More on training

Well, my back problems are now over, although my coach (who is also a physical therapist and a personal trainer) has given me some exercises to make sure it recovers well. He's also suggested ways of treating the scar tissue that my orthopedist told me was untreatable--will try that and see how it goes. It feels like it's already making a difference, but time will tell.

Today I'm going off to shepherd two novice-rider friends of mine around Golden Gate Park. I'm not quite sure how that is going to go--they haven't been riding in years, and their bikes haven't been fitted yet, but I imagine things will work out OK. I think I may try to get my workout in first, though, as it's unlikely I'll get in a quality workout while running around with them, and I don't know how long they'll want to ride, either. Of course, I *could* put in the extra time on a trainer, but I loathe the things and would rather be out riding. :-)

Last night I said goodbye to some good friends who are moving out of the Bay Area and going to India to work with Wangdor Rinpoche, one of the senior Tibetan monks. I have mixed feelings about this...I am sorry to see them go (especially since they say they'll never live in the Bay Area again...they'll go back to Canada if they go at all), and I am also incredibly envious. It feels to me like they're going off on another adventure, while I'm stuck at home doing basically mundane things. I LOVE the idea of foreign travel, and wandering the world translating for a senior Dharma teacher is just the sort of thing that sounds fabulous. But nope, here I am. I wish so much I were going with them...

And yet I don't. My life is here, I'm working on a book, I'm doing the AIDS Ride--my life isn't totally mundane, even if it's not as exotic as going to India. And I'm honestly not sure I could find the courage to pack up my entire life (as they are) and move to a foreign country.

But I'm still damn envious. I think that if they asked me to come with them, in a couple of years, I might very well do it for awhile. I would just LOVE to go adventuring again.

But for today, it's a nice quiet day, good for training, working on tutus, and writing my book. I'm just about done with Chapter One--although there's a troubling shift in tone near the end--and am working on putting together a photo shoot so I have photos of training rides to go with the chapter. It's a nice day.

But I still wish I were going to India.

Why I ride

I would like to take a moment and point you at two AIDS Lifecycle rider homepages:

Bill Delaney's "Why I Ride"
J.R.'s homepage (J.R. is Bill's partner, and is HIV+)

Stories like this are what keeps me riding. AIDS is not over--I have friends who would be dead today if not for the services of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and its sister organizations.

In all seriousness, the tutus are fun, but AIDS is what keeps me out there in the freezing cold or on the hellaciously boring trainer or coming back from injuries. What I'm doing--the money I raise--saves lives. I don't forget that--especially since I know so many people with HIV and AIDS--but stories like this really bring it home.

Training woes

Well, I did another four hours of riding this weekend--two hours on a trainer, two hours out on the road. I did NOT enjoy either ride...the hours on a trainer are unbelievably boring, and I just didn't have much energy for the two-hour ride the next day. On top of that, I was coming down with a cold.

Anyway, towards the end of my two-hour outdoor ride, I got a severe pain in my lower back that almost made me head straight home...but I am a stubborn gal, so I stopped, stretched it out, adjusted my saddle a little bit, and finished out the ride. It was still sore afterwards, though, so I talked to my coach, who has now grounded me until he can see me and check out my bike. I'm actually kind of relieved--all that training was getting pretty tiring, I think we went too fast. And I could use a little free time.

I am working on tutus! I made myself a purple tutu two days ago and am now working on a peacock-feather tutu. It's going to be quite handsome--three or four layers of peacock "eyes" on purple organza. I'm sewing the feathers on one by one, but using a sewing machine, so it goes marginally faster. (It's still very slow.)

snakes, training, book

Mushroom hunting, as it happens, didn’t happen—got rained out. Instead, I puttered around the house and ran minor errands—like stocking up on Power Bars and energy gels—and worked on my new pair of socks. I had a minor but embarrassing accident in the mid-afternoon—I was feeding the snakes, and Astarte had refused to eat her last rat. I went to get Isis out, and she smelled rat on my gloves and promptly coiled around my hand. So there I am with a snake wrapped around my fingers, squeezing.

