Ow

So in terms of riding schedule not much has changed, still only seem to find time for the one ride a week. It’s really quite sad seeing as I used to be able to get in up to 15 hours or more a week. But that was in the summer in Edmonton so there was much more daylight then. But the riding is good and I’m learning to ride smarter than I ever have before, not pushing my heart rate through the roof on every hill and managing to conserve strength and power for later parts of the ride. Saturday I did find a crazy hill to climb on the way out of Dana Point. Sadly I also learned that in California they only indicate if a road is a dead-end about 500 ft before it ends, I don’t need to point out how stupid that is do I?

The road can be found on google maps or earth, the view from the top was well worth the pain of the climb, you can see a few photos on google earth.


I in order to compensate for some of my lack of activity I decided to join Deirdre at the gym on Sunday. Our apartment complex has a small gym on the property and Deirdre has been there to use the treadmills a few times. So I figured I’d try to start doing a regular weight training program. My brother gave me a training guide for cyclists a few years ago and I’ve been using it in the winters to do weight work to keep fit. Of course being designed for cyclists the program calls for a good bit of leg workouts, with a lot of core muscle work as well (back and abs). Well, this gym was certainly not planned by a cyclist. Virtually all the equipment is designed to work your arms and shoulders. The one leg machine is part shoulder press machine and barely works well for the legs. But I soldiered on and did what few exercises were on my list. This included massive 60 pound chest presses! Yeah, I know, my arms are weak, but if there was a leg press machine I could have been doing about 600 pounds there. Essentially I’m the inverted gym junkie, no upper body mass, but lots of muscle below the waist.

Anyway the point of all this is that after doing the 3 sets of 20-30 reps my arms were feeling a little sore. The next day they were feeling fucking sore! I could barely even straighten them at the elbows. Of course the second day after working out is always the worst, though I did learn that I can do a great impersonation of a T-Rex.

I’m going to have to rethink this whole gym idea, I have a feeling that it won’t pay off the way I would like. So maybe I should invest in a good lighting system for the bike. Night rides are always a great rush, plus I don’t look so stupid wincing every time I point to a feature of a slide in class the next day.