Pedal Till Your Legs Fall Off

On Wednesday I had a Microsoft-induced disaster at work. Windows took a giant jump into the lake and left me without a working computer for the entire day. As a result, I got off work earlier than usual. Having been sick for about 3 weeks in a row and not having exercised much during that time, I was feeling a bit agitated. I needed a workout.

I have a race coming up in a few weeks. The 2012 Warrior Dash is just next month, and this month only has a few days left in it. I haven't run at all since my last race. That was quite some time ago. And having been sick between in addition to not exercising has sucked all the endurance out of me.

Gonna go for a run

So, having extra free time and being home before most of the heavy work traffic hit, I thought I'd go for a run. I put on my running clothes and pulled out my brand new running shoes, which I got courtesy of Fleet Feet and their video run monitoring system that helps choose the exact shoe for your particular running style. And I started to water up. I hadn't drank much water all day.

I had complained in the past about how this new area where I've been living for the past 6 months doesn't have any good hills. There is a road near my house with a few ups and downs, but nothing like the area I lived for the previous 3 1/2 years with it's long, steep mountainous climbs that would make my heart explode if I tried to run up it too fast. I grumbled about that to myself while putting my shoes on. Running in an area without hills just bores the crap out of me.

And then I saw my brand new, never-used bicycle helmet in the coat closet underneath the stairs. Hmm, bike helmet. I think I have some sport sunglasses. My legs are pretty wobbly for running after being sick for so long. Maybe I should take the bike out instead?

Gonna go for a ride

So I put my shiny new bicycle helmet on, grabbed my obnoxious red sport sunglasses, and went outside. I dragged my Bianchi road bike out of the shop where it was leaning against my antique Suzuki Duster 125. I briefly remembered for the 1000th time that I still need to find a welder to fix the kickstarter for my Suzuki so I can start it up and run it before the engine seizes up on me. I popped a cheap generic Kroger bottled water into the water bottle holder on the bike frame and started trying to slip my new running shoes into the toe clips. These shoes and these clips clearly were never intended to be used together. Still, I made them work.

The bottle of water fell over sideways as I stepped into the pedals and began moving down the driveway. When I sat down on the seat the bottle nearly fell out entirely. I reached down to straighten it up, swerving towards the grass as I did so and nearly wiping out. This never happened when I was a kid. I was the Evil Knievel of bikes when I was growing up. Today I nearly bust ass in my own driveway over a bottle of water.

As I finished straightening up my bottle of water I noticed that my tires seemed a little flat. I had given them a basic squeeze test before I got on and they seemed fine. Now that my big butt was on the seat, though, they seemed pretty flat. I was thinking about this when I reached the end of my driveway and nearly slammed into the back of my neighbors' new Toyota Sequoia. They had backed down their own driveway as I was swerving wildly down my own and we were now meeting in the middle. I couldn't blame myself for the near collision. Anyone could miss seeing a big black Toyota Sequoia SUV moving directly at them at low speed in broad daylight. I'm sure this happens all the time, right? Sure it does.

Hi neighbor!

Once I avoided the potentially fatal collision (for me) with my neighbor and got myself all straightened out and moving down the road, the sense that my tires were insufficiently inflated for my particular weight was even worse than it had been in my driveway. I could swear that every single pebble in the asphalt making up my street was hammering away at the rims, front and back, but especially the back. That's where most of me is.

I thought about turning around and going home again to pump them up a bit more, but as I had nearly died coming out of my own driveway the first time I was afraid to go back and give fate, or my neighbors, a second shot at me. I continued on.

Luckily for me, I live near the top of a hill, or slope rather. So the ride to the end of my street is easy even with under inflated tires. I was quickly going very fast. Why turn back for a tire pump? I was making good progress. After my street intersects with the next one, there is a short uphill climb and then its mostly flat for about a half mile. I pedaled past woods and two large dogs and some horses and then  took a right onto the long and winding road that has all those little hills that underwhelm me when I'm out jogging.

