Getting Back on Track (or Slow Train to Fitness)

This CSX Automobile hauler delayed my ride by about three
minutes during this morning's 23-mile ride to Avon Park.

I'm often compared to a locomotive, with my low-cadence, big-gear pedaling style. I'm slow to get up to speed but once there, I keep on chugging, chugging my way to the next sprint, climb and finish line. But 2015 has thrown some challenges my that have managed to derail me like an Amtrak car full of commuters. 

We opened a retail meat store and the stress of running and working there have taken their toll, mentally and physically. It's a good stress, mind you.

It's all about that Diet.

So, there's nothing to complain about, really. But, I am no longer quit as flexible during working hours and even after hours. That, and I've been blessed with good fortune and was able to go on a week-long cruise with the family and have another trip with family, this time to Branson. Family trips always wreak havoc on my diet and schedule.

During my ride this morning, particularly during the pictured train's crossing, I decided it was time I got back on track with being smart about every food decision I make. I currently have a variety of aches and pains that are making cycling and walking uncomfortable, the result of a bad back that was thrown out some 5-6 years ago. I plan very soon to address that.

But my true nemesis is food. 

I make poor choices frequently in all areas of eating: food types & quantity, time of day and notably but often missed is lack of hydration. A good friend, a runner, years ago told me that most people most of the time are thirsty, not hungry, when those hunger pains strike. It is my goal first and foremost to increase my water intake.

I plan to document on this blog my food.

It won't be pretty, but I feel compelled to use this blog and it's very limited, almost nill, readership to help me feel accountable for my choices. I plan to take pictures and post what I'm eating and, best as I can, when I'm eating it and how much. I probably won't track water consumption but who knows.

That's it. Be prepared to enter the ugly world of Shuttmeals.

Quitting is Always an Option

We were somewhere around the halfway point for our century, having dropped off the wheels of the recumbent cyclists.

From left, Paul, Bob, Allen (front) and Willem wait at a stop

sign on Arbuckle Creek Road at Power Line Road while Miguel

retrieves a water bottle that jumped for its life over some rough

railroad tracks. This was early in the ride, and I already knew

it was going to be a tough day for me. 

I was contemplating calling it a day as we approached Arbuckle Creek Road, the point at which we turn left into a stiff crosswind for the 10-or-so miles into Lorida. Or,  I could turn right; get some relief from a slight tailwind and be back to my vehicle in 30 relatively short minutes. 

But Miguel wouldn't hear it.

He took a long pull while we still had a helpful push from the brisk Northeast wind. We used the fair winds to recover and when push came to shove, we went left toward Lorida.

I'm glad we did.

Willem and the recumbent crew, plus Bob on the tri bike,

enjoyed a 12-minute respite at the Lorida gas station waiting

for the Poker Run motorcyclists to get their cards. 

We caught up to the four guys ahead of us at the gas station in Lorida...about 12 minutes after they got there.

Willem didn't expect to see us any more than we expected to see him, Bob, Paul or Allen again before reaching the parking lot in Sebring, where the ride started at 7:30 a.m.

Paul and Bob talk while refueling. A friend saw this pic and 

pointed out that it looks like a coke deal is going down. Can

you see why he said that? It's a bit of  a pun, if you ask me.

By the time we returned to Kenilworth Lodge I had 85 miles.  I didn't reach my century goal but I was pleased nonetheless.

The recumbent guys had us riding hard early on, which meant I rode sans my usual (and necessary) warmup. My legs felt like as if they had done the full 100 miles.

\

When I was in the weeds, feeling the effects of 50+ miles into a cold & honking headwind,  quitting certainly was an option.

I'm just thankful that Miguel didn't allow to turn down that road of regret.

Quitting is always an option, and I despise the motivational posters, quotes and speakers who beat their chest and tell us otherwise. I know first hand that quitting is an option. I've done it many times. Sometimes for the better: such as smoking, or drinking to excess. Sometimes to my chagrin, when not quitting would have been more rewarding than the temporary relief that accompanies stopping the pain of a tough training session.

I think it's important that we remind ourselves that quitting is an option, even if it's not the desirable option most of the time. That said, sometimes one must know when to quit, and I don't mean quitting something that is harmful. Rather, we need to know that quitting a particular training regime at a given point might be exactly what one needs to do to preserve their body for another day.

Endurance athletes approaching a race know that tapering (reducing intensity and/or duration) leading up to competition is most beneficial to their performance yet they fight an internal demon that persists in telling them that they shouldn't quit.

