Yes, for some completely unfathomable reason I thought that she’d actually become kind, nice, sweet and all of that touchy-feely crap. Yesterday she violently disabused me of that notion.

Before I get into yesterday’s little adventure, though, let’s review a couple of things. Over the past 12 months she has variously:

1. Convinced me to ride a bicycle outside. In 20 degree weather. For those of you Fahrenheit-phobes, that translates to about -7 degrees Celsius.
2. Duped me into running. Multiple times. In the rain.
3. Been directly or indirectly responsible for me crashing my bicycle - that would be the whole learning how to use clipless pedals thing.
4. Encouraged me to engage in several sessions of near-death-by-drowning experiences.
5. And, the crowning denouement, wheedled me into taking my road-bike onto a treacherous gravel road so that I could panic, lose the back wheel, steer straight into the nearest 4-inch-wide post and thereby dislocate my finger.

Now normally people who have all these injustices perpetrated upon them wise up and realize that something is amiss. But not me. Noooo, not me. Apparently I’m of the irrationally trusting sort.

So when she suggested that we use the trainers instead of riding outside in the nasty, blustery extant conditions I was quite convinced that the torturer of old had finally been vanquished. But I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

You see, Kerry has rollers. And she knows how to use them. I, on the other hand, didn’t. So just as I was about to put my bike on the trainer she said “Honey, would you go downstairs and get the rollers for me. They’re in the basement.” So, being the dutiful serf that I am, painfully dislocated finger and all I went downstairs to the basement, retrieved the heretofore-unknown rollers and brought them upstairs.

That’s when things went downhill. The next utterance went something like this: “You should ride the rollers. They’re fun. Besides, they’re set up for your size bike”.

And so began my latest 60 minutes of hell.

Picture this: you”ve never ridden rollers before, and while intellectually you know that gyroscopic forces conspire to keep the bike upright and that groundspeed has abso-fuckin-lutely nothing to do with it, your muscles, brain and body all tell you that you’re just about to die. Because if you don’t fall off the side of the rollers you’re going to do something stupid and the bike is going to launch off the front end of the rollers and about 10 milliseconds after that you’re going to be faceplanting at 20mph into the wall directly in front of you.

Oh yeah, I’m no longer a rollers virgin. I’ve ridden ‘em and survived. The first 5 minutes were, quite honestly, terrifying, but after about 10 minutes I started relaxing and then got more confident on them. So now I’ve added another new toy to my training gadgetry.

And now, a random thought for the day: “My 8th grade science teacher used to get high off of scented markers all the time” (Kerry, 9:38pm, 11/21/08)

It was significant because for the past 2 months I’ve been almost completely unable to run due to my left ITB giving me a big Fuck You. Cycling wasn’t any better - my ITB would start yelling at me after about an hour on the bike. But the ITB isn’t really the problem.

You see, the ITB is a longitudinal fibrous reinforcement of the Fascia Lata. It is attached to the midpoint of the external lip of the iliac crest and to the lateral condyle of the tibia. The iliac crest is obviously part of the ilium. The ilium has various other muscles that connect it to, amongst other things, the latissimus dorsi.

The fascia lata is the deep fascia of the thigh. In addition to being attached to the ilium, it is also attached to the back of the sacrum and the coccyx. That means that the fascia lata can have an effect on your posture. Alternatively, your posture can play with the fascia lata.

On the other end, the fascia lata is attached to the femoral and tibial condyles. Since the iliotibial band reinforces the fascia lata, it too is attached to various thingies around the knee. Well, one thing only: the ITB is attached on the bottom to the lateral condyle of the tibia.

And so we get to the tibia. Ah yes, the tibia. Ye olde shankbone is one of two bones in the lower leg, connecting the knee bone with the ankle bone. The medial malleolus is the medial surface of the lower extremity of the tibia. The anterior border of the medial malleolus is where we find the attach points for the anterior fibers of the deltoid ligament of the ankle joint, a synovial hinge that also connects to the talus bone. Talus bones, incidentally, have been used as a form of dice due to the fact that they can only land in one of 4 ways, but I digress.

Which, of course, brings me to the foot. Or, as the case may be, my feet in particular. And my lack of arches in my feet. There is also that nasty little thing known as the Achilles tendon or, as I like to call it, the fount of all that is wrong with my gait.

The achilles tendon has this interesting property that it provides proprioceptive information to the brain. As it seems to have turned out, my left achilles tendon sucks at that. That essentially means that if I try to balance on my left foot with my eyes closed I stand a fairly good chance of falling over inside of, oh, a second.

