Created a new blog; random updates

I decided I wanted to be able to go back and track my Markleeville Death Ride training independently of my main blog, so I created a new one. I think it should be fun to track how I'm doing, the ups and downs, and so on.

New stuff in my life the last couple days:

• Joined Gold's Gym and ditched 24 Hour Fitness. Gold's Gym is closer to work and has much better facilities for what interests me: spinning classes, lots and lots of free weights, and a steam room/sauna. They also have a good introductory deal on personal training: I got a package of 4 sessions for just $100 (!). So I'm going to use those 4 sessions to lay out a training plan and learn basic weightlifting form, to get what I need to continue on by myself.
  
• Turned down the offer of a free loom from a friend, who would have been happy to loan it to me for a couple of years. I would love to take up weaving, but between the book and the Death Ride, I know I wouldn't get around to it for at least another year or two. (Yeah, I know, some fiber artist I am, but right now, the book comes first.)

That's mostly it...the book has been coming along. I've been writing the section on fundraising, and am trying to draft out most of the stories without worrying too much about how I'm going to string them together. When I try to edit as I write, I wind up not being able to write at all. So writing a lot of incoherent stuff is really a step forward: at least I'm writing.

National Novel Writing Month is either October or November this year; I figure if I haven't finished the first draft by then, I'll use that as a motivator to get me to finish the first draft at least. Mike will undoubtedly be doing it, so we can do it in sync.

Mike, by the way, has been excellent in making me sit down and write on the weekdays he comes over. At this rate, I'll have to dedicate the book to him by the time I'm done. LOL

(Just kidding; it's going to be dedicated to AIDS riders everywhere.)

Didn't make it up Page Mill

Too damn hot (weatherman says 96 in Mountain View, and it was hotter in the foothills!). I went through over half a gallon of water in the first hour, and decided to turn back after running out of water just before the water stop. Too dangerous to go on--dehydration is nothing to sneeze at, especially on such a hot day.

Now I'm heading off to an AIDS Lifecycle reunion party, that promises to be great fun--several of the people I really want to talk to (for the book) are going to be there.

More writing later, when it's not so damn hot.

Floyd Landis wins the Tour de France!!!

Well, technically he hasn't won it yet, but since tomorrow's ride is mostly ceremonial, it's for all intents and purposes his.

I'm way psyched--I've been rooting for him since George Hincapie faded and I found out about a hip. How a man with an arthritic hip can win the Tour de France...well, it's just amazing. And then after his remarkable recovery in the mountain stage 3 days ago...! That man has courage.

In other news, the spiral shawl won the Founder's Prize in the Spindlicity shawl contest! That means I get a $200 gift certificate for use at the Fabulous Fiber Fest in Santa Monica, CA. So I'm going! It will undoubtedly cost me more than $200 to get there, get a hotel for the night, etc., but I'd love to see my shawl displayed as a winner! I'm very happy.

Today I go up Page Mill again, tomorrow I'll take an "easier" ride and go up Congress Springs Road, which is also a long climb, but at much less difficult grade (steepness). It's blazing hot, so I'll probably drench myself with water before starting, and bring extra water to keep myself from dehydrating.

Off to go riding...

shark's fin soup, #2 corn, and Page Mill Road

My cousin's wedding was yesterday, and was fascinating--it was a Catholic ceremony with Chinese -style reception. The Catholic ceremony I found fascinating, having never been to a Catholic wedding (or mass for that matter). Since I couldn't hear the priest very well, I stood up when everyone else stood up, sat down when everyone else sat down, and occasionally figured out that I should have been kneeling after the fact. Mike, having been raised Catholic, was eons ahead of me in knowing what we ought to be doing, so I mostly followed him. I must confess that I am still largely clueless about much of the ceremony, but I got the gist of it: Rocky and Noralyn are now married (after fifteen years of living in sin, plus a couple kids and a mortgage), and more power to them.