I remember when I was younger, I used to say that I am not a jogger, I am a runner. There is a difference. A runner is fast and competitive. A jogger is old and slow and wears headbands and iPods and carries a cell phone, maybe some keys, looks a bit awkward and sweats in all the wrong places. Well, I used to be a runner. Lately I'm more of a jogger. Any 5K time over 29:59 is officially a jog. I'm sorry, I don't care how hard I'm working to go faster, it's not real running if I can't finish the race in the 20s at most. Teens would be better, but I haven't run a 5K in a time beginning with a '1' for a very long time. 

The first real hill I hit on this road is probably the best of them all. But I was on the wrong side of it. It is a climb to reach the top, but it's the other side that's the real challenge. It's shorter and steeper and I use it to run sprints on when I'm trying to work on my speed and strength. Riding down that short, steep side on my bike made me a little nervous. I seemed to be really moving. I hunkered down and dropped my hands from the top of the handlebars to the lower 'rams horn' part. I don't know the official word for it. I think 'rams horn' communicates what I'm talking about so I'm going with that. Anyway, I was hauling ass. But even as I reached top speed I knew I wasn't going very fast relative to the speeds I used to ride as a kid on bikes with no gears and sometimes no brakes either. I stepped into it a bit and pedaled, trying to keep the speed up as long as I could. Half a mile more down the road is a series of hills with flat spots between them where you can catch your breath before hitting the bottom of the next hill, one building on top of the last, until finally you reach the top.

Fast as lightning on a downhill

At the bottom of this series of cascading hills I shifted to an easier gear and stepped into it. Halfway up the first hill my bike decided to shift itself. I didn't tell it to and I sure didn't want it to. The gear it shifted into was harder and I nearly fell over. I was huffing away and struggling to shift it back to the correct gear when the gear at the pedals snagged my shoestring and started trying to eat my brand new running shoe. I had to stop, mid-hill, snap my feet backwards out of the toe clips and jump off the bike, all without falling over as the steepness of the hill instantly stopped all forward progress as soon as I stopped pedaling.

A snake in the grass beside the road took off as my feet hit the ground. I tugged my shoestring out of the gear and stuffed as much of the shoestrings on both feet into the shoes as I could. Then I had to struggle to get back on the bike, into the toe clips, and moving forward as quickly as I could before the bike fell over, all while halfway up a steep hill.

Yeah, a steep hill.

On foot, running, er, jogging, these hills are nothing to me. I love running hills. I can't think of a better workout than sprinting up a steep hill as fast as you can. On a bike, an old bike with only 10 speeds total that jumps out of gear at random mid-hill, these hills were steep. It's all in your perspective. It all depends on what you're doing to get up that hill and how good you are at it. I can run this hill all day with no problem. But biking it, I was huffing.

This section of hills, I believe, is a cascade of three or maybe four connected hills built one upon the other, so that you climb them like giant stairs until you reach the very top. Halfway to the top I began to be aware that my legs were hitting something as I leaned into the pedals and pedaled for all I was worth. Something was in my way and banging against the tops of my thighs. It was my stomach.

Pregnant cyclist

Oh, for crying out loud, my own fat stomach was getting in the way of my legs! I could barely breath pedaling up this friggin' mountain and catching a knee to the stomach every pedal rotation wasn't making it any easier. It just seemed too ironic that my stomach was in my way pedaling the bike. This sort of thing never happened to me when I ran. Or did pretty much anything else. Ever.

I`ll bet Lance Armstrong never had this problem in his entire life.

Once me and my stomach finally reached the pinnacle of the mountain, as I was contemplating turning around, I became aware that I was steadily speeding up rolling down around the curve and further up the road. Visually it appeared to be a flat, straight stretch of road, followed by another sharp curve and then a steep downhill, but my bike's steady acceleration was saying that I was already on the other side of Mount Everest and heading down rapidly. I figured I was tired and would just ride it out. What harm could it do? I needed the rest anyway.

Down the other side was maybe 1/8th of a mile, possibly more. By the time I reached the bottom, which dipped sharply before immediately heading up another hill again, I was flying. I had hunkered down, gripping the lowest part of the handlebars, which I'm calling the rams horn whether you like it or not, bucko, and pressing myself down to avoid the wind as much as possible. I supposed I was making myself aerodynamic like a competitive cyclist, but I'll bet I looked more like a fat blue ball with a gay helmet and sunglasses on a bike with 2 flat tires creeping along the road at a modest speed to anyone who saw me.

