Off to Maryland!

Hi Elaine,

I'm going off to Maryland, and then to New York to visit close friends. Don't think I'm going your way, alas...!

Meanwhile, I am walking on air. I sent a copy of my latest chapter draft off to my writing coach and got back this response:

"All Right! You nailed it this time. Great writing. This is about perfect. A quantum leap."

So I am psyched. I'm only thirteen pages into the chapter (typed, single spaced, so probably about 26 pages in the book), but they're thirteen good pages. It's going well!

I also went out and bought three skeins of BRIGHT pink, frayed-edge ribbon. I'm knitting it up on giant needles into a hot pink tutu, and plan to put tufts of holographic angelina on it to spice it up a little. I bought another skein of green-purple-blue ribbon, and am going to knit it into a VERY open mesh and then hang peacock feathers from it. Should make for quite a tutu!

I also bought some cycling jerseys (I'm on an unstoppable shopping campaign) so I can decorate them to match the tutus. Woo hoo!

Tien

Having trouble motivating myself

Got to the gym a few days ago and felt really, really tired and unmotivated...possibly because I didn't get enough sleep. I've got to stop this pattern if I want to ride. I'm hoping that having a trainer and a training plan will help with the motivation issues, but some part of me really just wants to sleep in, forget about the ride, and not go out this year. Nonetheless, I plan to go on training.

Good news on the training front: my cycling coach from ALC2 is willing to help! He hasn't got time to coach me right now, but he's put me up at the top of his waiting list, and he's putting together a set of exercises for strength training, that will hopefully keep the knee from relapsing again. I'm really hoping he finds the time to coach me...that would be most excellent!

And I am thinking more and more about tutu ideas. (Because it's not a ride, dahhling, it's a fashion show!) I have ordered a few more brightly-colored cycling jerseys and am thinking of knitting a tutu out of some of the more outrageous yarns! I have to think about it--if the yarn is too heavy, the tutu won't stay up properly. Perhaps I need to knit a test tutu. :-)

I'm leaving tomorrow for the East Coast, so no training notes (and probably no blog updates) for a week and a half. I wonder if there's be snow?? BRR!!

Trainer and tutus

Put in an hour and a half on the trainer today, which is about 20 miles at my usual pace. Physically, I could have done more, but an hour and a half was as long as I could take the mind-numbing, earth-shattering, truly incredible boredom. I spent the first half watching the DVD of "Fellowship of the Ring" (which I've seen a few too many times already) and the second half watching a cycling training DVD that came with the trainer. It's put out by Chris Carmichael, Lance Armstrong's coach, and it tells you all about how to train for time trials.

I didn't follow the instructions in the DVD, because I would just have gotten injured, at least at this stage of the game. Those workouts are designed for racers, not post-knee-injury couch potatoes. But it was fun to watch the guys work. (I'm all for watching cute guys get all sweaty. :-) ) Meanwhile, I pedaled away, did a few sprints, and generally kept things going. I'm thinking I may want to get some videos of the Tour de France or something. Maybe I'll watch aerobics videos. Anything to keep from getting bored.

Training on a trainer is also extremely sweaty business--there's no airflow to cool you, so it all comes out as sweat. I think it's also a more intense workout, partly because of the boredom (I push faster because I have nothing better to do--I'm not watching out for cars, talking to other riders, admiring the scenery, etc.) and partly because, unlike cycling, there are no rests. In normal road cycling, about 10% of the time you're out riding is spent at stoplights, slowing down for stop signs, and so on. None of that on a trainer.

So anyway, I've had a short workout, and I'm hoping to push it up in the future. Hopefully I'll find a way to combat the mind-numbing boredom, or else just get used to it.

I'm going to start sleeping with the heart-rate monitor, so I can get a bead on my resting heart rate (taken when you wake up in the morning). It's fun to watch it dropping--when I trained last time, it went from 72 all the way down to 55!