The reception was fascinating too. Partly the food, which was excellent--they rented out Yank Sing Restaurant for the evening, and partly the traditional Chinese lion dance, which featured some great acrobatics and colorful lion costumes. (Chinese lions, of course, looking nothing like real lions--all red and green and gold, with rolling eyes and stamping feet.) I had shark's fin soup for the first time, and found it very tasty: rich, gelatinous broth, plentiful crabmeat, thin strands of what I think must be the cartilaginous shark's fin in it. I don't think I'll ever order it myself, because I don't like the ecological implications (too often the sharks are simply caught, definned, and left to die--terribly wasteful and inhumane), but it was interesting to taste it, since it was being served anyway.

Along the lines of wasteful and inhumane, I'm in the midst of reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, which (in the part I've read) discusses the evolution of corn as a foodstuff and wades squarely into the politics of food economics. It's fascinating reading and I recommend it highly. You may never eat feedlot beef again, though, after reading it. One thing I hadn't realized is that cows aren't evolved to eat corn, and in fact develop major health problems from eating the stuff--it chews up their rumen, gives them bloat, and destroys their livers. The only reason it's fed to cows is that it's so plentiful, and the only reason it's so plentiful is that the government subsidizes corn heavily. The agroeconomics of it are fascinating (and horrifying); I recommend the book highly. I think I've decided that, when buying meat, I'll stick with grass-fed beef; it's more humane and almost certainly better for me. Fortunately, living in San Francisco means it's easy to get grass-fed, organic beef and other such niceties locally; I think it'd be a lot tougher to find in other areas of the country. Not impossible, just harder.

I went up Page Mill Road again today. It's not quite routine yet, but I'm getting better at it. I nearly gave up early on because I was feeling weak and having to pull over to rest every few minutes, but then I arrived at the Palo Alto park (which has water) and stuck my entire upper body under the water spigot--it was a blazing hot day, and that cooled me down (and kept me cool) the rest of the way up. I also tried to slow down, so I wouldn't run out of breath, and keep going as much as possible, and that seemed to work. At the end of the three hour ride, I came in with plenty of energy, feeling like I could have done more miles, so I'm feeling pretty good about that. Time from Arastradero Road to Skyline: 1:51, of which 1:21 was spent riding.

I also got my bodyfat measured while Mike was running his half-marathon this morning: 25% bodyfat, which is the very high end of average/acceptable. I was pretty psyched--that's the lowest my bodyfat has ever measured, it's usually more along the lines of 28-32%. I've been clinically obese most of my life (which is different from "looking fat", which I don't), so it's nice to come in on the high side of average. I'm hoping to push my bodyfat down even further as I lose weight. The bodyfat reading was both low enough to make me happy (losing weight is working!) and high enough to make me want to lose more weight. I wonder if I can get down to 130 lbs? I haven't weighed that little since, oh, probably around college.

Workout

Well, I did my first exercise session with the dumbbells today, and I'm quite pleased! There were a few exercises I couldn't do because my exercise ball hasn't come in yet, but I got a good weightlifting workout in. I'm starting to suspect that I don't need that gym membership, although as my employer is paying for my gym membership I'll probably keep it anyway.

The only two things that I can't quite figure out are how to work the soleus muscle (which runs along the back of the calf, and is one of the secondary muscles in cycling) and how to work the quads. The problem with the latter is that the weights are too heavy for my hands to grip (i.e. I can lift more weight with my quads than I can carry in my hands). At the gym I would use an Olympic bar over the back, but I haven't got a cage for power lifting, so it isn't really safe to try it at home. Mike suggested that I try one-legged squats instead, and that seems to be working pretty well. Added bonus: it works the knee stabilizer muscles, which I badly need, at least on the left (injured) side. So I'm going to work with one-legged squats for awhile. I hope they're not bad for my knee.

The book is coming along well; I'm about halfway through entering my stories into the appropriate locations, at which point I'll be ready to sit down and write. Mike has been really helpful in this--he comes over, and just his presence helps me focus and keep plugging away where otherwise I'd have given up and started playing computer games instead of writing. I'm really happy that we work together so well.

