A long day...

Saturday, May 7, 2011

My front lawn was still a muddy mess. I knew I had to cut it, do the trimming and edging and picking up the downed limbs and leaves that were everywhere. It was also moving day for Holly’s office. She was changing things around…which pretty much meant I was changing things around…with stuff in Jack’s room and other places and I was supposed to be on-call for that. I also needed to drive to Kent to pick up Heidi and deliver her at work and stop by Mimi’s to check out the condition of her yard for work that needed to be done in the coming weeks. Oh yeah…and I needed to ride a couple of hours because it was perfect riding weather and I still need to do the birthday triathlon.

I started with the trimming. Since I’ve given up the tractor for cutting grass, I decided to go with the hand clippers for all the trimming. If it runs on gas or electricity, I’m trying to avoid it in caring for the yard. It’s a nice thought, but by the time I’d trimmed and edged, I’d used an hour and had blisters on my hands. Poor baby. I pulled out the hand mower and tried…and failed…to cut the front lawn. The grass was thick…which just meant I needed to push harder, but it was also wet and my wheels were sinking so far into the mud that the rotating blades were digging into the ground. It just wouldn’t do and I couldn’t wait for the lawn to dry so I broke down and pulled out my motorized hand mower and knocked out the front lawn. The back was drier (and bigger) and I was able to use the hand mower there.

By the time I finished the yard work and moving the furniture, I’d been working for four hours…all physical. I could have called it a day and had a pretty good workout, having burned probably a thousand calories already. And I was fatigued and wondered how well I would ride…but I was going to ride, none the less. I thought maybe I’d take it a little easier and enjoy the scenery. I ’thought’ that, anyway.

The skies were starting to look a little gray as I left my drive…it hadn’t rained in close to 20 hours…a record for the last three months…so I was leery of getting wet. I was headed for Old Mill Road, planning to ride out Pekin Road to Auburn before turning around. This course is about 37 miles round-trip, hilly and challenging…but I was going to take it easy. I reached the top of Old Mill and hit Cedar Road in a hair over 30 minutes…which is as fast as I’ve ever ridden that part of the course. And you know what that means…now I had to keep pushing so I could set a new pr for the entire course…easy ride be damned.

I made the turnaround in 1:05 and rode home in 1:03, breaking my old record for the course by 2 minutes. I haven’t been riding that much and believe the performance needs to either be attributed to a change in diet (not likely) or the bike. I think John’s bike, which was bigger than mine, actually fits me better. I’m able to ride using the profile bars (placed over the standard handle bars and allowing the rider to lean forward on their elbows in a more aero dynamic position, thus riding faster) for most of the ride, which makes me about 1 to 1.5 mph faster.

I was completely exhausted after the ride and did very little for the rest of the evening. Dinner was salad with chicken breast meat on top, which just didn’t hit the spot. I needed something sweet and Diet Mountain Dew just wasn’t getting it done, so I tried making a smoothie with skim milk, a cup of frozen blue berries, a cup of vanilla yogurt and a tablespoon of Agave Nectar. It was really good, but I shouldn’t have used the Nectar…which is pure fructose and probably gave me a bit of a spike in blood sugar. I’ll talk to Bob about that.

Yard work duration: 3 hours. Bike duration: 2 hours and 8 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 75-100 in the yard and 130 bpm for bike ride.
Calories burned during workout: 1,000 for yard work and moving and 1900 for bike ride.