Health

Now I know a bit of what the REI dividend will fund. I am in serious need of some pants that fit the new, somewhat lighter version of yours truly. I loaded up on some pants at the end of last summer thinking that would do me for a year or so (I hate shopping so I concentrate my buying in a few, short periods of intense activity). Gravity can take those pants down to my ankles if I remove my belt now that I dropped a few pounds this past fall/early winter. I, like Jared, will have to make room in the closet for skinny pants to reside alongside the fat pants.

I have asked The Wife what she would like from REI, as I prepare to spend the spoils of being the buyer for my workplace. She has her eye on the latest in cycling footwear, the Keen Commuter cycling sandals. I am a big fan of cycling in sandals, as I blogged about last year. The Wife got a pair of cheap sandals a few years back but never got into riding in them. One of her concerns was lack of protection for the toes, and she maintained that if Keen’s ever made a cycling sandal it would be perfect. I think a pair of those will definitely make it in the shopping basket. Still looking at what else we might want or need from REI, especially that one item that will make maximum use of our “20% off one item” discount.

Some might read that this new shopping list indicates which way I decided to go on the data collection device decision (say that fast three times in a row). Not so fast. At this point in time the Garmin Edge is still the front-runner, but I realized that REI was not the place to purchase said device. The full kit (head, cadence/speed sensor, HR strap, cables, mount, software) is $359 at REI and is not eligible for the “20% off one item” discount. Other vendors sell the same package for $250. Even if it is ‘funny money’ (dividend) it seems silly to pay that much extra for one item.

Saturday I decided to test the lungs, the legs, the mucous producing machinery by doing a brief jaunt into the Los Altos Hills area. The legs were OK, not great, but the lungs were straining to find room for some air in between the resevoirs of mucous that had filled over the past two weeks. Even though I was riding tempo I kept the speed moderated, in part a concession to the lungs, in part to make sure I had control as I fired off countless ’snot rockets’. By the time I got home the throat was agitated, leading to a few good coughing fits through the rest of the day. Hmmm, perhaps it was a bit too soon to climb back into the saddle.

Did I learn my lesson and throttle back? You must be kidding! Sunday I got up ready to put myself out there in Early Bird #3, having missed #1 and #2 due to the combination of weather and the now infamous cold. But I needed to warmup first, right? And what better way to warmup for a few circuits of the industrial park than to ride 19 miles to the event? Little did I know what was in store.

The first surprise was rain; about 2 miles from home I entered the precipitation zone, light but steady, enough to get me and the bike thoroughly covered in that black, oily road run-off. At about mile 4 I seriously considered turning around and going back for the car, but was I smart enough to take the wise choice? Noooooo! Surprise #2 was a drive train problem, finally traced to debris that had gotten thrown up into the rear cassette. As the problem started I considered turning back and getting the car, but still I was not smart enough to follow my intuition. Surprise #3 was flooding on the approach to the Dumbarton bridge and the entrance to the bike lane on the bridge. I had to ford through water 2-3″ deep to get started on my way to cross the bridge, and by this time it was too late to consider turning back for the car. If that was not enough, right after crossing the bridge I realized my rear tire was going flat. When it rains, it pours, as they say.

By some miracle I did make it to the Early Bird with a few minutes to spare. And to add to the fun the first 7 miles of the trip back was straight into a stiff headwind. Mucous production seemed to have increased, and keeping that in check while riding in the pack was loads of fun; I am sure some of the other riders were amused at the long strands that kept dripping off the nose. And all that fun and games tweaked the throat even more, leading to more and longer coughing spells through the afternoon and evening. I am so ready to get back to my normal, healthy self. But moderate? What’s that?

Lex Luthor is always devising ways to be near kryptonite so that he cannot be defeated or harmed by SuperMan, who is severely weakened in the presence of the substance. I feel as though someone has found a kryptonite analog that weakens me and has hidden some of it near someplace I frequent. I rarely get ill, and on the rare occasions I do the illness is mild and I recover in a day or so. The past three months have proven to be an exception to the norm, with two long bouts with severe colds,  and I am trying to figure out why. The latest version has  lingered for 12 days. Tough to get out and do any time on the bike when you keep coughing up huge chunks of matter. To date I have missed, besides my own self-motivated rides, the fundraising points race at Hellyer last Saturday and the first two Early Bird clinics/crits. I am really itching to get out and do something this weekend, and right now the signs are looking positive.

On one of the days home from work due to the disease I did venture onto the scale. I avoid the scale for the most part, too easy to get obsessive. But I had dropped 14 lb since I blogged that I wanted to trim down a bit before the coming racing season. If I go down much more I will be near the lightest I have been as an adult, excluding the pathological 120 lb I hit when fighting malaria. With the weight down it is time to get in some good power development work. Hope to see folks on the road starting tomorrow!

Dr. Brooke wrote recently of making her pilgrimage to Trader Joe’s to stock up on cartons of Luna Bars and other easy treats to fuel the fires while pedaling for hours. I am jealous; all she had to do was make a long trip to go shopping. I have a more onerous task; to find a food item that I can consume on long rides that does not taste like cardboard and does not produce copious quantities of extra gas on its way through.