I continue to work at losing weight--I weighed 139 again this morning, so it wasn't just a fluke--but it's not easy. It's peach season, and plum season, and I have a really hard time resisting the lure of Santa Rosa plums, Lady in Red peaches, and other summer fare. On the other hand, I'm also burning an extra 2500 calories on weekends (riding mostly), so that gives me some leeway to cheat a bit. I hope it continues to work--working out regularly at home should help, too. If not I'll have to get serious about weight loss.

Sunday morning Mike runs a half-marathon...I'm driving him over there and plan to bring my stitching with me. I haven't quite decided whether to bring my stitching piece or whether to bring some socks to knit--I have some gorgeous burgundy silk yarn that would make fabulously soft socks; I might bring that instead.

Bought some dumbbells today...

Mike and I have been (unconsciously?) adjusting our sleep schedules to match each other more closely, so recently I've been sleeping later, to about 6 or 6:30am. This creates a problem as far as getting up, showering, going to the gym, showering, driving back to work, etc. goes if I want to get to work by 8:30am. In addition, right now there's no way for me to get to the gym if Mike's sleeping over, because I have to drop him off at the shuttle to work.

So I figure, if Mohammed can't come to the mountain, perhaps the dumbbells can come to Mohammed. (Or something like that.) So I went out and bought a set of dumbbells, so I can work out at home. (I figure that, while Mike is sleeping in, I can get a good workout in.) I don't know how much I'll use them, but I rather suspect I'll be good about it; I do like to get my workouts in regularly.

It seems sort of strange to think of myself as a fitness nut, because that's not how I see myself at all. Despite spending six or seven hours a week on the bike, and another three or four in the gym, I don't think of myself as particularly athletic. My entire athletic experience growing up was being the slowest, smallest kid in the class--you know, the one who always got picked last. I was a couch potato in college. I'm not a particularly gifted athlete even now--I'm slow, I get injured easily, and in general I have to work really hard for the progress I make.

But I have to admit that I'm fairly athletic at this point, and hope to be more so.

It's a funny thing, this getting-in-shape business: I got where I currently am because I had a goal--to do the AIDS Ride--but once I'm in shape, I find I tend to want to keep it. I don't want to go back to being a couch potato--I want to be in even better shape than I currently am! I see fitness as a slope leading up and up, with each tier bringing more benefits and higher heights...and I want to climb further.

If only it didn't take so darn much TIME to get into/stay in shape...!

Speaking of which, off to bed. Tomorrow I try out my new toys. :)

quote o'the day

From a New York Times Magazine article about Floyd Landis (currently one of the favorites to win the Tour de France), who has a bad hip:

‘‘Everybody thinks you can overcome pain if you want to enough, and let me tell you, you can’t. This isn’t some Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, where somebody can get shot in the leg and keep going. There’s pain that makes me stop, makes everybody stop.’’

‘‘My parents would look at everything that I’ve gone through and say that all this is God’s plan, which makes it sound like a good thing. But I can’t do it, because I have to work with what’s true. Things end. We’re all going to die. But until that happens, there’s really a lot you can do. Especially if you realize this is your last opportunity.’’

Went up Page Mill Road again today...

This time was much harder (perhaps because it was blazing hot). I had to stop and rest every couple minutes on the way up--very discouraging. I almost turned around twice, but was just stubborn enough to make it to the top. Not counting rest periods, I averaged 5.6 mph the entire way to the top.

I'm feeling somewhat daunted by Markleeville--if I can barely make it up Page Mill Road, which is only 2200 feet of climbing, how am I going to do 15,000 feet of climbing in a single day??

On the other hand, at this time last year I could barely do thirty miles of flat riding, and eleven months later I was riding 600 miles to Los Angeles, so I imagine it's one of those training things. I'll get there...eventually.

Meanwhile, next week I plan to ride Page Mill again. My objective: take at least five minutes between rest periods when climbing.

If I keep climbing this stupid hill, I'm going to get faster at it.

(I've actually already noticed a difference in my speed when riding flat--I'm faster than I used to be, primarily because I've developed more muscle in climbing hills. Yay!)

I have an RSS feed!