So basically my Achilles tendon screws me over when I go running. Normally that wouldn’t be too bad because kinesthetically you can compensate - I don’t typically run with my eyes closed. That’s where the flat feet come into play. My heel rotates inward too much and even motion control running shoes don’t completely solve the problem (custom orthotics are in my near future). Still not the end of the world, though. But, combine running with cycling and problems start to appear - my cycling cleat for my left foot, for some reason that completely escapes me, was not shimmed to change the angle that my foot meets the pedal. I had shimmed my right cleat, but not the left (translation: I’m really just a cretin and forgot to do so).

This, of course, makes my foot angle in. That changes the angle of my tibia with respect to the knee, which in turn places more pressure on the ITB, tightening it up and making it rub against various condyles around the knee, which in turn makes the ITB a little cranky so it tightens up to try to make me stop hurting it.

That’s approximately when I start yelling in pain like a 12 year old little girl.

But wait, it doesn’t stop there. Because it is connected to the ilium, which is connected to the latissimus dorsi and the sacrum and various other body parts, those start to tighten up and I wind up with a sore back.

The combination of a sore back, a sore ITB, a sore knee because of the sore ITB and the inability to run or cycle for close to two months made me cranky. Couple that with a dislocated finger from riding into a large wooden post while en route to take pictures of Kerry’s new prototype cyclocross bicycle and you wind up with a very cranky me. I’m not very inspired when I’m cranky, so I stopped blogging much.

The dislocated finger, however, drove me to seek professional help.

No, not that kind of help. I mean help of the orthopaedic variety. And the physical therapy variety. And somehow I remembered that I hadn’t shimmed my left cycling shoe, so I fixed that too.

And that brings me to today: I managed to go running for 5km today. I was, of course, ass-slow because I haven’t been running, but at least I managed to run and, more importantly, it didn’t hurt.

Which, of course, proves that Dirk Gently was correct: By creating a new prototype cyclocross bicycle and having Kerry ride it, I wound up dislocating my finger which caused me to go to the doctor who sent me off to the physical therapist which provided me with the opportunity to whine about my leg enough so that they agreed to take a look at it and then suggested that I do some different stretching exercises which in turn made my back sore which made me go to the chiropractor who noticed that my left foot overpronates which reminded me that I needed to shim my left cleat which made riding not irritate my ITB which allowed it to start healing and that in turn let me go running this morning without any ITB pain which inspired me to blog again.

So thank you, Terry Precision, for providing me with some more blog material.

So we decided to carve pumpkins.

]]> http://into-the-blue.com/blog/2008/10/30/halloween-wooooooo/feed http://into-the-blue.com/blog/2008/10/19/a-recipe-of-sorts http://into-the-blue.com/blog/2008/10/19/a-recipe-of-sorts#comments Sun, 19 Oct 2008 13:24:29 +0000 andy http://into-the-blue.com/blog/?p=156 Take 2 cyclists, one a wannabe.

Add 1 cyclocross bike with knobbly tires. Liberally apply competent biker to the ‘cross bike and make the somewhat incapable newb ride his normal road bike with slick tires.

Stir in some sand and gravel. Apply a dollop of dirt.

Garnish with a wooden 5′ 4×4 lollipop.

Bake at 15mph for approximately 0.1 seconds; ensure that you use your finger against said lollipop column to cause a 200g deceleration.

Hey presto, you’re now the proud owner of a splint courtesy of a dislocated proximal inter-phalangeal joint on your index finger:

How not to wrap a splint

Inebriated. Buzzed.

Oh yeah, I’ve sacrificed great gourds at the shrine of Bacchus. I’ve spliced the main brace, wet my whistle, cracked a bottle. In short, I’m slightly shit-faced.

But I have an excuse. And it’s a good one.

You see, I’ve been forced to digest the undigestable. I’m writing code. Me, the software architect of little renown. I’ve been forced to spin fine constructs of caffeine-crazed code that traverse the unplumbed depths of that abomination known as extensible markup language.

That’s XML for you members of the great unwashed horde.

And naturally after a long, hard day at the office (OK, I worked from home today. But I worked. That’s something, right?) I felt the need to imbibe in a tipple or two, so that meant opening a bottle of wine. Tempus Two Vine Vale Shiraz of a 2005 vintage to be precise. And one glass led to a second.

And a third.

And then I got the munchies.

So that’s how I find myself in front of my laptop at 10:45pm on a rainy night. Eating hippie-crunchie-organic waffles with fake maple syrup.

Drunk.

Today I thought I’d be thrifty and not splurge on the pre-made entrees. That’s right, today I wasn’t even going to ask those miserable little money-grubbing assholes to assemble anything because I’d do it all myself from the deli counter.

