A Day in the Life

Yesterday, the day after my first century ride, I got up at 4:30 and ran four miles.  The first mile was 10:30, but then I woke up and the rest were in the 7:30 range.  I went to work and had a rough day, I was flat and my students were nuts.  After work I had an hour long meeting ... I think we planned the next meeting in that one.  Then, I taught two classes for the community college, finishing up at 8:00 pm.

Last night I couldn't sleep well.  There were javelina rooting around outside causing the stupid fat chihuahua we have to bark and bark and bark, and forget to stop barking.  I rolled out of bed at 4:15, headed out for a short two mile jog and then a full upper body workout at the gym. The picture is me at the gym this morning, see how busy it is?

Today I sat in a meeting for two hours and didn't even get grouchy!  That's a miracle or enormous proportions.  The Pope should be notified!

During class today, I saw nearly instant karma.  I was chastising a class, saying to the group, "This is stupid behavior."  A girl said, kind of under her breath, "You're stupid."  The funny thing is that when I checked my email after that period, I had an email from that girl's mother!  How's that for timing?

After work, I took off for a 40 mile tempo ride that has a measured 1100 feet of elevation gain.  It was quickly apparent that my legs were TOAST! I try to keep my tempo at a minimum of 17.5 mph, but no-no-no, not today.  Not with the dead legs, not with the wind.  I kept reflecting on the need to have purposeful rides once the base cardio work is done.  So I compromised.  When the wind was strong and I was going uphill, instead of trying to keep at 17.5, I'd lower the number to what I felt I could sustain.  As it turned out, most of the time I was able to maintain my 17.5.  I was happy with that!

And to make the experience better, look a the sky.  What a place to live where I can ride all year long on nice, empty roads like this!

Tomorrow morning I'm going to do a running workout, 4 mile repeats, along with the normal calisthenics I do on run days.

I also decided, on today's ride, to shoot a couple of videos of what I spend hours at a time looking at.  So, here they are: