Day 18 pt 1: Numbers...

Today's weight? 230

Miles walked last night: 2.31

Calories Expended: 396.4

Average Heartrate: 163

Time: 35 minutes

Water consumed last night: half gallon


I can't think of many more numbers to throw out there. I feel pretty good this morning. A little tired, but that's mostly because we had friends over. We watched The Lookout and The Usual Suspects last night. Surprisingly Nate and Angela had never seen The Usual Suspects. We turned off To Live and Die in LA and switched right over to their first experience with Kaiser Soze. What a great movie The Usual Suspects is.

I'm going to go grab some juice and my multivitamin and head out the door. I hate early mornings. Oh well. There's talk of moving to a bi-weekly Monday-Friday, Sunday-Thursday shift. The cool thing about that would be that every other weekend I'd vary between one day off and three days off. I kind of like the idea of a three day weekend every two weeks. We'll see. We're still talking about it. It would be nice to ride down to the Sunday afternoon club ride without being sleep deprived though. That's one of the reasons I've kind of fallen off the cycling wagon... a really weird schedule on Sundays.

Anyway, more later.

My Goals For the Year...

Angela and her friend headed off to the hot tub so I'm going to steal a few minutes and write about what I'd like to accomplish fitness wise this year. 

Last year, my cycling was almost non-existent. I rode one century, not even making it the whole way (here's the elevation profile if you're curious)

This ride SERIOUSLY kicked my ass. Basically, heading out of Buena Vista at 8,000 ft, you climb 2,000 ft over the first 20-30 miles. You get a little rest, then you continue heading up into Leadville. It was one of the more painful experiences in my life. 

One: because my friend Russell ditched me, wanting to climb faster. 

Two: because even though I'd gotten SOME miles under me, I didn't have nearly enough climbing miles in my legs.

Three: I got a really bad rash on my posterior just outside of town and had to stop riding every few hundred meters because my ass was on fire. It sucked. It sucked even more when, upon arriving at the first rest stop, Russell asked me "what took so long". It's been a long time since I've wanted to punch someday. He almost got punched that day. 

After short-cutting the climb into Leadville, we had lunch and turned back around. If there was anything about the ride that made all of the pain worthwhile, it was the view of the collegiate peaks we had on the way back to Buena Vista

On the way down it should be obvious that the wind picked up and negated any downhill advantage I may have had. It should also be obvious that if there's any time for something mechanically to happen to my bike it should be when I'm going downhill. In this case, I lost the cabling to my rear derailleur... I had a hard nasty gear or a way too easy gear. Did I mention that it sucked? 

Also (mostly because I have panoramas left I haven't posted), I should mention that Ang neglected to bring any cold-weather camping gear with her, meaning that I had to give her mine. So, starting the day century morning, I was absolutely freezing. I should also mention that I hardly slept all night because the area we were camping in had a raging snow-melt fueled creek less than a 100 yards away. All night long we were treated to a cacophony of bubbling, gurgling, creek sounds. It was probably as bad a situation as it could have been. 

All of that goes to say, I really want to go back there this year and kick the century rides ass. I REALLY want to ride that thing and make it my slave. Sense some century ride animosity? I thought you might. 

I also want to ramp up my running. Assuming we don't move this year, I'd like to do the list of Colorado Springs Grand Prix races

Long Series - Series runners must run 1 5K, 3 10Ks, and the 5Mile.
5K on St Patrick's Day (March 15)
Garden of the Gods 5Miler (May 3)
Sailin' Shoes 10K (June 21)<>

and maybe a half marathon or two. I haven't looked them up, but I'd like to at least do one this summer. Assuming I'm in town (events seem to conspire against me every year) I want to do the Red Rock Canyon century again this year. Russell and I did it a couple of years ago and it was a great century ride. I'm looking forward to getting back to it. 

Day 17 part 1

Sorry I didn't blog yesterday, got caught up with life. The cars brake lights went out for some reason (mind you, every other light works in back, including the brake light on the hatch) but after replacing the brake lights, they still didn't work. That means money on auto repair which is always depressing.

