Saturday, October 8, 2011

Crawling Back

Today I finally got back out and took a little ride on the bike. As I hadn’t a clue as to how my body would respond, I decided I would just go down to The Veloway to do some loops. (Yeah, hoping on the trainer would have been easier, but I have spent enough time in front of my TV lately.) I was actually very surprised how I felt on the bike! It went great and I actually felt like I could manage speeds close to what I had been riding before the pericarditis flared up - the hard part was not pushing it hard or heading out on MoPac for a little more of a real ride. Well, I did really push the fifth lap. But, it felt great and my heart responded just like it should. In the end I did nine loops and with the little ride to and from my car, managed nineteen miles in a little over an hour. Hopefully this means that I am back. Tomorrow I am going to ride with my friend Rob and perhaps even do a little run afterwards. We shall see.

After my bike ride, I made it home just in time to catch the start of the Ironman World Championship, Kona. One would think that watching the live web broadcast of an entire Ironman race would be something that you might check in on every once in a while, but certainly not a “just plop your ass down on the couch and hardly budge” type of event. Nope. I was enthralled. I watched it for nine hours. Now I want to qualify for the race more than ever. Watching the pros rip through one hundred twelve miles on the bike in four and a half hours and then set off at sub six minute mile pace for the marathon is just insane! I know that I will never be able to post those type of numbers…

Now for a little non-triathlon soap boxing – politics have become absurd! It is not my intention to make this a political blog or even discuss it here, but after a really good conversation with Claire earlier this week, I feel obliged to share this with you all. Chances are that you are amused or annoyed by some political sub-party that is making the news these days. Perhaps it is the new Occupy (place your location here) rallies going on or the Tea Party, but you probably have some strong reaction to them both. Everyone wishes that their politicians listened to them and would stop pandering to lobbyists and special interest groups (except for the ones we agree with, of course). The solution is really quite simple – vote! Voter turnout in federal elections over is low. Politicians cater to the people that actually vote, and by and large, the moderate middle is not very reliable at making it to the polls. But the overly vocal minority shows up in droves if you poke them the right way. I started this blog in part to focus on the things that we share. I truly believe that most people want largely similar things in life, and that we are not as polarly opposed to each other as the political environment would suggest. Typically only half of registered voters vote in presidential elections and even less in other national elections. If we all showed up to vote, I think we would find that the world at large, is not as extreme as it seems now.

OK. That is all for now. Run friendly! -T

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Can I get some cheese with this?

Forewarning – This is going to be a whiney entry. Naturally, shortly after I write a post about getting back to serious training, I come down with another bout of pericarditis. Luckily this bout has not come with the large amounts of chest pain that some of the previous ones did. Perhaps the Celebrex that I have been on has kept the pain away. What it has brought is exhaustion and frustration. Though, I have watched a ton of Angel and Psych. The most frustrating part is that if I lie down and not really move around a whole lot, I feel more or less OK. But, if I move around, at all, I quickly start to lose all of my energy. I have been going through this for about a week now and it seems to be getting a little bit better. But, even with that, I was only able to last a little over 4 hours at work today. After I came home and crashed out on the couch for a couple of hours, I feel more or less OK. Then, 30 minutes in the kitchen wipes me out again. Tomorrow morning I’ll see the cardiologist so I’ll hopefully get a better idea of what I need to be doing from here. My plan is to try to bounce back to full blown training faster this time than I have in the past. Before, I would always start back to training very slowly. While that might sound like the most logical approach, it takes me out of training for over a month and, well, it doesn’t seem to be keeping the flare ups from happening again. We shall see. Sorry for the rambling post, just needed to babble on a little bit. Until next time, run friendly!