June 30, 2006
Yesterday, the women's group ride decided we should ride for ice cream. A new ice cream store called Clumpies opened up recently and it is on our route home. Visions of creamy, cold scoops of frozen dessert floated above our heads as we practiced sprinting and hill climbing. At the end of the summer, we may very well be the Clumpies racing team, finishing in last place with our new XXL jerseys and shorts.
One of the women on my ride was nearly attacked by a dog last night. We have problems with one particular house where they allow a Chow to run free and unfenced. The dog chases us every time we pass by, and doesn't look too friendly. Fast runner, too, since it is difficult to outsprint him. The residents of the house said, "Oh, he ain't gonna bite anybody" and went about their business. I yelled back, "It's a CHOW for God's sake!!!" The owners' attitude of ignorance is exactly the reason why dogs bite people. The owner thinks, "Aw, my precious little pit bull Boo-Boo would never hurt a flea!!!" Idiots. Anyhow, the situation needs to be rectified before someone gets hurt. I suppose that means one of us will be purchasing some pepper spray in the near future.
UPDATE: I called the Irondale PD and they sent the complaint to animal control. The animal control guy just called me asking for details regarding the dog and location of its home. He said he'd stop by there in the evening to see if the dog is running loose. I don't feel optimistic about this, since animal control would have to be there at exactly the right time and would have to be outside of his vehicle in order to provoke an attack.
Posted by megabeth at 10:00 AM | Comments (3)
June 28, 2006I am a little reluctant to talk about the Park Place Farmers Market downtown because I want all of the vegetables for myself. Then again, I want to brag about this event and point out how much it benefits those who live and work downtown.
The Park Place Farmers Market is on Wednesdays at lunchtime at Linn Park. There are around ten booths with various farmers selling their produce. The prices are reasonable, in my opinion (you do pay a premium for fresh veggies over canned, of course). Every week I stop by during my lunch break and buy something different and sometimes cook up a nice meal on the weekend to feed my family, all of whom greatly enjoy this weekly practice. My family thinks I am a good cook, but most of the credit should go to the fresh ingredients.
Also, the restaurant Little Savannah is serving plates of collard greens, mac and cheese and baked chicken for six bucks. Today I did my shopping, picked up a plate of that good stuff, and checked out some books at the downtown library during my lunch break. The popularity of the market is catching on; I noticed that fresh veggies were flying off the tables today into the hands of a good-sized crowd.
Summer is awesome.
Posted by megabeth at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)
The title of this post implies that there is a rivalry between cyclists and triathletes, and while I wish I could pretend that there isn't, a lot of people would say that there definitely is one. Similar equipment, but very different sports. Some road cyclists don't make triathletes feel welcome on group rides, because triathletes generally do not act as if they understand the social etiquette behind group rides. I see people using aerobars in the peleton, which is just plain dangerous and unacceptable. Only time it's ok to use them is when you are the lead rider. Also, at times I see riders on tri bikes who don't seem to understand how to maximize efficiently by drafting. They tend to disrupt the paceline by leaving big gaps between riders or pulling off on a downhill slope and using their aerodynamic advantage to coast ahead of the pack.
I think that pack riding can be good training for a triathlete. However, a triathlete cannot expect to be able to ride at a consistent pace and utilize the aero advantage of his/her bike in a group ride. Having social etiquette and exercising proper safety measures trumps everything else. If that is found to be a problem, then a triathlete should train alone.
In a recent USA Triathlon Life magazine, I read an article about a triathlete who creates a daily syndicated comic strip. I have added it to my Bloglines syndicator. The author of this article, Lynne Fonda, takes a lovely shot at cyclists:
"As any USCF bicyclist will attest, finishing outside the top six delivers the harsh empirical reality that one might have slept in, instead, that day. A triathlete, however, will work it like a time trial, actualizing this specific level of training."