Meanwhile...there are tutus to make!! I'll need seven bang-up outfits for the ride. The first day is already done (that's the orange and blue outfit you saw yesterday)--I like to "fly the colors" on the first day, so it's gotta be blue and orange. The fifth day is always red, so I need to go through my red tutus and see if I have anything suitable, or if I need to make a new one. (I lean towards making a new one...dahhhling, do you REALLY think I'd be seen in the same tutu twice?)

I have a few more "favorite tutus" that I plan to wear--one is cocktail-party black with silver sparkles, one is orange silk organza ruffles (hand-dyed!). The others I'll have to make.

I also need to make some "working-girl" tutus for casual riding. I need tutus for training rides, and I don't want to use my "ride specials"--otherwise, by the time the ride rolls around, they'll be old hat. So I bought some brightly-colored organza and I'm going to make myself some training-ride tutus. (I bet you didn't know there were everyday-wear tutus!)

And then there are tops...I have a bit of a dilemma here. I'd like to wear cycling jerseys most of the time, because they wick sweat well and protect your skin if you fall. But I'd like to wear something fancier than just a plain old cycling jersey, so I'm thinking I might get some solid-color jerseys and tart them up a bit with sequins, ribbons, etc. I'm not sure how to do it so that they're washable afterwards--but I'll play with it a bit and see.

So much to do!

Tien

Okay. I think I've figured it out.

I'm going to train aggressively from now until March, trying to put on a good base before my life explodes in May. That way, if I have to skip some weekends of training, I'll be able to get away with it.

I'm going to move in March, rather than in May. That will give me a little bit of a break, time-wise, by spreading the craziness out a bit.

I'm going to move to an apartment on the Peninsula, not one in SF, as I'd contemplated. I'm not familiar with the city, and it'll take less time to get adjusted if I move someplace familiar. I won't have the time to explore new surroundings; I can move again in a year or two, once things are a little less crazy.

I'm going to put together my own training plan if Curtis (my cycling coach) isn't available. If I need to, I'll get some weights so I can do my own weight training at home. (It takes me fifteen minutes to get to and from the gym, making half an hour extra training I can get if I stay at home.) I'm going to do some cross-training as well.

It's going to take some doing, but I think I'll be able to do it.

Meanwhile, I have been spinning up the silk I got from The Silkworker, and man, is it lovely! I'm amazed at how fluffy and even it is. I want to ask her how she does it.

I'm also thinking (in my copious free time, of which I have none) of dyeing some very nice Babydoll wool roving in the primary dye colors, and doing some fun stuff with optical mixing. if I use fuchsia, yellow, and turquoise (roughly the three primary colors), I should be able to get all the colors of the rainbow just by mixing them together in different amounts. Would make wonderful socks. (Yes, I have a sock fetish right now.)

Anyway, that's about it--I'm going down to the farmer's market this morning, and then I'm going to hop onto the trainer and do a three-hour ride. Good thing I have Fellowship of the Ring cued up! That should be just about three hours long.

Tien

Training Diary: Rain cancels (not!)

Today was the "Jingle Bells" ride sponsored by the Positive Pedalers, leaving from Mike's Bikes in Sausalito and doing a nice, short, 20-mile loop in Marin. At least, that was the theory.

I arrived early, having given myself 90 minutes to make what turned out to be an hour's drive. I sat in my truck and knitted up a test swatch from that glorious silk yarn--it looks fantastic, and a Navajo-plied 3-ply seems to be the right size/color. (I'm thrilled by it.) It was FREEZING out, but I figured I'd warm up as we rode. I was dressed to the nines with an orange-and-blue AIDS Lifecycle jersey and bright orange tutu, and I was set to ride.

As I got out of the truck and went to join the others, the first drops of rain started falling. Fifteen minutes later, it was obvious we were going to have to cancel. It wasn't raining hard, but it was raining steadily, and it's extremely dangerous to be cold and wet on a bicycle--the wind-chill can lead to hypothermia fast. And, we had one steep (now wet) hill and a bunch of novice riders.

I think for me the deciding point was the cold. It was just too dangerous to ride.

So, after driving an hour to get to the training ride, I turned around and went home.