Actually, I now have both Atom and RSS feeds, thanks to Mike, who very kindly set them up for me. So now you can use my Atom feed or my RSS feed. I can only guarantee that the Atom feed will work--the RSS feed seems to be coming for free but Blogger might turn it off someday.

Nothing much new otherwise...I continue to cut and paste interview snippets for the book, Mike and I continue to see each other, the cats continue to sit on, and mew at, me.

Life is good.

Oh, the innocence.

Just went back and read my first few blog entries, about starting the book. Oh, the innocence. If I'd had the slightest idea what I was getting into, or how long/difficult it would be, I'd never have gotten started. In fact, that's my advice to anyone considering writing a book: don't get started. Really. You have NO idea what you're getting into. LOL.

I'm not grousing too much just at the moment, though--too busy cutting and pasting relevant parts of interviews into the right day's story. I don't have all of the interviews transcribed, but I have enough to work on. My speed is accelerating as I stop rewriting the stories and just start cutting and pasting relevant portions of the transcripts into the days I plan to write. I think this will speed things up and get me a workable framework a lot faster than trying to edit each story as it comes.

All in all, though, I'm reminded of Annie Dillard's book The Writing Life, in which she describes the ridiculousness and blindness of the writing process. I don't have the apropos quote right now (because Mike has my copy of The Writing Life), but if I can find it, I'll share it with you: it's quite funny.

Speaking of Mike, I'm very happy to have found him. I don't talk about other people much in my blog--mostly because I don't like discussing other people in public--but things are going well. I love him, and I'm glad to have found him.

Found out that my shawl didn't win in the Spindlicity contest, but I'm not devastated: I knew when I entered it that it had a major flaw in the knitting, so wasn't really expecting to win. On the other hand, I *would* like to know when I'm getting it back...so I emailed the editor to ask when it would be returned. I'm praying it's not one of the four semifinalists, because they'll be holding those until August/September, for display at a fiber festival. I'd like it back in my greedy little hands, so I know it's not going anywhere. It's too precious to lose.

Nothing much else going on right now, it's been a pretty quiet time. Mike is sick, so I've been working on the book and stitching in my free time.

Pleased

I am pleased by three things today:

1. When I got up this morning, I weighed 139.6 pounds. That's the first time I've weighed under 140 lbs since, oh, about a decade ago. Happy, happy, happy.
   
2. I went on a 40-mile ride today and barely noticed a hill that had been really challenging early in my training. In fact, it was so easy that, at the top, I looked at my ride partner and said, "Let's do it again!" (We did.)
3. Mike made a great suggestion for how to prevent getting stuck again on the book, which I am going to try to implement: just write down all the stories that I know are going into the book, and worry about the organization later. (I have a tendency to start writing, become uncertain exactly where the chapter is going, and then stop writing after about a sentence.)

I've also been thinking about priorities, and revamping my somewhat ambitious training plans. Outside of work, I think my priorities are:

1. Mike
2. the book
3. training
4. losing weight
   

That's the order in which I'd sacrifice them--obviously, I'd prefer to do some of each, but you--or I, anyway--need some kind of structure to help prioritize.

What this translates to in practice is that I will probably sacrifice one of my long rides on weekends to make room for the book/other social engagements, and I may have a somewhat erratic schedule at the gym. I don't have to get serious about training until October-November (some might say December), so I have room to be a dilettante for awhile. This is the vital window of time during which I can achieve something on the book.

Which means it's time to stop procrastinating, and go back to work on it.

Working on the book is almost a spiritual experience...

I'm working right now on the chapter on why people ride (stories of how HIV has impacted people's lives), and it's proving an intense creative experience. These stories are so powerful that they really don't need any embellishment--I could practically type them up, string them together with a little prose, and publish it straight up. (Which may well be what I wind up doing.) Right now I'm working on the story of a man whose brother died of AIDS, and the intense loss and guilt over not being able to do more for him, that led to his signing up for the Boston-New York ride ten years ago. This year, he rode with his partner/husband of ten years--who tested HIV-positive six months ago. As he says, "I've lost one of the most important men in my life to AIDS. Losing another isn't an option."