The author has apparently never ridden a bike race in her life. I'd like to find any USCF bicyclist who would agree with this author's statement. If she thinks that race results in cycling are empirical, she is smoking the big crack pipe in the sky. In triathlon, the numbers are very scientific. You ran 10K in 47 minutes, therefore your time states your exact performance for that race. In cycling, the winner is not necessarily the strongest person in the race. It's all about strategy. Cycling is also a team sport, and if you did not finish in the top six, you most likely helped someone else on your team finish in the top six, and teams who race together split their winnings at the end. And let's say that nobody on your team finished in the top six in a crit. It's not a loss in which the time was completely wasted. Crits are the best training opportunities for cyclists who race. Nowhere else do you push yourself as hard as you can than in a criterium.
That sort of attitude indicates exactly what is wrong with the sport of triathlon. While winning is nice, winning isn't everything. If Lance Armstrong had decided that his first criterium was a waste of time (and he most certainly should have slept in), then he would have quit instead of going on to win seven Tour de France races. An all-or-nothing attitude would prevent most of us from ever racing more than once.
Sometimes I am totally amazed at the things people write that pass through an editor's filter.
Posted by megabeth at 10:14 AM | Comments (1)
June 27, 2006Currently I have the remnants of three cookies sitting atop my desk. One is a chocolate chip caramel Pepperidge Farm soft-baked cookie. The other is a sugar Pepperidge Farm soft-baked cookie. And the other is a cinnamon Metamucil fiber wafer. Which one tastes best? The Metamucil wafer. The PF cookies taste like they have been soaked in a chemical preservative bath.
Fiber is good for you. It makes you feel full so you don't snack on junk food.
Secondhand smoke, on the other hand, is very bad for you. This article justifies my openly negative response to smokers (I treat them as if they have a communicable disease that is transmitted by mere proximity).
Posted by megabeth at 02:01 PM | Comments (3)
June 23, 2006I noticed a few lasting effects from crit racing last weekend. One, I am still insane. I have gone through my calendar and written down the cycling events that occur in the Southeast, same as I did early this season for triathlons when I thought I would pursue that route instead. Two, I have much more confidence in my abilities on the bike. When I started riding in March 2005, I hit the ground running on the fast track. I've accomplished quite a bit so far to be racing just fifteen months after my first bike ride in clipless pedals. (Which was 12 miles at Oak Mountain State Park, and afterwards I was exhausted.)
There's this one short hill on Ruffner Road I used to hate last summer because I would get dropped there on group rides. I dreaded the onset of that hill, knowing that at the top I would be breathing hard, heart thumping, and suffering greatly. This year, it appears that there is a game involving the girly men I ride with that before we reach that little hill, they rotate quickly off the paceline and dump the work on an unfortunate, unsuspecting person. Who happens to me, because I think they are being weenies. Someone has to pull up that hill. So I stay in my big gear, stand up, and crank my bike up that hill as quickly as I can. I love that hill now; I enjoy looking behind me at the top to see who couldn't hack it.
Then again, there are a hundred other places on the route where I am greatly humbled by other cyclists. I'm talking some sh*t in the paragraph above. At least I don't suck. Or, maybe I do. I'm covering up the fact that in the real world, I ride a tricycle. A pink one.
Posted by megabeth at 09:20 AM | Comments (1)
June 20, 2006While I am on the topic of metamorphoses, I'd like to mention the MAWP, pronounced just as it appears, is a ritual I began to practice over the last year or two. It involves doing little to nothing on weekend evenings other than eating out, and often going to bed between 11 PM and midnight, or even earlier if planning to wake at the crack of down for a morning athletic event.
The MAWP is quite a change from the rituals of my twenties. My early to mid twenties involved the habit of staying out until 2 or 3 am, imbibing large quantities of drink, frequenting the less finer watering holes across town, coming home with clothes reeking of smoke (not from my own habit, but from the low-quality atmosphere surrounding me). Then sleeping late and waking up feeling absolutely like crap. That I blamed on drinking, but later found out during a few evenings of not-drinking-but-breathing-smoke-secondhand, that the smoke is the main contributor to the Saturday morning suicides of non-smoking bar-hoppers.