(My orange tutu, however, was much admired, so it wasn't a total loss. I also dropped off some food for the food bank, hopefully making someone's life a little merrier.)

That, however, does not end the story. It looks like it'll rain all weekend, but I'm determined to train--I'll be traveling the next two weekends, so I won't be able to train then. So I went to the bike shop and bought a trainer--this little contraption you put on your bike that allows you to ride your bike indoors--and will be training on it tomorrow. (I still need to set up the blessed thing!) I expect I'll be doing quite a bit of riding on the trainer--it's a good thing I've got Netflix, I can set it up in the living room and ride while watching movies.

So nyahh to you, weather.

I also picked up a heart rate monitor, a cycling-oriented one that does a bunch of whizzy things, but mostly all I care about is that it will, well, monitor my heart rate. That's what tells you how hard you're working, and it's important for some kinds of training. I had one, but it broke--now I have a brand-new one, and I can monitor my heart rate again!

So that's the scoop for today's training--tomorrow I cue up Lord of the Rings and start trying out my trainer! (It's too bad it's a road bike, otherwise I could knit while riding!)

Tien

Please sponsor me at https://www.aidslifecycle.org/donate/form.cfm?n=1918!

Silk and socks

I bought some handpainted silk top and carded silk from The Silkworker a few days ago, and it finally arrived today...it is GORGEOUS! One of them is rainbow colored, and the other is a lovely purple-magenta-blue carded batt. I'm spinning them up separately and plying them together, and so far am very pleased with the result. I'm going to knit a test swatch tomorrow, and if that works, I'm going to go out and buy some elastic thread to ply into the yarn. That way I get the beautiful silk sheen, but I have something with enough "give" to it that it will make socks.

I have become obsessed with socks. I have quit work on my ring shawl for the moment, basically because it required too much intellectual effort: every spare brain cell I have is currently devoted to the book. Instead of knitting the ring shawl on the way to and from work, I'm now typing away on the book (which is going quite well, if slowly). But I still like handcrafts...so I have been knitting socks! Completely mindless socks--a simple 1x1 ribbing with stockinette stitch on the sole of the foot--the sort of thing I could do in my sleep. But I am knitting.

I knit in short spurts when I get stuck on the book and need to relax my mind for a moment...socks are perfect because they go so quickly, and I certainly don't have to think about them...except for a little bit of attention at the heel, they require no thought whatsoever. So I have been getting interesting yarns and knitting very plain socks out of them. Right now I'm at work on an orange-and-red pair knitted out of a softly spun wool singles--I know it won't make durable socks, but since I only ever wear handknitted socks around the house when my feet are cold (which happens a few times a year), I don't really need durable socks. I just want them to look FABULOUS, dahhhling.

And now, off to bed, perchance to dream of glorious silk socks...tomorrow morning, it's off to Sausalito for another training ride!

Musings on the Ride

I'm really nervous about riding this year.

Not because of the cause--I can think of few organizations more worthy of support than the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. They've done an enormous amount of good with almost no public funding--for one thing, their needle exchange program has practically eliminated pediatric AIDS in San Francisco. And they need money; public funds for AIDS have been drying up for years, and the dot-com bust hit them hard. I'm very big on raising money for the Foundation.

But this is going to be a tough year for me. I have a job with a 1+ hour commute, so most of my waking hours are spent at work or commuting. I'm going to be moving in April, which is the height of training season. The two projects I run at work are both releasing in mid-May, just before the ride. And I'm writing a book. I just don't see how I'm going to manage all of them at once, but if I want to ride, I'm going to have to.

It's difficult. At the moment, I get up at 5:30 am so I can get to the gym by 6:30 so I can make it to the train station by 8, which gets me to work by 9. I get home around 6:30pm, and have three precious hours of free time before I go to bed at 9:30. Most of that time I spend transcribing interviews, although I do go out for the odd dinner with friends, etc. I write my book while commuting to work.

If I'm going to do the ride, by April or May I'll be riding four or five days a week. Long rides on the weekends--as in, leave at 8am, come back exhausted at 5pm. More rides on weekdays, so I'll have to ride before and after work to get my hours in. And both my projects come to a head in May, so in addition to training 14-16 hours a week, I'll probably have to put in overtime at work...! I think I'm going to lose my mind.

