The Long And Limping Road

Morning Workout
RUN
1/4 mile. No, that's not a typo. 1/4 mile it is.
Heart Rate Zone: Just a bit higher than when I'm laying on the couch eating chips

SWIM
3000 meters
Main Set: 20 x 100 meters off 5-10 seconds rest

Random Comments: I went to the track to try and run today. Didn't work out so well. Between the stretching, limping and swearing profusely at my achilles, it took me about 10 minutes to run a quarter of a mile. At that rate, hmmm.... let's see.... I should finish the marathon leg in about...umm.... hold the two.... carry the seven.... err....uhhh.... yeah, here it is... I should finish the marathon in about seventeen days. It'll be the Lake Placid Death March.

The Little Things That No One Ever Knows

Morning Workout
BIKE
1 hour 35 minutes
Heart Rate Zone: Aerobic (Zone 1)

Evening Workout
LIFT WEIGHTS
1 hour

Random Comments: It was raining cats and ducks yesterday and the silly, somewhat incompetent, short-bus riding weathermen in Los Angeles said it was supposed to continue raining throughout today. So, naturally, I assumed I’d be powering through on the trainer this morning while I catch up on the latest episodes of Lost, The Daily Show, The Office or what have you. I don't know why I keep listening to the LA weathermen. They're idiots. Of course I woke up to sunshine. Beautiful bright sunshine. Not a cloud in the sky type of sunshine. Didn't rain a single drop today. Screw the trainer, I went riding in the great big outdoors. And that’s about the most interesting thing I can say about my ride this morning.
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Swim 2.4 miles then bike 112 then run 26.2. Can you swim that far, they ask. I can’t even drive that distance, they say jokingly. And they always ask about the legs - it's the most obvious question. How will your legs hold up, they say.

They will. I can. Those are my answers.
I should make up little index cards to hand out.
They will. I can.

My arms will be tired, but they will somehow pull me through the 2.4 miles. And my legs will be even more tired, but they will manage, there will be enough energy to carry me to the finish line. I can do it, I know that. That's not the concern. The arms and legs aren't the worry. It’s the little things that nobody thinks of that are the silent killers.

Take a look at marathoning. You can run 16, 17 or 18 mile training runs for months and feel great. I could do a marathon, no problem. I am superman, you’ll think to yourself after these exhilirating runs where you feel like you can go on forever. You’ll feel confident. And no matter what people tell you, it’s not until you experience it yourself that you realize how quickly that confidence gets squished like a possum on the roads of Pennsylvania. You will realize the hard way that the marathon really begins at mile 20. Yes, you may feel like you’re on top of the world at mile 18, and you should hold on to that feeling as long as humanly possible because a few miles later may very well bring utter disaster, collapsing you into a wimpering little twit. It happens time and again. Without experiencing it, you simply can't predict how your body will react.

I've been swimming 2000-3000 meters regularly every week without a problem. Piece a' cake. But it wasn't until last week when I swam the non-stop 3000 meters that I realized my form was just the slightest bit screwed up. And that slight bit o' screw caused tremendous back pain. All I need to do is rotate my hips a couple of inches further. Just a couple of inches. Practically nothing, you say. But after 4000 meters of swimming, those inches are the difference between a fresh start out of the water and one really t-ed off, severely pained bike rider who's gotta get through 112 miles with a sore back and is guaranteed to bitch and moan and yell unmentionables the entire way. I don't like yelling unmentionables, especially on 112 mile bike rides.

People ask me if riding 100 miles is hard for me. Nobody asks me if drinking my water bottle is hard. But trust me, it's harder than you think. I've got a drinking problem. Whenever I take a sip of liquid while on the bike, my heart rate rises 3-5 beats. Five beats, you're saying, big deal. Well, when I’m huffing and puffing, panting and groaning my way uphill, with my heart rate toying the redline and just enough energy to get to the top of the damn mountain, a drink of water and five more beats slams me right over the edge. Apparently it is a big deal. You cheeky git.

Take small drinks, you suggest. Small quick drinks. One would think that's the answer. I even thought that was the answer. I tried it and we were all wrong. Small quick drinks raises my heart rate even more. I've had to spend the last few months sampling with my drinking. Sounds lame, huh? It is. I go out on rides and try to drink different ways. Small sips, big gulps, two chugs, three quick shots... And finally I figure out what I need to do. One big gulp every 10 minutes. Gulp enough to finish the entire bottle in six gulps. That's the only method that seems to work so far.

And then there's eating. When you run a marathon, you are only out there for a few hours. Sure you will eat some solids, but not a whole meal. The Ironman? I'll be out there for a timespan in which I usually eat three full meals. And that doesn't even count the continuous expenditure of energy. How do you eat when you're constantly moving and your organs are working at their peak? More importantly, what do you eat? What will my body accept and what will it reject? As you can imagine, it's hard to simulate what the stomach will be like after 12 hours of exercise without actually doing 12 hours of exercise. But I'm givin' it the old college try. I spend the training sessions trying new tactics. Fig newtons, cheese sandwiches, pretzels, peanuts... trying to figure out what works. I don't know the answers. Yet. I hope I find out soon though. Heaven knows, I want to figure it out before I hit mile 20 of that marathon and find myself battling all the other little things that no one ever knows.

Phase Two Too Much

Morning Workout
ELLIPTICAL MACHINE
25 minutes
Heart Rate Zone: Aerobic (Zone 1)

SWIM
3000 yards
Main Set: 8 x 25 yards (w/ 5 seconds rest) + 3 x 600 yards (w/ 30 seconds rest)

Random Comments: We just got our new training programs that details the exercise to-do list for each day over the next couple of months. And there's only one way to describe it... Holy SHIT!!
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Disgusting, In A Good Way

Morning Workout
BIKE (on the trainer)
1 hour 25 minutes
Heart Rate Zone: OK, you're gonna love this one... 3 minutes each at Aerobic Conditioning (Zone 3), Steady State Threshold (Zone 4) and VO2 (Zone 5+) with 2 minutes at Lactate Threshold (Zone 2) between each one. I repeated that entire malarkey four times. If that's not enough, I then threw on four 15 second sprints at maximum speed for good measure. Confused? Yeah, me too...

