It may be a little bit obtuse (okay, maybe endlessly obtuse) but most of the time when I do a post title it references some at least quasi-recognizable piece of literature. In this case it is sung to the tune of "All The Pretty Horses," a book which I have not read.
There is an evil consortium of diet book publishers and cycling coaches behind the cyclical shifts of fad diets and fad training programs. It predates and far exceeds the reach of the infamous "Pentaverate." Colonel Sanders tried many times to infiltrate this consortium, but endorsing mass-scale fried chicken, mashed potato and gravy-based gluttony was a credibility stretch even for the diet/coach alliance, so he was always shunned. 7 herbs and spices be damned.
So the consortium had a pretty good run on the time-compressed training schedules, and sold a whole lot of books and coaching plans. Chuck Norris, Chris Carmichael, and the "YOU CAN DO IT" troll with the pony tail made a fortune on this swing. Jake "Body By Jake" Steinfeld suffered a long fallow period, the start of which roughly coincided with his star turn in "Coming To America." But a new day is dawning for Jake, as the pendulum reaches the inevitable end of its arc and begins its swing back.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. It's time for training to be brutal, long and intrusive. Senselessly long, hard rides (even on the trainer) all winter long, slogging it out with no regard for mental state or physical frailty. None of this "20 minutes 3 times a week crap," we're talking 6 days a week, 2 hours a day on weekdays and at least 4 a day on the weekends. Otherwise it's just not worth it, you aren't getting anywhere.
In all seriousness (or at least as much as I can muster), it's the time of the year when everyone pays his money and makes his choice on which training philosophy to go on. In the grand scheme, I'm fortunate to have enough time to train as long as I'm smart about it. No kids yet, and I'm fortunate in many ways with my spouse. First, she's of an athletic inclination so she suffers me this bike racing thing. Second, she actually enjoys riding bikes. It isn't often we get to ride together, but a cycling spouse is more amenable for your own cycling than a non-cycling spouse, of that I'm quite sure. So while I have this time and opportunity in the continuum, I'm going to use it.
The schedule roughly works out to Monday light spin, Tuesday short-ish intense-ish intervals for about 90 minutes on the trainer, Wednesday long-ish threshold-ish intervals for about 90 minutes on the trainer, Thursday off, Friday see Wednesday, Saturday try to beat living hell out of myself for several hours assuming no work but if work see also Wednesday, Sunday either a team ride or a cruise with friends or something. It's generally of the 10 to 12 hours a week variety, which is in the "a lot" bracket but it's not a ton. I don't thrive on shorter efforts. Last fall when I had a really weird but generally very mellow work schedule I would just go for these long ass mountain bike rides and I got in whiz bang shape. Unfortunately I paid for that with a suck work schedule all spring so I was better earlier than I was later.
I'm getting to a spot in work where our clients want me to run their interiors and amenity spaces, which is cool. One because my stuff is always the feature of the places and where the money gets spent so I get to do the coolest work. Two because I pretty much work exclusively inside. Big machines and all that shit is cool but I don't prefer it. The one buzz kill is that my stuff generally happens late in the project, and is necessito for selling the project, so it's always under a lot of scrutiny and schedule pressure. I can take that for the time being. Once I get done with this gym (and we put the paint on the walls today - my selections because they don't seem to want to make with the selections - design by default) I go off to spend 8 months building the marketing brochure for this big property, and then do the next few phases. Ought to be okay. I bitch a lot about work, but it's okay. Not ideal. What is?
Being able to hook people up with great bike stuff for great deals is a wonderful thing. Some of the deals that get thrown your way as the agent of hooking people up with great bike stuff? Oh my God. You have to be disciplined and it isn't every day, but we just got a deal from one of our suppliers on a "for personal use only" thing and wow. I'm like the movie vamp who gets all dressed to the nines and when some dude comments she's like "oh, this old thing?" Except for me, it's kind of true. The hard goods are all either what we sell and why would I ride anything else, or prototypes that we're putting mileage on. I was actually told quite forcefully by my partner in crime that I was not ever again to roll out on any janky ass cobbled together hooptie rides that got built out of my toolbox. Gotta be fresh.
Off to our board meeting. I think we have the best board meetings of perhaps any company ever.
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