Nutrition used to be easy on days where I planned long and/or hard rides. I would start with a big bowl of oatmeal with some fresh fruit (peaches are the favorite). I would fill my pockets with Clif Bars, and off I would go, hoping to get back to civilization by the time the energy from the bars was tapped. Then it happened. For years I had symptoms of a problem; one major symptom was physical, but there was a blood makeup issue, too. After lots of tests, I made the connection myself: the physical symptom reared its head on days I ate my oatmeal and bars! I cut oats out of my diet and rapidly the physical symptom and the blood makeup symptoms faded. I am allergic to oats!

Since I came to my realization I have been on the search for something I can eat in place of the ubiquitous oat-based bars. I tried PowerBars, and beyond the terrible taste and the fact they do not look like anything I would voluntarily put in my mouth there is the problem of the bloat they seem to cause. LaraBars are OK, but most of the flavors are uninspired and they tend to be slow to get sugar into the bloodstream. A number of newer bars are too heavily biased towards protein or to have a high fat content. I found a new brand, Greens Plus Bars, at Trader Joes a couple of weeks back. The ingredient list sounded like they had gone through the forest extracting from every plant in sight, and the bar tasted a bit like a good compost pile smells. Gels are, well, gels. So far my best choice seems to be to bake some banana bread or pumpkin bread and take slices of that with me. I did contact the Clif Bar folks a couple of years ago, and they were sympathetic but did not see a market for replacing oats with another grain for the few odd-balls like me who are oat sensitive. The quest continues.

Each Thursday I get an e-mail of the latest issue of Road Bike Rider, a weekly e-zine. While going through this week’s issue I found that I have been riding without proper equipment at times. In the cold weather I need to have PPP, ‘Personal Parts Protection’, so I do not suffer frostbite on my, ahem, member. Guess I will be digging into the drawer for an extra wool sock on those nippy mornings!

A nasty cold virus thing took a hold of my body last week and I spent a few days trying to fight it back and get back to health. Thursday I skipped the bike commute, Friday I worked from home. Saturday I went out shopping, then worked at home the rest of the day, skipping a ride for some time spent in the garage on the rollers.

By Sunday I was ready to get back on a bike. Fortunately we had made plans to meet Alicat and Merkeley Bike in Gilroy for some riding. The Wife had been tasked with developing a route, and she had decided on a couple of loops into the hills on opposite sides of the valley. Gilroy Hot Springs was the first loop, and the weather from town around the loop was perfect: clear, temperatures in the low 60’s Fahrenheit, moderate winds. The ride to the hills as mellow, punctuated with the smell of the pepper trees lining the roads. Only issue I had on that loop was trying to keep pace with Merkeley up the hill with only about a half a lung of respiratory capacity due to the effects of the virus. Amazingly, for a such a great morning we encountered only one other rider on that loop, a guy from Morgan Hill who was doing the loop counter-clockwise, like us, then going back around clockwise to get the double dose.

The second loop was across the valley and to the north, a trip around Chesbro and Uvas reservoirs, or more correctly the damned up areas that will be reservoirs when it finally rains. We had to do ride through a bunch of flat, semi-rural area to get to that loop, traversing a good chunk of Gilroy, San Martin, and part of Morgan Hill on the way. As we approached Chesbro reservoir the weather shifted, the skies became overcast, the temperatures dropped a tad, and the wind picked up a little. It felt as if it would or could rain at any moment, and indeed one section of Uvas Road seemed to have been under a recent little rain shower. With a number of golden-yellow trees, the weather, and some lingering wood smoke near some of the residences it was feeling very autumnal.

It was a great ride; nice scenery, pleasant weather, fantastic company. Only sour note was the tire slice flat Merkeley suffered in the last couple miles as we traversed Gilroy suburbia on our way back to the cars. We were glad that The Wife had selected a meeting point near a restaurant (was it really coincidence) so we could refuel before driving back north to home. Now I need to finish shaking this cold and get back out for more rides like that!

A few more photos from the ride are here.

The socializin’ over the weekend exposed me to some type or types of nasty microbes.  I am fighting them off, but that puts a crimp in my riding, playing, working, snuggling, … all sorts of things.  Sometimes I see value in being a recluse.

As I sit here avoiding social contact due to the nascent cold I have moved my blogroll off to blogrolling.com.  A bit of tweaking CSS, PHP, and other stuff to get it right.  My apologies if it looks a bit funky as I try to massage it into submission.

I am about to convert my commuter bike to a fixie, or fixie/SS.  The Wife is apparently not thrilled with this decision.  Me thinks her mental picture of fixie rider is the messenger types she dealt with when she lived in San Francisco.  I will convert, to get away from all the maintenance hassles, chain suck, etc. of the derailleured version of the bike, but need to be sensitive to her fears and assure/convince her that fixie !=  messenger and, more importantly, fixie != death.

Thursday is usually either city commission meeting night or yoga-then-taqueria-with-the-ladies night.   Think tonight will be yoga-at-home-then-under-a-warm-blanket night.  Time to crack into the extensive collection of yoga DVD’s.

I got roughly 4 hours of poor quality sleep last night.  About the same the night before.  Less the night before that.   Probably been a week since I had a decent night of sleep.  Damn hay fever has kicked in, wakes me up in the middle of the night, then I am up fighting it for and hour or two or the rest of the night.  Current bouts have proven unfazed by the standard meds.  Dang, I need some sleep.