Ang and I also spent a lot of time cleaning. She did a masterful job on the kitchen and guest bathroom. I did a mediocre job on the car and the garage. This morning, more cleaning. Hopefully it will be at a point where it's 'guest visitable' tonight.

I feel like I've fallen into a routine with the fast. Part of the routine is kind of strange though. It's not a craving for food so much as it's my mind thinking about food fairly constantly. I've taken to reading food blogs, I read a book called Julie/Julia that's all about one woman, in the year leading up to her 30th birthday, who decides to cook through Julia Childs' Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I started reading that one in the early days of the fast. I'm not sure what that says about me.

These are the books I'm working through, meditating on, at the moment...

I stumbled on Eugene Peterson's Eat this Book the other day while I was grabbing a copy of the Message. I haven't had a chance to dive into it yet, but I'm hoping that there's a lot I'll get out of it. I'm continuing to really enjoy working my through that translation.

I'm about mid-way through Morgan Spurlock's book. It's not that there's anything I don't know in his book. It's stuff that's been pretty well covered in a variety of places. That said, it's not bad reading on a fast. It certainly makes me want to continue the fast food sabbatical I started well before the fast after this fast ends. There's just so much good and nutritious food for people out there. Why rely on chemical injected franken-meat. Like I said, the book acts as an appetite suppressant.

I've mentioned Messy Spirituality earlier this week, but it is a pretty great book. It's mostly composed of stories from around Michael Yaconelli's church. Here's a selection of writings put out just after he died in 2003. I was first exposed to Yaconelli through the publication he used to write for, The Wittenburg Door (looking at The Door's website, I thought this was funny and pretty representative of The Door). My friend Lance used to read it, and he was maybe one of the biggest molding influences on me in Junior High School. Lance is the one that introduced me to alternative Christian music. The one that played bands like Adam Again, Daniel Amos, The 77s and The Choir for me... and introduced me to the Door.

I haven't started on The War of Art yet, but I added it to my reading list after Stu Maschwitz, one of the partners at special effects company The Orphanage, raved about it at his blog.

In 1999 I made the most difficult decision of my life: Quiting my dream job at Industrial Light & Magic to help two friends start a little company called The Orphanage. At the core of the DV Rebel code is the impetus to do what you love, against all odds. Whenever I need a kick in the Rebel pants, I read a bit of The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. A better book on the creative process you will not find. Warning: ProLost is not responsible if you quit your job after reading this book! Well, maybe a little.

Weight this morning was 230. Whoop de doo. I mean, I think it's great, but at this point, I'm mostly interested as some sort of scientific experiment.

If I get a chance a little later I'll try to run through my 2008 fitness goals. I've been thinking about them quite a bit the past few days.

More later.

Day 15 part 1

I feel good this morning. I'm quite happy that last nights stress passed over. Getting through the day today should be easy, then I'll have the weekend and that's surprisingly easy and we'll be at seventeen days. I know I can do that. 

More later.

Day 14 wrap up

crisis averted. I had a nice glass of pineapple juice and quite a bit of water. heh. I tipped well, mostly because I felt a little guilty. My friend Dave mentioned something that he's been experiencing during his fast though. He feels like God has really been impressing on him to put 'Him First'. So as he was feeling a little guilty as well on his way over, he came back to this thought about God being first... and how even if he was uncomfortable and felt bad that he wouldn't be ordering something and annoying the waitress with a 'cheap table', that that was what he had to sacrifice to put God first. I guess I can relate to that. 

Thanks to Nate for encouraging me to 'sleep on it' with regards to breaking the fast. Those were the key words to kind of get me over the hump. 

26 days to go. I need to take them one at a time. Just like in the Ironman, you can't focus on the end goal, you have to focus on finishing the first task in front of you. Maybe I needed to learn that lesson again. 

More tomorrow.