Random Comments: Logically, one would think that biking on the trainer is easier than biking on the road. There is no wind on the trainer. There are no hills or potholes on the trainer. And, Lord knows, there are no damn stoplights or reckless drivers on the trainer. Which makes it all the more perplexing when you realize that it is actually more difficult to bike on the trainer than it is to bike in the real world. Much more difficult. With an emphasis on the 'much'. In fact, raise your eyebrows when you say that... Much (eyebrows raised) more difficult. There you go. I'm guessing it's because of the friction that the trainer creates when it rubs against the tire. Of course, I could be completely wrong. To be honest with you, I only showed up to one class during the entire semester of Advanced Physics (which is another story entirely...). I'm guessing they covered friction sometime within that semester. Oops. (This should be a lesson to all you boys and girls out there - show up for your classes and maybe you won't be as clueless as me when you get older.) But the truth is, I don't really need to know the reasons for why the trainer is more difficult, I just know it is. The veritable buckets of sweat that were pouring out of my body this morning is proof of that. The sweat levees were breached. It was disgusting. In a good way.
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Lo And Behold, Y'All

Morning Workout
BIKE...
2 hours
Heart Rate Zone: Aerobic Conditioning (Zone 3) and higher

...RUN
1 hour
Heart Rate Zone: Recovery (Zone 0) and Aerobic (Zone 1), though it was supposed to be Aerobic Conditioning (Zone 3) but, you know, I've got these achilles problems so let's not push it, ok

Random Comments: This morning's activity was filled with a fun little brick workout: 2 hours in the saddle followed by 1 hour pounding the pavement. I love these workouts. Short and exhilirating. However, as we all know by now, my achilles problems have been, well, an achilles heel in my training. (You've been waiting for me to use that play on words, haven't you? Well, ya little wiseacre, I've avoided it as long as possible and now look what happened - it finally slipped out. I hope you're happy with yourself.) So what with this whole leg pain thingy, I assumed I wouldn't be able to run after the bike anyway. But I figured I'd amuse myself and pretend I was actually going to head out. So I laid out the running clothes in my place - awaiting my lightining speedy transition off the bike. But knowing it was all just a farce, I gave it my damndest on the bike. I wanted to make sure I squeezed the most quality out of this half-of-a-workout as I could.

When I finished the ride, I figured I'd play the charade anyway, so I put on my running clothes and quickly headed out into the great big unknown. I started running and - oh! - slight twinge in the achilles. Predictable but oops anyway. I slowed 'er down to something just short of a walk. Lo and behold, y'all, the achilles pain quickly dissipated. I kept running down the block, then the next block, and the next... And Sweet Mama Pajama, the legs just kept feeling better. I mean, they were so relaxed and fresh - it was like I hadn't ridden at all today. I was so happy and smiling and laughing and saying things out loud that I probably should've kept to myself until all of the sudden I realized I was a mile from home. Lookee here, I've past the point of no return. Being so far away from my couch, I figured I'd do a really slow, really easy 30 minute loop. I was already going at a turtle-esque pace, if I could just keep it up for another 20 minutes my achilles may hold out and I'll be home free.

Fifteen minutes later I reached the turn-off back to my place. A quick right and I'd be five minutes from home. So easy, so simple, so close. But, I ask you, since when do I take the easy route? Since never, I tell you. I did a quick body check and, whooopie, it felt great. Legs were still relaxed, body wasn't hurting. Achilles? What achilles? What the hell, I thought, it couldn't hurt to go a wee bit more. So I did. Another block here, another block there. Next thing I know it's 1 hour into the run and with every step I'm feeling more and more like Forrest Gump. I could run forever. Granted, I was going slow. Very slow. I'm talkin' Heinz Ketchup slow. I'm talkin' about me being passed by Grandma McPudgy out for her morning stroll type of slow. But dang gummit, I made it through that one hour run with nary a problem. There might very well be hope for me after all. Hallelujah and amen, sista. Sing it like you mean it...
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Kumbaya

Morning Workout
SWIM
57 minutes 55.3 seconds
3000 meters

Random Comments: Without a doubt, this morning was the longest consecutive swim I've ever done. So far, at least. I mean, I've swum 3000 meters before, but never without stopping. I was expecting to be bored. Even when I swim only 300 meters I tend to lose count of the laps. Here I had to be able to count all the way up to 3000 without losing my place. That's 60 laps. Oy, the pressure. I was also expecting to be tired. I mean, I usually get tired within the first few hundred yards of warm-up on my swim workouts, I couldn't begin to imagine what I'd feel like after these 3000. However, now that the 3000 meters is said and done, I'm ecstatic. It was great. Dar I say it was even easy. Perhaps I underestimated myself. Or perhaps it was the low expectations that set me up for success. Regardless, I'm pretty darn happy. Aren't you happy too? Let's be happy together.
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Sock It To Me, Sock It To Me...

Morning Workout
Hey, wait a minute. What the hell am I talking about? Today is Friday... it's an official rest day. I'm resting, I'm resting!!! Watch me rest. Can you see me rest? Here I am... resting. Woohoo! Can I get a little R-E-S-T-P-E-C-T. Yeah, find out what it means to me..

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I'm not much for the technical gobbledegook (which apparently is the correct way to spell gobbledegook. And this entire time I thought it had a 'y' in it. Huh. Go figure.) When people ask me about the detailed specifications of my bike set-up, as a for instance, I usually just stare at them in bewilderment, my eyes clouded over in agoggleness (yeah, I made that one up) and, I'm not too ashamed to admit, oftentimes with a driblet of drool dropping from the corner of my mouth. I know that the bike has two wheels and when I push on the pedal thingies it goes forward. If I push on the handlebars it may even turn in the direction I intend every now and then. And there are a couple of little lever thingamabobs that help me slow down when I go so fast I begin to crap my shorts, which, in case you care, have so much padding in them it feels like I have an extra set of last night's undies crumpled up in there by mistake (and I know you know what I'm talking about..) I'm told that my wheels are a size 700 and I've got a size 25 of something-or-other somewhere down in the chain ring vicinity, whatever that means.

Truth be told, I don't even understand what the numbers of my blood pressure mean. Or anybody else's blood pressure, for that matter. I'm told that mine is very low in a good way, but I couldn't tell you the difference between a fifty over ninety and a seventy over one eighty. Hell, I don't even know if those are in the range of blood pressure zones. I'm just not a technically minded person.

So you can probably imagine the cranial meltdown I've been experiencing since I decided to purchase new handlebars for my bike. I'm moving from the standard "drop downs" to the more aerodynamic and, honestly, much cooler looking, "bull horns". I won't bore you with the reasons for doing this because, frankly, they're just plain shallow. I'm really here to talk about the mentally exhausting process of making this technical decision.