For me, knowing that I can in fact quit but instead choosing to do the exact opposite is the greater accomplishment. Not quitting the extremely hard (read: too fast for me) ride on Saturday, opened the door to my not sleeping in Sunday morning, when I started the ride 10-degrees colder than the day prior.

Not quitting eventually becomes habit forming. I hope.

Unfortunately, despite Miguel being the hero of this ride and the focus of this post, I didn't get any pictures of him during this ride.

The Corned Beef Hash Wasn't Scratch Made

From left, Willem, Rusty & Brian
Tarpon Springs, Oct. 4, 2014

Capping off a great weekend of cycling on the Pinellas Trail, six couples jumped on a variety of bicycles from single-speed city bikes with baskets to a Specialized S-Works Roubaix to go have breakfast before we cleaned up, checked out and headed home to pick up the kids and get ready for the coming week.

Our original plan, before we even left Home Sweet Sebring, was to break our fast Sunday morning at Toula's Trailside Cafe in Tarpon Springs, an 11-mile ride north from our Dunedin hotel. But, during our riding Saturday, we discovered that Toula's was closed for vacay through Sunday.

We rode our bikes down to the Sponge Docks being the tourists we were and we sought in vain a comparable breakfast spot. We returned to Dunedin with no clear plan for tomorrow's morning meal but that didn't matter, we had this day's lunch, dinner, dessert and brewery to look forward to before Saturday even came to a close.

+Legacy Bicycles organized what I hope will be the first of many annual "Oktoberfest on Pinellas Trail" couples-only rides, where we combine (somewhat) aggressive road riding with a few casual, points-of-interest rides, where mileage, moving average and PRs (personal record) aren't the focus and kid-free camaraderie with like-minded adults is.

That said, my Plus 1 (+Katara Simmons) wan't able to come over to Dunedin until Saturday afternoon, after work. Being the only guy there among five couples, the last thing I wanted to do was sit down for lunch with all these love birds after a measly 37.8 miles (links to Strava) on what was turning out to be a beautiful Saturday morning. I decided to ride the trail to the south as we had just ridden north.

My Tarmac SL4 on a section of the

Pinellas Trail, where a pedestrian 

bridge crosses over Tyrone Blvd.

My two goals on this southward solo sojourn was to kill time while waiting for Katara and, if time permitted, ride down to where Pinellas Trail crossed Tyrone Boulevard via a pedestrian bridge that I've been seeing for the past nine years during visits to Tampa. That day finally came, culminating in an exactly 80-mile ride that included a side-trip off the multi-use trail to swing my an aunt and uncle's home. They weren't there.

The ride north brought a stiff headwind and at times a gloomy sky that threatened rain and storms that never materialized. The wind did deliver an expected and welcome cold front that allowed me to wake up Sunday morning to about a 55-degree morning run for about 2.5 miles (links to Strava).

My goals accomplished, I returned to the Comfort Suites with about an hour to spare before Katara got in. I hung out with my group of friends, who were just returning from lunch and drinks. We sat on the patio at the hotel, getting colder as the cold front got colder. We retired to our respective rooms, I cleaned up, Katara arrived and we all went to dinner at Johnny's Fish House and Iguana Bar. Live music and decent food. It was a good time with great friends. The brewery was nixed after dessert at another location on account of too much ice cream on giant chocolate chip cookies. And,because we're old. I was dragged to a Target for late-night shopping but was able to be in bed and sleeping by midnight.

I woke up at 6 a.m. and ran at 7 a.m. north along the harbor before turning inland and returning to the hotel via Pinellas Trail, which was already bustling with activity.

Katara & I met the four other couples downstairs at 8 a.m. and after the requisite group photo we headed south on the trail in search of a suitable breakfast place. Not expecting to find a restaurant on this section of the trail, I recommended we ride across the causeway to Clearwater Beach to find breakfast. Worst case scenario, I explained, is that we could eat the breakfast buffet at the same restaurant as the previous night's dinner.

Going down the spiral bike path was easier than going up.

Clearwater Beach Causeway.

With no clear plan, we rode up the circular bike pack to the causeway bridge and grinded our way over to the beaches. When phone searches for food started, Katara recommended a solidly analog method: "Why don't you just ask somebody." I did and the lady working the ticket kiosk for some fishing trip or excursion recommended Beach Shanty Cafe, mostly because she knew it would be open on a Sunday morning.

I was torn between an 8-oz NY Strip Steak &

Eggs or corned beef hash, which I only wanted if the corned beef was made in-house. I asked our
waitress and she said "yes." A buddy asked, "How's the corned beef hash?" And she said, "Good." Based on this conversation, three corned beef hashes were ordered among everything else

The food was fine. Nothing to get excited about but nothing disgusting either.

