Pushing and Perspective

"I am NOT soft." I found myself saying yesterday.

Ok, good hook, now, to make it sound somewhat less like a "This has never happened to me before honest!" moment . . .

"I am NOT weak." I found myself saying yesterday, as I sucked down a pint of fluid.

Not quite right, somehow . . .

"DAMN, I feel a lot worse than I think I ought to." I wiped the sweat off on a towel and untied my running shoes. 45 miles on the bike followed by 15 minutes running had really taken its toll.

Flip the sentences, and thats it.

45 miles on the bike followed by 15 minutes running had really taken its toll. "DAMN," I thought to myself, "I feel a lot worse than I think I ought to."

Long bike rides are like long runs, it turns out, except that you haven't been pounding your feet against the pavement for three hours, you've been pushing pedals. The ride+run (a "brick" in tri-parlance) really left me feeling knackered, and I was trying to convince myself that it wasn't that I was out of shape - which really doesn't make sense -- but rather that the whole POINT of doing that kind of workout was to stress my system, and put my body on notice that what was barely good enough last week was no longer going to cut it.

So, weekends are going to start sucking again, from a fatigue point of view. Otherwise, though, it was a loverly sunday -- I graded papers whilst M & J decorated Eggs, J and I cleaned up whilst M hid said eggs, and then I helped J with his science project, which was to determine whether eggs dropped inside a plastic, lidded cup would break more often if the cup also contained water, or not. As predicted, eggs dropped in cups with water broke a lot less often than eggs dropped in empty cups. And, we had scrambled eggs for dinner!

I got some new traction today on chapter three, looking back at some old film clips I had acquired when writing my master's thesis -- they weren't quite right for that project, but after spinning my wheels most of the week, I went back and looked them up again and lo! there's some stuff that works for this chapter. So, tomorrow, I'll dig into some hardcore movement analysis. Oh yeah, baby.

J has been fascinated with the muppet clip of Beaker performing "Ode to Joy" for some time now -- check it out on youtube. Hilarious, and as an added extra bonus, there is a version of the song in his piano book -- he read ahead, and taught himself to play it. Woot! Which brings me to the big purchase of the spring . . . We got a piano!

Yes, the University surplus warehouse had two pianos for sale, $200 cash and carry. M has wanted to own a piano since about five minutes after she didn't have regular access to one, and I've always thought it would be a good investment, but we didn't have the $1K that most used pianos were going for. So, this one is in tune, more or less, pretty beat up, and now in our garage. We have to organize six strong folk to get it into the house, since there are steps involved. Hopefully that will happen this week.

Off to North Carolina for a sprint Tri on Friday. (Sprint = shortest distance for race triathlons, .5 mi swim, 12 mi bike, 5K run.) First tri of the season! Not a high priority race, but a good chance to practice transition technique and see how the training for endurance translates to a shorter distance.

One last note -- got my body fat measurements done last week -- %12.5; ~140 lean / 20 fat mix. Looking to drop that to below 10 % by june, and get to 150 pounds.

I have pics of the Easter Eggstravaganza, will post them soon.