Tour de Sandston?

Saturday morning I met up with the TnT group.  We were leaving from the Food Lion shopping center in Varina for a nice 31 mile ride.  This ride is always a nice ride.  It is full of rolling farmland, airplanes and other various surprises often found along the way.  We started with a somewhat large group of 16 riders.

The way it turned out Susan Ann and I got separated from the group as we helped a newer member of the Team out.  We decided it would be best if we short cut the route in order to get back in front of them.  We would then ride the route backwards until we ran into them.  We would then jump back in.  Well that plan didn't go so well because the group missed a turn and short cut the route themselves.  Oops!

We eventually met back up about the 15 mile mark. While we were sitting at an intersection a young man drove by and rolled down his window to yell "Tour de Sandston, Wooooo!"  It actually made me laugh a bit.  Usually it is something along the lines of "get off the road" or a clever line questioning my sexuality. From there we finished up the ride together.  It seemed everyone had a good time and nobody mentioned getting sick from all of the surprise scenery.  At least no one mentioned it. Then again I was mostly likely the only one keeping track.  Sorry no photos this go around but for those of you who are curious the count was:

• 1 Turkey buzzard
• 2 Somewhat new Deer
• 1 Deer skeleton
• 1 Raccon

Tasting vomit

Wednesday and Thursday were a bit strange for me.  Wednesday, I had planned on getting some stuff done around the house and even find some time to ride outside.  Mother Nature being the big B that she is, threw a wrench into that plan with a day full of rain then sleet then snow back to sleet and then finally back to rain.  It didn't really matter anyhow because I was having a terrible time even staying awake.  A simple walk to the fridge seemed to really tax my energy stores.

Fearing I may be catching something I wanted to make sure I was well hydrated and started looking for some juice to drink.  We didn't have anything so I turned to the next best thing, Powerbar Endurance mix.  The rest of the day went like this; eat something, drink something, sleep, wake-up, pee, repeat.  All day long it was all I could do.  Thankfully, Thursday went a lot different as I felt like I had some energy, still didn't ride but at least I wasn't completely lethargic.

A quick look at the weather forecast for Friday had me once again optimistic I would be able to get outside and not have to ride the rollers.  With the morning sleet/rain storm which came through uninvited, I decided it would be a good rainy day project to organize the office closet.  Jenn and I have a bag for every athletic discipline we participate in which allows us to keep everything we need in separate bags.  We can then just grab the appropriate bag and go.  Very little searching for any gear has to take place. 

The problem lies in when you have so many bags and so little space to put them in.  The closest in the office has been a pretty good team player with all of the additional responsibility we have asked of it over the years.  It started off with just office type stuff in it.  Then came one bag, two bags, more bags and more random stuff.  Recently the closet started protesting the decision to hold more than just office stuff.  He didn't sign up for it he says and like any disgruntled prisoner who felt he had nowhere else to turn he started to fight with biological warfare.  Instead of throwing feces it just started to vomit on us each time we opened the door.

Tired of tasting last night's dinner each time I wanted to don my ruby red slippers, I took the morning to gut the closet and restore some order.  While doing so, I went ahead and made it aware his responsibilities have changed and he will now solely be responsible for keeping all of our bags neat and organized.  He tried to negotiate by asking for a "no random crap" clause but seeing how you aren't supposed to negotiate with terrorists, I made no promises.

Keeping with the getting some sort of workout out in each day theme which I started a long time ago on Sunday morning, I decided to squeeze one in yesterday prior to going into the shop.  I didn't have a tremendous amount of time once the decision was made.  Just an hour to setup the bike, get changed and then ride. That would leave me about 20 minutes to shower and put together a lunch to take with me.

I remembered how nice of a workout I got in on Sunday morning with the newly downloaded video from Sufferfest and thought about putting it on again especially since I was home alone.  I could play with my revolver all I wanted and no one would carry right?  Then it dawned on me, I was sitting right in front of big double windows in the living room which all my peeping tom of neighbors could see into if they looked out their windows.

They would probably wouldn't understand all the benefits of getting one's self all sweated up just to wave their revolver around all willy nilly for 48 minutes.  Combine that with a constant pain stricken facial expression they would probably call the authorities thinking I was going to do something drastic.  So I looked for other options.

I ended up going with the beginning of a documentary I haven't seen in awhile.  A friend actually asked me if I had seen it before just the other day.  I offered to let her borrow it but not before I watched it one more time.  The workout consisted of 40 minutes of steady state tempo riding.  I focused on keeping my cadence the same and not shifting.  I felt good and inspired once the time was up.  Check out the trailer if you have some time its been out for awhile.

Knife to a Gun Fight

The month of January seems to be in a hurry to come and go this year.  With the goals I have for this year I really cannot afford to let any time go by without getting my workouts in.  There just simply is not enough time between now and the last weekend of April. 

In trying to make a change in my regimen, I had to stop making excuses not to be on the bike.  Yesterday, I was working all day long and the football championship games on after work which meant most likely I would not be motivated to get in a late night session.  I got up with enough time to get in an hour long ride. 

I have been getting tired of doing the same three Spinerval videos and I went looking for something different.  I have heard good things over on Jason's blog, The Soiled Chamois, about the videos available for purchase from thesufferfest.com.  I decided to give The Revolver a go.



It was 48 minutes of pure feel good pain.  The longer the video went on the harder it was to recover from some of the intervals.  I certainly felt as if I couldn't have gotten a harder workout into such as short session if I tried.  Once in the shower and my stomach tried to give back its contents I knew I had truly showed up to the gun fight with only a two inch knife.