My momentum carried me surprisingly far up the next hill before I had to start pedaling again. I pushed my way up to a large, brick gated driveway and decided to turn around and head back home again. I was already worn out.

Turning around I was faced with the long, deceptive hill that I had just allowed myself to coast down moments before. I built up as much speed as I could on the downhill I was currently on before reaching the bottom, waving to a blonde woman taking out her trash, and heading up the monster hill from hell. It was awesome when I was coasting down it, nice and long and gradual and so easy. Now it was just long and endless and I wondered if it would ever end so I could catch my breath and not pass out here with the snakes and random stray cats and dogs and my shoe-eating Italian bike.

After an eternity I reached the top, hyperventilating and likely turning blue from lack of oxygen. I was excited about the fact that I was now at the very top of the long progressive series of hills I had climbed already because it meant I had a lot of time to sit up straight on the bike and catch my breath without doing any pedaling while I coasted down and down and down until I finally reached the bottom where a long, flat straight hill-free stretch of road awaited me.

So in 2 seconds flat I was all the way down the series of hills and doing about 40 mph. I had been forced to press myself low to the handlebars to get out of the wind and avoid bullet-like bugs and the occasional bird trying to take my head off. 40 feels pretty fast on a bicycle with flat tires. I suppose if the tires had been properly inflated I could've gone even faster.

Seemed longer riding up

I took my sweet time pedaling down that 1/2 mile stretch of straight, flat road because I knew what was waiting for me at the other end - the killer mountain cliff that I once enjoyed running sprints up, but now dreaded the way a child dreads going to the dentist. I was all out of gas, but much too stubborn to simply get off the bike and walk it up that hill. And I knew it.

I hit the bottom of that hill with no speed at all. I just crawled up to it. An old man could walk faster than I was pedaling. And when I got to the bottom and started up it, I just pressed my gear levers as far down as I could until my pedals barely felt like they were doing anything with each rotation. I was in the easiest gear I could find without dropping my chain onto the street, which I have been known to do.  The slope of the hill began to increase rapidly. And my bike began to strain against it, as my pedaling grew more difficult, and my gears chose themselves seemingly at random, kicking the chain from one gear to the next, each one harder than the previous and inspiring me to curse to myself in my head. I would've cursed aloud, but I didn't have enough oxygen to spare. I thought about my shoestrings and how my bike had tried to eat them the last time I was working this hard to climb a hill. I became aware of my own sweat dripping onto my sunglasses right in front of my eyes, almost as if my eyeballs themselves were sweating from the tremendous effort. I wished I hadn't worn the dorky helmet because it felt as if it was squeezing my skull like a grape and it was hot. I needed all the air circulation I could get. I began to swerve a bit, left and right, not doing a very good job of holding a straight line.

A truck passed me. There was someone inside who looked back at the crazy blue man trying to pedal a bicycle up this impossible vertical cliffside. I saw them out of the corners of my vision, but I never once looked up. I don't believe in looking up while climbing a difficult hill. I think it is counter productive to look up. All you're doing is checking your progress to see how much further you have left to go. And invariably you feel disappointed. You feel as if you've gone a very long ways. You feel as if it should be over already. You are convinced that surely the top is a mere inches away. And so you look and discover to your dismay that you are barely halfway to the top. And that's when you tell yourself that it is OK to stop and walk.

It isn't OK. Don't look up. If you just keep plugging away you'll get to the top eventually. Looking up doesn't help get you there. Keeping your feet moving does. Your mind plays tricks on you when you're working that hard. You want it to be over so you fool yourself into believing that you've gone much further than you really have. Keep your eyes down.

I crept to the top of the hill. I was really heaving by the time I reached it. I was swerving and sweating and gasping and inhaling pollen and bugs and whatever amount of air my wide opened mouth could take in. My face was like a jet engine sucking air so hard that people would be in danger of getting sucked in if they stepped in front of me. I felt as if my lungs were going to burst. But I reached the top. I didn't stop and walk. My bike didn't eat my shoes. And my legs felt as if they were made out of freshly boiled spaghetti. They were just about useless.

