RTAWW #8 The Touch… The Feel… Of saANd, The Story Of Our Lives

      I woke up at 5 this morning as I’ve been doing for the past few weeks and went for my morning walk.  I walk/jog 3-4 miles depending on what I feel like doing, or really it depends on how good the book that I’m listening to is or how bad I want to get through it. I’m not too excited about the book that I’m listening to so the walk was shorter, besides it was windy. It was windy all night and was still windy when I went walking. I’d say the winds were something like 10mph probably stronger, but I’ll keep my guess safe as the actual speed in my area – the weather at the airport recorded wind speeds of 20-40 miles an hour at the time of my walk and it’s not more than 10 miles away (point being it was windy). Took a trip to the Asian market, which is always fun, and got a few things for several soups that we like. Have I mentioned I like soups? When we got home, my mother in law had prepared some…guess what…soup! Some pea soup. It was delicious!

      The highlight of this day again was riding with my kids. We went out again and they were much more confident today than yesterday – maybe a bit too confident.  My oldest son face-planted into some sand. He came roaring down a hill and I imagine he thought that he would be able to go through the sand or slow down easily in it because yesterday the sand was a bit more wet from rain and he had gone through some short patches of it, but he went about 10 ft started took a swerve left, corrected right in the shifty sand and KuhFWAhP! It took a few seconds for the pain to set in of having his handlebar jabbing him in the abdomen but it did. Luckily my wife and mother in law were strolling around in the park when it happened and came to calm him down. After spitting out all of the sand in his mouth and getting it out of his hair and off his face he calmed down and in a few minutes he was riding around again – but now making sure to steer clear of the sand. Big time kudos to him for get back on and riding. Earlier he had told me that he fell off somewhere that I hadn’t seen but said it was not big deal because stuff like that happens in life, but you just have to get up and keep going. I do believe that is pretty sound advice from a child.

      Mostly we’ve been riding around on grass, which I know is difficult to ride on, but I’m thinking about the long term here – they’re building up some great strength pushing those pedals to trudge through the grass so once we do hit up some bike paths and easy dirt roads, it’s going to be super easy for them.  They actually know that it’s harder (they first learned on blacktop), but I think they feel more comfortable on the grass for now. Plus it’s more fun to go fun to go up and down hills. As long as they’re having fun, I’m having fun!  And having fun on a bike usually means that I’m not going to be stressed or depressed or gaining weight. Bada-bing Bada-boom.

      Time for a recovery sleep – got to do some drivin’ tomorrow that I wasn’t expecting.  Ride on!

RTAWW #3

Who doesn't love an acronym? Third day into this and I'm already tired of writing out my own title to the "series."  The good news is that I'm pretty darn happy with my day today.  I was able to do a good amount of reading for my thesis paper and in between I did various stretches and exercises. I'm sure I'll talk about them in more depth as I figure out a better routine or schedule for doing them.  I also watched some GCN videos on Youtube today.  I particularly liked this one about time efficient training.

As usual they have some good advice, but I think the biggest take away is that consistency is key. Today felt like a day that was more consistent with my goals as far as eating and staying more active.  This evening my wife and I went on a walk to get the heart rate up and the legs stretched out and even though it was a bit cold, it felt great (even my wife, who needed quite a bit of persuasion to go for this walk, said that it felt good and that she was glad that I talked her into going for the walk.
      Another thing that came up in the video is that having some kind of goal might be a good idea, so I'm tentatively setting one for myself for the distant future - a year and a half-ish into the future.  I'd like to do the Sherman Pass RR (climb) again if it's still going on, or at least go at it at race pace and see if I can smash my only attempt from several years ago.
       The last bit, which is my favorite part of the video, is the emphasis on the importance of getting adequate rest - exactly what I'm going to do right now. Ah, yes, sleep.