My mid-to-late twenties involved less frequent visits to bars and more frequent attendance at parties held at the private homes of young adults, who most likely had acquired professional jobs paying enough to secure a mortgage for a first home. There would be cookouts and coolers of bottled beers, and crawfish boils and impromptu, sucky jam sessions with guitars and tambourines. And morning life was much improved, since the raspy-voice, leather faced smokers would partake of their nastiness outside on the porch. (Can you tell that I REALLY don't like smoking?) Nevertheless, life was still a continual series of time-wastage hanging out with professional wastrels. What was particularly disconcerting to me was that many of these people were in their thirties and forties, still drinking to excess until 3 am on weekends, not having much to say for themselves in terms of personal growth or progress. Was I to spend the next two decades of my life in a vicious cycle of drunken nothingness?
So, I changed my weekend ritual. I started doing more exercise activities and found a very large local community of athletes who do the same thing. By the time Friday rolls around, I'm usually too tired to throw down. I've learned that sleep is important for my mental and emotional well-being, so I like to stay well-rested on the weekends. Many times, I go to bed early and get up early so that I can ride my bike in the morning. I still hate getting up early and probably will never like it. I like to sleep later on Sundays (9 am-ish) before church at 11 to give myself a little gift of relaxation before the work week begins again.
I'm still very new at finding a good balance in my life. Still making mistakes and then (over)correcting for them. I hope I eventually figure it out. Currently, though, I enjoy lazing around on the sofa on weekend nights, falling asleep at some obscenely early hour for a twenty-something. Removing the extra non-essentials, like dressing to the nines and spending a bunch of money on drinks and talking about blah-blah-blah with random acquaintances, makes it much easier to go back to the basics and do what makes me happy. Being in my thirties so far has been EONS better than being in my twenties. It's when I stopped caring about what other people think and started doing whatever it is that I want to do. That is, being an enthusiastic participant of the MAWP.
Posted by megabeth at 03:05 PM | Comments (2)
June 18, 2006During the last month, I have been trying to squelch my tendency to become insanely competitive again. So it didn't take long for me to try out a new type of bike racing this weekend and quickly become coo-coo for cocoa puffs about criteriums. My original plan was to do one crit in Tuscaloosa on Saturday, but I had fun and my team encouraged me to race the second crit this morning in Homewood.
As usual, I was stressed out about racing, no matter how much I told myself it doesn't matter. And it doesn't. I guess I am just wired to be competitive and can't convince myself to relax about it.
I went into the race feeling encouraged and rested. There were nine of us in the field. The first few laps were fast but I had plenty of energy. I did not feel tired until about halfway through the race. At the end of the race, I dug in deep for the final sprint and crossed the line in fifth, behind women of lower categories than mine (lower cats = faster racers), and one teammate, the Little Beast. My payout: $70. We pooled our winnings together ($250) and each teammate went home with $50. I quickly learned that women's crit racing has very nice payouts since there are so few of us competing in the sport. I suspect part of that is a barrier to entry (the high expense of bikes and equipment), and another part of that is that women make babies.
The distance in my Saturday crit was only 16-17 miles, but it took a lot out of me. This morning, my legs were not sore, just a little fatigued. I didn't feel that fantastic when starting the race. The first few laps were quite brisk, and it was very hot outside, and I was immediately suffering. I began to feel stronger as the race progressed, but at the end, I was fading again. This race was faster because the race directors offered several primes (pronounced "preems"), which are prizes for the person who wins the lap. That makes the lap pace fast and furious. They had several prime laps and I was about to scream, "STOP ALREADY WITH YOUR DAMN PRIMES!!!" But I couldn't scream anything since I was about to die. The end of the race involved myself and a teammate trading places trying to gap up to the leaders. We were successful, but not in a position to sprint for the win. I dug in deep again for the final sprint, and was neck and neck with my teammate at the line. In the style of Davis Phinney, I threw my bike forward across the finish line for the fourth place finish. I was very excited about the chance to throw my bike across the line. It is an act of much drama and flair. I'm not sure it was entirely necessary, but I thought it looked cool.
