Monday, March 15, 2010

Baby steps

Maybe riding really hard in January, taking a vacation until halfway through Feb, and doing very little riding since getting back was not the greatest way to come blazing on to the podium this spring. But things had to be done, things like looking for apartments (and starting innumerable stupid arguments with Michelle over insignificant details about said search/application process/apartment), working the bike show (and mega hours in the week leading up to it), and finally moving, a task which I have completed, which means the task is really probably only 30% complete as Michelle has a lot more stuff than I do. I am not complaining, as most of her stuff falls into the 'useful' category (furniture, dishes, etc) as opposed to the hundreds of pounds of bike mags circa 1994-2001 that I shuttled from my place yesterday. But I mean, come on, those were the glory years, I couldn't possibly be expected to throw out 8 years worth of re-worded maintenance and fitness tips and highly biased reviews of out-dated bicycles........could I?

Luckily my patient and understanding ladyfriend has not made any such request, and in any case I am digressing. I believe I was slowly trying to build a case for my own lack of fitness, hence giving myself a pre-fabricated excuse in the event of a terrible finish at an early season event. Or potentially even a mid or late season event, because, you know, it's really all about base miles.

And even this "break glass in case of emergency" excuse making was all just a vessel in which to unveil my MASTERPLAN, involving now living 12km from my place of work instead of a moderately uphill 800m, which was really not much of a commute at all. Now I have multiple route options beyond cutting through the schoolyard or not to shave off about 5 seconds. Now I can ride trails to work, or I can get kitted up like it is race day, because it will be when I sleep in and have to hammer that 12km in 20 minutes (I will fail, and probably be 10mins late).

So last night I didn't actually sleep at the new place, but Michelle's instead. Dropped the rental van off in the morning with my Stigmata in tow then got in a decent 90min boot before work. After work I decided to check the main trails in the Don out on the CX bike (not terrible, but not great). Totalled about 50km on the bike, at a mostly moderate pace. That's almost like base miles, right?

5 days a week of this and I might resemble myself last November by late April.

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6 comments:

tara said...

how rideable was the ridge? was this done b4 or after it rained?

Unknown said...

i took the "back way" down pottery road yesterday and it was definitely soft, but i didn't have to get off the bike at least. I'm talking about that steep hill behind the apartment building off broadview. decided not to check it out furhter after that, but suspect with a week of weather like today, the flats/ridge might be in good shape before the next batch of rain! Rides you guys??

Dan Garcia said...

I would have figured that your MASTERPLAN would have involved owning land up north, building your own trails to your own spec, holding your own race series and then kicking everyone's ass on it.

Then again, that much have just been mine.

Dan

velotaku said...

rode the ridge again today on the cx and it was slightly more ridable. seemed really difficult but that was probably because i was on the cx bike on soft rutted slippery trails.

Dan? Yang?

tara said...

i don't think that i've ever heard you say that something was difficult before.
it's a new era

Dan Garcia said...

Nope, the other Dan. You know - the one who doesn't ride his bikes often enough.