cleansed

Do this: Ride solo for 3hours, covering 100k in pouring rain, with gusting wind and low visibility. Let the rain soak you to the bone, while the 18-wheelers shoot crap into  your eyes and suck you along in their draft. Have sweat and stress and snot and spit flow out of you until their is nothing left but the feeling of utter and complete satisfaction.

Do that, and any crap that is bothering you in life won’t be bothering you anymore.

I do love the bike.

expect the unexpected

Belwood Sprint was on Sunday. It turned into a bit of a teaching session on what to do when the unexpected arises! Let me explain.

I didn’t expect it to be cold, windy, or rainy. So I modified by wearing my race kit t-shirt doing warm-up.  Who does that?

I didn’t expect to get outswam by so much, by so many people. But they’re all good looking, so I’m not that ticked off.

I didn’t expect to see Clark Kent transform into Superman, either, but sometimes you just get lucky.

I didn’t expect to ride past so many people, so quickly. But Optimus (my bike) was good to me today. And it sure felt good to ride well again.

I didn’t expect to see a guy run out of transition carrying his shoes in his hands, so I had to ask him that was all about. Apparently, his calves tightened up when he bent down to changes shoes, so he quickly decided to run out the stiffness before lacing up. SMART! (and it worked…he passed me soon after). Nice job, Mike!

I didn’t expect to be running behind two dudes in their forties 4k into the run, so I had to deal with my ego.

I didn’t expect my 19-year old teammate to go bombing by with 800meters to go. So I had to take some satisfaction in seeing him kick down another guy 600metres later. Way to go, boys!

And I sure didn’t expect to be married to such a good looking lady, but God’s sense of humour sometimes comes out in my favour.

But most encouragingly, I didn’t expect to have such a solid race (6th overall in a good field, and right there, mixing it up with the dudes I want to be mixin’ with).

So I’ll take it. And next time you go out to race: expect the unexpected!

courage means what?

Before last night’s track workout I was certainly feeling the past 18 days of training. Coach doesn’t tell us the workout until after we have warmed up so we were taking bets on what it would be during warm-up. I thought it would be k’s (at 10k pace). Others bet on 400s and 800s. We were all wrong.

The workout was supposed to be 4X400+ 3X1mile at faster than 5k pace. It just didn’t seem possible, considering the extreme fatigue in my legs, the heat on the track, and (mostly) the fear in my brain. And so I got to thinking about courage, and what it meant to win a mental battle, and how my Dad used to tell us that the Tough get going when the going gets tough. And that sort of helped. But not enough.

But then I remembered something else I had read in To Kill a Mockingbird about courage.  In the novel, there is this mean old lady who always yells at Scout and Jem for no good reason. But then she dies, and it is revealed that Mrs. Dubose was so mean because as her health deteriorated she refused to take medicine that would numb the pain. She wanted to die, not beholden to nothing or nobody.

And in her death Atticus teaches his children a lesson. He says this: “Courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.  You rarely win, but sometimes you do.” Atticus teaches his children that courage is when you start, even when you know you can’t finish.

So it was those words about starting something, even knowing that I couldn’t finish it, that helped a lot. And even though Coach modified the miles to 1200s, the whole squad still saw it through. And even if it was a small kind of victory, it was still a victory.

And for that, we learned about courage.

Not only get off it, get off it carefully

This just in: Ben Stiller steals Lance Armstrong’s bike!

You need to watch this.

dear promises of global warming. i hate you.

You know that feeling when you get in your car after it’s been sitting in the sun for a couple hours? And there’s that extreme heat that makes everyone scream for rolled down windows. And if you breathe that hot air in, it almost hurts.

Yeah, I crave that heat.

Here’s the deal. I teach backyard swimming lessons. 6 or 7 hours/day. It pays rediculously well, but it’s SO cold. Like the last fews days it has been overcast, windy, with no sun. And, perhaps because we’re in a recession, folks would rather spend their money on my instructional abilities than they would on heating their pools. That means there is no sun, a cold wind, and most pools hoover around 75degrees. I’m not even kidding.

Go ahead, try standing in that kind of water for 7hours, with no sun, and very little movement (teaching 7-year-olds doesn’t demand I move all that much), and tell me you don’t want to punch those global warming idiots in the face. 

Training, however, is sweetness! Today’s swim was 9X300 best average on 4:30 (painful, but Tom/Dorelle kick up a badass draft). Bike at night was 90minutes with 2X20threshold (I haven’t felt that good in forever), into a 6k progression run. I did the bike/run solo because of my teaching schedule and I was SO pumped with how it went.  Great day. Really, really great day. Oh man, just so loving this sport right now.

It’s all coming up Milhouse.  (except the lack of sun, of course)

del monte: 1 sharratt: 1. rubber match next year

Well, Sharratt got even today.

Today was the Peterborough Sprint. It went as well I was hoping. I ended up 2nd overall (the dude listed in second was steered off course on the run, making his run split too fast).  What is significant about this race is that the last time Dave and I went head-to-head was the only time in history that I beat him (note: he didn’t wear a wetsuit and didn’t ride a TT bike). Since then (2004), however, he has crushed me at pretty much everything (especially Guitar Hero). So today was his chance to even the Peterborough score. And he did it.  1:1. See you in 2010.

I felt great throughout the race, particularly on the bike, which I was really excited about. I know I was almost 4minutes slower that my 2004 self but a/ the 2004 run course was much faster; b/ there may (or may not) have been a tiny bit of drafting on the 2004 bike; and c/ if you take 3 years off, it takes a few to come back. So I’m trying…

Overall, it was an excellent weekend. I certainly do love our wonderful sport.  And, of course, thanks to my best and more beautiful cheerleader!

dear rain clouds: you suck

Not that you didn’t notice, but it’s been cold and rainy the last 4 days. It’s not that I don’t like rain (e.g. it makes the pain in the run workouts quite a bit less), but when you are teachiing backyard swimming lessons 6 hours a day, it just gets really, really cold. Looks like tomorrow will be nicer.

Training is rolling. Just loving being with the PTC crew. Lots of good energy to work off of.  I’m actually surprising myself with the workouts I’ve managed to do. Some great swims, actually generating a little bit of power on the bike, and a couple good run sessions. Last night we did an 8k progression run (speeding up every 2k) and I was just about at 10k race pace for the last couple k. We’ve decided to race this weekend because I’m dying for some competition.  It’s the Peterborough Sprint (a course that I don’t love), but it’ll be excellent to race on somewhat tired legs and see what happens.

Ps. Not sure if I can root for Lance when the tour starts, but this commercial makes it awfully difficult not to.