Saturday, March 20, 2010

Blog is short for 'boring log'

Friday, March 19, 2010

Dakota, Holly and I were huffing up a particularly steep hill in the Metroparks. Well…for sure I was. I had ridden two hours already for the day and I was really starting to feel the accumulation of workouts over the past month. As I’ve said, the body will send warning signals that it’s time to rest…but I don’t have time to listen.

“I was writing for the blog yesterday, and…” I started.

“You say ‘blog’ and all I hear after that is ‘blah, blah, blah’,” Holly said.

“What? Wait…they’re really, really interesting. I wrote about your green dinner yesterday. Didn’t you read it?”

“Blah, blah, blah…blog must stand for ‘boring log’,” she concluded.

Yeah. Real funny. I’m laughing now. Anyway, I told her about resting heart rate and how you can use it to predict if you need a break, which mine is. She yawned and I changed the subject.

I’d gone on a ride earlier. It was another unseasonably warm March day and plenty of sunshine. There are a couple of very important rules to riding which should never be ignored. The first is: have a spare tube and a pump on your bike when riding places from which it would be difficult to return if you had to walk in cycling shoes. The second is: if you ignore the first, you WILL get a flat. I ignored the first and fell victim to the second.

Fortunately, I had my cell phone and managed to get my brother Jim to swing by, pick me up and deposit me at my car. If ever there was a brother alter ego, Jim is it for me. Smoking and drinking are his primary forms of exercise and he’s Olympian in both. I walked about 30 minutes in my cycling shoes, incurring a blister, before I figured it was time to just sit and wait for him to come. I hate to wait. He arrived shortly after.

“Bro…did you know they make those things with motors on them for people our age?” he asked while helping load my bike into his trunk.

“Jim – wouldn’t you love to be able to ride your bike on a beautiful day like this and not be ready to puke from the effort?”

“What I’d love is to not have to rescue your sorry ass from these rides when I could be in my easy chair and sucking down a brew,” he said.

No winning this one. I got back to the car, took the bike home, fixed the tire – it was the rear – put it back in the car and drove back to the Metropark to finish the ride. I sometimes like to start from the park to avoid the traffic around my house. Anyway, I get there, hop out and open the back door to pull out the bike when I notice I don’t have the front tire with me. A big ‘holy shit’ later and I’m in the car and heading home from where I would finish the ride. Some days are destined to be fubar’s (f..ed up beyond all recognition) and this was mine.

Bike duration: Two hours. Hike duration: One hour and twenty minutes.

Training Heart Rate: 125 biking. 70 hiking.

Calories burned during workout: 1,800 biking. 600 hiking.

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