Body Atoms

Guru Weekend

So anyway, the guru weekend started on Saturday. My cycling guru lives across the street. The Kahuna has RoboStu. I have a cycling guru living across the street. He was getting ready to conduct a Road 101 class at the veloway and said we could probably get a few laps before the class started. That's all I needed to hear. I was about to do bamboo flooring. Not. Got changed. Got the bottles filled. Got Pawn Shop Bike down from the rafters. Crap! I didn't place the rear brakes back on PSB. Oh well, I still had the front brake.

Cycling Guru and I went a couple of laps on the veloway without any issues. No issues if you call losing half your gears as no issues. I had installed new bar-end-shifters and the chain was moving back and forth on the chain rings. However, when on the ground the derailer required more tension. We found his students. We found some tools. We got the chain to go in the larger chain ring as the guys changed from going on the veloway to going out on Mopac and practising peloton skills of trading the lead. Gulp!

I held it together for as long as I could with half my gears. We got four miles in and I even made it past the long, tall hill before waving them on. My heart rate had red lined in the larger chain ring going up the hill and needed to settle down. The peloton was going 25 mph at this point and didn't look like it was going to slow down.

I was disappointed PSB couldn't hang but I think it could have given it had a full set of gears. Given that the other bikes were two $6000 Pinarellos and one $2000 Fuji. I got home and put the bike on the rack to make some adjustments. A great ride regardless.

Da Fish called me Sunday morning to see if I'd want to check out the new University of Texas pool. Hell yeah! Brand spanking new sweet set of indoor and outdoor pools to choose from. Twelve lanes in the outdoor pool and six in the indoor.

I hadn't had a swim since the last triathlon, Sept. 10. Over six weeks ago. My goggles were still in my triathlon bucket on the porch and covered in sand. A quick wash up and they were good to go.

The pool was prettier than the photographs indicated. I had a lane all to myself so I dove in and started to enjoy the water. For some reason I can't do math while swimming. Everytime I try and figure mileage with laps I mess it up. I have to figure it all out before I leave the house. I paused somewhere around 45 minutes when Da Fish was paused. He asked how far I was going and I said a mile. He said I was way past that as he was working on 3500 yards so I must have been at about 2500. For the life of me I couldn't get my head around the simple multiplication of 60 laps x 50 yards = 3000 yards. I said, "On this perfect day, I'm not going to fight to get my brain to work. I'm going for a little longer," not wanting to stop. Whatever it was was what it was going to be. It was 3000 yards and it felt so good.

Permanent Link: 10/30/2006 06:01:00 PM