About four months ago when I originally decided to get bull horns, I did a cursory search and decided that the ones I wanted to get were the Hed aerobars. I saw them on a couple of professional racers bikes and, well, they look really fast. But when making this type of decision, that reasoning alone didn't sit well with me. I mean, after all, I have to get the one that is best for my riding style and capabilities, don't I? And I sure am of no professional caliber. Far far from it. So I started the process...

Like the stages of grief, there are various stages of my technical decision-making process. It kicks off with perhaps my most favorite stage: procrastination.

Tough decisions like this really require a fair bit of procrastination. I mean, you can't make rash decisions in such complicated matters. It'd be too easy. I find it much better to talk about it for a few months as if I were actually going to make a decision. But don't worry, I'm not. Yet by talking about it I can continue to get more and more stressed about having to make the actual decision without the real relief of decision making. Once that stress level reaches a critical point (which, coincidentally, is about the same time that Cat starts pressing me on a daily basis to get my ass in gear), I know phase one has come to a close, so I move to phase two: research. And that, my friend, is where the trouble really begins.

I started by asking a whole bunch of people what their opinions are on which are the best handlebars to get. I spoke with triathletes, road riders, bike shop owners... I'd say I spoke with about twenty people. And, as we can all expect, I got twenty different answers.

That's about the time I find myself at a cross-roads. With all that technical information sitting in my lap, I could easily parse it out and weed down my decision to a few specific items. It's a short process that leads me right to purchase. On the other hand, I can get all befuddled and slip back into the procastination phase. That's the road I decided to take. If I didn't think about it, I thought, maybe it would go away and the decision would be magically made for me.

Well, that plan didn't work out so well.

So here I am in Phase Three going through all the information to try and figure out what handlebar will work best for me, based on my body, experience and understanding, all of which are quite limited. I'm reviewing all the technical rigmarole and juggling the gibberish which is all just a bunch of mumbo jumbo that is crowding itself into the already overdeveloped real estate of my brain. It ain't easy.

You see, with all the different opinons, they inevitably begin to contradict each other. This person says to buy the fifteen hundred dollar custom set-up, while that person says to get a hacksaw and chop off the drop down on my current handlebars. This person says Company A makes the best set-up in the world, while that person says Company A has got their respective heads up their respective asses. It becomes very difficult for a non-technical little brain like mine to take it all in. I want to know the reasons for the opinions. But the reasons are all even more technical and, as we already established, I'm not a technical person.

But nobody said triathlon was easy. To complete an Ironman distance race, you have to dig into reserves that you never knew existed within you. So I dig down a little deeper. I become one with the technical information. I read the recommendations, I cross-reference and compare. I look at pictures online and at pictures in magazines. I put checks and arrows and funny little asterisks next to some suggestions while I cross others out one by one. And eventually I am left with only one final choice. The handlebar set-up that is the best choice for my Ironman pursuits. And guess what....

Its the exact same one I wanted to buy four months ago.

One Of Those Days

Morning Workout
RUN (ummm... sort of)
25 minutes (15 minutes on the treadmill with a few stops for stretching my calf + 10 minutes on the elliptical machine with a few slow downs so I don't fall flat on my face out of basic retardation)
Heart Rate Zone: Recovery (Zone 0) while on the treadmill. Lactate Threshold (Zone 2) while stumbling on the elliptical monster

SWIM
1800 yards
Main Set: 4 x 400 yard "time trial" with 1 minute rest between each

Random Comments: Some days the stars align. Today is one of those days. For reasons beyond our limited human comprehension, nothing goes wrong on the days that the stars align. No matter how hard you try, the world spins in your favor and luck always ends up firmly implanted in the good column of life. Yes, today is one of those days. And it all started with this morning's swim which, as you can probably guess, felt great. Odd the swim felt great. I don't normally use the word "great" when talking about swims. But, as I said, today is one of those days. Both Cat and I swam 10 to 15 seconds faster on each of our 400 yard sets than we did a month ago, which was the last time we did the same workout. For the record, 15 seconds off a 400 yard swim is a pretty damn good improvement. Remarkable, even. That equates to about 5 minutes off an Ironman swim time. I love that progress. I love when that happens. I love those times when the stars align - just like today. Which, as I'm sure you know by now, is one of those days.
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The Eating Never Stops

Morning Workout
RUN TEST
30 minutes on the treadmill
Heart Rate Zone: Maintained Lactate Threshold pace. Heart rate started in Aerobic (Zone 1) and moved on up to Lactate Threshold (Zone 2), as we all would probably imagine it would.

SWIM
2500 yards
Main Set: 5 x 300 yards with 30 seconds rest in-between each one. I sure do this workout a lot, don't I.

Random Comments: The calf, it was fine throughout the run. It gave me hope that maybe someday I'll be able to run like a normal person. We all have to have dreams.
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OK, I'm sorry already. Jeez. I mean, can't a guy get a chance to rest at all?! All your nagging and whining and why this and what that... really now, you need to relax. I said I'm sorry, and I am. I went away for four days, as you know. Well, not so much away physically - more away computer-ally. I'm back though. See, this is me typing.

It was my birthday, if you really must know. And Cat put together quite the birthday weekend for me. It was amazing. It started off with a surprise knock on the door Friday morning. Well, the knock wasn't the surprise, what was on the other side of the door was. I opened it, expecting to see Cat on the other side. I did. That wasn't the surprise part either, as I already told you. Next to Cat, there on the other side of the door as well, stood my mother and step-father, all the way from Florida. That was the surprise. I had absolutely no clue they were flying in. Apparently they did a little behind the scenes planning with my girlfriend over the past few months. Aren't they just the sneaky little whipper-snappers. Anyhoo, it was a wonderful surprise to see them and to get to spend a long birthday weekend with the family. It made me very happy. (Picture me smiling)

I'm not going to bore you with all the details of the birthday events, suffice to say, there were dinners and museums and lunches and parties and breakfasts and gifts and shopping and eating and eating and eating. And man am I stuffed. Fat face aside, I even managed to eek out an extra rest day in the whole mess of it all. That's right, no workout on Sunday or Monday. Yet another surprise. Ain't life full of them.

But the weekend is over and the week is in full swing. Consulting for the Company, looking for a job, managing my life... Maybe tomorrow I'll have something interesting to say. Right now, not so much. And lookee here, it's time to eat again.

