Mountain Bike Mike
Well-Known Member
Speaking of... mY head to State College this fall to hit these trails
James Pearl Thinks Blogging is Dead
- Thread starter Norm
- Start date
Nittany is awesome. I love that race. But I can't do two days, a double that early in the cross season is exhausting
Edit:. And I think think you should try to get to some cross practices. Otto's really helped me turn my season around last year. I know it's a huge PITA to get there, but you can't get that kind of workout any other way. Skills + real racing....
Edit:. And I think think you should try to get to some cross practices. Otto's really helped me turn my season around last year. I know it's a huge PITA to get there, but you can't get that kind of workout any other way. Skills + real racing....
Isn't Otto's kind of close to Norm, relatively speaking? Norm did try the Bubble Cross practice and that's gotta be *far* for him.
I'm very excited about Norm getting back into cross.
quick google shows he is 36 minutes from otto's farm - you are 39...see ya there!
Pearl
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
Honestly didn’t watch my YouTubes was being slow
I like to plan my days. Usually, before I go to bed at night, I look at my calendar to get a sense of work obligations I have, then I can wake up and try to put together a rough draft of how the day might go. I'm not so set-in-stone that I expect things to ever follow that rough draft, which is why any Day Plan like this will always be nothing more than a rough draft. Last night, I didn't do that. When I started working this morning, I realized my bike plan had a major pothole in the road in the form of a 4:00 meeting. Given that this is a follow-up to the Austin trip I did, I am 1 of 2 people pretty much required to be there. As such, Day Plan, meet the eraser.
It also became pretty clear pretty quickly that my nearly 4 hours outside yesterday took more out of me than I cared to admit. So maybe, all things considered, it ended up better than I just make this a short day, try to put in as many work hours as I can, and just get in the normal CR Monday ride. The intention thus changed from hard effort + group ride, to just group ride, where I try to keep the HR as low as possible. I now need to make today a green day on the calendar.
In the end it was more or less successful. A bit under 2 hours, 132 average HR which is solidly in endurance pace. Tonight was a nice ride, did not push the pace, and just enjoyed riding with the crew. According to Strava I was in tempo for 1.5 minutes, otherwise I was entirely under.
@jShort - I have mixed feelings about Nittany. From an objective standpoint, it should suit me. Power course, no elevation, minimal barriers, wide turns. But it's still the summer and I feel like it's too early to go neck deep in the season at that point. But like I said, if I have no plans, I'll be drawn to it. Of course, I have had some miserable races there. As for cross practices, it's on a kids weeknight. That's not easy to justify.
Ok @pearl - it's on the radar. Will bring it up to the committee.
Sorry this has been almost entirely training. After the ride tonight we watched episodes 7/8 of The Five, which is now getting pretty fascinating. Only 2 to go on the season. Will watch the last 2 tomorrow night. After that we may finally get to The Tunnel, or The Bridge, based on a recommendation from @jmanic.
Tomorrow I have no idea. Hard effort of some sort. Will wake up and check the weather. I guess July ends tomorrow. Man.
It also became pretty clear pretty quickly that my nearly 4 hours outside yesterday took more out of me than I cared to admit. So maybe, all things considered, it ended up better than I just make this a short day, try to put in as many work hours as I can, and just get in the normal CR Monday ride. The intention thus changed from hard effort + group ride, to just group ride, where I try to keep the HR as low as possible. I now need to make today a green day on the calendar.
In the end it was more or less successful. A bit under 2 hours, 132 average HR which is solidly in endurance pace. Tonight was a nice ride, did not push the pace, and just enjoyed riding with the crew. According to Strava I was in tempo for 1.5 minutes, otherwise I was entirely under.
@jShort - I have mixed feelings about Nittany. From an objective standpoint, it should suit me. Power course, no elevation, minimal barriers, wide turns. But it's still the summer and I feel like it's too early to go neck deep in the season at that point. But like I said, if I have no plans, I'll be drawn to it. Of course, I have had some miserable races there. As for cross practices, it's on a kids weeknight. That's not easy to justify.
Ok @pearl - it's on the radar. Will bring it up to the committee.
Sorry this has been almost entirely training. After the ride tonight we watched episodes 7/8 of The Five, which is now getting pretty fascinating. Only 2 to go on the season. Will watch the last 2 tomorrow night. After that we may finally get to The Tunnel, or The Bridge, based on a recommendation from @jmanic.