I had one final downhill to coast down at this point. I needed every bit of it. I reached the bottom of the hill at good speed and when I needed to make a 90 degree left turn I did it without slowing down. I rolled for as far as I possibly could and then began pedaling. It was like trying to push a pedal with a rope. My legs had nothing left. I don't know how I made it home. That easy slope up my street to my house felt like another mountain climb. I eventually reached my driveway and slowly weaved up it to my house.

When I reached the end of my driveway and had to step off the bike I nearly fell down. My knees buckled and I almost dropped the bike on ground. It was all I could do to roll the bike back into the shop. I leaned on it pretty heavily. And once I got it back into the shop, I leaned it back up against the Suzuki and pumped up those damn tires.

Stomach Virus

So, my latest excuse for missing workouts right and left is that I have a virus. It's some sort of stomach virus and it has me tired all the time, running to the bathroom a lot and generally weak and shaky. I haven't been on my bike in awhile, haven't run in even longer, haven't lifted weights or even jumped a rope. I have done quite a few push-ups, at least, for whatever that's worth. Gotta give me credit for that much.

I know you are, but what am I?

So, there's a lot of heavy politics going on. I know it's important. I know this election is critical in determining the future of this country. But I'm so sick of it already. I'm not going to say that both sides are equally guilty of mudslinging because they're not, but the one side that seems to have nothing else to offer by mud is stooping to a new low. A certain politician currently in office just today accused the other entire political party of wanting to enslave all the black people. Seriously? This is a professional man who represents our country to foreign lands and he's slinging crap like that around with a straight face? Where do they dig up these people?

OK, though about that.

I've been looking into what all is involved in self-publishing. I have a friend who is writing like mad and in the past 2 years or so has put out over 10 books, all selling very well. Meanwhile, I have had people pushing me to write for a long time. I never knew a good option for how I could write and get published so I didn't take it seriously. I had submitted articles to newspapers in years past only to get rejected every single time, so I'd blown it off. Now I'm thinking maybe I could make this a reality. If I could ever find a minute of free time to write, that is.

Supercar?

I'm currently in a rather unhappy situation. I decided that in order to make this situation more bearable I'd buy myself a car. I started off looking at 2 reasonably priced models. And I quickly moved my attentions to their higher end big brothers, one of which comes from the factory with a supercharger under the hood. I don't know if driving a supercharged musclecar each day can make up for the empty places in my life, but I'm thinking it can't hurt.

I've been looking into road cycles, trying to see what a decent up-to-date model would cost. Looks like what I'm riding was a very ordinary road cycle when it was new and would cost about $1500 today for a brand new model of the same bike. It's an Italian bike, from the oldest bicycle manufacturer in the world. I had another one, a Mercier, that looks to be similar in value. I gave it to a cyclist friend who liked to fix up old racing cycles and ride them before selling them and fixing up another one. Some of the nicer cycles are priced at around $5000. And one bike I read about is $10,000. I can't imagine paying that for a bike. But I guess if I was a very serious cyclist and competitive racer I might. I'm not, though, so I won't.

Anyway, I have neglected my workouts, my blog, my own life even, for quite awhile now. I just wanted to stop in and catch you up on what's been happening. And when I get another chance to catch my breath I plan to stop by your blogs and catch up on what's happening with you, too.


*UPDATE* - Oh my God, I just reread my previous post and it was almost exactly the same as this one! I mean, this is basically an update from the last one, but it's the same topics EXACTLY. The only thing I didn't mention this time was the Olympics, which I did end up watching like an addict. They were really impressive and the track and field was awesome. I turned it on the second I got home from work and watched until it stopped at 11 pm each night, plus the weekend. I was sick all weekend, so it was the perfect time to sit on the couch all weekend long and watch the Olympics. Awesome, awesome, awesome!

Hot Heat and Hotter Humidty

I am aware that I haven't written in nearly a month and I apologize most sincerely to both of you who read my blog. In my defense I was at the beach for a solid week and did not bring a computer with me. I also didn't take many photos, which is somewhat unusual for me. The first time I went to this particular place I had been a photography enthusiast and spent roughly half my time taking photos with my new expensive camera. This time I used my phone and mostly only photographed sunsets.