Fortunately for me, snakes don’t generally kill by directly squashing their prey—they suffocate it instead—so it wasn’t like she was breaking my fingers by squeezing. On the other hand, here I am standing here with a snake balled up around my hand, and how on earth am I going to accomplish anything this afternoon with a snake wrapped around my hand? It’s not as if you can knit, type, etc. with one hand balled up in a snake. On top of that, my fingers were rapidly turning blue, even with a leather glove on.

I poked at her. She refused to move. I pried up a coil or two. She refused to move. I tried slipping out my fingers, but of course snakes earn a living by NOT letting things slip out of their grips. I was stuck there with a snake wrapped around my fingers. (She, brat that she is, didn’t even bat an eye. Thankfully, she didn’t try to bite me, either.)

I wasn’t too worried because I figured at worst I could fill up the bathtub/sink and stick her in. When a critter’s head is underwater it usually finds higher priorities than squeezing my fingers. But fortunately I managed to pry her off my fingers eventually, whereupon I promptly dropped her into the feeding box, where she eventually devoured four rats. Better them than my fingers, methinks.

Finished up my workout on the trainer (still hellaciously boring—but hey! I can now sing the entire theme to the “Fantastic Four” cartoons!). Still very sore from Friday’s workout.

Sunday’s workout was one of those awful experiences you’d just as soon not remember. I got up in the morning and went out into the freezing cold to ride—was wearing THREE layers up top and was still cold for most of the ride. Also very low-energy; I had to stop to rest every fifteen to twenty minutes, and it was just generally a miserable ride. But I did it anyway. (I figure the willpower to get up and ride 2 hours in the freezing cold is just one small step towards the willpower to ride 585 miles with incredible soreness.)

And I saw another wild turkey! Dang, they are gorgeous birds.

Tonight (Tuesday) I’m going to interview another rider…this guy sent out fundraising emails to everyone he knew, and a couple in Chicago that he’d never met donated $1,450! The cause is apparently near and dear to their hearts…I’ll find out more details this evening, when I interview him. Should make a good addition to my chapter on fundraising stories.

And I am making progress on the book prep…got another transcript from one of the Lifecyclists I “hired” to help out with the transcription, so I think I may actually be en route to getting all my transcriptions done! Which would be a major relief, since it would mean I’d have enough material to work with and could proceed at something other than a glacial pace. I’ve also started printing my photo collection so I can decide which photos go into which chapter. I had to buy a new printer to do it, though, as the old one had gotten blurry in color printing. The new one is half the size, half the price, and does just as much! And prints faster, too. I am one happy camper. :-)

That’s all for the moment…Thursday I interview a gay rider who came out this year…his mother has disowned him and refuses to speak to him since he came out, and his brother has said very little…but, when he sent out his donation letters, his brother donated three weeks’ salary, with a note “Go Erhan!” I’m always amazed by how AIDS and homophobia can bring out the best and the worst in people.

Went down to see my cycling coach yesterday...

...he's got me doing a bunch of exercises in the gym to build up core strength and the cycling muscles. Squats and lunges for the quads and glutes; bench presses, shoulder presses, standing rows, skull-crushers for the upper-body; back extensions and crunches for the mid-body; calf raises and deadlifts for the calves and hamstrings, and oh yes, balance exercises to keep the knee happy. Went and did a round of those this morning, and boy am I going to be sore tomorrow morning! But it'll definitely help prep me for the ride.

He also re-fitted my bike for me. My saddle has apparently broken down somewhat from all the riding I've done with it (over 5000 miles thus far), but he moved it back and tilted it up a trifle more, and suddenly things are magically better! I may wind up having to get another saddle, but I'm rather hoping not. I'm fond of this one, and good saddles are expensive.

So my training schedule for the next two days calls for one two-hour ride and one two-and-a-quarter hour ride. Saturday I'm doing an organized training ride (a nice flat jaunt around the baylands and back), plus probably some additional riding on my own because I don't think that ride will last long enough to get in my bike time. Sunday I'm going to get up early and do a two-hour ride before heading up to lunch and the AIDS Lifecycle kickoff party!