Tomorrow I have no idea. Hard effort of some sort. Will wake up and check the weather. I guess July ends tomorrow. Man.
Juggernaut
Master of the Metaphor
So along those lines..... As oblivious as I am to daily life, I am noticing a concerted effort or reemergence of HIV related adds....heavily skewed towards the gay male and genetically male transgender folks masquerading as quasi PSA's. I mean hell, I haven't seen anything this slanted since the late 80's! Did I miss a significant uptake in reported HIV positive cases in the US or is this just big Pharma peddling its latest batch of snake oil? By nature I believe the latter, but Pharma will always exploit people's fears... So is the it trending up?
@Juggernaut reliable statistics on disease prevalence can be found on the Center for Disease Control website. Granted their stats lag a few years.
https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/statistics/overview/ataglance.html
I would like you to know I find your blanket typed statement that Pharma “peddles snake oil” offensive given the amount of mental and physical energy I have dedicated in my career to finding cures for diseases. While I won’t engage in a social media debate about it, I would be happy to have an in-person dialogue with you to understand your position and to share mine.
https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/statistics/overview/ataglance.html
I would like you to know I find your blanket typed statement that Pharma “peddles snake oil” offensive given the amount of mental and physical energy I have dedicated in my career to finding cures for diseases. While I won’t engage in a social media debate about it, I would be happy to have an in-person dialogue with you to understand your position and to share mine.
Juggernaut
Master of the Metaphor
Comment wasn’t intended to be inflammatory.
Having friends in the industry also affords me with an insiders view. Specifically in the drug trials and approval process.
It was more of a question about is this “targeted” campaign a responses to a trend or opportunity to capitalize on trials result.
I hadn’t had the opportunity to talk to my friends yet, the question was just a thought provoked by the blog while on the throne.
It’s the commercials that really bother me. It seems like it’s insinuating that HIV is only a gay male issue. Since I had a female cousin pass in 2002 I’m a little sensitive to how the disease is portrayed.
The Tunnel is great.... Currently in Season 3. Need to watch The Bridge next.I like to plan my days. Usually, before I go to bed at night, I look at my calendar to get a sense of work obligations I have, then I can wake up and try to put together a rough draft of how the day might go. I'm not so set-in-stone that I expect things to ever follow that rough draft, which is why any Day Plan like this will always be nothing more than a rough draft. Last night, I didn't do that. When I started working this morning, I realized my bike plan had a major pothole in the road in the form of a 4:00 meeting. Given that this is a follow-up to the Austin trip I did, I am 1 of 2 people pretty much required to be there. As such, Day Plan, meet the eraser.
It also became pretty clear pretty quickly that my nearly 4 hours outside yesterday took more out of me than I cared to admit. So maybe, all things considered, it ended up better than I just make this a short day, try to put in as many work hours as I can, and just get in the normal CR Monday ride. The intention thus changed from hard effort + group ride, to just group ride, where I try to keep the HR as low as possible. I now need to make today a green day on the calendar.
In the end it was more or less successful. A bit under 2 hours, 132 average HR which is solidly in endurance pace. Tonight was a nice ride, did not push the pace, and just enjoyed riding with the crew. According to Strava I was in tempo for 1.5 minutes, otherwise I was entirely under.
@jShort - I have mixed feelings about Nittany. From an objective standpoint, it should suit me. Power course, no elevation, minimal barriers, wide turns. But it's still the summer and I feel like it's too early to go neck deep in the season at that point. But like I said, if I have no plans, I'll be drawn to it. Of course, I have had some miserable races there. As for cross practices, it's on a kids weeknight. That's not easy to justify.
Ok @pearl - it's on the radar. Will bring it up to the committee.
Sorry this has been almost entirely training. After the ride tonight we watched episodes 7/8 of The Five, which is now getting pretty fascinating. Only 2 to go on the season. Will watch the last 2 tomorrow night. After that we may finally get to The Tunnel, or The Bridge, based on a recommendation from @jmanic.
Tomorrow I have no idea. Hard effort of some sort. Will wake up and check the weather. I guess July ends tomorrow. Man.
I agree with you there, sound bytes are not the best medium to communicate about what is a difficult and multifaceted disease. Sorry about your cousin. And thanks for your thoughtful response.