There was one glaring inconsistency though because the corned beef hash put before myself, +Daniel Andrews and +Jeff Carlson was straight from a can. It was well-cooked, mind you. Nice and crisp as I like it but the corned beef has wasn't homemade. It wasn't worth mentioning to the waitress or complaining about.

As we were standing up to leave somebody totally unexpected came outside to talk to me.

As it turned out, Marcus McNac from high school was staying at the hotel across from The Shanty, for a wedding he and his wife attended. We grew up in Lawton, Oklahoma, and he now lives in Austin and I live two hours away in the middle of Florida. My group wasn't even supposed to be eating in Clearwater Beach on this morning. And, sad to say, I wasn't even on Facebook enough to know that Marcus and Jamie would be in town.

Marcus told Jaimie, upon spotting me from their spot inside, that he that that bearded dude was me. 

Like a good wife, she thought he was crazy and dismissed his assertion to the contrary. Marcus, like a good husband proving his wife wrong, pulled up Facebook on his phone and saw that I had just posted a picture of our group at the restaurant. Of course, he came out to talk and we took the requisite pictures for Facebook proof.

After this unexpected encounter blew my mind, I didn't really care that the corned beef hash wasn't scratch made. 

Marcus, left and me.

My Earliest Cycling Memory

It's been a long time since I've written. For myself. As therapy and as a creative outlet. Maybe even just to kill time. This blog, This Old Blogger will serve as my writing buffet, with a little bit of this and a little bit of that. It won't be single focused and it won't be political, though I reserve the right to the occasional political digress. But, no longer am I focused on changing minds...mostly, I suppose, because I finally realized that most of us who read aren't looking to be changed so much as entertained.

I hope that I, This Old Blogger, can provide a tiny little spec of entertainment.

My Earliest Cycling Memory

I don't remember exactly how old I was at the time but I would have been in First Grade or younger. We lived at Mechanicsburg, PA, and I was around 6 or 7 years old when I received that reddish bike with solid rubber wheels. My memory is foggy on this, thus the description reddish. It might have been orange-ish or just had orange accents. Or no orange at all. Not that it really matters. It was a bike. My bike. 

It wasn't a new bike. I had "discovered" it's hiding place several weeks (or a day or two) before my birthday party. But, none of that mattered. It was mine. It was new to me and I was excited.

The solid rubber tires have stayed with me. At the time, to my youthful perception, they added stability and strength to my bike. Obviously, it was faster because of these non-pneumatic tarmac huggers. The added heft wasn't something that caused me any grave concern back then.

I didn't realize it then.

I didn't realize it about 10 years later (which doesn't sound very long at all anymore) when I got my driver's license. I didn't even realize it around 2000 or so, when I threw my leg over a Trek 4500 hard tail mountain bike. I didn't realize it until very recently but my love and passion for all things cycling and bicycles started back with that first bike. 

I'm no collector or deep-pocketed blowhard but my stable of bikes currently includes a Trek 5000 road bike, A Trek Sawyer fully-rigid mountain bike from the Gary Fisher Collection, a Globe Daily 01 single-speed city bike with basket(!) and my current daily driver: a 2014 Specialized Tarmac Expert SL4. Of course, my 9-year-old son rides a Felt Road bike (24-inch wheels) and a Trek MT mountain bike. The wife has an old Trek Navigator for trail use and a Specialized Vita in a beautiful orange. Not burnt orange or orange-ish or orange accents but a full-on Orange orange. I love her bike.

I love each of my bikes because they each have their own purpose. And each excels when used as intended.

I did it and so many other do to and I would guess that most Americans by their late teens have forgotten the joy of bicycling. I'm grateful that I'm one of the relative few who have picked it up again.

Beyond the obvious health benefits (balanced with the, hopefully obviously, risk of being on the open road) of cycling, I enjoy the ability to get around town under my own power. 

There's a joy and camaraderie that comes from hanging out with fellow cyclists, whether on a leg-screaming hammerfest or a leisurely family-friendly dinner ride. 

If you've been on the fence about riding a bike again, please get off said fence and dust off your old Schwinn, air the tires, lube the chain, take it for a spin and make new bicycling memories for yourself and your family.

Thank for reading and thanks for joining me.

I have other cycling memories from my childhood leading up to present day. I plan to share those with you. If you happened to stumble upon this page accidentally, I hope I didn't waste too much of your time. If you like what you read, please, subscribe and share.