@Mitch brings up the point that I would stress. Going from no spin bike to ALL-IN winter training is going to do this. Add to this the fact that the class is constant standing & sitting and high cadence when standing and so on, and it puts pressures on my knees that I am not used to. You also need to take into account that some of these bikes are old, and you get some erratic behavior at times with the pedal resistance clunking and the bike just not working as well as some other bikes. We've been told that these bikes are all at the end-of-lifecycle and they have ordered more. They're supposed to be here in January, which begs the question: Which January?
@jmanic I understand your concern, but I think
@Mitch nails it with the spin bike fit. In general I think if I ride the spin bike like I am grinding out a hard road ride, everything is fine. But when I stand too much and act like Olivia Newton John on uppers, it starts to stress things that are not used to it - up to and possibly including my dignity.
I will admit that the ice cream was not as good as the potential sounded. Also on food, I am going to keep the Impossible Burger a real possible future blog topic. So while I see what you wrote there
@jackx, I am going to defer that post until I consume some. As anyone here well knows, I do like a good meal. Ah who am I kidding? I like a bad meal too. Today's meal was not bad. It was both good AND healthy:
After talking to
@UtahJoe yesterday about the double spin class he ventured into the realm of goals. He asked me if I had any. I think at this stage of life, it's hard for me to have any goals other than not dropping dead of heart disease and trying to save for the kid's inevitable $4.5 million dollar college education. I joke, but it's hard for me to be working in a high-pressure work environment while staying attentive to home life, trying to do anything on a personal level, and then adding bike goals. My answer to him was officially that every time I state a goal in the past year, I generally eat or drink my way out of it within a week. Now that I am not drinking, 1 of my excuses has dried up.
So I am left to ask myself, do I really have any goals? The answer is both "of course" and "seriously, are you serious?" I think it is wise for me to step back at this point in the narrative and look at the broader picture. I have made a lot of jokes recently about age, and yes they are really just jokes laced with some hint of reality. At the same time, when you see a 105 year old guy announce his retirement from trying to break the centenarian speed record, you quickly realize that 46 simply isn't that old. So yes, I am not that old. But I am also no longer in my late 30s and I think this past year was my reality check in that regard. Things hurt a little more, it takes longer to recover, excuses come far more easily - these are all normal signs of aging. Add in my reluctance to wear any reading glasses properly as well as the constant allergies that seem to always be present, and I think the last year or so has been my coming to terms with getting older.
Having said that, I have come to terms with it. And yeah, I now take reading glasses everywhere and take a claritin every morning, and those light nagging headaches I used to get are pretty much a thing of the past. And I am not drinking. And while I post pictures of a lot of good food, I do try to eat oatmeal and salad as often as I can, just not at the same time. So in some respects I can consider this year as a clean slate. No more excuses other than my own motivation.
That was a long-winded way to say that no, I don't have any goals. But I want to get back to the point where a 100 mile bike ride is just a road ride where I didn't feel like stopping. I of course need to get back under 200 - duh. For anything to happen in terms of "goals" I need to lose some weight. But that drum is carried & beaten by almost everyone here. So I am not saying anything that almost all of you don't say as well. I have put forth the idea of Monkey Knife Fight at home, and it was met with curiosity. I have the ability to play the endurance race card for March Mayhem, or whatever it is called. These are things I would like to think about doing.
Does that amount to a set of goals? No, not really. I think I need to be iterative in what I set out to do. Right now, I guess I want to hit maybe 40 total hours in January? Right now I'm sitting over 31 already. I think 40 is reasonable. After that, we'll see what February brings. I would love to soft commit to the H2H endurance series, being that it would entail me only committing to 4 of them. But I am sort of excluded from doing 2 of them which makes it all far more difficult to pull off. So that's not a goal that makes any sense.
So where does that leave me in terms of "goals", one of those words we love to throw around every January? I don't know. I wish I could sit here and say that I am devoting this writing space to doing The Longest Day, or riding 3 centuries in a long weekend, or riding 100 miles on the mountain bike, or some such nonsense. But as anyone knows who has read this blog over the course of the last 10 years, I am not much of a single goal kind of writer.
What the hell - I am literally open to suggestions. What should my goals be?
While I may be getting old, I am not quite yet ready to ride off into the sunset. Well, unless I end up riding overnight one of these days.