Pearl
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
just watched the video i linked, i apologize
1speed
Incredibly profound yet fantastically flawed
When you planning to go? I'm planning a trip out there in mid-September for a weekend (camping at Raystown, ride Allegrippis Friday, State College Saturday.) If that kind of time frame works for you, give me a shout. Some of the folks who may come might only come for Raystown and not stay over, some may only make it for State College on Saturday. Whatever works for you - a la carte riding in mid-state PA! Still finalizing details and I'll keep you in the loop if you're interested. Also, anyone else interested welcome. Based on our Tuesday Night Group, should be a mixed group of beginners and people who think they are better than they actually are, so we may have more than one group riding together at a time. If some are more beginner, they may stick with Raystown all weekend because Rothrock is ... well, it's Rothrock.
As you can see in the stats linked by @2Julianas MSM have much higher rates of infection than other groups.
And while the overall trends of new infections are on the decline, they are actually still on the rise for MSM, specifically minority MSM.
It's not just pharma that is shifting their focus to these individuals.
I don't actually fully understand how my blog gravitated towards man-on-man sex but you know what, I'll just go ahead and roll with it.
So today is the last day of July which means it's time for some sort of status report. You know, the PMs I work with - they love, I mean just LOVE project plans. This leads to status reports. I was going to write out why PMs are so frustrating but it's just not worth it. So I will get right to the status report.
The Status Report: July
Exercise: Crushed July with 67.17 total hours of exercise. Total on the year is 351.5 (307 of those are on the bike). On pace to top 500 hours on the bike by the end of the year. Averaging over 50 hours/month. Just, you know, feeling good out there right now.
Blogging: 21 for July which is a better number. I think the target should be 5/week. I will admit that sometimes it gets to be a chore when it is 10:30 at night and I have not started writing for the day yet. On the year I am at 141, which is 24/month.
Doing: 27 days of doing "stuff". This isn't necessarily a challenge anymore and one could argue that I should set a goal to have more zero days next year. But zero isn't a hero. July was a busy month with the following things:
* CR Monday rides
* Kingdom Trails
* A trip to Texas
* The Ringwood-Sterling ride, where I smashed my face into the ground
* Sean's picnic
* San Francisco
* Podcasting
* The CR hike
* Plus some wedding planning stuff, like buying a ring & meeting up with the caterer
Weight: So close to the double century yet still not there. I am tempted to say that if I do not see 199 before school starts, I will give up ice cream until I do. But, is he really dedicated enough to do that? Overall we have an 18 pound drop in 7 months. I think that's healthy. As a reminder I was at 195 the last time I raced cross but that was a rising 195, so I was expanding, not deflating. Can I get to 195 by the first cross race? Well I guess that depends on when that is. I think 9/9 is a stretch.
Books: 3 this month. Spy Sinker, which was the 3rd in the second trilogy. Don't read it. Also Paris Spy, which D lent me while we were in SF. Started slowly, picked up, and in the end made me fascinated by reality in terms of WWII and the like. I have never been into WWII but after reading this, I suddenly am. I've always been enamored by Vietnam for reasons I cannot put my finger on. D happened to ask me this morning why that is. I really don't know. Maybe it's the video footage? Maybe it's the video footage combined with the stark sadness of the people who went to fight there and were seen so poorly by so much of the American public? Maybe it's that, plus the culture that arose from it all? I don't know. Anyway, I'm currently watching the Ken Burns documentary as well as reading The Sympathizer, which is about post-Vietnam. It is a fiction book that takes place after the war. I picked this up entirely by chance. The 3rd book I read this month was A Canticle for Leibowitz. I hated this, and put it down after 50 pages. I am finding that old school SciFi doesn't really work for me.
Consideration - I've started to think that this pseudo-random number of 3/month doesn't make a lot of sense. The book I am reading now is excellent, and engaging. But this isn't a book you plow through in 5 days. That begs the question if I should be reading more engaging books and scrapping the goal of 3. I think when I travel it makes sense to gravitate towards quick reads. But on a daily basis, things that are more engaging are more rewarding. I think 2/month next year, with the idea that 1 of them is something more than just brain candy. I don't think there's an answer to this question.