Kinda Careful, Not So Smart

Morning Workout
BIKE...
4 hours 21 minutes
Heart Rate Zone: Aerobic (Zone 1), VO2 Max (Zone 5+) and everything in between

...RUN (yes, run)
20 minutes
Heart Rate Zone: Lactate Threshold (Zone 2)

Random Comments: Sneezing, clogged sinuses, feverish, no energy. And that was just waking up. I didn't feel a heckuva lot better riding in the 40-odd degree weather. So, like the smart and careful person I am, I decided to cut my planned 5 hour ride short. Well, kind of short. Which I guess assumes I was only kind of smart. Instead of the 5 hours, I only rode a mere 4 hours and 10 minutes. Which, in the grand scheme of things, amounts to a savings that is just short of bupkiss. More importantly, though, I went on a run right after the ride. And my legs felt great! Great, I say. Not good, not mediocre, not merely satisfying... but great. No achilles problem. No calf problem. Perhaps there was a bit of a nutrition problem. If feeling like I can't take another step, stumbling about on the sidewalk just short of passing out is considered a nutrition problem, then yeah, I guess there was a little problem. But please, don't change the subject. We're rejoicing in my painless run. Now excuse me, I gotta go eat too much food.
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Tinkle, Achoo!, Tinkle

Morning Workout
ROW MACHINE
20 Minutes
Heart Rate Zone: Aerobic Conditioning (Zone 3) + Steady State Threshold (Zone 4)

SWIM
2500 yards
Main Set: 24 x 50 yards, twelve of them were sprints

Random Comments: I was supposed to do 30 minutes of aqua jogging after this morning's swim but, you know what, screw that. Todays entire workout was mentally challenging. It was like I was staring at the clock the entire time. Which, by the by, I was. At least on the row machine I was. If there were a clock under water in the pool, I would've stared at that too. But there isn't, so I didn't. I'm guessing the reason it was all so darn difficult is because I'm sick. Or sort of sick. Apparently I have a cold. But it's not a regular cold, it's on time release. When I wake up in the morning, I feel fine. After my workouts, I feel fine. Late in the morning, I feel fine. Somewhere around mid-afternoon, I feel utterly crappy. And then it comes and goes in hour increments for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Fine, crappy. Crappy, fine. Back and forth until I can't even remember which nostril is supposed to be congested and which isn't. This has been going on since Sunday night and, frankly, I'm over it already. My niece called me yesterday cause she heard I was sick and wanted to make me feel better. She's three years old so just the fact that she called me made me feel better. Of course, when she belted out "The Basketball Song", which apparently she wrote herself, I felt even better. And it just kept improving through her rendition of the Happy Birthday song. By the time she started singing Tinkle, Tinkle Little Star I had forgotten I was even sick at all and just sat there with a twinkle in my eye wondering why the star needed to tinkle in the first place. The fact of the matter is that I need to take some time off working out. At least I need to stay out of the pool for a few days. So I'll tell you what I'm going to do -- if I still feel like crap on Sunday, I'm not going to swim. And then if I still feel terrible on Monday, I'm calling my niece again. Maybe she's writing another song to sing to me.
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I Didn't Need This Brain Anyway

Morning Workout
BIKE
2 hours with our friends, the hill repeats.
Heart Rate Zone: 2 x 15 minutes climbing in the saddle at Steady State Threshold (Zone 4). Followed by 1 x 15 minutes climbing out of the saddle at VO2 Max (Zone 5+++)

Random Comments: I started doing these hill repeats about 5 weeks ago. Five weeks ago I was climbing for only 10 minutes and it just plum hurt like hell. I guess that was the purpose so it means I was doing it right. Well, I don't know what happened but something is afoot. Cause here I am five weeks later, now doing 15 minute climbs at the same heart rate and, well, I gotta tell ya friend, it ain't that hard. In fact, I have to keep easing back on the ole throttle in order to lower my heart rate. Maybe it means I'm getting stronger. Maybe. Or maybe I'm just doing something completely wrong. That's the thing about training - the more you start analyzing it the more things confuse you. Should I tilt my foot another few degrees - will that give me more power? What if I inched my seat up 2 millimeters? And what about that lobotomy - if I shave off a few sections of my brain will I have less weight to carry going up the hills? These are the things I think about on my hill repeats. As if that's not enough to cause an aneurysm, riddle me this one, bikerboy: How come on the 15 minutes when I'm climbing out of the saddle with an astronomically high heart rate I travel the exact same distance as the 15 minutes when I'm sitting in the saddle and my heart rate is 15 beats lower? Shouldn't I be stronger out of the saddle while expending more energy? Isn't that the way this is supposed to work!? What's the point of me getting out of the saddle at all? I'm confused. Hey, tell me again that number for the lobotomist. 1-800-NOBRAIN, is that it? Yeah, I think that's it.
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A Lack Of Coefficiency

Morning Workout
SWIM
2500 yards
Main Set: 5 x 300 yards off 20 seconds rest

AQUA JOG
30 minutes

Random Comments: I keep my mouth open when I swim. I've tried to close it, but the moment I stop thinking about it, like a goldfish it opens again. I wonder what it's doing to my drag coefficient. I wonder what my drag coefficient is. What is a coefficient in the first place? I vaguely remember random discourse about coefficients when I was in 9th grade. Would that be calculus? Or maybe it was phsyics. I wasn't paying attention. In fact, I don't think I paid attention throughout most of 9th grade. I remember my math teacher though. He fantasized about being a baseball player. When he noticed students not paying attention, he'd take the eraser off the chalkboard and, with astonishingly accurate aim, hurl that thing across the room at the unsuspecting victim. And I'm not talking about any lobbing softball toss. No way, this was a full wind-up, side arm fastball hurl from one corner of the room to the other. THWACK! - the eraser would hit me in the face. Yeah, I wish I paid more attention in 9th grade. Maybe I wouldn't have such an adverse reaction to chalk. And maybe I'd know what a coefficient is and have a better understanding of whether I need to really focus on closing my mouth when I swim. In the meantime, I'm just keeping it open. The downside is the crap that they put in the YMCA pool. I don't know what it is - though I know it's not chlorine - but when you keep your mouth open underwater, it really dries it out. It doesn't seem logical, the mouth getting dried out from being underwater so much. I know, I was confused too. But believe me, it's true. In fact, when you get out of the pool, your entire mouth tastes like chalk. Which gets me all scared of my math teacher again.
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It Happened at 5:18 PM

