Dave's Good Stuff

I rode for a little over an hour this afternoon, with a single break around the 34 minute mark. That’s my best so far in terms of roller endurance. I’ve not been able to go over 30 minutes before, and that only once. Prior to that, I had to break after 20 minutes on a good day, or 10 to 15 minutes on an average day.

The secret? Motivation.

For me, I use two primary forms of motivation, also known as "distractions."

The first is television. Like The Fat Cyclist, I will typically throw in a couple episodes of my favorite-show-of-the-month and ride while the plot thickens and the bike goes nowhere.

The second is music. Today, this is the motivation/distraction method I used, and at least today, it worked better for me. First, I chose exciting tunes out of my music library with tempos between 85 and 105bpm (determined using MixMeister BPM Analyzer), and set them up on a Nano playlist so that they started off slowish at 85bpm, slowly sped up to 105bpm, and then relaxed back down to an easy 85bpm. Setting them up this way allowed me to easily maintain my own rpm, as it is my natural tendency to spin at a tempo that matches whatever song I’m listening to.

One might use headphones in order to transfer the music from the mp3 player to the ears if one wishes. I prefer portable iPod compatible speakers, myself.

Regardless, being able to just zone off to good music and let my mind wander back on a fantastic weekend was just what the doctor ordered today.

A cool 40°F kicked off the 2008 Bike to Work Week work week this morning. There are various activities set aside for the week, but my schedule is going to keep my from doing… well, any of them, really.

The Commuter Convoy that others are having great success with was a bust for me (and others) this morning. I arrived at the Walmart parking lot at about 06:05 this morning and hung out until 06:15. No one showed, so I took off. On Quivira at around Monrovia, I passed the news crew that interviewed Noah. They didn’t even raise their heads for a lone cyclist not part of a convoy. I guess that’s not news.

This weekend was similarly news unworthy. With the rain on Saturday and the wind on Sunday, I stayed indoors and watched much of the television with the GF. I did get on the rollers for an hour or so on Sunday, pulling the equivalent of about 20 miles. It’s a shame really, the rollers marked the first time the new Edge 705 met the Torelli, and the maiden voyage of the new Triple cranks. They work, at least on the rollers, like a champ. I love the fact that I lost nothing on the high end, but gained a lot of wiggle room on the low. I am so not worried about the Triple Bypass now.

While watching the Buffy, and since I couldn’t/wouldn’t get my newly transformed Torelli out into potentially nasty, bottom bracket chewing weather, I, instead, revamped a process that had, up until this point, been somewhat cumbersome. Previously, to update my mileage and expenses pages, here and here, I updated an Excel spreadsheet, and then copied and pasted the results of the formulas and calculations into my site. I’d built an elaborate and complicated set of concatenate functions to distill the many numbers into an easily copy/paste format. While such an endeavor did teach me much in the ways of Excel Love, it was a process much less than streamlined.

So, I converted that locally bound Excel spreadsheet to a Google Docs spreadsheet, and then took advantage of the publishing options, and embedded choice bits and pieces straight into my site. While this does offer the disadvantage of being reliant on the availability and accessibility of Google Docs any time one visits my site, as well as being somewhat limited in formatting options, it offers the advantage of merely having to update the spreadsheet online once, and simply being done. My updates show up here automagickally.

My Big Ring streak continues, but this morning wasn’t a hammerfest, much less a slamhammerfest. See, at some point on Sunday, I developed quite the seemingly random, out of the blue infection on my right shin. At first I thought it was a spider bite. It swelled my shin to mammoth proportions and had the general look of a bite, plus the pain I would associate with same. For most of Sunday I was a slightly feverish and generally out of it. It was bad enough, in fact, to keep me up most of Sunday night and home yesterday. I did not sit completely idle, however, I took advantage of the freedom allowed by VPN, and hit the doc up for some meds between work related tasks. Since Saturday was spent helping the GF clean up her old apartment to expedite the retrieval of her security deposit, and Sunday was spent feeling generally lethargic, there was no riding for me this weekend. No riding this weekend translates to an easy pace into work this morning.

What I/we/she did accomplish, aside from finding health issues to deal with, was

• give her old apartment a good thorough cleaning,
• pack the remaining items and transport them to my overflowing garage and basement,
• rearrange said garage and basement to make room for the GFs’ (much nicer) washer and dryer,
• set up the Cat Genie in the basement bathroom,
• install and enjoy Lazarus, a Dungeon Siege total mod,
• gobs of loads of laundry, and
• make it through seasons 1, 2 and part of season 3 of BtVS.

Sunday night and last night I really didn’t get that much sleep. This infection on/in my leg causes a fairly consistent and constant low level ache accented by moments of sharp pain. That makes for the tough time sleeping. I’m pretty sure today will *not* be a decaf day. Regardless, I’m back up in the 230′s for my mileage deficit, so tonight I pick things back up again with the long way home. Pain or no.

