Quality Volume

The transition is at hand, that magical time when ownership and caretaking of what we've built slips from us to the owner. Those of you who live near Old Town might recognize this. Lots of little exterior stuff light lighting and signage got put out on King Street last week, so it's been changing dramatically. Despite the flood, there were so many good things that happened on this project, most important among them that my company made money on the deal and our team has been recognized for a good job. It's a big thing with me that people make money. If you go to work or have a business, the point of it is to make money. Yeah, it's great if you love it and all and have the passion, and there are a bunch of things without which you won't sustainably make money (honesty, integrity - the crap I usually rant about Wall Street and the government not having), but making money is a reliable indicator of things going right.

The short term reward for the above is a little more time with the below:


It would have been criminal to have just a perfect day perfectly aligned with the opportunity to enjoy it and not do something epic. The missus was visiting her parents for the weekend, so load up the team car I did and head my ass out to Skyline. Just up to Elk Hollow or whatever that place is named and back, but what a nice ride. Having only done Skyline once nearly two years ago, I forgot how long that first climb is. It's really long. Hogback Lookout (?) is the high spot at like 3660 feet, and that's about 15 miles I think from the Front Royal entrance. Then you bomb down to Elk Hollow and turn around into the face of about a 20 minute climb. It's about 2 hours interrupted only by about 5 minutes of screaming downhill. As I'm climbing along I'm having to adjust myself to the fact that this thing is as long as it is, and I settled in on this mantra of "quality volume." Completely sold myself on the idea that the hill was offering me quality volume of training and kept rolling.

This is the first time I've done a real climb with a power meter. The two other times I've done big climbs since I've owned a power meter, the power meter didn't work. Once because it was an epic rainstorm and it always died in epic rainstorms and the other time because it was in terminal death throes, possibly related to my propensity for repeating the first issue. Anyway, I felt like I was rolling well and it was cool to see that feeling objectively supported. If I can post 50 miles of rugged tough riding like that, we're in good shape for now.

Oh yeah, the other quality volume was Friday's C of O party. Between 20 of us we did a $1700 bar bill in 3 hours. 50 shots of Patron. There was a very good feeling of release from being at the point we are after a long and challenging project. And getting home on the Metro after was, for me, another long and challenging project. Wow. So work on Saturday did indeed really suck, but yesterday's ride was just ducky. Adaptation - it works.