Morning Workout
BIKE
1 hour 20 minutes
Heart Rate Zone: Aerobic

Random Comments: It was at precisely 5:18pm yesterday that I got sick. Clearly it wasn't one of those creep-up-on-you type of colds. One second I was fine, the next I was sick. Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom... It was as quick and simple as that. Cat's cold, on the other hand, has been sneaking up on her since that whole frostbite/hypothermia fiasco this past Saturday morning. But her cold really slammed home sometime last night as well. Mind you, being sick didn't make the pizza and Soprano's watching any worse for us. That Sunday night ritual is still a pleasure whether I'm completely healthy or on my deathbed - it don't make no nevermind. This morning, however was a completely different story. My bike ride felt fine, aside from my nose running faster than I could soil my gloves. It's really when I stopped that the sickness caught up with me. Catherine, however, felt crappy from the get-go. She didn't even go biking today, that's how bad she felt. Now, it's 7:15 already and I'm still typing on the computer. I think it's about time I go laid on the couch and ingested some soup. After all, I have to wake up at 5:45 tomorrow morning and go swim in a cold pool. I'm sure that'll help make me healthy. Yeah, that's smart thinkin'.
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Thirty Minutes of Sanity

Morning Workout
RUN
30 minutes
Heart Rate Zone: Aerobic (Zone 1)

ELLIPTICAL MACHINE
30 minutes
Heart Rate Zone: Aerobic (Zone 1)

AQUA JOG
30 minutes
Heart Rate Zone: Aerobic-ish

SWIM
2400 yards
Main Set: 16 x 25 yards / 8 x 50 yards / 4 x 100 yards / 1 x 400 yards

Random Comments: I went running today! Sure, it was only a 30 minute run. And sure, I had to stop after 15 minutes and stretch. And sure, it was really really slow. And sure, maybe I felt a slight bit of discomfort in my calf when I was going uphill. But why do you have to be so negative all the time. I went running, for goodness sakes!! And man did it feel great....
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If Only The Flying Monkeys...

Morning Workout
BIKE
23 miles of the Solvang Century
Heart Rate Zone: Beats the hell out of me. I had so many layers of clothing on, my heart rate monitor couldn't even grasp the pulse of my heart. According to the monitor, I'm dead.

Random Comments: Solvang is a quaint little Danish town north of Santa Barbara. And when I say "quaint," I mean "hokey". But it's a neat place to visit once in awhile. And when I say "awhile," I mean "a decade". But seriously, we had a wonderful time, Cat and I. Mediocre hotel, mediocre meals and the ride... oh yes, the ride. It was a trip that will forever be etched in our memories. And when I say "etched in," I mean "haunting".
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I rode the Solvang Century back in 2002. It was the third most miserable bike ride I've ever gone on in my life. The first most miserable bike ride took place on January 14th of this year. You can read about it in 60% Chance Of Rain. The second most miserable bike ride took place a month later, in February of this year, fully documented in The Charlie Brown Effect. When I did the Solvang Century in 2002, it was so cold that within the first half mile I lost complete feeling in all my extremities and didn't thaw out for the next four hours.

There are times when things go so horribly wrong, you reach limits of anger heretofor unknown to you. And there are times when you get so angry, you just have to laugh. That pretty much sums up todays Solvang Century - or at least the first 23 miles of the century, which is all we rode. I can say, without an ounce of doubt in my mind, this years Solvang experience was 4 miles short of being the absolute, positively, without a doubt most miserable ride of my life.

It started at the beautiful Hamlet Motel in downtown Solvang, only a few short blocks from the race start. At 6pm we arrived at our palace. The room was.... ummm... whats the word... not dusty.... not really dank... seedy is an overstatement... ghetto. Yeah, that's it. Ghetto. But ghetto in an endearing way. A very "you've really got to be in love with each other to appreciate this place" type of ghetto. We quickly settled in and after eating a fairly decent but definitely over-priced meal, got our bikes ready and snuggled up into bed for a good nights sleep before our big morning ride.

The 5:55am alarm got us out of bed and we proceeded right into our regular 35 minute preparation routine: tea, yogurt, oatmeal, bathroom activities, get dressed and be gone. Sure it was a bit of a challenge that our teapot had a three pronged plug and the room only had two-pronged outlets. But we finally figured out that the air conditioner was plugged into a three pronger. Sure it was a bit of a challenge when our teapot power cord wasn't long enough to go from the air conditioner outlet to the ground, leaving our teapot dangling in mid air. But we finally were able to move a luggage rack over to rest it on. Sure it was a bit of a challenge when we realized we didn't have any bowls or spoons to eat our breakfast. But Cat just drank her yogurt straight out of the container, drank her tea out of the mug, and then we used the same mug for our respective bowls of oatmeal, all the while shoveling the food into our mouths with a torn piece of plastic cup that we doubled as a spoon. You can call us McGyver if you want. That'd be OK.

Now it was time to get dressed. It was 30-odd degrees outside and supposed to rain. We hadn't ever ridden in 30-odd degrees and, frankly, didn't own the clothing to do so. So we decided to layer. Enough layers would surely keep us warm and dry. I piled on 5 layers and Cat did the same. If that's not enough, we shoved a few heating pads into our shoes, gloves and long sleeve jersey. We were determined to stay warm by all means necessary.

The first 10 miles of the ride were stunningly beautiful. The sun had just risen over the green mountains as we rode through central California wine country. By mile 12, we were sweating like pigs from all the layers of clothing and overheating heating pads so we stopped to unlayer a bit. That should've been our first omen. Five miles later it began to rain.

But a little rain has never stopped us before. Even though we saw other bikers turning back, we raised our noses at them and harumphed as we trudged on. These people can't stand a little rain?! Wuss. All of them, a bunch of wuss. That should've been our second omen.

It was about that time that the lightening blinded the sky a few miles from us, but a mere few seconds before the dramatic crashing of thunder. ka-BAMMMMMMMM!!!! We looked in the direction of the darkness. We had thought that darkness was the outline of the mountains in the distance. In a quick crash of thunder, we realized we were wrong. Those weren't mountains next to us - they were the shape of very large, ominously foreboding clouds. And they were getting closer. And we were headed right smack dab for the center of them. Maybe it'll pass before we get there, we thought. Omen number three.

It was about this time that the wind started picking up. And then it started getting really dark. Curiously dark. Forebodingly dark. You know how in horror movies, the heroine is walking through a dark old house down an empty hallway towards the one closet door and that ominously foreboding music is building in the background. And you know the killer is on the other side of that door because it's so damn obvious - what with the darkness, no escape and that damn music building in the background. This is just about the exact scene we found ourselves in the middle of. The wind got heavier, the sky got darker, there was only one way to ride and the crashing sounds of the thunder kept building in our ears. Somebody was going to get hurt real soon, and odds are it was going to be us. Omen number four.