So here’s what I did:

1. Take 2 slices of somewhat stale bread,
2. add 1 slice of unpleasantly aged cheese,
3. 2 smallish slices of overripe tomato,
4. a dab of mayo,
5. some wilted lettuce leaves,
6. toss in 3 slices of dried-out ham
7. and assemble the above with loving care.

Concerned that this may not be quite enough sustenance for my busy mind I thought I’d throw 1 slightly bruised banana into the lunch mix.

And how much did they charge me for my trouble?

$7.35.

I could get twice the size sandwich for half the price from Subway, Panera, D’Angelo’s, Quizno’s or name your favorite fast-food joint. And at least the bread would be fresh.

Time to start bringing lunch to work.

Unlike most other triathletes though (ok, there you go, I’ve finally admitted it - I’m a triathlete. Satisfied, honey?), I decided to target one in August as the “big” or “A” race, and planned on racing 1 or maybe 2 triathlons beforehand just to get a feel for what they were like. Of course I targeted Timberman, only one of the biggest triathlons around. Naturally there was a minor issue. Well, two or three actually: (a) I had no bicycle, (2) I have flat feet and was President of the Anti-Running League of New England and (iii) I hadn’t swum in, oh, 20 or so years.

And it was winter. In New England. With record snowfall.

So of course, I had to get a trainer. And then I had to try my hand at racing bicycles (summary: I suck). Not content with that, I had fun at my first triathlon and proved that I have a future in sabotage. Around about the same time I managed to screw up my Achilles tendon, putting my running training back by about 3-4 months (I’m still recovering from the lack of running but I managed to run a 7:15/mile 5 miler tonight so I’m moderately content with that). And then the triathlons came fast and furious:

And of course for good measure I felt compelled to run the Bill Luti 5 miler (finishing 125th out of 332 finishers).

So now I’m back to base training with the goal of actually being able to run consistently and increase my running mileage. Hopefully I’ll get consistent enough that I’ll manage to get in more than the one and only track workout I managed this year and associated with that, get faster.

That way I won’t have to resort to sabotage to beat people.

And strangely enough, with all the ITB pain, Achilles tendon issues, shin splints, sore knees, aching quads and general exhaustion from lots of training that my body wasn’t accustomed to, I couldn’t be happier and am looking forward to doing better next season.

I guess that means that the descent has reached it’s final destination, the weather is gorgeous and no, the coffee isn’t cold.

I didn’t know her all that well, but Erica had recently married a very good friend of mine, Kendal Simpson. I can’t even imagine the desolation that Kendal and Erica’s family must be feeling at this point in time. From what little I know, Erica, an extremely talented pilot, was practicing for the Reno Air Races. During the practice session her airplane’s wing separated from the fuselage, causing a crash that Erica did not survive.

Right now I’m pretty much at a loss for words. Yes, motorsports have a risk and yes, flying airplanes has a risk attached to it but you never seriously contemplate the possibility that you or someone you care about will be harmed.

Kendal, Erica, you are both in my thoughts.

Erica Simpson (nee Hoagland)

One day. Two riders. 108 miles of asphalt. 3500 feet of ascent. May I present Le Petit Tour.

Nashua -> Keene -> Nashua

For the elevation profile weenies:

Nashua -> Keene -> Nashua Elevation Profile

Epic.

Closer to 1/2 mile.

Otherwise I’d have to say I suck at swimming because I got a 13:33 split on the swim. Oh yeah, the swim: 13 1/2 minutes of “where the fuck am I? Is that the buoy, or is it some other swimmer?”, followed closely by “Shore? Which shore? Why are there rocks there?” and “Ok, I thought that swimming back to shore was going to be easier because the waves were going to help me.”

Mmm, ocean swimming. Tasty.

After the little swim fiasco, things started to look up. I started in the 3rd wave, so I had a bunch of targets I could pick off on the ride - I managed to get the 34th fastest bike split, so I was constantly calling out “On your left!” as I rode my victims down.

And then there was the run. Somebody should tell triathlon race directors that they could apply for the position of Chief Assistant to Satan. The run course started out uphill. For the first mile. Oh, and they marked the first mile point at about 1.2 miles just so they could fuck with you and make you think you were running slower than you were. As it turns out I managed a 7:15 - 7:20 pace, so I was fairly pleased with the run.

And that culminated in a 53rd place finish out of about 370 competitors in a time of 1:23:53, 65th ranked swim, 34th ranked bike and 88th rank on the run. Kerry, of course, beat me. Again. For the 6th time in 8 triathlons this year.

Which brings me to my apparent loss of sanity.

I’ve just signed up for Lobsterman. It’s an Olympic distance tri. With an ocean swim.

I’m going to die.