Zigzag (Cycling Column)

It took a half bottle of wine to send me into la la land (not in one go, first a glass, then more gulps, until the desired effect was achieved). Of course when I woke up at 4:08am, I wasn't feeling fit as fiddle, so I popped my first Activ-Lean pills (high in caffeine). I haven't used these metabolism boosters in about 4 months, and to be honest, they make me jittery and irritable. At 4 in the morning, jittery is better than dozy.

I felt the excitement first during a steep decent (I clocked 84km/h and passed everyone as gravity took hold of my stomach), and then further up William Nicol. We were two lines of cyclists moving in the dark, probably 8 or so on each side, most of us with strong lights. That's a sizable number for 5 o' clock in the morning.

My stats:
Time 1:42
HR 145 avg (174 max)
Distance 44.7km
Average Speed 26.3km/h (84 max)
Altitude average 1502m
Temperature 4 min, 7 average
Ascent 465m
KCal 1639

As my buddy has said many times, when you're up this early, wheeling through the sleepy suburbs, you feel as though you have the edge on everyone. When you realise how tough some people are, that get up every morning, day after day, summer and winter, for the love of being on a bicycle, I too despair less for the future of the human race. We are - some of us - tougher than we know. Some, unfortunately, may never know.

Zigzag (Cycling Column)

Sssh. I am doing cutting edge research for a thesis on HOW TO GET FIT BY TRAINING AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE. Results are looking good so far. Today I cycled the Cradle route with Cyclelab again (about 73km, climbing around 1000m) and came in 15 minutes quicker.

I think it's a combination of two things.
1) Last night I actually ate something (something I'm not sure I did the week before)
2) My body has decided to play ball after getting its ass kicked last week, and now it knows it has to come to the party.

I'd like to do the same route (it's slightly different to the out and back route of the Cyclelab guys) one more time, and try to bring the time down to around 2:30.
After that I think I'll ride with C group.

Today was unquestionably the highlight of another draining week. I find that the energy required for writing is a lot, and writing messes big time with my sleeping patterns. I'm at my peak mental activity at around midnight, and it it hard to turn off the fireworks once they're on. For example on Thursday night I called Frans Cronje, then went for a swim, and while in the water magic sparks fizzled: I knew exactly how to start my article on Hansie. When I arrived home (at about 10pm) I only intended to write one or two paragraphs. I ended up writing the whole damn thing, and only hit the sack at about 2:30am.

What happens then is you carry on in that sleep deprived state all day, which means metabolism is crawling along, you tend to drink and eat foods that are very high in sugars, caffeine and other slightly toxic compounds. And the body is in a critical mode, holding on to every last fat globule because it's anticipating a firing squad, concentration camp or some other life threatening scenario.

Exercise forces you to deal with this imbalance. In order to train you have to be rested enough, and also energy levels (from eating and sleeping) have to be fairly good. It also is a tremendous mood stabiliser. I am a pretty grouchy person went I don't train, and when I do, I'm chipper.

The good news is I've already sold the Hansie story (a few hours after offering it around). This means I can now take a little break from writing and get into a good routine for training. I have to get fit for an upcoming 180km cycle from Jo'burg to Sun City. In that ride alone I'm hoping 2 2kg tubs of human margarine will be left on the road behind me. I have a feeling getting my body back in the loop will improve my writing, at a minimum if I am a lean 75kg machine I will be able to tell amazing stories about how I was riding in a bunch and suddenly became a speck disappearing in the distance. (Er...ahead of the bunch ;-)

Today's stats (previous week in brackets):
Time: 2:45:30 (2:59:26)
HR: 151 avg (144 avg)
Distance: 72.6km (72.5km)
Speed: 26.3km/h avg (76.3km/h max)- (24.3kmh)
Alt avg: 1297 (1198 min/1395 mx)
Temperature: 10 C avg, 5 C min/21 c max (8 C avg, 2 C min)
Ascent: 935m
KCal: 2801 (2818)

Above pic courtesy topleftpixel.com