It was about at this point that I felt like I was in the Wizard of Oz. I felt like we were just a few short minutes away from flying monkeys swooping down and snatching us right off this yellow brick road. But the things that came swooping down from the sky were no flying monkeys. It was hail. Big, sharp, hard-hitting, face piercing pieces of hail. I would've preferred flying monkeys. This hail was like little knives being thrown into our faces. It hurt. They were bouncing off our backs, off our helmets, and soaking into our completely drenched riding tights. We couldn't look up from our bikes to see what was in front of us - the storming hail made it hurt too much. So we had to keep our heads down and pray we didn't crash into anything or anyone.

It was at about this point that Catherine went crazy.

At first I thought she was crying. I didn't blame her - this was miserable. Then I realized she wasn't balling, she was laughing. Laughing hysterically. Quarter inch hail stones were slamming down on us, the road was a slick slip-n-slide, our bodies were wet and frozen and she was laughing. The more we rode, the harder she laughed.

My anger began to open up and a chuckle erupted from my body. That chuckle brought a laugh. And before I knew it, there we were, riding in misery and laughing our butts off.

But all good things must come to an end. Soon the hail stopped and so did the laughing. And then the temperature dropped. We had climbed a thousand feet and could already see the snow in the distant mountains. It was cold. It was freezing. Literally. And the fact that we were now completely wet, from head to toe, didn't make matters better. Our clothes neared freezing. Cat couldn't feel her fingers or toes. My legs had gone numb and my feet were following quickly. I can't do this, she said.

How many miles have we ridden, I asked her. Twenty-two, she said. Ok, I replied, there's a rest stop one mile down the road. Let's just make it there and then see what we should do.

One mile later we rolled into the rest stop and loaded up on food. But Cat was shaking violently. I can't do this, she said. I need to go back. I agreed. This was already ridiculous and quickly getting worse. There was more hail a few miles down the road, we were told, and it completely turned the road into a slick, iced-over carpet of white. And but a couple miles further, the snow began to pour down. Riders were turning back en masse.

This is absurd, I thought as I loaded the bikes onto the SAG vehicle. We have nothing to prove on this ride. Cat stood in the back of the SAG truck violently shivering. I gave her my gloves, my heating pads. I took off her wet shoes and socks only to see her feet, completely white and frozen. No blood was getting to her toes. Frostbite, hypothermia... these were the words that came to mind. Another man took off his waterproof pants and waterproof rain jacket and we draped those around Cat to try to get her warm. And we sat in the truck shivering and laughing, for that 20 mile drive back to Solvang.

Remind me never to do this ride again.

From The Annals of The Aqua Jog Lane

Morning Workout
ROW MACHINE
20 minutes
Heart Rate: Really high. Teetering on the edge of "too high". If this were biking, I'da been in Steady State Threshold (Zone 4), but it's not biking, is it.

SWIM
2500 yards
Main Set: 5 x 200 yards (off 15 seconds) + 5 x 100 yards (off 15 seconds)

AQUA JOG
45 minutes
Main Set (Yes, there was actually a set): 2 minutes hard tempo run + 1 minute easy. Repeat ten times.

Random Comments: I've got a doozie of a story for you from the annals of the aqua jog lane. We fade in to our adventure with a spotlight on the fifty-five year old chinese lady. And me, serenely minding my own business, jog belt strapped firmly about my mid-section, bounding about the deep-end of the pool when alas, do my ears deceive me, or is it the sweet whisper of the hummingbird coo-cooing at me from behind. I harkened closely, eager to grasp the joy of the elegant bird, nature's sweet little wonder. And as it bore closer, I realized that my ears were in fact deceiving me. There was no bird inside this pool. Nothing sweet nor little. Instead, it was the fifty-five year old chinese lady, and she was boring down on me slowly and painfully, slogging through the water in her old lady breast-stroke. You know the style, where the flower-printed shower capped head never actually gets in the water. It's less like swimming and more like treading water forward. So as she's moving along on the old lady breast-stroke, her mouth is in the water and she's humming a tune by blowing bubbles. Kinda like a three year old does at the breakfast table with a glass of chocolate milk before his father rolls up the newspaper, cocks his arm back and wallops the kid halfway across the state. As it turns out, that's exactly what I felt like doing every time she came bubble humming by me. And every one of those times she passed me by, I'd listen extra sharply to try and figure out what song she was singing. If for nothing else than to make this experience a bit less annoying. Yet for the life of me I couldn't figure it out. Musta been a chinese folk song or something. But that's not even the all of it. Get this... Every single time the fifty-five year old chinese lady finished a lap - she'd hold on to the edge and with a big bold CCCCHHHHAT-PTEWIE!, she'd spit on the side of the pool. Then she'd turn around, assume the old lady breast stroke, dip her mouth in the water and resume her bubble blowing, chinese folk song humming workout. Frankly, my friend, it was repulsive.

These are the types of things that happen in the Aqua Jog Lane.
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Heeeeeere's Johnny!

Morning Workout
BIKE
2 hours, including our favorite, the hill repeats
Heart Rate Zone: 2 x 15 minutes climbing up the hill at Steady State Threshold (Zone 4) plus 1 x 15 minutes climbing up the same hill at VO2 (Zone 5+) while standing up on the pedals the whole damn time, I might add

Evening Workout
LIFT WEIGHTS
1 hour

Random Comments: It is Cat's mother's birthday today. There was a birthday dinner for her last night. We had Indian food. Mental note: Don't ever eat Indian food before a high intensity bike workout again. Me stomach no likey.
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I'm a bit frustrated for a variety of reasons and I'm going to tell you all of them right now whether you want to hear them or not and I might even do it in one long run-on sentence just to make you as frustrated as I am since we're on the frustrated theme and if I'm going to be frustrated, well it only seems fair that you're frustrated too after all if we have a theme for this rambling here we might as well make it all encompassing don't you think?

OK, that got annoying pretty quickly.

I did the hill repeats today on the bike like I've been doing every week for the past 3 weeks. And every week for the past three weeks I slightly increased the distance I traveled on each 15 minute repeat. That is, until today. Today I rode up the same hill, at the same cadence, with the same heartrate as I've done for the past few weeks. My legs felt fine, my breathing felt fine, my body felt fine. Everything checked out. There was only one problem: I didn't go far. In fact, I couldn't ride nearly as far as I've done in the past. Why, you ask? I have absolutely no idea. And that, my friend, is a wee bit annoying.

