Wet And Cold

 Five weeks down in training and 19 weeks until the big race. I’m really looking forward to the race even though I make comments like “What the hell (sorry, Mom, what the heck) did I sign up for this race anyway?

Tuesday night was the bike “AT Test” and without going into a great amount of detail, it’s where you test yourself (with Diane actually doing the testing-I was just putting my body through pain) to determine your heart rate training zones with HR1 being the easiest and HR4 being a very hard anaerobic zone. Wednesday morning was the swim “AT Test” for the same reasons, but it determines your swim HR training zones which are translated into speed (minutes and seconds) and perceived exertion for 100 yards or meters.

Enough technical talk. Now to implementation. Yesterday was a 3 to 4 hour HR2-3 bike ride. The schedule doesn’t take into account temperature or rain and yesterday, as many of you know, was wet and cold. My ride was the same distance as last week but I took 10 minutes off last week’s time because it was a higher intensity ride.

So is it Murphy’s Law that says “On a crappy weather day, it will start to rain when you are at the farthest point away from home” because that’s what happened. Two miles North of the farthest point away from Hastings (corner of Lacey Road and North Avenue for you locals) it started to sprinkle. I thought it would stop soon and it just got worse. Several times I thought about stopping, calling friends on my cell phone until I found someone home, and asking to be picked up and brought in. I didn’t for one simple reason. I figured If I got someone, it would be half an hour before they could pick me up as I stood there in the cold and rain and got colder and wetter so I might as well ride and maybe it would end. It quit raining when I pulled my bike up on the porch (it was still raining outside, but I was inside) and I was miserable.

So then I made mistake number 2 (or more). I had my contacts on for distance so I asked Jean to read my schedule to see how long and at what intensity my transition run should be. She told me 30-40 minutes at HR3. I ran 37 minutes and pushed as hard as I could, but because I was so tired from pushing the ride, I could only muster HR2. After my shower and removal of my contacts I saw the T-run was supposed to be HR1-3 meaning no harder than 3, but if 1 or 2 was all I could do, that would be OK. We discussed the possibility of getting different contacts for her elderly eyes.

So here’s the science question of the week. Last week I stopped at the corner of Brown Road and Martin Road and put the bag of figs (not Fig Newtons) in my jacket pocket. Sometime before Woodland Road the wind sucked the bag out of my pocket (yes, I littered and I’m not proud of it) and I didn’t know it until I reached for another fig and they were gone. This week I had learned my lesson (I thought) and took the figs out of the bag and put them in that same pocket.

I counted and knew I had eight figs. By the time I got to Center Road I had eaten 7 of them and started to reach for number 8. Something caught my eye and it was fig number 8 dropping out of my pocket and passing me on the bike. So for the Science 101 midterm essay “Why does it pass you by when you are pedaling to keep yourself going and the fig isn’t pedaling anything”? Send your answers to http://www.whocares.com/ .

For those of you who haven’t seen figs and want to know what they look like, and without getting too crass, if a Boy Scout found one out in the woods he would wonder 1) What kind of animal left it there? and 2) What did that animal have to eat the day before it was deposited?

Toodle-oo,

Just (Wet, cold and can’t warm up) Jack

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