Added to that is the fact that I'll have to move in April...all my stuff in boxes, which I'll have to unpack in between training and work...well, you can see why I have mixed feelings about the ride. But I very much want to ride this year!! so I'm going to go forward with it, and see what happens. Truly, the Ride is magical. It's worth every bit of effort.

I'm just worried about going insane. There's going to be a lot to do.

Training Diary: Had my first two training rides!

Had my first two training rides last weekend! And I’m in worse shape than I thought.

I went to a category evaluation ride on Saturday—a relatively flat, 20-mile ride—and came out at 11.9 miles per hours average. That’s pretty darn slow. Now, granted, that was a 20-mile route with headwinds and a pretty impressive hill, but still…I have a lot of work to do!

Sunday’s ride was a quieter, 25-mile ride along a flat route in Sunnyvale. I did OK in it—the training ride leaders were really good about keeping track of everyone—but had trouble keeping up with people on the hills. I’m not a fast rider by any means, but I’m particularly bad at hill-climbing. That’s because I’m 5’0” and weigh 146 pounds! Granted, a lot of that is muscle, but it’s still a lot of weight to be hauling uphill on stubby little legs. So I don’t expect I’ll ever be a great hill-climber, but I can sure do a lot better than that. More stuff to work on!

One really cool thing happened on Sunday’s training ride—I was riding along in one of the Los Altos Hills backroads, and a wild turkey crossed the road! I couldn’t believe my eyes, but there it was in front of us, strolling across as if it owned the road. Wild turkeys are big! The one I saw was easily the size of a peacock, and it was gorgeous—black and bronze barred feathers, and a bright red wattle. I’d never seen a wild turkey before, so this was particularly special—I didn’t even know they lived around here! But those are the sorts of things you see while riding. (I saw a bobcat once, carrying a big ol’ gopher snake in its mouth…it just walked right past us as my boyfriend and I sat there on our bikes with our jaws on the floor.)

One thing is obvious, though: I’m gonna have to start wearing my tutu on training rides. Six or seven people asked me “Where’s your tutu?” So I’m going to wear my tutu at official training rides from now on. Clearly I must make more tutus. :-)

Next week’s training ride will be with the Positive Pedalers (HIV+ riders), a “Jingle Bells” ride on Saturday the 17^th. They’re collecting food for a local food bank, so I’m going through the pantry tonight to see what I can donate. I know I’ve got a bunch of foodstuffs that I’m never going to use…might as well do some good!

The ride itself is a flat ride, going out of Sausalito, about 21 miles…exactly what I need right now. I’m in pretty miserable shape, so two 20-mile rides are about what I can manage at the moment…last week I did a 20 and 25-miler, this week I may do 20 miles Saturday and try for 30 miles on Sunday. I haven’t yet decided whether to venture forth on my own Sunday, or go to an organized training ride. I rather think I’ll go off on my own.

I’ve emailed my coach from AIDS Lifecycle 2, asking him if he has space for me on his training schedule. He doesn’t coach many riders anymore—he loves doing it, but he earns a lot less from coaching than he does from the other stuff he does—but I’m hoping I can talk him into helping me out. With the knee injury, I feel like I need some professional guidance in order to keep from getting re-injured…and there’s no one better than Curtis!

But I’ve started my training, and though it’s a long way to go, I have five months to train…I think I’ll make it!

P.S. You can sponsor me at https://www.aidslifecycle.org/donate/form.cfm?n=1918 . My target is $5000, so every penny helps!

Registered for AIDS Lifecycle 5!

After months of sitting on the fence, I've decided to ride again this year. I wasn't sure if the knee would take it, I wasn't sure if I could write the book AND ride in the same year, I wasn't sure...

...I signed up. Now it's just six months of training and a whole lot of fundraising away.

It's funny how you can have doubts, and doubts, and doubts, but the moment you commit to something they all fade away. If my knee will do it, so will I.