The other reason that I haven't written much this month is that I haven't done much working out. The heat had been rough, the yard has been out of control, and there have been a few other things popping up that I have had to take care of. There is always some excuse for skipping workouts and I realize I shouldn't be making any, but I did anyway. I have skipped almost an entire month's worth of workouts now.

Oh, one other reason for not blogging here much is that I've been trying to write. I mean, I've been trying to write more seriously, and this has meant that in the few spare moments I've had for getting on the computer (when it wasn't for work) I was trying to write something reasonably coherent and mildly entertaining. I'm not sure if I've been at all successful on that, but if nothing else I can consider it practice.

On the political front, as long as I'm here and writing random things, the Democratic Party and the United Nations have been working together to try to take away the rights of citizens to keep and bare arms. I don't just mean American citizens, but all citizens of any country that signs the treaty the UN has written up. It's odd at first glance, for a political party to be doing this, albeit as stealthily as possible, during a major election year. The subject is extremely unpopular even with their own supporters in the US. But it is very popular with dictatorship nations like Russia and China, and as anyone who has been paying attention has noticed, the governments of Russia and China both have a disturbing level of influence over certain political parties and certain politicians in all of the various Western nations. So, unpopular or not, they're trying to shove it down our throats like they did in the UK. And as the citizens of the UK have tried to warn us, this is a very, very bad thing.

The Olympics have started. I always plan to watch them and then miss most of it until they are almost over. About that time I begin to get hooked and then POOF! They're over and I'm sorry that I missed so much of them. I want to watch track and field. I don't know if I've missed any of that yet. I always like to watch and see how fast everyone is this time. Every Olympics they are faster than the last. And everyone is faster than I was at my peak. But at least I have old personal best times in certain events that I can compare with the times of the runners competing in the Olympics to give me an idea of how much faster they are than I was. It makes it more fun.

For those of you who know who I am, I have been actively looking for a new car. I have been reduced to talking with car salesmen on the phone. Friday I talked to salesmen in Texas, Wisconsin, Connecticut and Massachusetts. I'm looking for something specific and I had no idea when I started just how hard this is to find. I've been looking for months now.

Anyway, I can't think of anything else much to say. I wish I could say that something exciting was going on in my life, a new child, a new mansion, a luxury cruise, Kim Kardashian stalking me, anything at all. But I'm afraid it's just all been work and stress and trying to get back into the groove of regular workouts. Oh, and missing my friends back home. There has been a lot of missing my friends.

Random Topics

Several months ago I hurt my right hand while planting 3 trees in the back yard. My hand still has not healed. Years ago I hurt this same wrist while playing football. A sports doctor injected it with cortizone several times, then tried a sort of ultrasound treatment. Eventually it was fine. Now, all these years later, it very much is not fine. I was about to go to the doctor, but with the recent Obamacare ruling from the Supreme Court I now don't know if I want to or if I should just get used to handling these things myself.

The Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare is just wrong. It explodes the power of the Federal Government way beyond the limits the Constitution placed on it, which our Founding Fathers did for a very good reason. It further centralizes all power and wealth into Washington, DC, purely for the benefit of sociopathic politicians at the expense of the citizens of this country. It is as if Europe weren't in a dire financial crisis or else we have no way of knowing about it. They are and we do and we know what caused it. This is like seeing your friend losing his house to a raging fire and instead of helping put it out, you set your own house on fire just to be like him. Oh, let's be more like Europe.

Despite the record heat last week, I still managed to go biking all but 2 days after work. I have increased my distance, but I still wouldn't consider my rides to be anything much just yet. I need to replace my pedals with more race-oriented pedals that accept toe clips and then get myself some shoes that will clip into the pedals so I can do this right. If I'm going to bike there is no point in doing it wrong and then going into a race wondering why I'm so unable to compete with everyone else and their toe clips.

