there was a song

in my head when I woke up. But man i can't remember it now. woke up and headed out fo a short little run. the bit of trails with the dog yesterday had me thinking about trail running and XC. Last time I was really running cross country was high school. I was super skinny (Keith Kelly skinny) and it was fun. Except my knees weren't liking it and people just kept giving me heavier and "more supportive" shoes to run in (counter productive IMHO in hind sight) and I sold my Mistral Sailboard and bought a '88 Raleigh chill and started riding for training, and I got faster. Never super fast. Fast enough to make varsity my senior year (nerd school, lots of fast runners).

SO this morning i grabbed the idiot device/iPod and cued up the song before Trees on Chronicles and started running. It takes about 90 seconds of running to get to the first bit of trail I can get on, and it was pretty cool. Not so bad, and then Trees came on, and yeah I'm an old dude who likes certain old bands, and the vibes flowed through and I picked up the pace. And elevated it a bit more. Flying around the corners, HR finally high and at a good threshold (not 'threshold' but... nevermind). It felt AWESOME.

I was striding out and it felt great. Timed it out and I got about 15 minutes of trail running and i ended with a nice 5 minute cillax walk to head back.

Then of course it was load up the tandem and power into the city. We talked about different bits, the wind, the flags I use to tell the direction of the wind, we saw egrets, swans, and other birds. We stopped along the wash bridge to check out a swan pair and a pair of immature swans. Absolutely fabulous ride in.

But man. Hauling that thing up hill is not really all that easy, esp w/o much stoker help. But at least we aren't dragging the trailer this time.

My hamstrings were pretty tight again but not nearly as bad as yesterday. They are slowly coming around, tired though. Not sure if I take the morning off and make a big batch of pancakes or go out for the "planned" run in the morning. We'll see. I passed on the smack down tonight. My wife really wanted to ride in today, and I couldn't honestly tell her that I wanted to ride the smack down more than she wanted to commute on the bike, so i happily conceded to not ride with the team. It isn't on my coaches's plan. Oh and btw my coach is an idiot. Anyone who goes on a 73 mile ride with ONE f'n waterbottle is an idiot. Or who eats lunch at 11:30 and then nothing until he heads out on a 35-40 mile smack down ride at 5pm. Total idiot. Something else. Oh yeah.

It took me until this week to realize that I might not always have time to eat breakfast in the morning but instead of skipping it or going out to grab a breakfast burrito once I got in that I could make a breakfast sandwich at home and take it to work and eat it there. Yeah. My coach might be brilliant but he's still a f'n idiot. That and there is some truth to what Dr Flat's A lot said. Been thinking about that too.

Anyway.

Ordered bits for the wagon. Got a slightly stronger clutch than stock so I can put the injectors I have laying around in there and swap out the ECU for one that is stage 2 chipped... if i'm going to be the only one driving this, well, might as well jack the crap out of the power, new clutch, head gasket, front suspension... esp if it is just me driving. Although - with luck (crossing fingers and toes) i'll be bringing my oldest to the races with me so it will at least have to get us there and back. We'll see though. Sounds like i might have a few longer trips solo before i have a passenger.... we'll see what happens though.

time to make some food...

heddwch
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