So let's file that wee bit annoying fact in the fortress of our minds as we harken back to a day not long ago - in fact, it was last Saturday - when I did the 30 minute bike time trial up the mountain only to find that I rode a mere 10 yards further than I did 6 weeks prior. Ten yards improvement. In the grand scale of improvement over 6 weeks of intense training, that's in the "pretty lame" category. From what I've done in the past, I expect to improve much more than 10 yards. Frankly, it's got me all bollixed up.

So now we have bollixed up piled on top of our wee bit annoying. Let's keep going, shall we?

In fact, let's take it down a bit. Way down. Somewhere around ankle level should do just fine which, coincidentally enough, is where my achilles is. The same achilles that has been injured and has left me unable to run for two weeks. I love running. I thrive on running. I need to run. All work and no running makes J. a dull boy. I get all out of sorts when I can't run. That's what I am now - out of sorts. And when you pile the out of sorts on top of the bollixed up on top of the wee bit annoying, it starts to mold into frustration, which brings us back to the annoying run-on sentence I started with.

And so I watch Cat fly. She gets a PR in the half marathon and wins her age group. She rides nearly a quarter mile further in the time trial than she did six weeks prior. Every day she gets stronger. Every day she gets better. And that makes me happy - it makes me smile. And just thinking about that seems to ease my frustrations. At least she is improving. Growing. Flying.

So here I am laying on the couch with an ice pack on my left calf, trying to get all excited to wake up early for my 30 minute aqua jog with the old Russian ladies who I really don't think like me in the slightest. Meanwhile, Cat will be on the track doing her 2000 meter repeats at top speed. I wish I could be there with her. Just the thought of running those repeats brings butterflies to my stomach. But I must tame those butterflies. Well, maybe not tame as much as squish them until they all lay dead, scattered about my large intestines. I seem to have a lot of dead butterflies clogging up my large intestines lately. Of course, it could also be the Indian food I ate last night.

Aqua Jogging Can Be Fun

Morning Workout
SWIM
2500 yards
Main Set: 3 x 300 yards (20 seconds rest)

AQUA JOG
30 minutes

Random Comments: This whole aqua jogging thing is for the birds. The birds, I tell you.
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Star Spotting Of The Day: Eric Bogosian (if you didn't see Talk Radio rent it now)
Location: Starbucks in Santa Monica
What He Was Doing: Sitting with is wife and baby daughter, drinking coffee. Well, he and his wife were sitting and drinking the joe, his baby daughter was running around pulling down posters and pounding on glass and not listening to her father yell at her to stay away from the opening door.

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Something Felt Funny

Morning Workout
BIKE (on the trainer)
1 hour
Heart Rate Zone: Aerobic (Zone 1)

Evening Workout
LIFT WEIGHTS
45 minutes

Random Comments: I got all dressed and ready to go out on my ride this morning. Had the tights on, the long sleeve shirt, jersey, arm warmers, helmet, shoes, glasses, gloves... When I say I was ready, I mean I was absolutely ready. I grabbed my bike and started walking out the door. But something felt funny. I checked the rear tire. Damn, a flat. I backed up and leaned the bike against the wall. Took off my gloves, my glasses, my helmet. Removed the shoes, the arm warmers, the jersey. Slipped off the tights. Got out my trainer, put the bike on that, turned on the TV, slipped on a t-shirt, hopped on the bike and started watching TV and pedaling for the next hour. I suppose I'll need to fix that flat tire sometime. I'm sure it'll be there waiting for me tomorrow.
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Numba One Runna

Afternoon Workout
SWIM
3100 yards
Main Set: 10 x 50 yards (10 seconds rest betwixt each) + 4 x 400 yards (20 seconds rest)

Random Comments: We were in Palm Springs this morning. At seven oh-five in the morning, the airhorn went off and Cat began running the Palm Springs Half Marathon. I waved goodbye, blew a kiss, snapped a few photos, sat around, read, massaged my calf, stretched my achilles, and one hour forty minutes and eight seconds later Cat sprinted across the finish line. But that's not the story. The story is that she not only got a PR - destroying her previous best time by 3 minutes - but she WON HER AGE GROUP!! Woohoo!! [cue confetti][cue streamers][cue annoying noise maker thingies]. Overall she was 88th out of six hundred and some-odd people (and let me tell you, there were some very odd people there). And she was first out of fifty-one in her age group. First, I say! Number one. Cat is numba one runna. Ain't she the best?! Yeah I'm injured - but I'm damn proud of my woman.

A Great Place To Stumble Into

Morning Workout
BIKE
3 hours (including 30 minute time trial up the side of a mountain)
Heart Rate Zone: VO2 Max (Zone 5+) for time trial. My heart rate averaged 174 bpm and peaked at 182, if you really need to know. Which you probably don’t.

Random Comments: This was our 2nd Time Trial Up The Hill day. As you probably don’t remember and I don’t blame you, this day comes around every 6 weeks as a test of our training progress. What with my thriving achilles injury this time around, I didn’t know if I should actually do the ride and add more stress to my calf. But realizing that riding doesn’t stress my calves nearly as much as running, and realizing that I really love these fitness tests, and knowing that this was only a short little 30 minute climb anyway, well naturally I figured I should do it. I mean, how bad could it really be anyway? If you know me, which at about this point I’m supposing you do, you are probably expecting me to say that I completely destroyed my achilles on that climb and it was, in fact, a really bad idea to do it. Well apparently you don’t know me as well as you thought you did, little buckaroo. My achilles felt fine, thank you very much. My quads and lungs, on the other hand, might have sung a different tune, perhaps one that includes quite a bit more gasping and shriekings of pain. Which I suppose is the purpose of the time trial anyway – the gasping and pain. Regardless, I went about exactly 150 feet further than I did last time, which kind of pissed me off. I mean, in six weeks of training, all I improved was 150 feet in 30 minutes - a distance that might very well be attributed to a 30 second burst of tailwind somewhere up the climb. That blows - and I ain't just talkin' about the wind. Cat, on the other hand, went a quarter of a mile further than what she did last time. That is a nice example of “amazing”.
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Star Spotting Of The Day: Deep Roy, who is that little person that played the Oompa Loompas in the Johnny Depp remake of Willy Wonka

Location: The corner of Fairfax and Wilshire Boulevards

What He Was Doing: Driving his Volvo through Hollywierd. I first glanced over at the car because I sensed that the driver was seated a bit close to the steering wheel. When I turned to look, I found out I was right. If the little fella sat any closer to the steering wheel he'd be on the hood of the car reaching back. When I realized that he was sitting there because he was a midget….er… a little person, I felt like an ass. Then I turned away and really didn’t much care about it anymore.
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OK, here’s my prediction for the events to take place at Ironman USA on July 23, 2006 as it relates to the performances of Catherine (aka “the Girlfriend”) and moi (aka me, aka yo, aka whatever the Chinese, German and Sanskrit words are for “me”).

