Sure has been a while since I had any time to write here. Life has been pretty hectic for me lately. I feel like I haven't had time to do much of anything I really want to do, but this weekend the tides seemed to turn which is good 'cause I didn't know how much more I could take...
3M work has been kind of unbelievable. I've got a big rush project that is consuming far more of my time than I'm used to. Basically we're crunching an 8 month project into 2 months; piece of cake. So in addition to spending far more time at work than I'm used to, when I get home I'm pretty well fried and fall asleep. Not to mention I get to look forward to spending large amounts of time in Arkansas in the upcoming 2 months. yipee. Needless to say, this has put a crimp in my usual bike work/enjoying life schedule.
As a result of this I seem to be reverting back to my time tested (as being less than ideal) methods of binge training. You know going all out for about 1 day, then nothing for a week or two, then hit it hard again... President's day weekend we headed up north to Bayfield WI for what has become an annual event, the Book Across the Bay. This is a ski race across chequomegon bay at night. Well due to our unusual January, there was significant open water on the bay when we got up there, but they still held the event. However the night of the race it was about -10 and there was stiff wind coming across the lake which was going to make for a headwind the whole race. So between the idea of skiing that close to open water on Lake Superior and the cold wind, we decided to bail on the race. That was Saturday night. Sunday it did warm up a bit, so we got in a nice ski. I took advantage of the fact that there was real snow up there and I classic skied on beautiful freshly-set tracks. I think I got in about 20K in the couple of hours we were out and it felt great. That is until the next couple of days. That was the only classic skiing I had done since last year at this time, and my inner thighs reminded me of that for about a week. There were so tight I could barely walk. Then I had to go back to work, which meant no free time and no exercise during the week.
This past weekend I decided I had enough of this not exercising business, so I made time in my schedule to go out on a ride with a few Kenwood folks. It was a little more than I probably needed but it sure was fun to be out. We started out at One-on-One, rode down the river road, grabbed a quick bite to eat at Caribou (and some coffee for Stone) and made our way down tot he Kenwood enduro route. That basically consists of riding from one end to the other across the south metro on dirt trails, or in the case of this weekend, ice trails. The trails actually weren't all bad, there were mighty slick sections due to all the melting and refreezing lately, but there were also large sections of dirt that were a blast despite the 15 degree air. After about 4 hours, my legs told me they had all they could take of the 34-18 gear and needed a break, so I took the light-rail shortcut home. All in all, it was a great ride and I felt better than I figured I would considering how long it had been since I rode a bike.
As a side note, once again I want to say how rockin'ly awesome the light rail is. There are bike racks right inside each car, so you can just roll your bike in with you. Not to mention way faster and easier to figure out than the bus system. Apparently I'm not the only one that thinks so either since it was standing room only in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday! We gotta get the line in from downtown St. Paul to Minneapolis, it would be fantastic.
Sunday I finally got in some painting time on bikes. The paint work has really been piling up in the shop, so I prepped, primed and started painting 5 frames Sunday. I've still got a ways to go, but it won't be long before I can get a bunch of these frames out of the shop. It's pretty bad when I've got 10 frames in for work simultaneously in a one-man shop. There are literally frames everywhere!
bbbb
No comments:
Post a Comment