lack-of-sleep-induced-ramblin's

The legs were dead for the bike commute this morning. It took me 5 minutes longer to get to work today than it did last Thursday, which for a 40 minute ride is a 12.5% drop in performance. Ugh. From a training point of view (if this is training), physically perhaps it would've been better to just drive and let the legs rest. Mentally, though, it was sort of satisfying to force myself to pedal in. Ride home felt better (and it's more downhill) so I don't think it's overtraining.

Now, I'll admit that going for a long run on Sunday possibly didn't help. I'm thinking that lingering fatigue is a clue that my running shoes are getting old and should be replaced. Or, that trying to go for a "recovery run" on Monday didn't quite work. I understand that swimming can be a no-no for cyclists because it builds up an oversized upper body that becomes a lot of dead weight, but I can't see how running would be detrimental to cycling other than it takes energy and time away from that which could be spent on cycling.

However, I think the leaden legs were mostly due to lack of sleep. I don't sleep well, never have. At some point when young I missed the lesson on how to hit the hay and fall asleep. I marvel at people who can lie down and fall asleep in 10 minutes regularly because I really, really don't understand how they do it. I tend to toss and turn, and typically at least one limb goes numb to the point of near-amputation each night as a contort them into what I hope will be a comfortable position. It's somewhat hazardous when your arm is asleep but your shoulder isn't and you wake up and try to scratch your nose--no brakes (whack!). On the other hand, it's sometimes oddly comforting to hear the sprinklers come on at 3.30am, or to notice that it's light out but I can still lie in bed some more because the 6.30am alarm hasn't gone off, or that my bed just shook a little from a baby earthquake that no one else was awake to feel.

I've collected little wisdom about my sleep habits. I know that if I take an afternoon nap of more than 15 minutes I'm pretty much assured of more sleeplessness. Sugary food in the evening is a no-no as well, so I now give myself permission to have dessert before even cooking dinner in order to give my blood sugar levels as much time as possible to return to normal. Ice cream tends to last a long time in my freezer because I can't really eat it weeknights and, after five evenings of ignoring it and munching on a carrot instead, I tend to forget it.

Maybe it would be interesting to stop by the Stanford sleep lab or something like that and have them hook up a bunch of electrodes to my head as I try to fall asleep in an unfamiliar hospital cot. I wouldn't be happy if they prescribed me pills, though. I get enough chemicals in my bloodstream from work and engineered athletic foods, no need to add any more to the mix. I do think one of the first things I would do if I ever bought a heart rate monitor would be to wear it to bed. I figure a toss or a turn has to be worth a little rise in the bpm's--how many a night? Heck, in general, what is my body doing when I'm not looking? Much more interesting than some alarm going off because I've hit 200bpm or so trying to get up that damn hill on Hicks Rd (ouch).

Need a photo...

Road rash

Eule:

I saw something like that before.

It made him really sick to the stomach,

and I had to hurry over and open the window.

I said, "Ete, can you stand it?"

With a brush,

he scrubbed his wounds open again

under the shower, so they really bled.

Ete (Erik Zabel):

You take the brush

and you practically

open the cut right up again.

and then it really bleeds out.

Yes and...

...

to get it all out.

It's better that way. ...

Eule:

As I said, now the suffering really begins.

--from "Hell on Wheels"

--

What will Bjarne Riis have to say tomorrow?

What will the consequences be? Of those that have confessed, Aldag and Zabel are the only ones with something to lose, and Aldag already has word that he'll keep his DS job. And Zabel's confession? Emotional, yes; but based on words alone, it should piss people off as much as Basso's "but I didn't really dope" cop-out. (I don't want to say that--I'd like to stay a Zabel fan--we shall see.)

Aldag has mentioned getting an arm tattoo to hide bruises from his injections. Both Zabel and Kloden have prominent red and black tattoos on their upper arms (almost matching devil faces). Come to think of it, why did Kloden leave T-Mobile at the time of the regime change?

C'mon everybody, sling mud from the armchairs while the slinging's good.

--

Liquigas is the preeminent Italian team in the Giro. Saunier Duval is the top Spanish squad. T-Mobile from Germany had a good run with Pinotti in pink. Ummm...is there a French team in this year's Giro? (Ouch.)

Runners get views too

Closer to ground, almost underfoot, are the funnel webs of the spiders...