Movies: This is a new category and something I want to add for 2019. I think next year I would like to watch at least 1 movie per month. You would think that with all the travel I do this would be easy. But I generally don't watch much. I tried The Darkest Hour on a plane once and the feed died. After reading Paris Spy, I want to watch the rest. I watched The Greatest Showman this past month at the MPAC. I'll aim for 6 total the remainder of the year. With Zwift this should be easy in the winter.
Social: Wait, another new thing? Sort of tied into the Doing thing but this is an effort to make sure we are spending time with our friends. I think it is important for people to spend time with other people, be it at dinner, on bike rides, on vacation together, or somewhere in between. In July we had 14 days where we did something on a social level which sounds really high. That includes some CR Monday rides, the Vermont trip. hanging out with my boss in Austin (not the dev "team"), the Stirling ride & Sean's picnic, having dinner with Mike & Mary twice in SF, podcasting with Sean, and seeing my parents.
Drinking: Or not. Today is 477 straight. When do you stop counting? IDK.
Just to remind myself why I am doing all this. It's my effort to strive for balance. Left to our own devices, I think we delude ourselves at how well we spend our time. I have a bathroom book called You Are Not So Smart that I pick up now and again. Eventually it will make the "books read" list. It is fascinating, and really underscores how much we deceive and bullshit ourselves. This helps me not do that, to some extent.
The Month Ahead: August
We have the following on tap:
* NO WORK TRIPS PLANNED!
* Raystown and maybe Rothrock
* Upstate NY with a road bike assault on Whiteface
* Cranks around the Campfire
* Hoping to do 2 podcasts, maybe with guests?
* A trip to Canada
Don't totally love this post so I am going to treat you to this pic of Utah, wearing the Sweetness jersey:
So today is the last day of July which means it's time for some sort of status report. You know, the PMs I work with - they love, I mean just LOVE project plans. This leads to status reports. I was going to write out why PMs are so frustrating but it's just not worth it. So I will get right to the status report.
The Status Report: July
Exercise: Crushed July with 67.17 total hours of exercise. Total on the year is 351.5 (307 of those are on the bike). On pace to top 500 hours on the bike by the end of the year. Averaging over 50 hours/month. Just, you know, feeling good out there right now.
Blogging: 21 for July which is a better number. I think the target should be 5/week. I will admit that sometimes it gets to be a chore when it is 10:30 at night and I have not started writing for the day yet. On the year I am at 141, which is 24/month.
Doing: 27 days of doing "stuff". This isn't necessarily a challenge anymore and one could argue that I should set a goal to have more zero days next year. But zero isn't a hero. July was a busy month with the following things:
* CR Monday rides
* Kingdom Trails
* A trip to Texas
* The Ringwood-Sterling ride, where I smashed my face into the ground
* Sean's picnic
* San Francisco
* Podcasting
* The CR hike
* Plus some wedding planning stuff, like buying a ring & meeting up with the caterer
Weight: So close to the double century yet still not there. I am tempted to say that if I do not see 199 before school starts, I will give up ice cream until I do. But, is he really dedicated enough to do that? Overall we have an 18 pound drop in 7 months. I think that's healthy. As a reminder I was at 195 the last time I raced cross but that was a rising 195, so I was expanding, not deflating. Can I get to 195 by the first cross race? Well I guess that depends on when that is. I think 9/9 is a stretch.
Books: 3 this month. Spy Sinker, which was the 3rd in the second trilogy. Don't read it. Also Paris Spy, which D lent me while we were in SF. Started slowly, picked up, and in the end made me fascinated by reality in terms of WWII and the like. I have never been into WWII but after reading this, I suddenly am. I've always been enamored by Vietnam for reasons I cannot put my finger on. D happened to ask me this morning why that is. I really don't know. Maybe it's the video footage? Maybe it's the video footage combined with the stark sadness of the people who went to fight there and were seen so poorly by so much of the American public? Maybe it's that, plus the culture that arose from it all? I don't know. Anyway, I'm currently watching the Ken Burns documentary as well as reading The Sympathizer, which is about post-Vietnam. It is a fiction book that takes place after the war. I picked this up entirely by chance. The 3rd book I read this month was A Canticle for Leibowitz. I hated this, and put it down after 50 pages. I am finding that old school SciFi doesn't really work for me.
