michigan headwinds

Well, I wonder, do the rest of the New England commuters have to deal with the same steady Mid-west like headwinds on their way to work?

That and Kelly said this morning that our normal low for this time of year is around 30°F but today it was 24°F in the morning, close enough. Oh yeah? Close enough? Not with a 15 mph steady headwind it isn't close. Sure might be close if all you have to do is walk from your house to your car then from your car to you office. But spending time out there esp with the sun, the air temp difference seems significant.

It was cold, the headwind sucked but I felt okay. Just a mellow ride in. But the two days off the bike were good. Doing the controlled burn at the farm on sunday was a hell of a lot of raking but it was fun, even though I think i can still smell the odor of burning dry grass and weeds. it has been a while since I've done a controlled burn, fun stuff. One sketchy moment where the fire jumped from one plot to the next (we had a wind shift) and then a bit of frustration as the ground level fuel ran out and left a good big of the taller stuff standing. But the really dense matted grassy areas burned clean, hot and fast, just what was needed to keep the tiller blades on the tractor from gumming up.

Not inactive days but off the bike days. I suppose I should formalize the plan in my head on paper leading up to the ToB. But I've got it mostly sort of cemented into a feeling. I should, I suppose, be able to spout off exactly what the plan is, well work my ass off with a combination of long hilly rides and short punchy super steep hill intervals. I was contemplating adding a few elements in but 'focus on weakness' somehow is ringing true lately. But now I've gotten way to specific about training plans than I intended. The one hard rule I'm trying to stick with, is rest, stay rested, don't over extend myself. Two weekends on, one weekend off seems to actually be working pretty well when added on top of the commute.

Enough of that nonsensical ramblings. Yeah I'm going to do the KOB, but this year, heck I'll be lucky to get much more than one or two rides on the Adroit, no taking away focus from something else, the KoB is going to be a fun ass ride. Probably will have to run the nasty rock sections 'cause i'm a crappy bike handler, but hey, what can I say.

I started reading the second book Skinny white dude (and man is he skinny - serious case of chicken legs) loaned me, North Wind in Your Spokes. I've only just started reading it, pretty interest catching way the book opens. It is one of those that I have to force myself to stop reading. I like those kind of books. If i find myself putting the book down after a chapter's finished content with closing it then I often won't make it all the way through the book. Growing up I would get a book and start reading it and I'd keep reading until it was finished or until I was so tired that I thought I'd better get at least a few hours of sleep. One book, an awesome book, i read in one night. All 300-400 pages of it (I don't remember my edition being 400 pages long though - i think the pages were bigger than they are in the paperback). My mother was furious, but she also admitted to guessing that would happen. Few Books have been like that in the past. A couple here and there but none so memorable as the Dana book. Just take a moment to re-read the first page over there at Amazon and I'm not surprised that i started with that page and kept going until the very last one.

I like this graffiti that gwadzilla posted. Very funny and true.

And of course there is the snake hawk post of the week. I laughed out loud. Then I remembered one thought on the ride this morning. In his peak I defended Lance against skeptics and those who'd call him a cheater, or suggest that with everyone else getting caught how could he not. I would rattle off LA's resting heart rate, his lung capacity, his insane natural VO2 Max, the fact that he was dominant from the first day, and that getting cancer was a chance to recharge and rebuild his hulking mesomorph frame into one more resembling a ectomorph. For some reason that came to me this morning riding in. It seemed logical to me that his achievements made sense. But, the one thing always in the back of my mind was his phrasing at Press Conferences. "I have never tested positive" or some other slippery lawyer lingo. He never came out and said I have never used any performance enhancing methods/drugs/substances/practices. When it seemed like every one of Ferrari's other clients were getting busted for doping LA was clean. That and his book freaking sucked to read. Hell i read it in an afternoon standing at the shop hanging out one day (not working, just happened to come in it was probably brian's copy or something and I just read the whole damn book). Man did that book blow. Seemed like a 1st grade reading level full of fluff. Not impressive at all, on written level. No meat and potatoes. Light and as superfluous as you can be talking about coming back from cancer. Finishing Kimmage's book made me start making the comparison between books. Not that there is much to compare, Kimmage is, without a doubt, a talented writer. Even back then having just hopped off the bike for good. Lance is without a doubt a talented cyclist, dope or no dope. I should lay off, it don't do any good. Besides it is march madness. Who wants to think about LA when douche has a decently distracting bracket going on.

Oh and one random thought i just remembered from the ride in. Smoothly powering up over a rise off the bridge and I wondered if cars (people in them) could tell a difference between an average cyclist and someone who's well trained. I decided, probably not.

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