Sunny and hot. Went up and over Turner and Mountain roads, then had my first battle with Pete’s Mountain road. Hard. Steep. Plus I was running very low on water, and all the mega-mansions up there have gates. So no illicit tapping of the garden faucet for me.

Anyway, it was abou a five hour ride. Epic. Hilly. Hot. I’m still slightly sunburned on my arm. It’s a scar I’ll wear with pleasure.

Since then, I haven’t ridden much. But I have been swimming. That has been marvelous as well, if only because Portland has been in the middle of a Global Warming inspired heat wave. And our AC is dead.

If there’s one thing I need to work back into the rotation, it’s hitting the gym. My shoulders and back have been bothering me, and the cure is quite obvious.

But I have one more day of swimming ahead of me: tonight, I’m swimming up at Klineline Pond in Vancouver. My first open water swim in a while. With luck, it’ll be fun. Without any luck at all, it should be nice and cool!

As long as I make the time. What a great weekend.

Definitely will be adding a few minutes of core work to my morning routine, or I foresee a bad week of hobbling around.

Amanda and I have been swimming for the past two months or so. Maybe even a little more. It’s been great to swim, and while I can’t say I’ve lost any weight, it’s made me feel a little better about things.

I’ve also been doing the occasional trip to the gym. Mostly I’ve been doing that to keep my shoulders from being injured from all the swimming. It seems to’ve worked thus far.

Today, I got back on my bike for the first time in a while. I may try to commute by bike a few times in the next few weeks. We’ll see.

Three things have been going really poorly lately. My food choices are attrocious. I’ve been tossing and turning at night way more than in the past. And work’s been stressful. Possibly more stressful than normal. I’m going to try to get the food thing on track this week too — little changes mostly — and hope that the work thing works itself out.

As for the sleep problems? I don’t know what I can do. Probably my first step should be to cut waaaay the hell back on caffeine. I’ll start there today and see how it goes. Maybe I’ll try the doctor at the end of the month if things don’t sort themselves out.

Yeah. That should work out REALLY well. I’ll make three major lifestyle changes in one week. I feel EXTREMELY confident that they’ll all stick. Ha!

1. Yep, I registered for the Harvest Century last night. I’m in.

2. I didn’t know a few of the exercises, even after looking them up. Are they in the training videos on your site? Specifically the

• Medicine Ball Extension/Flexion
• Floor / Physioball T
• The Triangle
• Active standing Psoas Stretch

I think the reason I was so sore after the demo workout was because I didn’t get myself well warmed up. Since then, I’ve been doing a better warm-up and I have not been (very) sore from the exercises.

3. I am feeling OK. I had a great, long ride Saturday and follwed it up Sunday with… almost nothing. I let myself get so overcommtted to other things Sunday that I only got an hour in on the trainer last night. I am one of those unfortunate people who only seems to learn by making mistakes, so I guess I learned that I need to do a better job of scheduling myself and my social commitments.

4. Energy and recovery both seem to be doing OK. We’ll see how this week goes leading up to the Century. I felt AMAZING on Saturday, but if you look at the workouts I did last week, it was likely because I didn’t do any hard efforts other than off-the-bike work.

5. Diet. Ugh. I have been eating OK, but not really keeping track. Too many bad lunches, though. Most breakfasts and dinners are fairly healthy, if the portions are maybe out of whack. I’ll try to start tracking that better this week, again.

-Thom

The “Meet the Team” rides start mostly downtown. But none of the regular team rides start remotely near our house in deep SE. And with just one car, I can’t monopolize it on the weekends to drive to Hillsboro or Beavertron or whereever. And unless I want to add 20 miles to every group ride I go on (I don’t), I’m out of luck.

A while back, I shot an email to the OBRA list. I got one semi-legit reply, which was for a vegan, organic triathlon team. Which is somewhat ironic because I’ve been considering getting back into the pool and focusing on triathlon to help strip off some upper-body weight.

Finding a team in cycling has been one of the most frustrating aspects of the sport. In swimming, which is my native sport, teams fall all over themselves to make new swimmers welcome. They encourage them to come out, try to be social, organize car pools, the whole shebang.

In cycling, the indifference to new members is shocking to me. You ask, and you get shrugs. You volunteer, and you get blown-off.

I had one outstanding experience when I first started with Veloshop, in that the Calver brothers (now with GSC United way the hell out in Beaverton) were some of the most welcoming, nice, encouraging people I’d ever met. They have a passion for the sport that completely infects new riders. But then, a few months later, the damn team kicked them off. I couldn’t even tell you why, because it was so bizarre.

Anyway, Mike off-handedly mentioned that he might put together a CycleOne kit to promote his cycling coach biz around the Portland area. I told him I’d wear it. And though it might not be a “team” in the strictest sense, I would certainly use it as an excuse to organize rides out here in SE.

Ultimately, I came to some (hopefully) healthy resolutions about work. With at least a plan, it should make work-life more stable, or at least easier to not get whipped around and knocked off the bike.

One thing that gives me confidence is that I have a good cycling coach. I know that he is pulling for me, and that he will help me find a way to use cycling as a positive force in my life.

I sent him a whiny email, and he said replied along the lines of “Don’t beat yourself up. Get out there when you can and enjoy every pedal stroke and breath of fresh air.”

Great guy, that Mike Manning.

Sent from my iPhone

Up and over Terwilliger, down through Lake O and West Linn, across the
OC bridge, then back on the east side on river road.

Sent from my iPhone

I love my little two butte ride. Just about 90 minutes (usually less) and I get maybe 25 minutes of climbing. Head north along 52nd, then go up and over Tabor, then head down Yamhill to 75th, which takes you to Tillamook. From there, you’re pretty much at the foot of Rocky Butte. Get to the top, circle the castle, then do it backwards.

Oh, the photo was of Doug Ollerenshaw of Rock Racing during the Mt. Tabor Crit stage of the Mt. Hood Cycling Classic. Cool, huh? He had one really bad-ass attack where he was storming across the gap at the top of the course, and I just got lucky with the camera. Bon voyage, Doug! Congrats on heading back to school!

Paul and I met up Thursday after work, and went up Lovejoy to Thompson to Skyline. I remember it from my fitter days as a long hill: painful but not too awful. My God, I used to climb that thing with an 11-23 straight block cassette. Yesterday, I climbed it with a 12-27 cassette — a frickin’ frisbee back there, a damn granny gear — and I still had to ice my back and knees when I got home.

On the other hand, I can still suffer with the best of them. I climbed pretty much the whole way, other than that flat section before you get to Thompson, with my heart rate around 181.

I wonder if that’s even healthy?

And that long, straight, heart-breaking stretch at the top of Thompson? The one where it gets impossibly steeper? Where a sign says, “Stop in 500 feet” and you think to yourself, “there’s no way they didn’t measure this wrong”? The part where you can see all the way up to the top and it just NEVER SEEMS TO GET ANY SHORTER?

Yeah, I was at like 186 for that whole thing. I can’t believe I didn’t throw up.

I’m hoping for a long, flat ride this weekend. Just maybe do the Oregon City ride. Though I need to take the bike over to Bike Gallery to get it tuned. I think the new Fat-Ass Cassette is making the old chain a little cranky and creaky.