Consideration - I've started to think that this pseudo-random number of 3/month doesn't make a lot of sense. The book I am reading now is excellent, and engaging. But this isn't a book you plow through in 5 days. That begs the question if I should be reading more engaging books and scrapping the goal of 3. I think when I travel it makes sense to gravitate towards quick reads. But on a daily basis, things that are more engaging are more rewarding. I think 2/month next year, with the idea that 1 of them is something more than just brain candy. I don't think there's an answer to this question.
Movies: This is a new category and something I want to add for 2019. I think next year I would like to watch at least 1 movie per month. You would think that with all the travel I do this would be easy. But I generally don't watch much. I tried The Darkest Hour on a plane once and the feed died. After reading Paris Spy, I want to watch the rest. I watched The Greatest Showman this past month at the MPAC. I'll aim for 6 total the remainder of the year. With Zwift this should be easy in the winter.
Social: Wait, another new thing? Sort of tied into the Doing thing but this is an effort to make sure we are spending time with our friends. I think it is important for people to spend time with other people, be it at dinner, on bike rides, on vacation together, or somewhere in between. In July we had 14 days where we did something on a social level which sounds really high. That includes some CR Monday rides, the Vermont trip. hanging out with my boss in Austin (not the dev "team"), the Stirling ride & Sean's picnic, having dinner with Mike & Mary twice in SF, podcasting with Sean, and seeing my parents.
Drinking: Or not. Today is 477 straight. When do you stop counting? IDK.
Just to remind myself why I am doing all this. It's my effort to strive for balance. Left to our own devices, I think we delude ourselves at how well we spend our time. I have a bathroom book called You Are Not So Smart that I pick up now and again. Eventually it will make the "books read" list. It is fascinating, and really underscores how much we deceive and bullshit ourselves. This helps me not do that, to some extent.
The Month Ahead: August
We have the following on tap:
* NO WORK TRIPS PLANNED!
* Raystown and maybe Rothrock
* Upstate NY with a road bike assault on Whiteface
* Cranks around the Campfire
* Hoping to do 2 podcasts, maybe with guests?
* A trip to Canada
Don't totally love this post so I am going to treat you to this pic of Utah, wearing the Sweetness jersey:
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I think what a lot of people find interesting about WWII is the complexity due to the grand scale, and a more aligned Good Guy vs Bad Guy. It's nearly impossible to look back at Vietnam and point to the Viet Cong being evil bad guys, but it's hard to find the good points about the Nazis or Japanese.
I recently finished Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson and it's set in WWII and the mid-90s. I'd recommend it, but being historical fiction I spent more time in Wikipedia rabbit holes as the book would mention WWII events that sounded unbelievable and then would check Wikipedia to find out more information and see everything that sounded crazy was true. WWII had so much complexity with breaking of the codes, espionage, the way airplane flight was used, first and only nuclear war, massive amounts of military and civilian involvement, the costs of failure, etc.
Today was a busy day, just jam-packed from the gun. I am taking the time between 7:45-9:00pm to sit, relax, and write this. Otherwise it's been non-stop all day.
The Caterer(s) came over at 7:00. We had the tasting for the wedding food tonight. He came with a bunch of samples for us to try. We enjoyed the food and signed the contract. And so, we are on for October 6th. If you think you'll be invited, mark it. We'll get some invites out shortly. I think we're doing electronic invitations this time so it shouldn't be too long. We had the carving station food already decided, so we just needed to verify it was tasty. The filet was on-point. Don't miss that one. Otherwise we needed to choose 6 of the 8 appetizers we had picked. In the end I think it was an easy enough choice.
I bring the kids to camp on Wednesday even though we don't have them in the morning, so my day started early. I got up at 6:30 to get some work done before I left at 8:00. To be more accurate, I have to bring Julia to camp and so I offer to get the boys, since their dad takes the train to the city very day. I round them all up, bring them to camp, then go home. So my "full" day started a bit after 9:00 and ended at 3:30, when I had to leave to get Julia to bring her to the dentist. In that time, I had 3 calls and needed to get a ride in. I'll talk about the ride later but that was a 2 hour sink. So we're talking really a 4.5 day plus the 1.5 this morning. I was long Monday so it evens out but I'll need to work in some nooks & crannies to really get this week tied up before we leave around 1:00 on Friday.
We finished up The Five last night. Oh man, this was good, and the ending was great. I was absolutely caught off guard by the end. You find out how it all works out at the conclusion of 9, and the 10th is a sort of wrap-up. I don't endorse this approach in theory, but this was warranted. I read that they are going to do another 8-episode series called The Four. Honestly, I'm not sure how that will work out. This one season wraps everything up. IMO they should leave well enough alone. Having said that I will absolutely watch it.
