Internal Mono(b)log

Yesterday my ebay win for a set of bullhorn and aerobars arrived at the house. Super excited it was all I could do to finish my work day before running off to tinker with my bike. A few well placed phone calls had located a great deal on some bar-end shifters for the aerobars, amazingly, at a little bike shop just around the corner from my house called HoopDriver.

Immediately after I was done work I walked a dog up to the store, grabbed some handlebar tape, the bar-end shifters and some handlebar shims (the bullhorns are 26mm, but my stem is a 30.5mm), and zipped home to install. I’ve done basic bike maintenance before, but never anything like removing Shimano Tiagra brifters and recabling deraileurs. With a little advice from my friend Paul, it went swimmingly and in seemingly no time my bike was refit with new bars, break levers, and bar-end shifters on the aerobars. Super exciting! I didn’t bother with the bar tape yet, but will probably do that tonight. Not really so important as I wanted this configuration for spinning in the trainer and don’t want to be on my hands but rather down on the aerobars building stamina and tweaking bike fit in that position.

This morning I took the new setup for a 75 minute test spin. My coach had only planned for a 60 minute zone 2 spin for me, but the aero setup felt so good that I was happy to sit in it and finish watching 2006 Ironman Kona for the extra 15 minutes. With luck, I still hope to be picked as RacerMate‘s Desperate Athlete and win a computrainer and year’s training program, but for now, I make do with a borrowed Cyclops liquid trainer and old tv shows. Hey! It passes the time and does the job, right? 🙂

Thursdays are brick days, cycle for a while, then run to work. Running today, in the -12C and snow from the last 36 hours was challenging. I ran in my cycling rain pants, pulled out my yaktrax, and replaced my new orthotics with my older ones. (My new orthotics have been wrecking my feet and, while I think they’re better now, my feet are still pretty destroyed and so letting them heal seemed like a good idea.) I also wore my neoprene face mask to start the run. Outside, waiting for my gps to sync up, I was cool, but far from cold, so I felt that I’d dressed appropriately for the weather.

It’s funny, I caught myself with an interesting thought form this morning. While I was walking the dogs after by ride/before my run, as I was dressing to take them out, I found myself thinking: “Brr! Looks cold out there, guess I’ll judge how warm I need to dress for my run, while I walk the dogs.” and then I caught myself and laughed a bit. I think many would go outside to see if it’s too cold to run, I just wanted to know how warm to dress. Awesome! 😉

Perceived level of effort (confirmed with my HRM) this morning was significantly higher than normal. I was trying to keep mid zone 3 for the 5.7k long route to work and was generally successful I think. My legs felt like lead the whole way in, but having just watched Kona, and seeing blind athletes and dual leg amputees complete an IM, I wasn’t about to let 5.7k and some snow shut me down! I’m sure that part of my lead feet was the extra weight of the yaktrax and the snow/ice bound up in them, but such is life. We’ll just call this hyper-gravity running 🙂 Some use ankle weights, I come by it more… naturally 🙂

Which brings me to “Annoying Pedestrians”: ok folks, I know it snowed and that there’s snow and slush on the sidewalks, but nowhere on my entire run in, was the sidewalk only cleared 1-person wide. Yet, frequently I found myself having to dodge around people, (or later in the run yell at them to move aside) because they were shuffling zombie-like down the middle of the cleared path. Is it so hard to share?! Come on! Really?! Sheesh!

Something great from the Kona show this morning. 1st 2 letters of IMpossible are “I” “M”: IronMan. Impossible? Ironman: Possible! Love it!

Ok… done ranting and raving now. Coffee time. Y’all have a good day. I’m pretty pumped for a good one myself. Tonight, a 8k run home. Booya!