One of my cats killed a rabbit last week. We know this because he left it on the front porch. Later, when I went back out to look for him, he wasn't there and neither was most of the rabbit. All he left behind was the feet and its head. The head literally cooked in the sun, leaving a charcoal bricket with ears scorched to the concrete of the front porch. I'm sure the postman is thrilled to see that when he comes to deliver the mail because I forgot to clean it up. Speaking of government-controlled industries that are in perpetual crisis, the post office is no longer going to deliver mail on Saturdays. The government long ago turned the post office into a social class warfare welfare program wherein they only hire black people and women, so now that they are broke and can't seem to raise fees enough to cover their enormous expenses (lavish retirements for way too many employees) they are reducing service. If there were a free-market industry they would lay off workers based on who was least effective at their jobs. But being a government welfare/affirmative action program, they simply cannot do this. They must keep every black or female employee regardless of need or ability to pay and simply raise our taxes and fees on mailing a letter. Small wonder FedEx and UPS have reaped such large profits these last 20 years or more what with everyone choosing to mail all their packages through them. We'd mail our letters through them, too, if it weren't illegal for them to compete with the Post Office for that service. But now that we have email, the Post Office mostly just brings junk mail and bills, with more and more people paying them bills online, too.

And this brings us to the United Nations' push to take over control of the internet, with Russia and China being the two biggest promoters of the idea. So awesome. We should totally let them do that. Then the Chinese government can help everyone see a glimpse into how it feels to live in a country where Big Government controls everything and the citizens have no voice and no rights at all.

It's expected to be less than 100 degrees today. Perfect weather for a bike ride, I think. You know, with my right hand being so reluctant to heal it makes lifting weights virtually impossible. And that is frustrating. Even more frustrating is that with all my frustration, I'd love to wrap my hands, put on some gloves, and beat the hell out of a 70 lb punching bag, but I can't because it hurts my already injured right hand.

Triathlon that never was

Someone else's bike

So 2 weeks ago a friend and former track teammate from high school days asked me to join her in a sprint triathlon. I had mentioned several months ago that I was thinking about trying one out, so when this one came up she thought of me. I was flattered.

I was tempted.

My calves still aren't healed, so I said "I think I'll miss this one."

And then I began to think about the 2 out of 3 sections of the race that I haven't even tried in I-don't-know-how-long. I haven't been in the water in over a year. Haven't swam a single stroke. And I wasn't a strong swimmer anyway. And my road bike, the antique Italian once-up-a-time racing bike, was stashed somewhere in my tool shed with tools piled on it and a wheelbarrow pinning it to the wall. It has no kickstand, so technically the wheelbarrow was doing it a favor. But ask any true cyclist about that and they'll curse in Italian and tell you it's sacrilege.

The race day came and went. But it was on my mind the entire time. A sprint triathlon? I could do that. Swim 200 yards? I could do that. Bike 10 miles? I could do that. Run 3.1 miles? I just did that a few weeks ago. No problem.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, I went out to the toolshed on Tesday night and dug my old road bike out from its tomb of yard tools. The tires were not simply flat. They were squashed in the permanent shape of the concrete below. Even when I rolled the bike out, the flat spots on the tires remained right where they were, rolling around and around. The tires had a layer of dirt on them that seemed rather permanent as well. The whole thing had a layer of dust and dirt on it. And it didn't roll with the kind of ease that it should. Something or other needed oil.

The first thing I did was get out the tire pump and try to pump up the tired, old, flat, flaky tires and their innertubes. I don't know when I last installed new innertubes, so I was halfway expecting a small "boom" followed by the tires instantly going flat again as I pumped them up. It has happened to me before, when a bike has been left sitting for so long that the tires turn to dust and the innertubes lose all flexibility and become brittle. But the tubes held the air without explosion.

I rolled the bike around to the back porch and started spraying WD40 on everything. Something was dragging, but none of the brake pads appeared to be touching, so I didn't know for sure what was the source of the problem. I just sprayed everything. I'm sure some bike expert somewhere reading this is cursing me now and saying "WD40 isn't for oiling a racing bike, you idiot!" Well, it was what I had, so cut me some slack.

Once I was satisfied that the tires weren't going to exploded on their own and the chain was still intact and the wheels would turn, I got onto the bike, fumbled with the toe clips and peddled slowly down my long driveway. I was still anticipating a sudden blow-out from the tires, so I rolled along in a kind of 'ready position' just in case. Nothing exploded or fell off or broke, so I started peddling harder and headed out for a quick lap of my neighborhood.