Now come into my den, my sweet,
I'm sure I'll find you a little treat...

Where was I

Visited friends in Cambridge/Boston, MA, last weekend.

Sea breezes and seafood.

Natural history and American history.

Fine arts and performing arts.

Not bad for three days. To add to the fun, (a) flying on a red-eye over Friday night didn't kill me and I was fine Saturday ('cept maybe an hour's nap in the afternoon) and (b) the weather in Boston was nicer than the weather here in the Bay Area. Go figure, I've got great timing.

And lest I forget, Massachusetts is where Slow the Bike truly belongs. Cambridge is the mother ship of old bikes, I swear.

Odd coincidence: the person sitting beside me on the red-eye was flying back to Boston from Vancouver. Turns out she's doing regulatory work for Genzyme as it took over a smaller pharma company near Vancouver called Anormed, where a friend of mine was working as a chemist. Hadn't heard from that friend recently; could be because all of the Anormed chemists were immediately sacked. As many people do, I ran around the Charles River basin while in Boston (the river is more famous for the rowing races that take place on it), and ran right past Genzyme's corporate headquarters. There are big fish and little fish, and Genzyme seems to be a big fish. Bye-bye, Anormed.

Good luck trying this at home

U-locks are tough. Ignoring moral issues, I respect the ingenuity of bike thieves who have the wherewithal to remove U-locks from bikes in public places. For those of us with not-quite-so light fingers, removing a U-lock sans le cle is more difficult. But not impossible.

First: the blowtorch.


Second: the boltcutters.


Finally, the coup de grace: the hammer.

Result: smoldering wreckage.


(Another lesson here: do not get in the way of a building manager with a blowtorch.)

Weekend at Wildflower

The Wildflower Triathlon is to California triathlon as Sea Otter is to California MTB'n: an athletic event of international stature where a large proportion of participants are camping. I got a pass to drive down to the reserved campgrounds close to the festival this past weekend, and if you know Lynch Hill, you know that pass is worth its weight in gold.

Saturday morning I did a slow, scenery-savouring run along the course before the racers got there, and at 8 in the morning with temperatures still low and a wee breeze off the lake, it was really pleasant. I can imagine how at high noon on a cloudless day it's a bit more of a burning-in-hell trial-by-fire.

Mile 1: cool lakeside

Mile 2: still cool lakeside

Mile 3: off the road, on the trail, but enjoy the lakeside temps while you still can

Mile 4: heading inland and uphill

Mile 5: in the middle of the godforsaken misery-inducing hills

Mile 6: back in the flats, bikes to the left

Mile 7: still roadside, bikes to the left

Mile 8: back into the wilds after winding through campsites

Mile 9: end of the road for this photog

The payback for enjoying the campsite was to be the runner for a relay entry in Sunday's Olympic distance triathlon in the team sponsored by my friend and host's bike shop, Front of the Pack. A strong swimmer and a flyin' Frenchman of a cyclist left me enough room to breathe out on the run...and we all got hats and shirts for our efforts. Pretty good for a weekend's holiday.

The positive effects of living for a couple days without permanent shelter and showering by swimming in a lake are not to be underestimated.

Hot! Hot! Hot! biking action

Brent over at bikebuzz is getting swoony over his new helmet cam. I've seen some of his handheld work--good stuff. With the tilting corrected (and if the titling is kept under control), there's bound to be some great shots of the Oregon trails appearing soon.


The local helmet cam favourite is HK, and maybe there's some hope of my behind crossing in front of his lens some day...

But the films I keep going back to, even though I'm usually not of the knobbly-tire inclination, are the work of Pete Fagerlin. Maybe you all knew that already. Well, I've watched them before and I'll watch them again. And while there's a certain anti-Colorado bias 'round here do to their constant trumpeting of living in some kind of Bike Capital USA, they've got their fair share of great trails in CO (at least in the summertime).

Personal favourite (though I haven't seen them all): the singletrack in The Flight of Icarus (in PF's Colorado vids section).


Let's keep in mind that video files tend to be quite large...all the better to be viewed using fast internet connections at work, no?

Still, the heights of helmet cam idiocy are well-demonstrated by the "street racing" crowd and its heroes such as "Ghost Rider" or Pascal on La Peripherique. Darwin's got an eye on those boys.