Thursday, February 28, 2008

Insert Clever Title Here

For some reason I'm all empty in the clever title dept tonight so we'll go with audience participation... just imagine your own either before or after reading. Anywho... so what's up? With me it's basically way too much of everything (except sleep) basically all the time. Too much work, too much stress, too much eating, too many places to go, too many dumbasses... etc, etc. I really can sort of see the end of the tunnel with the work chaos so let's hope there's not a crew down the far end still extending the damn thing. Then again, someone accomplishing something might not be a bad thing.

Training is going well in some ways and not so well in others. The past month or so I've gotten an acceptable amount of riding in on the weekends and have gone to the gym more than I have not during the week. Gym days are really mixed and are kind of a coin toss depending on how packed it is, mood, etc. One thing I have been doing is lifting at least once a week since early January so I'm hoping that pays dividends. And no, it's not an ounce of upper body lifting... you think I'd ruin this skinny white guy physique? I am seeing noticeable gains in the weight I'm using so that must count for something. We'll see how it translates as I start to add more miles. I haven't run for shit since my blister incident a couple weeks back so I need to do some of that. I am starting to weather watch for when commuter season begins and the long-long range looks promising for late next week. Mondays and Wednesdays are out until May when school ends (not riding in to work at 6 a.m. and home from school at 7:30 p.m.), but I'm going to shoot for the Tuesday/Thursday or Tuesday/Friday routine. Other than GG I'm not registered for any races yet, but I really need to buy my license (slacker) and sign up for Palmer and then Burlingame when it opens. Tufts is still a question mark and who knows if there'll even be a USCF race this year since they seem to keep cutting back.

So last weekend I had probably the weirdest virus/bug thingy ever. Wednesday night I just sort of felt like whatever I ate didn't sit well and was going to make a hasty exit. Thursday I woke up and I was just beat. All day Thursday at work I was just the walking useless. I didn't feel really feverish or queasy, but my head was just somewhere else. Thursday night I was in bed at 8:30... I average about 10:30 so this was unprecedented. I also wasn't hungry at all but I ate a little because I knew I should. Friday I felt more with it, but still had zero appetite. Either Thursday or Friday night dinner was an english muffin and I was stuffed. Saturday I was starting to come around, but by now we had a new problem. To spare people unpleasant details, I was just having some digestive issues in the form of none happening. It felt like every crumb I had eaten had formed this ball in my gut and wasn't going anywhere. Saturday night I ate 4 bites of a very nice dinner my wife made and I couldn't put down any more. Friday I had gone to bed at 9 and Saturday I think it was 8:30 or 9 again. Sunday morning I woke up and I could feel that I was coming around and finally my stomach started to sort itself out. By lunch time, I had an appetite back and downed a foot long Subway sandwich in about 30 seconds. It probably took until Tuesday until I really felt normal again. The whole thing was just weird... just 3 days of extreme exhaustion, no appetite, and some weird stomach malfunction. From stories I'm hearing from others, I got off well compared to the flu that's making the rounds. Maybe 7 years of being infected with every strain of everything from the rugrats has made me immune. Who's laying the line on how long till I start puking after making that comment?

Laundry calls as does bed. Maybe I'll catch a break and be able to check in sooner than a week or two.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

The rare post

Well sadly, these things are becoming rare lately, but I finally have a few minutes so I wanted to say hi again and empty a little corner of my brain in the blogosphere. Mayhem and chaos still reign at home, but I'm getting everything done that I need to (including some training) so I think I'm winning the battle. It was a pretty good weekend for riding even though mid week last week sucked and then I almost ruined things for myself Friday. I knew I was finally going to have some time at work so I had planned to run "long" 6 or 7 at lunch. I headed out and after the first 5 or 10 minutes I could tell my right heel was going to give me issues. I have strange feet and I always end up with this spot in the padding on the heel cup in my running shoes that wears out. It's not a big deal because it somehow never causes problems and around the time the hole gets big, the shoes are dead anyways. Well I've been wearing new insoles to help support my arches and take some of the strain off my right shin and they raised my foot up in the shoe a good bit and thus just at the top of the developing hole in the heel. That coupled with wearing a crappy pair of socks meant that I could just tell a blister was setting in. Long story short, I had to cut the run to 30 minutes and I still ended up with a large and painful blood blister in the back of my right heel. Fortunately, there's no sliding of my heels in my cycling shoes at all so I still got in an hour on the rollers yesterday and then got out for about 2:45 today. My goal was 3 so I rode from home to the 2 hour team ride and then peeled off to come home at the end. I have to say that the last few miles weren't exactly easy especially into the wind so I was fine being 15 minutes short. I did let myself get roped into a mini-throwdown with another guy on the hills, but he had me beat more than half the time and we weren't going all that hard especially relative to the abuse we'll all give each other on that loop in a few months. The joys of riding with the team.

Just random other stuff going on... finally got my son's tilted skate issue sorted out thanks to this master skate doctor up in Wilmington. He's had a thing where he can't get on the inside edge of his right skate because his foot wants to just tilt out. Turns out his (and my... it's genetic) right foot is naturally turned outwards relative to the centerline of his knee-leg so it wants to go that way when he gets on 2mm of steel on ice. A visit to a podiatrist and a subsequent visit to the skate guy and they made some tweaks that have him up on center. It's actually pretty amazing to see how little they modified the skate and what a dramatic effect it had on him. It was also kinda weird to discover something about myself that I never knew and it sheds all new light on why it's my right shin that acts up first any time I have a problem. Funny how I get this far after how many thousands of miles of running and never knew it.

Ok, time for bed. Day off tomorrow so we're taking the kids to the New England Aquarium. Should be a good time.

Saturday, February 09, 2008

Where the hell did Rich go?

Hi there folks (both of you). Yes, I've sort of fallen off the planet lately. The primary reason is that the work beatdown has reached UFC proportions lately and grad school certainly isn't helping. I'm pretty motivated on the school thing right now most because I can clearly see the end. This semester isn't exactly easy, but it could be worse. I had a couple good weeks of training going including riding both days last weekend (1 hour Saturday, 2+ Sunday) and then this week sucked ass. I think I went to the gym once, but I redeemed myself by getting out for an hour today. I had planned to set up the rollers, but then I stepped outside for something, realized it was pretty nice and the weather.com radar was showing that I had at least an hour. As it turns out, I couldn't have planned it better... as I was coming over the last rise around the corner, I felt just a few flakes hit my face and then by the time I was in the garage it had really started. Good luck for a change I guess.

I'll probably be putting some pictures up on the other blog sometime soon of the current disorder of the house. We got the downstairs mostly all set so now the chaos upstairs is beginning. The painter comes in a week or so and then we can get more of the next round of furniture shuffling done. All of this happens slowly these days, but we're getting there.

OK, gotta get ready... Mom volunteered to watch the boys tonight so who are we to argue...