Well, It's About Time

Had to do some traveling last week for business, and G & I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary last Friday. Pretty cool I think we both believe. The bond gets a little stronger each day, week, month & year. It's really neat seeing our relationship grow each year. The VQ gang has been doing some riding, indoors and out. The Badger, Coach Stan-O and I have been hitting the road & off road, doing some cyclo-cross riding. Cyclo-cross has been around since the beginning of the century in Europe. It is riding off road, usually in wide open fields & trails where a course of less than 1.2 miles is laid out. You ride a bike that looks like a road bike, but with knobby tires for traction. I started "crossing" in the late 80's, as a way to stay in shape throughout the winter, and stay competitive. Throughout the course, they set out barricades that you have to get off your bike, hop over the barricades, run and then get back on your bike and ride again.

Cyclo-cross usually means lots of mud, snow etc. It's a blast, and a great workout. I have competed at cyclo-cross nationals several times, and am going to nationals in Kansas City next week, to cheer on my friend Dr. Mike, who has a great shot of winning the national title.

Last night, we did an indoor workout consisting of 15 x 1 minute VO2 intervals. What does this mean? Well, you go through a grueling warm up on the ferocious compu-trainer, then the computer forces you to go all out for 1 minute straight. Oh, by the way, we had to do this15 times. It's a death march to say the least. Stan-O & The Badger were my partners in this torture. We all set our resistance to the level where we needed to be at for this workout.

Halfway through, I looked up at the LCD screen, and noticed that The Badger had lowered his resistance level, on the sly, ie: wattage down by 20 watts. This is known as using the "negative button", which you may recall from a previous posting, that I agreed will not be used by me. I had made a commitment to my friend "Pain" that I would not press the negative button, as this would hurt Pain's feelings, and probably anger him.

The Badger did not look good, as he mentioned projectile vomiting, cross-eyes, heart-attacks, stroke, heartburn, athlete's foot and some other ailments during this mother of all workouts that he was succumbing to. I did my best to get through it, and even had a chuckle with Pain during the last 2 intervals by raising the resistance level or the "plus button" by an additional 10 watts. This of course was all for show, as the effects were felt immediately, with Pain laughing back at me, confirming the fool that I really am. I did not look so hot, kind-of pale & sore.

As you can see, The Badger was not looking too good either.