The quick lap didn't last long before I headed out for a longer ride. I had JUST eaten supper, and I was quickly reminded of what effect milk and biscuits tend to have on me. This was never an issue when I was younger, but it is now. They bloat me up like a bullfrog, expanding my stomach to what feels like 10 times its normal size.

When I was younger, I didn't have a stomach, so having it blow up like a small raft wasn't an issue. It just didn't happen. Now that I'm a little older and my physique is considerably less sleek, a bloated stomach combined with being bent over the handlebars of a racing bike doesn't go together well. My knees come up and there's something in the way. Oh, it's me. I'm a bullfrog on a bicycle. Yay. So excited.

I tried to sit up taller to get my big bloated stomach out of the way of my knees as I peddled, but it was awkward. Anyway, I wanted to focus on the bike itself, and on how well it was holding up. It seemed to be doing OK.

More than I could say about myself.

I rode about a half mile down to a stop sign located at an intersection at the bottom of a hill where I like to run. I briefly considering riding the hill, but I had discovered on the ride up to the stop sign that I was no longer at all familiar with the gear shift levers of this bike. I had no clue what I was doing. So I shot a U-turn and headed back, consciously choosing to shift gears a lot just to refamiliarize myself with which lever did what and whether I wanted to shift up or down and what that did.

1 mile, maybe, was all I rode. That's all. It should have been nothing. 1 lousy mile at most. Not even close to the distance required for a sprint triathlon.

I put the bike away and walked inside the house, dripping with the sweat of the season here in the Southeastern Humid States of America. It's a tropical jungle here in summer. I showered off and stretched a little. I figured I'd ride again tomorrow night and go a little further.

Tomorrow came. And I was sore. SORE! From that tiny little ride. Oh, how far I have fallen.

Quit Calling Me

Dear Black Man Who Keeps Calling Me,

I can see your phone number on my caller ID. I know its you each and every time.

I tried to answer your calls, but you acted like you were too busy and too cool to care when I picked up. I could hear you screwing around being all "I don' even care" and all that. I said "hello?" two times. That's all you're going to get. You didn't respond after the 2nd "hello" so I hung up.

You have called me 10 times in the past hour alone. Don't you have a job or something to go to? I am at work. Why aren't you?

You finally left a message after the 10 calls. I could not comprehend what that sound you made into the machine was so I put it on the computer and had it try to translate. It came up with this:

"haygooit ..."

I guess you're drunk? Or does that mean something where you live?

If you were less concerned with acting cool and more concerned with actually communicating with the person on the other end of the phone line then you'd know by now that you're dialing a number that doesn't lead to anyone you know. The reason you don't know this by now, though, is that you're stupid. Stupid people are more concerned with acting cool than they are with effective communication, having a job, or much of anything else that doesn't help them look cool to other losers like themselves.

My phone has a volume control for the ringer. Just for you I set it to 0. Now you can call all you want. I won't hear you. Unfortunately, I won't hear anyone else's calls coming in either, but all the people I want to talk to are intelligent enough to know how to use an answering machine and leave a message which communicates with me who they are and what they want. I'll trust them to do this while I leave you to waste the day calling a wrong number and being all cool.

Cuz I know you don't even care, right? Sure, losers usually don't.

Gibson 5K and my calf injuries

Gibson Guitar 5K race

I signed up to run the Gibson 5K which is held down on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. It was held last Saturday night at 7 pm.

Wednesday last week I drove to Fleet Feet on Poplar Avenue and picked up my race packet, which included my shirt, my race number, and the computer strip which records my official time as I start and finish the race.

I was pretty excited about this race. I don't know why. I've never run it before. I don't know anyone who has run it before. I never planned to sign up for it. I only recently even found out about it. I signed up on the spur of the moment. And I'm still rehabbing an injury from the Cotton Row race about 2 weeks ago.

Making matters worse, on Thursday I felt sick. Something was wrong with my stomach. I wanted to go home from work and sleep, but I couldn't afford to leave just then. Whenever I ate it didn't sit well. I never really felt hungry and when I ate I felt like I was overfull somehow, as if I just didn't have any room in my stomach for any food at all.

