WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy

Today I hate when I introduce myself to someone and ask for their name, then don't listen to the answer. I have more to say on this but April and I have to catch the 9:15 showing of Waltz with Bashir.

Today's and yesterday's workout

Yesterday: No workout! Friday will be a day off in this training phase.

Today: Rode my bike to the gym for leg strength and core strength. Then I skated 20.25 miles in 1:20:22 (15.1 mph), HR 70%, temp 46. My legs were kind of toasted from the strength workout but still a good skate. Time 3:15.

WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy

Today I hate when people stop by my cubicle to make disparaging remarks about my teacup. I drink a lot of tea, so my teacup gets pretty narsty-looking pretty fast. But I'm too lazy to clean it, and anyway who cares? That stuff is just tea residue -- it's not like it's herpes fungus* or something.



*Explanatory note for Canadian readers: This is an example of the American humor technique known as "making shit up." Herpes is not actually a fungus -- it is a tiny catfish native to the Amazon River that can lodge itself in the urethra of unsuspecting swimmers, locking itself in place with its spines. It can only be removed with surgery.

Today's workout

22-mile bike commute. Then to the gym for leg strength and core strength. A slow bike ride home as my legs were toasted. Time 3:00.

WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy

Today I hate when I’m writing a post about how I hate my crappy Fujifilm FinePix J10 digital camera for suddenly refusing to autofocus on anything, and then it suddenly starts autofocusing just fine. Which is actually a good thing, but now I have to start a new post about how I hate something else. Unless I decide to go all meta with this post. Which I might.

Today's workout

Skated 28.1 miles in 1:49:13 (15.4 mph), HR 70%, temp 57-54. Holy efficiency, Batman! I've never skated that fast at a heart rate that low. The last lap I averaged 16.1 mph at 74%!

WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy (TBTL Metablog Edition!)

Today I hate Too Beautiful To Live,* which has insinuated itself into my consciousness to such an extent that I can't help but think "Thumbs down!" when I ride past this doggie daycare on Montview Avenue.



*Explanatory note for Canadian readers: Too Beautiful to Live is a massively popular Seattle radio show/podcast that attracts a larger audience than the combined viewership of American Idol, Sesame Street, and Seinfeld reruns. Every night, over 500 million Americans tune in to hear host Luke Burbank read lists of prison nicknames, or to learn about producer Jen Andrews’ obsession with Michael Cera, or to find out if sound mixer Sean De Tore gained weight (Answer: Yes). All accompanied by silly audio clips from the Internet!

Today's workout

22-mile bike commute, then to the gym for leg strength and core exercises. Time 3:00. I've shifted my strength workouts to emphasize leg strength -- I used to do two core exercises for each leg exercise; now I've flipped that ratio.

I weighed in at 154 this morning, up 1 pound from last week. Grrr!

WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy

Today I hate when I touch my tongue to both poles of a 9-volt battery,* like I’m about to do... eeearugghhh! God, that feels awful… uurrrmmmngg! If I never feel that sensation again it will be too soon... pfeh! Yekk! Vfvfvfff!

*Explanatory note for Canadian readers: A “9-volt battery” is an object that Americans use to decorate the insides of their smoke detectors. It is generally considered to have no practical use, although it was famously employed by American horror author H.P. Lovecraft, who used to think up the names of monsters (“Cthulhu!”) by touching 9-volt batteries to his tongue. (Discussion questions: Can we all agree that H.P. Lovecraft was a very strange-looking man? What’s going on with that wandering right eye? And how did he get cellulite on his chin?)

WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy

Today I hate sportswriters who use singular verb forms to go with singular sports team nicknames, as in “Colorado Mammoth wins 15-9.” (I also hate singular sports team nicknames -- Miami Heat, Oklahoma City Thunder, Edmonton Rush -- but I’ll save that for another day.) One could argue that this usage is grammatically correct, but it sounds stilted and unnatural because we’re accustomed to plural verb forms when we talk about teams doing something (“Broncos fail to make playoffs”). I say we stick with the plural form for its consistency and natural sound.

Today's workout

Yesterday: I went to bed early Saturday night but could not get to sleep, finally drifting around around 3:30 Sunday morning and notching 3 hours of sleep before the alarm sounded.

Stairclimbing race! This was the third time I’ve run the American Lung Association’s Run the Republic, a race to the top of the tallest building in Denver. I knew I couldn’t run double-steps all the way to the top, so I started off running single-steps and was quickly passed by a guy who was doing a weird Spider-Man thing: walking double-steps and hauling himself upward by grabbing the handrails on both sides of the stairway. At the 21st floor I switched to running double-steps, my HR shot to 97%, and I caught Spider-Man a few floors later.

