New Year Revolution

OK, maybe not a revelation or a resolution but a "revolution" an overthrowing of the old, a reversal. December has been miserable. With snow, sickness, family, holidays, work and little time or physical capacity to ride or train. I've held my own on nutrition through this period, not gained or lost but now that it's over except New Year's Day, I can get back moving again. So January MUST be better than December.

The sun is out this week in Germany, but it's -6 C with a windchill of -15 which is about 21 degrees. I figure if I go ride 25kmh the windchill is 8 F. Ouch! But it's SUNNY, honest sunshine. I can feel the vitamin D just by looking outside at the sun as I sit at my desk.

The new year ride looks like it'll be outside and the weather should be clear but in the low 20s. I think it'll be slow but I'm just going to ride and enjoy it.

I mentioned the holidays being tiring? After days of literally bouncing around from excitement about Christmas for a couple days, we got the boys in bed by 10pm and put the presents out. We got to sleep around 10:30 pm. My youngest son, who just turned 6 on this past Sunday, came running down the hall at 1:40 AM (yes, that's right 0140 or as we in the military say "oh dark thirty" or in this case "holy %#$@ it's early) on Christmas morning after having peeked into the living room and it was all over at that point. No going back to bed, so we got ourselves and our 8 year old son up, made coffee and within 30 minutes they tore through the presents. There was no tracking who gave what to whom. Imagine a feeding frenzy of piranhas and during the middle of it trying to get them to chew their food and stop eating with their mouth full. Not gonna happen!

They didn't get a nap or rest at all and it took us a good two nights to recover. I've discovered that when you have a bad night sleep you need at least two good nights to get recovered. Sleep is SO important!

What am I going to do on New Years? Well ride either in or out and pull together a training schedule for January and then update my blog on the 2nd after I register for Nove Colli in Italy. I'm not sure where the 100 miles came from, I think we started doing that in Tucson with Ralph Phillips and his clocktower group back a few years ago but it's become a standard. I've had to do it inside on the trainer and that's harder than outside!! Almost as hard as the masochistic sessions on the rollers in a dark room . . . get your bike on the rollers, turn down the lights, no tv or music and just go . . . for two, three hours. That was training in the 1980s and I think into the 90s, don't know if anyone does that anymore. It really was hard!