Friday I was still not feeling right. I had hoped to do a run on Thursday, just something short and easy, but I had to cancel that. Friday wasn't much better. I didn't even go for a walk.

Meanwhile, my calf problems have continued. All week long I could feel something bothering my left calf. It feels like something pressing into it just below the calf muscle and just above what I'd consider the ankle. It's just enough pressure that I wasn't terribly confident the muscle would make it through an entire 5K run.

Seriously, are you up for this?

I went onto the internet and began reading about my calf injury problem. Apparently I'm not alone in experiencing this. That didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was the number of people who began having this problem who never seemed to find a solution. So many runners experienced this issue only to have it come back again and again and again. Most said they found that they could run shorter distances without trouble, or that they could run on treadmills without any pain. But if they tried to run a race or run outside up and down hills then the injury would continuously return.

I read all kinds of suggestions. Try different shoes. Try stretching more. Try warming up more. Try eating more bananas. Try this and try that and no one seemed to really have a solid answer.

What I gathered from what I read is that there is a muscle sheath inside the lower leg that wraps around the calf muscle. Ironically, it acts sort of like a calf sleeve, which is what I wear due to the injury. This muscle sheath isn't terribly flexible. When a new runner, or an older runner, begins to rapidly increase the intensity of their training so that the calf muscles are pumped with more blood than they have been for a long time, or ever, and that 'pump' remains in the calf for a long period of time, long enough to almost complete a 5K race, the muscle sheath seems to constrict the muscles because it cannot stretch or expand enough to allow for this. It's apparently choking the calf muscles, but it can feel exactly like a calf cramp or muscle pull.

I read a number of suggested treatments, but no solid cure. I even read about some people having surgeries. I used to lift weights a lot. I remember getting shin splints in high school cross country after I'd spent a summer doing a lot of very heavy calf raises to build up my calves while running long, slow workouts to maintain my endurance. I had no calf problems during that summer no matter how far I ran, but I wasn't running fast. I wasn't running up on my toes to any extent in an attempt to get a fast time. I was just trotting along for 5-10 miles each workout. I had thought that working my calves very hard all summer would improve my running when cross country season began at the start of the next school year. Instead, I started the season with an immediate shin splint problem that appeared as soon as I began running competitively with the team again. At the time I had no idea where the injury had come from or why.

I haven't read anyone suggesting this strategy, but I'm going to try working the hell out of my calves at the gym. I'm going to try jumping rope and leaping on those metal platforms, I can't think of what this excercise is called, and doing a lot of toe raises, all in an attempt to pump up my calves and make them grow long-term, so that the sheath around the muscle is stretched more and more often. The fact is, it does stretch over time. Bodybuilders who pump up their calves to ridiculous proportions couldn't do that without crippling themselves if the sheath simply never expanded. I'm going to assume that steady work on my calves will make it stretch eventually.

The bottom line is, with my calf injury problem, plus feeling somewhat sick, I decided to let the Gibson 5K go and not run it. I didn't even drive down to watch the other runners compete. I know how I am. If I went to watch, I would run. I can't stand on the sidelines. In every sport I ever participated in, when I was on the bench I was going crazy. Either put me in or let me go home. Running is no different. If there is a race and I am registered to run it, if I'm there at the moment they say "runners take your mark" I'm going to tense up and start running as soon as I hear them shoot the starting gun. So I stayed home.

I don't have another race until September. And that race isn't a competitive event where anyone cares about what time you run it in. It's the Warrior Dash and I run that for the fun of it. There's nothing to compare it to time-wise, what with all the obstacles to climb or crawl through. Other than that, I can't think of any events I'm planning to enter. That should give me time to work on my calves and try to get them back into the groove of a regular running habit.

I'm also planning to order a tool called The Stick for sprinters, which is a deep muscle massager you roll along the muscle that you are trying to rehab. I have heard that this tool helps a lot with muscle injuries and tightness. Once I get it and begin trying it out I'll let you know how it works for me. There are several different versions. There is one for marathoners, but from the description of it, I don't think it is what I need.

So anyway, I signed up for and skipped the Gibson 5K. But maybe next year I'll have this injury problem beat and take another shot at it.