At the 38th floor we were supposed to turn right and run down a short hallway to where the stairway continued. Confused by oxygen debt, I turned left instead… and ran into a wall, embarrassing myself in front of a pair of pompon-waving cheerleaders (I am reasonably sure this was not a hallucination). By this time my breaths were coming in great heaving gasps, my legs were turning into wood, and at the 50th floor I stumbled and reverted to single steps until the finish at the 53rd floor.

The result: 56 floors and 1,098 steps in 7:25 with avg. HR 93%, an improvement of 55 seconds over the same race last year! Official results have not been posted but it looked like I took 8th place out of ~1,800 climbers -- my best placement yet at this race. The only disappointment was that I faltered at the top: if I could have shaved 6 seconds I would have moved into 5th place. I sipped water during the entire climb and my throat only got a little scorched with some coughing, nothing a little Yogi Tea Throat Comfort can’t fix.

It was a beautiful day in Denver, so after a leisurely breakfast I went skating: 26.4 miles in 1:44:39 (15.1 mph), HR 70%, temp 61. Then to the gym for a short strength workout. Time 2:45. Sunday marked the end of my Preseason training phase -- now I enter a 10-week Base training phase.

Hours this week: 11.25
Hours this year: 97.25
Miles skated this week: 28
Miles this year: Skates 253, Bike 353

Today: What workout? Monday is my day off, except when it's not.

WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy (At Least It's Right Twice A Day Edition, Part the Second)

Today I hate another broken public clock -- this one on the 9News building off of Speer Boulevard stands frozen at 9:35 (click photo below for a larger version). How accurate can 9News' news coverage be when they can't get their clock to tell the correct time?


This photo taken at 12:37 pm. As far as you know.

WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy

Today I hate when I take a cookbook to the grocery store to buy ingredients for a recipe, and then I leave the cookbook at the store in the bottom of the basket. Which happened to me today. Which is why I'm bringing it up.

Today's workout

Nothing today... tapering for tomorrow morning's stairclimbing race.

Today's workout

Just my 22-mile bike commute. Took it easy as part of a mini-taper for Sunday's race. On the ride home I had a ridiculous tailwind, which was awesome but a little weird. It feels odd to ride fast with so little effort and without feeling any air resistance. It's like riding in a vacuum!

WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy

Today I hate that I’ve become one of those people who is always cold. I haven’t always been this way -- just a few years ago I could wear short-sleeved shirts to work all winter, and until the temperature dropped below freezing I could run outside in nothing more than T-shirt and shorts. Today I wore a long-sleeved shirt to work with a T-shirt underneath, and I’ve had to add a sweater since I got here. And I can’t exercise in chilly temperatures without bundling up in an embarrassing costume of arm warmers, tights, gloves, and hat. Is this what happens when you get older? At this rate I’ll be living in Death Valley by the time I’m 50, and wearing a parka to sweep the sand off my porch.

Today's workout

22-mile bike commute. Then to the Marriott for the last stairclimbing workout before Sunday's race. 8 climbs of 20 flights each (2 walking, 2 running/bounding, 4 running). Felt good. I just wanted to get some stairclimbing in without scorching my throat. Time 2:15.

Today I reviewed my 2008 Montreal training log with an eye toward filling in the details of my 2009 world record training plan tomorrow. It was a little nostalgic, reliving all those long skates... and a little exciting thinking about the long skates to come this summer.

WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy

Today I hate drivers who use excessive caution around bicycles. Of course, I prefer these drivers over the rude, inattentive drivers who endanger the lives of cyclists everywhere. But I don’t like drivers who wait at an intersection when I’m half a block away and could not block their path if I sprouted a jet pack.* Or drivers who pass ridiculously wide even when there’s plenty of room -- or, even worse, refuse to risk passing and creep behind me for an entire block. Some drivers wait at stop signs even when we’re traveling in parallel directions, and an accident would require that I hurl myself into their path. It might seem courteous to drive this way around bicycles. But really it’s annoying and it makes me feel guilty for holding up traffic.