I drove to work yesterday. I have no guilt. Recovery days are a critical part of training, and I am officially In Training now. As of today, I have 3 months and one week remaining before the Triple Bypass, and it is time to kick it up a notch.

On Wednesday, I rode the new route I spoke of. It was pretty brutal. Noah suggested I take it up a notch and head to 67th before turning off Lackman. Tonight, I’m going to give it a shot. It will add a bit more distance, and a few more feet of climb. I’ll let you know how that works out for me. ;)

Yesterday, taking a recovery day was as much due to running errands as it was about recovery. I *finally* went to the optometrist to get my contacts replaced. Washing the contacts twice a day due to discomfort and haziness was just too much, and I caved. What really sent me over the edge to spend the cash (to be recovered via pre-tax Flex money) was that it was affecting my pool game. It was becoming increasingly difficult to focus on short shots, much less long shots. I hope to have the new ones by League next Tuesday.

Tonight, it’s going to be a quiet night at home with the GF, some wine, and Buffy.

I’ll never forget the joy I felt as a child when I hit the support wires on the telephone pole next to my house with a small metal pipe. It sounded *exactly* like the blaster bolts from Star Wars (original series). It wasn’t similar… it didn’t remind me of it… no, it was *exactly* the same sound.

I found out years later that this was, in fact, the case. Ben Burtt, the sound designer on the films created the sound exactly the same way. I accidentally discovered what he’d sought out. I wish I could say that accidental discovery led to Great Things^TM, but alas, it only fueled the already supercharged interest in Star Wars I had at the time.

I’m reminded of this every day as I ride over the I35 overpass on Quivira. As cars pass by, their tires make a singular sound on the corrugated pavement. They sound *exactly* like the Cylon Raiders in the re-imaged Battlestar Galactica.

Chalk another reason up in the “Reasons to Bicycle” column. You experience wonderful things that you would never have experienced in a car, not the least of which is better health.

I wonder if the sound designers of Battlestar Galactica are cyclists…

It’s a lazy day today. The snow and cold keeps me from riding, though I have many miles to make up to meet my goals for the year. Instead, we have accomplished exactly the following:

• Recovered from a fantastic evening with the GF’s brother and soon-to-be fiance. There was imbibery, Scattergories, and Taboo.
• Watched the last four episodes of season four of Nip Tuck. In spite of myself, I’ve really come to enjoy that show, though the self-destructive nature of the characters drives me absolutely nuts on occasion.
• Picked up some grass seed at Home Depot and hit the bare spots in the yard for the first time. Yeah, it’s a little cold, but it’s damp, and I’m hoping that some will take root. I hate muddy puppy footprints, and the more grass I plant, the less of that I’ll have to deal with.
• Ate pizza.
• Contemplated buying the boxed set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I miss that show, and I’m sure the GF would love it.
• Cleaned up the kitchen some.

Everyone needs days like today where absolutely nothing is accomplished, and absolutely nothing need be accomplished. I’m glad I’m able to have one every now and again. I know not everyone has that luxury.

Perhaps I’ll get out and ride tomorrow. If not, perhaps I’ll get some more done on the basement. Who knows, and right now, I’m too lazy to care. :)

I wrote a while back, in a blog that’s been retired, that I’d found myself with a show for every night of the week. Not all of the shows made it through, and I was moderately surprised by which ones I found to be my favorites… here’s my post-season take on things: Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe it’s the fact that the last couple of years have been an emotional roller coaster, with the last two months being a roller coaster ride amidst torrential downpours, but I just can’t help finding myself strangely addicted to Grey’s Anatomy. Thanks to a couple of friends, Will and Maggie, I’ve burned through seasons one and two, and am currently downloading season three (not to be released on DVD until September 11). I still think it is, at heart, simply Ally McBeal for Surgeons, but it’s got an appeal, all the same. Chalk it up to a guilty pleasure.

Not too long ago I saw the Sci-Fi mini-series, Dune. I was quite impressed. I’d never seen the 1984 movie, nor had I read the book, so I was a complete Dune n00b. The mini-series inspired me, however, and I went out, bought the book, and now, two days later, I’m over half-way through it.

Damn, but it’s a good book. I compare it to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in it’s depth. Both are extraordinarily rich universes, inhabited by people quite unlike ourselves w/o being so alien that we can’t relate to them. Both have a very "human" element that draws you (or at least drew me) completely in and just doesn’t let you go.

In anticipation of the end of the first novel, I’ve already bought the rest, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse Dune, Dune : House Atreides, and Dune : House Harkonnen.

I don’t know that all are truly good books, but I intend to find out.

I just got done watching 5 hours of Babylon 5. That is, in my humble opinion, the greatest show of ANY genre EVER to be shown on television. I cannot think of a single other show that inspires such an attachment in me as Bab5.