Friday 26 October 2007

The Boring Season

My official Joe Friel plan organized training schedule begins November 5, or the second day of Eastern Standard Time. Just so I know that it’s the dregs of the season when I start. In preparation, I am doing no weekday training of any sort until I start but weekend club rides will continue. One day in to this forced layoff, it’s pretty obvious how damn boring this period is going to be. I guess the cars are going to get really clean or something, because there isn’t too much else to do. I generally get home any time between 4:30 on a good day (sometimes 4 on a great day) and 6:30. The FPG gets home around 9 most of the time. It’s a screwed up schedule we’ve got; I leave the house at 5:45am, she gets home at 9. Maybe in a couple of years I will move back into the office and have a more normal schedule, but being in the field is way more fun despite the heinous waking up time. Anyhow, there aren’t really any lingering projects to fill up the couple of hours every night that I would otherwise spend working out. Maybe I’ll read more. I’ve already dealt with all of the investment stuff and that’s more of an ongoing thing anyhow. Perhaps some movies, or dusting off the PlayStation and crushing the tour at Tiger Woods golf.

Last night I wired up the Powertap to use it in cycle computer mode while the hub gets sent back for repair. I think this violates the spirit of the layoff. Speaking of the Powertap, it’s a pretty good customer service deal they’ve got. I bought the thing on eBay and had to replace the hub batteries right away. The pickup was really finicky about placement and everything, so I start screwing around with it and finally wound up breaking off one of the battery contact ears inside the hub. I’m a dumbass, what can I say? Anyhow, you send the hub back to them and they charge you $175 to replace the entire electronics section of your hub. Call me a sucker, but I wind up with a functionally brand new Powertap for a couple hundo less than I would have done buying it new. I also got a 28 spoke DT Swiss rim, which I prefer to the 32 hole Open Pro that most pre-built Powertaps come with. All those snazzy deep dish carbon rims are available in 28 hole drilling, so if I want to relace to one of those things, I can. Definitely not before moving up at least one category and shifting my focus to Masters racing. That’s my plan – to move up to Cat 3 and shift to doing more Masters races. Our Cat 4 team has a lot of team goals this year and I’m really involved with them, so my thought is to ride with them all season, hopefully qualify for my upgrade before too long, and spend the last part of the season helping my teammates accomplish their goals and start making my way into the Masters races. It's become really easy for me to understand that this whole tomfoolery is nothing other than a healthy competitive outlet and a good framework to stay in great shape. The Masters group seems to jive more with that, as opposed to the would be pros who aren't so focused on the critically important race that happens on Monday morning, when you go to work and fulfill a bunch of way more important obligations to your family, spouse, coworkers, clients, etc. As fun as the weekend races are...

Following my layoff, I’ve got to find some cross training stuff to do for a couple of weeks. Ideally, this would encompass playing squash 5 nights a week. Unfortunately, squash is too expensive to do other than as your primary thing. It winds up being a couple grand a year, which is too much for something that I’m going to basically ignore once cycling season ramps up. Running is cheap and easy to do, and I guess my longer workouts will be runs, but the first phase of running really sucks. I’ve been a fast enough runner that being anything other than fast sucks, and right now I am untrained enough to definitely be something other than fast. For shorter workouts, there’s the rowing machine and elliptical thing in the condo gym, but it’s tough to put together more than about 45 minutes on them before dying of boredom. The goal is to build strength and be aerobically active from the first week in November through Christmas doing no riding other than doing weekend team rides. Also, I need to work on flexibility, so maybe I will try to get with the program on yoga a little bit. I swear if they would come up with that without all of the gong-banging and chanting and namaste crap, it would make it a lot easier to stomach. There’s no doubt it’s good for you and does awesome stuff for your body, the FPG is ample evidence of that. I just can’t stand the whole voodranasa crap. Anyhow, that ought to have me bouncing of the freaking walls just dying to ride by Base 2 period, when it’s time to start putting some real saddle time in.


The rain continues to make things go at a sub-hectic pace at work these days. We’ve got to baby sit the water management system and oversee the construction of the mockup hotel room. Since the mockup is being built about 4’ away from where I now sit, it’s not too taxing, and our dewatering setup is tight. I’ll spend most of the rest of the day organizing files and submittal records and then continuing drawing review and coordination. There’s only so much continuous time you can spend with drawings before you go batty.

Here’s a picture of the back side of the “historic” building on King Street, which houses my office. I think it looks pretty funny perched up there on top of the sheets. We monitor this sucker for movement a couple of times a day. So far, so good.

3 comments:

Kyle Jones said...

Is that building close to the metro stop as opposed to the water. Thats close to me. I am off prince a few blocks away. Btw running sucks.

Chuck Wagon said...

yeah, we're a block from the metro. two doors down from the hampton inn, between harvard and peyton.

i like what you've done to your site.

Kyle Jones said...

I know the front of the building does not look that bad, but the back looks horrible. Thanks.