Today's payout: $65. We will pool our winnings together again. I couldn't have done so well without my teammates. We're just getting started racing together and need to work on strategy. These being my first two crits, I don't know what is going on most of the time other than my need to hang on and not get dropped and to sprint hard at the end. I was doubtful I would like this kind of bike race, but it seems to suit me well aerobically, as I have grown up doing interval-type sports like tennis and ultimate frisbee. And despite my (misleading) diminutive size, I am not the best hill-climber. My bike does weigh more than most racing bikes (around 19 lbs), which does not matter as much in a crit as it does when climbing hills. I could probably improve my performance with a lighter bike, but I also need to increase my leg strength.
Next weekend I am doing a road race, which will require hill climbing skills. Hmm.
Posted by megabeth at 04:13 PM | Comments (6)
June 14, 2006I have decided to try racing my first criterium this weekend, although I still feel tentative about it. And I am scared of crashing and/or getting dropped early. I'm the type of person who feels discouraged unless I know I am at the top of my game, and I doubt I'm anywhere near that, especially since I had that mystery virus and took a break a few weeks in May. I do find it interesting, though, that if I ride less often (two or three times a week), I perform much better during those rides. Perhaps if I quit riding entirely, I'll be the fastest cyclist in town. Ha.
Back to the crit. It's on Saturday in Tuscaloosa. I'm trying not to think about it. I am trying to remind myself, however, that feats of Olympian nature should not be expected of one's first crit. I expect too much from myself.
Posted by megabeth at 02:12 PM | Comments (1)
June 07, 2006This is totally unrelated to the mission statement of this blog, but since I am a numbers person I am taking this opportunity to spout some numbers. That's fun for me.
Yesterday, Alabama had a primary election. I did some calculations and looked up some numbers, and I drew some conclusions from those numbers.
Number of people who voted yesterday state-wide: 924,124.
This number was calculated from the total votes for governor in both primaries with 99% of precincts reporting. I assume that most people who voted marked a vote for governor at the least. Just to cover that last 1% of precincts and a few curiosities who didn't vote for Guvnah, I'll round that number up to 925,000.
The 2000 census shows that in the year 2000, there were 2,528,963 registered voters and a voting population (adults 18 and up) of 3,333,000. That leaves a difference of 804,037 people who aren't even registered to vote!! My, my, my. I am disturbed that so many people are completely oblivious or apathetic.
These numbers are old, but since I don't have anything else to go by, I'm using them.
The voter turnout of those registered to vote is 36.5%. The voter turnout of those of voting age is 27.7%.
Thus, my vote basically was representative of three adult citizens in the state of Alabama, including myself. To the other two of you, thanks for allowing me the opportunity to speak for you. I voted against some of your favorite candidates. I also look forward to voting for you in the election in November.
p.s. Note on comments: I am disabling comments for old posts, will keep comments on the latest posts open.
Posted by megabeth at 09:19 AM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2006One of the doctors I visited suspected that I had a virus and I think she is probably correct. Exactly six weeks after the days when I was too sick to be at work, I am feeling pretty froggy again. Last night I had a very strong bike ride, which makes me feel more confident that I am going to recover completely.
Some decisions I made during my down time will still remain, though. I have decided not to do triathlons (I suppose I could do the occasional sprint race for fun) because I don't like swimming, I don't have time for swimming, I dislike getting up at the crack of dawn to swim before work, and I don't have time (full time job, grad school, homeowner, freelancer, and very sweet girlfriend) to train for three sports.
If I forget about racing altogether, then I start to think about what I would do to enjoy my hobbies. My choice of activity would be based on what I want to do at that moment rather than what I should be doing to get faster. If I want to run, then I will run. If I want to ride my bike, then I will ride. If I am tired, then I will rest. I bolded that statement just to beat it into my thick, stubborn head.
I think I will participate in some duathlons, some running races and some cycling races as I feel like it. I'm interested in doing some more cycling races because they do not seem as stressful to me. Something about being with other people, especially on a team, adds a social element to the competition and takes my mind off of pushing myself beyond my limits. It's a bit more of a struggle for me to participate in team sports; I have excelled at being a solitary athlete in competition (particularly tennis singles). It's worth a try to see how it pans out.
Most importantly, though, I want to have fun.
Posted by megabeth at 03:51 PM | Comments (3)