Bike Builder / holiday damage report

Both bikes have arrived. Now I have to get them put together. Genine's appears to be new. I can't see a mark on it, not the rims, crank or cassette. I keep thinking there's got to be something I'm missing... Or maybe we got another really nice deal on a bike for her.

I mentioned in the last post the Cervelos have the compact crank but I said the wrong size. It should have said 50/34 for the cranks. I'll have to go back and edit that post. More about the bikes later. I've got to run before I build.

I had said that there were some dangerous weekends ahead back at Xmas. Well I came away from the first weekend in pretty good shape. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for New Year’s weekend. I’m somewhat stunned at the damage that occurred last weekend. I blame the guacamole. Which is my fault, I made it after all. Obviously guacamole really wasn’t the problem, it was just too much of everything. The good news is I’m sort of glad this happened when it did. I’m far enough away from my “deadline” that I didn’t make the goal impossible and I learned a good lesson. If I really want this weight goal to happen, I can’t stray from the plan for 3 days like I did this past weekend. (I also learned that I gain weight quickly, is that useful somehow, somewhere?)

As I got onto the bike trainer the other day, I stopped to consider pressing the odometer reset on my bike computer. That way I could keep track of how many miles I put in for each workout and have monthly and yearly totals. I decided not to do it. My current plan is time based, if I start to look at mileage there is a good chance I start to make that the priority. I suppose I’ll be able to go through my workout journal and determine how many hours I put in but at the moment, that isn’t important to me at all. I’m more interested in what I have to do next, rather than what it is I’ve already done. I think this is because I have a workout schedule. Without the schedule, I’d probably be looking to see what I’d done in the past to try and work out some sort of balance. For example, I missed the majority of my runs the last 7-10 days. Before that would probably mean I try to make up for lost time by running a bunch this week. Now I just make sure I complete the runs that are on my schedule. It’s simply a matter of getting back on schedule

That idea kind of leads me to my weight training. Over the last few years, I’ve tried a few fun strength plans that I never finished. Twenty Pull-ups was one of them, 100 pushups was another. For some people, these plans would be just fine. In hindsight, they were not good for me. They were just pushing me into overuse injuries. My weight training now is much more balanced. I have no goals in mind as to how much I want to improve. Meaning I’m not feeling pressured to bench press say 200 pounds before the season starts. I just add additional weight onto the exercises when it feels that the previous weight has become too easy. There may come a time that this approach is not good enough but at the moment it seems to be right.