Yep, there's a PARTY, folks!! And I'm going, along with a friend who I've talked into signing up. I'm so psyched about that! My first convert! It'll be REALLY cool doing the ride with someone I know. From outside the ride, that is. :-)

Meanwhile, I am quite smug at having solved my transcription problem. You may recall that my transcriptionist was moving along at a pretty pokey pace (3 tapes in the last three months!). Well, I was racking my brains for how to find a new transcriptionist, and finally hit on the idea of trading donations for transcription work! So I offered people a $10 donation for every hour of transcription work, which my employer then matches, "paying" them $20/hour! And I got four or five "takers" within a day, one of whom is a trained paralegal and has done transcription work before! I'm SO psyched. I've bought two more transcribers on eBay and plan to send them out as soon as they arrive, so people can get started.

I mean, everyone wins. I get my tapes transcribed, they get money towards their fundraising goal, AND the AIDS Foundation gets the money! What's not to like??

Anyway, hopefully this will work out and get me out from under the backlog.

Meanwhile, I have started Yet Another Pair of Socks. I am an unstoppable sock maniac. Cringe in terror...

More tomorrow, after mushroom hunting.

Going mushroom hunting

Just a quick note to say that my ex has invited me to go mushroom hunting with him! Apparently candy-cane, boletes, and other mushrooms are sprouting in abundance after last week's heavy rains, and his property is full of more mushrooms than he can eat. So I am going up there on Saturday, after my training ride, to hunt mushrooms.

Also, I am psyched to say that I may have talked one of my friends into doing the AIDS Ride with me! He's still waffling, but I think he's getting really excited about the idea of doing it...that would be way cool! (Not least because it would mean I wouldn't have to find a tentmate.) I'm taking him to the AIDS Lifecycle kickoff party on Sunday.

Tomorrow I go down to see my coach, who will wire me up and do all sorts of exciting (and sweaty, exhausting) tests to see what my fitness level is, and whether my bike needs to be fitted again. He's also going to show me some cycling-specific exercises to keep the knee from getting out of sorts again.

Whee!

Back in training

Got back on Monday and am back in training as of today...went for an hour's workout at the gym this morning, followed by half an hour on the trainer when I got home tonight.

This is going to involve a bit more sacrifice than I thought. I had to get up at 5am this morning in order to get my workout in--I have a 7:30am meeting every Wednesday morning (an international conference call), so I had to be up at 5am to make it out the door at 5:30am to the gym at 5:45, finish workout by 7am and back home by 7:15 to prep for the call. Which meant I had to have the discipline to get back and into bed by 9pm last night--that was really the hard part.

Training on the trainer isn't full of pain and suffering anymore--I got a new set of DVDs from Netflix and am happily catching up on Fantastic Four cartoons. I also have "Collateral Damage" and "12 Monkeys" queued up to go. The only problem is that my groin area starts to get numb after about half an hour, since I'm in the saddle in the same position without a break. I'm going to have to remind myself to get off the bike from time to time to let the area decompress.

My training schedule at the moment seems fairly light--weight training three times a week, two longer rides on the weekends (2 hours and 2:15), and two half-hour rides during the week. Still pretty light and easy so far.

I have a new heart rate monitor, and am learning to use all the bells and whistles.

I also have a bunch of new cycling jerseys--I went on a bit of a crazy kick the week before I left and ordered a bunch of jerseys at 50-75% off. Tried one on today and decided I look REALLY good in sleeveless jerseys--will keep that in mind during my next fashion rampage. :-)

I have knitted myself a pink tutu. I'm working on a blue-purple-green one which will have peacock feathers sewn all over it--have over 200 peacock feathers. Not sure how I'm going to attach them yet.

And I have my first two donations!! My brother and his wife pledged $500 and my mom is sponsoring me for $250. Both of them were kind enough to send the money to me and let me make the donation in my own name, so that Adobe (my employer) will match the donation. So I have $1500 already! That's good news.

The bad news is that I still have $3500 to go, and some of my big sponsors probably won't be able to donate this year...so I don't know if I'll be able to make my fundraising goal. But I'm sure going to try! (And if you feel like helping, please sponsor me yourself!)

Tien

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