*Explanatory note for Canadian readers: “Jet packs” are an American invention, originally developed in the 1960s for secret agents such as the American spy James Bond. However, with the end of the cold war in the 1990s, Americans realized a “peace dividend” as the U.S. government declassified jet pack technology and made it available to citizens. Today, nearly two in five Americans use jet packs for their daily transportation needs. (These consumer-grade jet packs have been “defanged,” of course, and unlike the military models are incapable of firing missiles, laying down oil slicks or smoke screens, or deploying grappling hooks.)

Today's workout

To the crowded gym for leg strength, core strength, and cardio exercises. I've shifted my strength workouts to include more leg exercises, and toward higher weight/fewer reps. Time 2:30.

WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy

Today I hate a label I found attached to a bag of Yogi Tea. Normally, these labels carry gentle, quasi-Zen messages suitable for pondering over a soothing cup of tea. Messages like, “Live with reverence for yourself and others,” and “Let things come to you” and “Love is where compassion prevails and kindness rules.”

But this label says, “Keep up.” Yes. Keep up. As in, “Keep up, slowpoke,” or, “What’s the matter with you? Keep up!” Kind of aggressive for Yogi Tea, don’t you think? Maybe the label writer was having a bad day.

Today's workout

22-mile bike commute. Then to the Marriott for stairclimbing. 8 climbs of 20 flights each (2 walking, 1 bounding, 3 running, 2 running/bounding), with a fast climb of 1:41, which is a little behind my best. The race is Sunday so I have one more stairclimbing workout to go. It will have to be easier because I'm coughing a little. Time 2:15.

Weighed in at 153 this morning, no change from last week.

WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy

Today I hate The Onion Movie. The CNN/C-SPAN/Good Morning America parody videos on The Onion’s website are first-rate -- I love the one featuring a U.S. Representative reading into the congressional record an account of beating a homeless man to death for purposes of recreation -- so how did America’s Finest (Fake) News Source issue this bit of dreck?

The Onion Movie is a series of parody TV news items. This would have worked if the items had been funny, and if the filmmakers had stuck with it -- they could have had a morning show, a sports show, a financial segment, a disaster report, and so forth, plus commercials. But the jokes seemed like rejects from The Onion’s main publication, and the writers tacked on a dopey framing device about the anchorman that culminated in a painfully unfunny cameo by Steven Seagal. The whole thing seemed to have been outsourced to the lowest bidder in Sri Lanka.

Fair warning: The Onion Movie is not so bad it’s good. It’s just bad. Don’t watch it.

Today's workout

What workout? Monday is my day off, except when it's not. So I'm making a chocolate-peanut butter cheesecake for a co-worker's birthday, and to exacerbate the free food problem we were discussing so recently.

WHAT I HATE TODAY: Your daily dose of negative energy

Today I hate when my left front tooth is suddenly chipped for no reason I can recall.

My right front tooth is also chipped. But I remember how that happened: I was at a bar on New Year’s Eve, drinking beer* out of a heavy glass mug, and I misjudged the distance between the mug and my face -- this was not my first beer of the evening -- and I smacked the mug into my tooth. I spat the tiny chip into my hand and considered putting it on ice, so maybe I could get it glued or welded back on or something. But that sounded like an awful lot of trouble, so I flicked the chip onto the floor and kept drinking.

The chipped place was sharp at first. Being a highly evolved lifeform endowed with intelligence and the ability to reason, I instinctively rubbed the spot with my tongue until I developed a sore (and then I kept rubbing it anyway, while saying “ow”). After a few years the spot has worn smooth. None of this has anything to do with my left front tooth, of course, but chipped-tooth stories never fail to fascinate.

*Explanatory note for Canadian readers: “Beer” is an alcoholic beverage, invented in America, and made out of fermented barley, hops, and unicorn semen. Going to places where people drink beer theoretically makes it easier to obtain casual sex, although I cannot confirm this from personal experience. Famous American beers include Foster’s, Heineken, and Molson Canadian.

Yesterday's and today's workouts

Yesterday: Snowshoe race! Drove to Frisco for a "5K" (I'm pretty sure the course was short at least half a mile -- I finished in 34:41 at HR 87%, temp 16) to benefit their local high school track team. The course was not as challenging or as picturesque as the previous snowshoe race, but it was fun and cold and I won my age group against a small field, for which I received a charming painted dinner plate as a trophy. I love small community races!



After the race I went to the gym for some easy cardio. Time 2:00.

Today: Skated 20.25 miles in 1:22:50 (14.7 mph), HR 70%, temp 47 and windy. Then to the gym for leg strength and core exercises. Time 3:30.

Hours this week: 13.75
Hours this year: 86
Miles skated this week: 22
Miles skated this year: 225