The Swim: I will be out of the water 10 to 20 minutes ahead of Catherine. I’m giving myself a one hour twenty minute time on the swim and assuming Cat will zip out in one thirty-ish. At this point, I think that’s a pretty fair estimate. Unless, of course, she learns to keep her legs buoyant, at which point she’ll kick my butt and leave me gurgling in the background.

The Bike: There’s a lot of climbing on the Lake Placid course. A lot of climbing. In fact, there’s the elevation gain chart if you really want to know. I believe Lake Placid has more hills than any other Ironman in North America. Which makes it a shame that my quads are so weak and I’m such a bad climber. Cat has much stronger climbing legs than I do. It’s like a different category of climbing legs on her compared to my little chicken legs. Which explains my predition that she’ll pick up about 10 minutes on me during the bike ride, maybe more. Then again, I’m faster on the downhills and straight-aways, so why don't we stick with the 10 minute prediction for now. Which leads us right to…

The Run: My gut says that we will be running a large part of the marathon together. From the get-go, I’m guessing there will be a ten minute difference between us. Depending on what happens to each of us on the bike (both nutritional dilemmas and circumstances-beyond-our-control dilemmas), I’m predicting that Cat will either be 10 minutes ahead of me or 10 minutes behind me as we step our first foot onto that marathon course. At this point in our training, our heart rates are right around the same zone at the same pace when we run. Which means that we’d be pretty good at pacing each other through the marathon. The catch here is that my heart rate usually sky rockets after bike rides, so there’s a pretty good chance Cat will just breeze by me and be all cooled down and eating pizza by the time I stumble across the finish line. Or maybe she'd be standing there waiting for me with open arms. Which, honestly, would be a great place to stumble into.

The Cold War at The Pool

Morning Workout
SWIM
2600 yards
Main Set: 10 x 50 yards (10 seconds rest) / 4 x 400 yards (20 seconds rest)

AQUA JOGGING (shut up!)
30 minutes

Evening Workout
LIFT WEIGHTS
1 hour

Random Comments: It's not that I don't like old people. I do. They're almost like normal people. It's just that they're so.....well.... old. As if it's not embarrassing enough that I'm jogging in the pool, I've got to be jogging with all the blue-haireds. There's actually a woman that rolls up in a wheelchair and, after 10 minutes of concerted effort, finally makes it down the steps of the pool only to flounder in the water for 15 minutes before she pulls herself back up onto her chair and wheels herself away. That's the lane I jog in. The geriatric lane. Basically, to get there you just go to the slow lane and take a left.

So there I am doing my pool jogging, minding my own business, focusing on my efforts. The only things keeping me afloat are the turtleneck jog belt and my pride. When all of the sudden two elderly ladies meander into the geriatric lane with me. One of them, the fat one, starts doing some quasi-workout where she'd treadwater from one end of the pool to another, then hang on the edge and push herself up and down for a few minutes, only to tread back to the other end of the pool and repeat the process. The other lady, the thin one, is playing around with a jog belt - which apparently is her very own and not one of the ugly yellow ones like the one I borrowed from the YMCA. So she's aqua jogging up and down the geriatric, the three of us trying not to run into each other in what seems like a cross between a game of chicken and cat and mouse. And when these two ladies pass me by, I can hear them talk in their Russian-sounding accents. I have no idea what they are saying, but it leaves me with a random craving for borscht... and I hate beets. So a few minutes later I look up and see them both at the other end of the pool. I can hear them yabbering back and forth to each other in their thick SlovakoKhazakstoBelarussian drawl, only to see them both look up at me, point and laugh.

You got a problem ladies?! I yell to myself. Why don't you aqua jog your asses down here and Sprechen ze Russian right to my face?! Who's laughing now, huh?! Yeah, you wanna piece of this!!!?? Oh, I'll splash you till the Cold War starts again, we'll see who's laughing...

That was the conversation in my head as I continued on with their aqua jogging. Suddenly the fat lady goes back to her pool side push-ups as the other one - and the clear leader of this gang - starts aqua jogging back to my side of the pool. She comes by me, touches the wall and turns to aqua jog back. As she's passing me by, she steals a glance at me, let's out a grand old smile and says light-heartedly, I'm going faster zen you!
Yeah, whatever..... old person.

I'm Not A Cyclist, I Just Play One On TV

Morning Workout
BIKE
1 hour 30 minutes
Heart Rate Zone: Aerobic (Zone 1)

Random Comments: I felt like I was riding on a movie set this morning. Which I guess is odd, because there are usually movies being filmed in Santa Monica during the mornings so quite a few times I actually am, in fact, riding on a movie set. But there were no movies being filmed on my ride this morning. Today I wasn't actually riding on a real movie set - it just felt like it. You see, it's been raining for the past few days out here in Los Angeles. The good thing about the rain is that it washes away the multi-layers of smog so that when the sun finally shines its bright smiling face again, life becomes so incredibly clear and the colors so overwhelmingly vibrant it is truly breathtaking. You can stare at trees all day long and not fully realize how green they really are until the rain comes along and clears the smudge on the atmospheric void that separates you from seeing the true nature of the nature. So picture, if you will, me riding along the beach this morn, sun peaking above the horizon stretching it's technicolor arms across the fiery sky, waves crashing romantically on the shore in a "From Here To Eternity" moment and seagulls and pigeons frolicking as one, laughing and flapping and yakking it up as if they actually thought they could live together in harmony. Let's be real, people, seagulls and pigeons don't like each other. They never have, they never will. They fight over bread crumbs. They clammer over empty potato chip packages. They argue about which one will get to fly over you and take a crap. The only time seagulls and pigeons get along is in the movies. Or, apparently, on my bike ride this morning. Which, as I said, felt like I was riding on a movie set.
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