New Look

I like the other them I was using.  I found this new one, I kind of liked it too!  I was like WTF, Mate?  (http://www.endofworld.net if you didn’t get that one).  Let me know what you think!

On other unrelated and less exciting notes – my back is doing better – might even be up to 60% now.  I have a new TENS machine which is short for electronic muscle stimulation or something like that.  It is nice – calms muscles and makes you feel good!  Doc doesnt want me riding with it… but I don’t think that would work out well anyway.

More unrelated stuff – Apparently microsoft live meeting sucks – more on that later!

August – can I start over?

As you may recall, in late July, my riding all came together – or so I thought.  About July 19th… I headed up to Mt Airy and did a great ride in the mountains.  It was hot, it was hard, good stuff.  I was really getting strong.  The goal was to wear myself out before 8/13 – and then recover a bit.  Come into September really strong.  When I finished the ride, my lower back was a little sore.  I didn’t think much about it.  Through the next week, there was a bit of tenderness in my lower back.  Nothing TOO bad at all.  It was so – not – bad that the following weekend, I did about a 60 mile ride in Mt Airy again.  This one was harder.  When I got done, some soreness still existed, but again – not too bad.  Through the next week, I tried to ride but things didnt work out so well.  I finished off a record July happy and good… The first weekend in August we went on a wacky vacation (wacky for me).  My back was sore, but I tried to participate.  Since my back was more than a little sore, I didn’t try to ride the GA mountains.  Also, I was to be doing some back and forth driving so … it made life less complicated.  Through the week, I kept getting more and more sore – more and more ibuprofen, heat, cold … chiro all seemed to help a bit, but it hurt.  I took a trip to announce Junior Nationals – that was good, but a few periods of bad-back-ism.  NOT GOOD!  Well, I got back, slept in my bed Sunday, Monday and Tuesday … Wednesday morning I felt better than I had in a week.  I was optimistic!

I had some work to do as soon as I got to in… a production situation, a lot of technical mumbo jumbo that I needed to sort out.  Got it going and my back started hurting.  More and more… I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t stand, I was nearly in tears.  I wanted to go see a  chiro, I was even willing to go to a regular doc.  It was bad.  I called a chiro and they said they could see me NOW!  Literally – so off I went.  I will try to keep this under 4 pages and tell you that I just finished off the weekend “sore”, not hurting like I was last week.  It was ok.  I am eager to get back to the chiro and get things checked out, but I am a functional human again.  A couple “twinges” but other than that, things are going well. It’s been miserable.

The pain in my back is only 1/2 of this.  My weight loss plan has completely fallen apart.  I have turned back to pizza and burritos to get me through.  Not good for weight loss as you can imagine.  My desire to ride is going CRAZY (probably a good thing) but I fear I have lost mad fitness and when I finally CAN ride I am going to suck so bad it will be miserable.  All of that … not so good.

That brings me to the subject of this .. can I start over?  Absolutely.  That is what I am doing today.  Today is the first day of phase three.  I don’t actually know how many phases there will be.  3? 4? 10?  I don’t know.  I just know that I need to get back to my core goal – go get in shape and be healthy.  That involves going back to my “basics”.  Riding, working out, running if needed, back to intentional exercise time.  Now, I am not sure if the new doc will want me doing the workouts just yet, but today we start new world order.  Healthy eating is coming back.  I had my delicious shake for breakfast and will have a something healthy for  lunch.  My mileage totals are in the crapper, but still much better than 2007.

It’s rough when something you really want to do is really bad for you… at this moment.  When you want to ride, you really just want to get out and breath clean air and feel it move through your lack-of-hair… but you can’t.  I am going to talk to the doc and see if I am “clear to walk”…. treadmill, trail, whatever… I don’t think I could run.  I think if things keep progressing, I should be able to ride in a week or less.  I may have to put a shorter, higher rise stem on my bike but I have one I can use.  It will be fine.

So here it is – phase 3 – starts today!  Sarah and I went shopping, got bunches of good food and we are ready to get on it!  I may race a time or two more this year, but that’s up to my back.  It’s cool that the DLV has winter training, so I can get back on my soon to be delivered frame.  Sarah is working with me on both of us eating good.  Derek is now running with Sarah.  Max and I “run” together, but it’s more of a “confused walk around the neighborhood”.

I will update my weight chart tomorrow, I forgot to weigh myself, but that might be good for my mental state.  When you eat too much, you start to fear the scale.  I typically lose weight on Mondays – maybe tomorrow won’t be so painful!

Goodbye July, Hello heat…

So I know that all of my blog reading fans have been hitting refresh over and over…. this is the day you all wait for, right?  (Who am I kidding, 98% of my “readers” get this in their email and the other 2 already went home from work for the week!)  Okay, so there you have it.  I am sort of stuck again.  Seems to happen right around the “10′s” and right around the end of the month.  Maybe it’s end of the month stress caused my all of my end of the month work I don’t have to do… (in the support world, you have to work when the problems exist, they don’t understand the month, close of business or any other such thing!

I honestly think I did this “plateau” to myself.  Last week I rode a seemingly HUGE number of miles.  My body probably said “Hey man, STOP!”.  I didn’t listen and it said “Ok, I am not going to let ANYTHING go… we might need it to get your big keister up the mountain for pancakes!”.  This is all, of course rumor and speculation, but hey… this is my blog and I can speculate if the urge this me.

The other thing I updated you on 1 month ago was MISSING my June mileage goal by a bit (35 miles?)  Well, I took care of that in July.  I finished off the month with an unbelievable 758+ miles.   Recall my goal was 600.  That’s a spare 158 miles and a 10k.  Only 2 days of the month did my average mileage go below 20 miles a day.  I finished with an average of 24.45 miles a day.  I didn’t ride 9 days so the actual average was about 35.5 miles a riding day.  If you throw in the last 3 months, I have literally done over 1800 miles (and a 10k).  It’s crazy to think I have done this.

• April – 435 miles – 14.5 miles a day
• May – 490 miles – 15.8 miles a day
• June – 532 miles – 18 miles a day
• July – 758 miles – 24.5 miles a day

I think I can comfortably say it wont go up in August.  I am glad I have a few “carry over minutes”.  I have a vacation, lots of travel, some business travel … I am going to try to ride hard some next week, the week after and bury myself in the “pain cave” before I have to take a few days off…. recover and hopefully get ready to open up my “cottage of wattage” on some poor unsuspecting bike racers down at the DLV… Eh… if not, I hope I get my new bike and have fun riding it too!

July was a success.  Let’s hope August isn’t a hot mess!