Tonight (after I wrote most of this) we embarked on a PBS show called Wonders of Mexico, Part 1: Forests of the Maya. I am a Thirteen supporter so I get what is essentially a PBS TV Guide at the start of every month and this caught my eye. It is a 3-part series over the course of August, each of the first 3 Wednesdays. Part 1 was about the forests of the Yucatan Peninsula. Some pretty interesting things here, and we all enjoyed watching. As the kids get older, I think it's good to find shows like this that we can enjoy watching together. While it is not Death in Paradise (the kids love this show), it's informative & interesting. Some pretty fascinating stuff in the show. Not sure if this can be seen OnDemand (should I say on OnDemand?) but if so, it's worth checking out.
@Santapez - I do this thing where I get books and put them on my shelf based on this-or-that recommendation. Then I specifically don't read them for however long, be it a month or year or several years. Sometimes I wait for something to jump out at me and then I think, "Hey...I think I own that book, let me read it now." Sometimes the author or cover just jumps out, and I read it without knowing why I got it in the first place. I have been intentionally doing this for a bunch of years because I have found that having expectations when going into a book often changes how the book reads.
Anyway, I just dug this out of my bookcase and I will be reading it when The Sympathizer is over. But man, 900+ pages?
The Biking & Training & Hey Hey & so on
Yesterday I did this:
* Went to Allen road to do some 5 minute hill repeats. Mother of dog I have not done this in forever, so yeah they really hurt. I did 2 and that was good.
* After that I slow rolled over to this ~3m Strava segment I used to own. Threw in the kitchen sink, beat my old PR, and got 3rd overall. Hey, after a pair of 5s and still over the double century mark, I'm content with that. Just need to trim 10s off this and I'll get it back.
* Then I rode to the MAFW ride and did that with D
* All told, 3:15 and ~56 miles. Not bad for a Tuesday.
The whole interval thing is "re-new" for me. So this may take some time to adjust to it again. I'm probably not going to often do hill repeats but I needed to bite the head off this bat. Ok, someone come up with a better expression. I am looking to @jmanic here. I will likely work the intervals into my normal rides as best I can. I will almost surely do a lot of Strava KOM Hunting to accomplish this. There are some in my own neighborhood I need to avenge.
Today it was raining and as I mentioned above, time was of the essence so I maxed it out on Zwift. We're in Watopia so I decided to climb Watopia itself, back side then front side. This was my effort to do a Threshold day, which is usually in the form of 3x15 or 2x20 or something like that. My reps:
* 27 minutes up the shorter/steeper back side. Set my PR by almost 2 minutes
* 32 minutes up the longer front side. Missed the PR by 23 seconds
* In all, 59 minutes of what I would consider threshold work. Strava says 40 minutes of this was in L3/Tempo and most of the rest was L2/Endurance. But that's HR-based and it says the low end of my L4 is 175, which is probably a tad on the high side.
* Anyway, legs felt surprisingly good after yesterday. 90 minutes total today
Tomorrow I have no idea right now. Yesterday and today were orange, so red is out, which means no race this week for sure. In a classic training approach this would be a tempo ride for as long as I can spare. We'll see what the day brings. In order to have a good weekend I need to tie up as much of the Delaware work as I can. So this may exclude a long tempo ride. I may dip into a 3rd straight orange (reminder: orange = hard workout, red = race) but not go too deep. I don't think we are riding Friday but I guess you never know.
The Caterer(s) came over at 7:00. We had the tasting for the wedding food tonight. He came with a bunch of samples for us to try. We enjoyed the food and signed the contract. And so, we are on for October 6th. If you think you'll be invited, mark it. We'll get some invites out shortly. I think we're doing electronic invitations this time so it shouldn't be too long. We had the carving station food already decided, so we just needed to verify it was tasty. The filet was on-point. Don't miss that one. Otherwise we needed to choose 6 of the 8 appetizers we had picked. In the end I think it was an easy enough choice.
