Happy Thanksgiving . . . so whaddaya thankful for?

I'm thankful for Leonardo Da Vinci inventing the bicycle (I think he did) and for all the cyclists, mechanics, designers, etc. who make cycling such a great life sport.

So I'm in hold mode or plateau or whatever. Lost some weight but I'm having to relearn my body sensations for satiety and hunger. Oh, and I turn 43 in a week. I hate my birthday, just another reminder about getting older. Anyway, enough self pity.

Winter really hit this past weekend, after a major computer crash which has finally been resolved. Snow and more snow with sub-freezing temps. There is no desire to go out and ride since it is so miserable. But I can ride inside and am stretching.

40-50km in the mornings on the trainer and stretching seems to be my standard. Nothing else really new. I know I owe my loyal readers a longer post which I'm still working on. But enjoy the holiday and family.

Time and energy fly or get suck out of you

I can't believe a week has passed. I kept meaning to write but work has been chaos with really extra long days and stress. Although I stuck to the nutrition I lagged on exercise and sleep was a problem too later last week through the weekend. I think that sleep is the biggest killer to the active lifestyle. Unless you sleep you're too tired to perform and don't really have energy to exercise. Yeah, I know the saying that if you do it then exercise will GIVE you energy. But if you've only slept for 2-3 hours at a stretch and been interrupted the rest of the time and that has gone on for nearly a week it's pretty hard to convince yourself that riding 2 hours is going to help you.

But this is another week and the stress and workload has died down. I've slept pretty good the last two nights so tomorrow I'll get back to the trainer. Supposed to snow this coming weekend and get colder so indoors is still it for a while.

I got the saddle and I have to say that I never really appreciated the whole prostate cut out thing before. It looked painful but it really does reduce/eliminate pressure "there" for men and I imagine for women too.

So, overcome, adapt and move on again. The back still feels good and am working on neck stretches to keep that loose. Hopefully I'll have more posts this week and more exciting. Is anyone reading these beside me, Josh and Graeme? Let me know, I'm still interested in feedback as to strategies for overcoming obstacles.

Short but sweet today

Well, I dropped three pounds the past week. Pretty good but I can do better. Didn't get as many workouts in as I wanted but I really have the nutrition under control. My problem now is forcing myself to eat when I should to keep my strength up.

The ear problem cleared up with the muscle relaxants and I'm figuring out ways to deal with this new manifestation of my body's reaction to stress. The back is still doing really well and with the neck I'm focusing on not clinching my jaw, doing neck stretches and some balms I have that work really well to reduce swelling and muscular problems. So I learned something new and gained some new strategies.

Promise to write more this week. Last week was a bummer and my uncle's brother died on Friday but having been riddled with cancer it is for the best. Just hope my uncle doesn't get too down since he's now lost all his immediate family (parents, wife and now brother).

Oh and tomorrow is Veteran's Day. I try to go for a LONG ride on days like that so I don't have to think but I probably will anyway. Vet day and Memorial day are hard because I think about my friends I've lost and the experiences. But if you know a vet then thank them, many have been through worse than me so I shouldn't whine and I do try to be thankful. Anyway, you see where my mind goes . . . so I go riding and leave the mind at home! Plan is for at least 4 hours and may try for the Czech border again.

Feeling so freaking good!

When life gives you lemons . . . ok, life gave me a 5 year old who gets up at 4 am to come into our room. So, he's my alarm clock now. Much to his chagrin when he came in this morning, I got up went downstairs, made coffee and got on my trainer for 30 minutes. Did spin ups and high cadence (100rpm+) intervals then did Body Weight 1 on Cyclo-Core finishing with stretching. The 5 year old and my wife slept soundly but my 8 year old boy got up during my bike session and we did the circuit and stretch together. I need to get him a small exercise ball though, he keeps falling off the big one, which I think he enjoys doing! But I finished by 6 am and was really charged up!

Foggy day but not unpleasant although I'm going to be tired this afternoon. Will try to get to bed early and do another morning workout tomorrow. Those hindu squats are killers!

I feel like the stock market . . .

I ended up short of my goal for the month. 298 to 294 so only 4 pounds but this was a wild month of weight swings (298, 291 up to 301 at one point early last week) but I think I've stabilized. Lots of things happened good and bad in October, the weather, being sick, having to revise my training system/program. But 4 pounds is still 4 pounds I don't have to drag around. So I go into November with things worked out and with a goal weight of 284 which is 10 pounds. I'm not going to do cumulative and overreach by adding what I didn't do this month to next. One day and one month at a time and I'll get there but I want to get there healthy and flexible and happy.

What an amazing week, good and bad!

Well, the week didn't start too well. We hit daylight savings time here this past weekend so on Monday it was a nice light ride into work but it was pitch black and rainy by 5 when I left, even with lights it was a bit scary although the dark winding road I use was fairly surreal under those conditions. It just brought it crashing into my psyche that winter is here and I can't ride to work. So the week was spent getting my Tacx trainer updated with the Cyclo-core workouts. You have to hand jam them into the program. Very tedious but I got most in.

The clogged right ear went into the left ear and really was bothering me. Balance all screwed up. Finally took the plunge and went to a German doctor here in town. Turns out, according to him and totally unexpected to me, that a huge amount of neck tension was causing me Eustachian tubes to block. The doc prescribed a muscle relaxant so I started hitting that and putting tiger balm on the mucsles of my upper neck. Guess what!? It's worked! Of course a couple days fried out on happy pills meant no workouts but all in all I feel a lot better.

Oh, by the way, with continued stretching my back pain and knots have gotten better and it's not giving me a problem. Whatever you do . . . STRETCH!

I was feeling so good that this afternoon I got a wild hair and decided to load up the real life video of the Tour of Flanders for 83.5 km of torture on the trainer! I think I did too much, 4:17 and I'm wasted but I did it! OK, not fast and I took a couple breaks to stretch but I did it. Maybe it's that I'm feeling better or maybe I needed to burn some stress (since I hadn't ridden this week) partly since I found out this morning my uncles brother is dying of cancer in about everywhere you can have it. They opened him up to take some out but after seeing the extent they just closed him up. We figure he's got a few days to a week. I'm sad but there's nothing I can do, a terrible helpless feeling. I can't be much support for my uncle either. Sort of useless.

The hands are sore and shaky for holding the bars for nearly 5 hours. There's a lot of vibration that rumbles through the frame so it's pretty hard on the body. Time to get the kids to sleep and then I get to do Graeme's Cyclo-Zen stretch before bed!

Ciao!