It's difficult writing down these stories because they're so intense that practically anything I say mushes into banality next to them. They're so full of expressiveness, of grief, of celebration of the human spirit that it's hard for me to think of anything to say after it, how to organize and shuffle around the stories and forge them into something even more powerful. I feel honored to be working with such material, and more than a little intimidated. But these stories, difficult as they are, are about what's best in the human spirit, and so I find them inspiring.

Got started on the book again today...

...and it feels good!

I have finally worked out the big thing that was blocking me--how to manage multiple riders over multiple days/years of riding--and am now happily at work on the chapter about why people ride. So far I've just started telling one story, that of a man whose brother died of AIDS (and whose partner recently became HIV+), but I like it. I'm still not quite sure how to handle Days 1-7, but I *feel* good about the book for the first time ever--I think I'll be able to handle it. It makes a HUGE difference having been back on the Ride.

I'm having trouble figuring out how to fit everything I want into my busy schedule. I want to go to the gym three days a week, spend three days a week with Mike, do two bike rides on weekends, and incidentally write the book. I don't think there's enough time for all of these, so I may have to get creative/miss some days at the gym...the book takes priority over athletic prep for now. I want to see if I can get into a rhythm of writing...maybe half an hour every morning or something like that. I do my best creative work in the AM.

Meanwhile, I have a busy social calendar for the month of July, which doesn't make things any easier. I have a party to go to on the 8th, a wedding on the 15th, another party on the 22nd, all of which cut into my ability to do long rides. I still plan to go up Page Mill regularly, though--I'll just have to use my day "off" to do it, I guess. I liked riding Page Mill, I'd like to maintain my ability to do it.

This afternoon Mike and I are making jam. We bought a half-flat (that's six baskets) of strawberries and an entire box (about 12 pounds) of apricots at the farmer's market yesterday, and are making strawberry preserves and apricot jam. My favorite recipe for apricot jam involves only apricots and a little bit of orange blossom honey--although I keep meaning to try it with a little bit of jasmine tea thrown in--but I'm going to let Mike pick out a recipe for the strawberry jam. It's just a pity I can't use my recipe for sun-cooked strawberry jam, which is fantastic--it's not sunny enough in the city to pull it off. But it should still be delicious.

Yowza!

Just read that, on the eve of the Tour de France, two of the hot favorites (and the two riders I'd been rooting for), Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso, are out due to a doping scandal. So now the field is wide open...!

I'm sorry to hear about Ullrich and Basso. Ullrich has come in second to Lance Armstrong so many times that he deserves his own Tour win (IMO), and Basso is one of the up-and-coming young riders, someone I think could put his own stamp on the tour.

I'm in shock. Who am I going to root for now???

Rode up Page Mill Road today!

I'd been promising myself I would do this for awhile, but I finally got around to it: I rode up Page Mill Road! It's a long and fairly steep climb, about 8.5 miles of climbing to Skyline Blvd. at the top of a ridge. It's one of the tougher routes on the Peninsula.

I wasn't sure if I could do it. You may recall I attempted it a few weeks before the Ride, ran out of time to finish the ascent, and turned back. I wasn't sure whether I'd have been able to finish the climb, as I was running out of energy around the point where I turned back. So I wanted to tackle it again, just to prove to myself that I could.

And I did! It wasn't nearly as hard as I'd been thinking it was--I stopped to rest once or twice going uphill, and it took me about an hour and a half to climb, but I never got terribly out of breath and I managed to climb it all with energy to spare! I guess I'm in better shape than I thought.

Now, of course, I've immediately switched from "Can I climb this at all?" to "Can I climb this fast enough?" In order to do the Markleeville Death Ride, I'm going to have to average 12-14 mph up and down hills...my climb today was good, but not nearly fast enough to finish the Death Ride. Clearly I will have to practice some more. :-)

Current plan: ride Page Mill Road (or an equivalent climb) once a week for the rest of the summer. I think I'll get to be a stronger rider if I do.