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Monday, January 19, 2009

Sodbuster

My shovel turns
the sod
so the grass can be
food for the worms
whose castings provide
nitrogen used by
the tomatoes to turn sunlight
into food for me
so that I have
strength
to turn the sod.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Perspective

Black Ice

Didn't see it comin', babe.
Did not see it comin'.
Cruisin' along, all nice and smooth
Then, bam!
Flat on my ass --
still smilin'

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

That's better

I spent Saturday on the trainer, climbing the Glandon and Alpe D'Huez with Lance and Der Kaiser ("He's digging deep into his suitcase of courage!" "Oh, he's suffering. My goodness me!"). I clocked a T30 result along the way of 265W. So with a weight of 66Kg, I'm at 4.0 W/Kg. Just need to add 55W and drop 2Kg and I'll be flying!

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

T30/T60 results for January

I wasn't going to publish these, since I seem to be going backwards. My excuse is that the test was at the end of a training block, and the block was disrupted by a week off the bike due to snow. T30 results were 256 watts, T60 was 245 watts. Weight was down to 66.2 Kg, so I'm holding around 3.86 watts/Kg.

As punishment, I'm starting under/at/over intervals where I do 2 minutes @10% under AT, 2 minutes @AT, and 2 minutes @10% over AT. Repeat until overcome by nausea.

Recap of 2008

I finished out 2008 with 6,406 miles on the bike versus 4,922 for the car. I was hoping for a few more bike miles, but bad weather and a child in the hospital put me behind the wheel more often than on the wheels in December. Total vertical feet was just under 400K (392,200).

High mileage month was July (698). Not surprising since 150 of that was in one day (RAMROD). What was surprising was November was the second highest (681), when all I was doing was riding to/from work and some longer training rides on the weekends.

This year, I'm going to track miles walked in lieu of driving. The definition is a little loose, but includes trips to the local grocery store (1 mile each way), and to the sandwich shop at lunchtime (not totally legit, since I bike to work and have to walk to get lunch anyway).