are probably the same people that look at the bicycle saddle and comment on how small it is and refuse to ride with you.  “Surely one of those tiny saddles was never intended to accommodate a whole butt,” they say.  So, the more butt you have, the more bikes you need.  I have a big butt!  Next issue, they are so expensive.  How can you spend more money on a bike than you did on your first car?  I like to use an argument that involves a probable alternative in this case.  I could take up golf.  Let’s see.  A round of golf costs anywhere from $30 to $70 (on the courses I would probably play).  So we’ll average that out to about $50 a round.  Since I ride my bike 3 to 6 days a week I’ll assume that I’d play golf no less than twice a week (a conservative estimate).  Now, take $50 times twice a week times 52 weeks and you come out to about $5,200 ($5,300 on a leap year).  That does not include the clubs, the balls, the beers (I mean, how could you golf sober?  Which is part of my standing argument about why golf is more of a game than a sport, how can it be a sport if you are better at it drunk than sober, but I digress), the wagering, the plaid outfits, the funny hats.  We’ll just round that up to $10,000 (remember, if it’s 5 or more you round up).  You can clearly see that golf is far more expensive than cycling.  Furthermore, I’d ride in a cart instead of walk the course so the drastic impact it would have on my health would surely increase the cost of my healthcare and burden society as a whole (see, I’m looking out for everyone here, isn’t that nice?) and decrease my total number of wage-earning years.  Last argument, where are we going to put all of those bikes?  My response, “the garage is mine!  You can have the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom, the bathroom, the closet, the garden, heck, I’d even be willing to give back the little sliver of medicine cabinet I’ve carved out for myself, but the garage?  That is not open for discussion.” 

Saturday's weigh-in = 250

Saturday's Club Ride:  1:56, 31 miles, 60 min. 256 Watts or 2.35 Watts/Kg, 5 min. 415 Watts or 3.81 Watts/Kg, 5 sec. 1152 Watts or 10.58 Watts/Kg