I bring the kids to camp on Wednesday even though we don't have them in the morning, so my day started early. I got up at 6:30 to get some work done before I left at 8:00. To be more accurate, I have to bring Julia to camp and so I offer to get the boys, since their dad takes the train to the city very day. I round them all up, bring them to camp, then go home. So my "full" day started a bit after 9:00 and ended at 3:30, when I had to leave to get Julia to bring her to the dentist. In that time, I had 3 calls and needed to get a ride in. I'll talk about the ride later but that was a 2 hour sink. So we're talking really a 4.5 day plus the 1.5 this morning. I was long Monday so it evens out but I'll need to work in some nooks & crannies to really get this week tied up before we leave around 1:00 on Friday.
We finished up The Five last night. Oh man, this was good, and the ending was great. I was absolutely caught off guard by the end. You find out how it all works out at the conclusion of 9, and the 10th is a sort of wrap-up. I don't endorse this approach in theory, but this was warranted. I read that they are going to do another 8-episode series called The Four. Honestly, I'm not sure how that will work out. This one season wraps everything up. IMO they should leave well enough alone. Having said that I will absolutely watch it.
Tonight (after I wrote most of this) we embarked on a PBS show called Wonders of Mexico, Part 1: Forests of the Maya. I am a Thirteen supporter so I get what is essentially a PBS TV Guide at the start of every month and this caught my eye. It is a 3-part series over the course of August, each of the first 3 Wednesdays. Part 1 was about the forests of the Yucatan Peninsula. Some pretty interesting things here, and we all enjoyed watching. As the kids get older, I think it's good to find shows like this that we can enjoy watching together. While it is not Death in Paradise (the kids love this show), it's informative & interesting. Some pretty fascinating stuff in the show. Not sure if this can be seen OnDemand (should I say on OnDemand?) but if so, it's worth checking out.
@Santapez - I do this thing where I get books and put them on my shelf based on this-or-that recommendation. Then I specifically don't read them for however long, be it a month or year or several years. Sometimes I wait for something to jump out at me and then I think, "Hey...I think I own that book, let me read it now." Sometimes the author or cover just jumps out, and I read it without knowing why I got it in the first place. I have been intentionally doing this for a bunch of years because I have found that having expectations when going into a book often changes how the book reads.
Anyway, I just dug this out of my bookcase and I will be reading it when The Sympathizer is over. But man, 900+ pages?
The Biking & Training & Hey Hey & so on
Yesterday I did this:
* Went to Allen road to do some 5 minute hill repeats. Mother of dog I have not done this in forever, so yeah they really hurt. I did 2 and that was good.
* After that I slow rolled over to this ~3m Strava segment I used to own. Threw in the kitchen sink, beat my old PR, and got 3rd overall. Hey, after a pair of 5s and still over the double century mark, I'm content with that. Just need to trim 10s off this and I'll get it back.
* Then I rode to the MAFW ride and did that with D
* All told, 3:15 and ~56 miles. Not bad for a Tuesday.
The whole interval thing is "re-new" for me. So this may take some time to adjust to it again. I'm probably not going to often do hill repeats but I needed to bite the head off this bat. Ok, someone come up with a better expression. I am looking to @jmanic here. I will likely work the intervals into my normal rides as best I can. I will almost surely do a lot of Strava KOM Hunting to accomplish this. There are some in my own neighborhood I need to avenge.
Today it was raining and as I mentioned above, time was of the essence so I maxed it out on Zwift. We're in Watopia so I decided to climb Watopia itself, back side then front side. This was my effort to do a Threshold day, which is usually in the form of 3x15 or 2x20 or something like that. My reps:
* 27 minutes up the shorter/steeper back side. Set my PR by almost 2 minutes
* 32 minutes up the longer front side. Missed the PR by 23 seconds
* In all, 59 minutes of what I would consider threshold work. Strava says 40 minutes of this was in L3/Tempo and most of the rest was L2/Endurance. But that's HR-based and it says the low end of my L4 is 175, which is probably a tad on the high side.
* Anyway, legs felt surprisingly good after yesterday. 90 minutes total today
Tomorrow I have no idea right now. Yesterday and today were orange, so red is out, which means no race this week for sure. In a classic training approach this would be a tempo ride for as long as I can spare. We'll see what the day brings. In order to have a good weekend I need to tie up as much of the Delaware work as I can. So this may exclude a long tempo ride. I may dip into a 3rd straight orange (reminder: orange = hard workout, red = race) but not go too deep. I don't think we are riding Friday but I guess you never know.