Skip to main content

Hate to drink alone- made a sandwich to go alongside

Yeah, this is more my style of late. I'm enjoying doing some biking but more in the shorter portioned 2-a-day model, where I try to throw in a few surges, climbs, TT poses- that sort of thing and then wipe the sweat off and go to work for 8hours, and finally repeating the ride back to the house. It never ceases to amaze the disregard I get around town on my bike from drivers, but I haven't gone over anybody's hood yet. I actually really like the idea of grabbing a coffee midway and then finishing the ride out which is what I did last Wednesday and low and behold I was able to do a good deed by rescuing a bewildered dachshund from certain peril and reuniting him with his owner, all while ordering coffee and a danish.

For those readers who are both fans of the Tour and graphic novels (statistical analysis has shown this to be a large subset of my visitors), I thought the VS Epic Cycle bit is kind of interesting and worth visiting if for no other reason than to hear the legends of the tour referred to by their nicknames, ie Bernard "The Badger" Hinault. Science of Sport also had an interesting analysis of Contador's climb up Verbier yesterday, don't you just love real science with all it's potentialities and implications that relate to yesterday's epic ride. Cycling is a unique sport and while I'm no more than a passive rider, I always maintain that I will someday do a recreational bike tour of my own choosing. I think it would be a great way to cover some distance in epic scenery as long it wasn't somewhere that the wind is regularly sweeping down the plains. The other issue of note from this year's tour is of course the absence or any doping, thus far. It's always a little weird to me that it was so rampant in this sport where speed, per se, is not really the issue. That I know of, there is no speed milestone like the 4:00 mile in cycling and while I suppose there may be one in actualy track cycling, really it is more like a cross country race where pace is irrelevant as long as you are at the front of your opponents more often than not.I guess it is the addictive nature of the sport because I really believe more people can be PRETTY good at cycling, with less chance of fallout, burnout, etc like in running. I'm in no way saying that anybody can be a GREAT biker and obviously the time required to ride is much greater anyway, but people will find an amazing amount of excuses to not run like 50 miles per week versus 6-8 hours per week on a bike. I will give a shout out to a known doper and yet indisputable badass who's sentiment seems true in one way, shape or form, maybe with malintent, maybe unwittingly, maybe with purely transcendental hopes.

"Leave me in peace; everybody takes dope."
--Jacques Anquetil

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

ride the wave

I hit the track this morning for some work. It was another nice morning but I can't imagine the humidity abating for long. Jordan and Meagan had matching workouts of 4-8-12-16-16-12-8-4 w/ 60 second rest. The paces prescribed were quick and I didn't run great but I tried to hang with Jordan on the middle reps. I should hopefully be able to substantially improve on my efforts this morning and maybe feel better doing it. I did something like a 200-500-1100-800-1600-1200-600-200, I wasn't happy with missing out on the first 1600 but I had to break for the restroom and I at least touched on some faster paces on the other reps. The recovery made it a pretty honest effort and I at least was able to sneak below 5:00 pace. My goal for the summer is breaking 15:00 so we'll see what happens. The picture above is my uncle's digital rendering of a wave complete with a frigate bird. I think he used only Adobe throughout the process.

some ups and downs

I ran the Little Rock Marathon last weekend, finishing in 2:28:30ish. The race director took good care of all the elite runners, giving both the 1/2 and fullers the option of staying in the race hotel 2 nights prior to the race. I will note that their standards seem fairly relaxed and yet they gave us some nice little perks, with staging areas before and after and dinner before and whatnot. I again have to tip my hat because this is clearly not the norm in today's race circuit and if it is offered, there is often a very limited number of allowed elite spots. I had contacted the Woodlands marathon for instance and was not going to be offered any more than a comped entry, even though the marathon field was very limited. I have a number of issues surrounding this phenomenon but will just make note of the races that make an effort to help someone like myself. The course at Little Rock is quite winding and undulating for about 18 miles but then smoothes out and allows for a steady fin...

blog, blog, blog

I'm spreading the gospel in a few other forums. Firstly, I'm going to be remarking to the appeal of Okie fitness advocates, hopefully including crossfitters, at okathletes.com . Additionally, I'm keeping a training log at Fast Running Blog , where there are a few other Oklahomans, namely Jason Butler and Jake Buhler along with some other salty characters. I needed somewhere to tally the training miles so right now it will be this place, although I'm well aware there are probably better online training logs. I'm back to logging some miles, feeling fitter and having good company from Asher, I think his secret is recovering well, utilizing the most comfortable places to sleep and plenty of strides chasing squirrels.