I was bored one Saturday, I never thought I'd actually get it!

Dear Athlete:

Congratulations! We’re excited to announce that you have been selected to become a member of the 2009 Team Aquaphor Sponsored Athlete Team.

The selection process was tough, but your application stood above the rest. Your athletic accomplishments and goals were a perfect match for the sponsors’ goal of building a dedicated team of athletes who are passionate about their sport and competition. Your 2009 goals, past achievements, future motivations, and overall dedication to the sport best demonstrated this commitment.

As brand ambassadors for Aquaphor, team members must not only be dedicated to athletic excellence, but should be 100% committed to the success of the program. If you agree to accept your invitation for team membership, please complete the attached Sponsorship Agreement no later than April 10^th, 2009. You may fax the forms under the ATTN: “Team Aquaphor” to 858-430-5292 but we would prefer if you scan and e-mail to TeamAquaphor@active.com no later than the specified date to guarantee your spot on the 2009 team. Failure to turn in these forms by the above date will result in the cancellation of your sponsorship. Once we’ve received your completed agreement, we’ll provide you with details on the MANDATORY program kick-off calls.

If you have any problems with the attachments, have questions, need clarification on the Agreement or do not think you will be able to get the forms turned in by the deadline please e-mail team management at e-mail TeamAquaphor@active.com or leave a message at 858-964-3802. Once we receive your completed Agreement, you will receive an athlete Welcome Kit and custom-branded team apparel within eight weeks.

If, upon reading the Agreement, you choose NOT to participate in the program, please let us know as soon as possible so that we can then extend the invitation to another qualified athlete. You may do this by e-mail, fax, or voicemail.

Again, congratulations on your selection to the 2009 Team Aquaphor sponsored athlete team. We look forward to a successful season!

Brian Law

Team Aquaphor Manager

Active Marketing Group

Quickly...

I did a 125-mile ride in screaming headwinds on Sunday. It was epic. I even have a lot to say about it, but haven't had time to write it up. I'm going to be working 50- to 60-hour weeks for the next 3 weeks, so don't expect to see me much around here.

If you're curious about the ride, here's a condensed version:

Mile 15: Guy smears his face all over the road going about 30 mph. We stand around in the 30º cold for about 40 minutes waiting for the ambulance.

I collected another Straight Male Over 40.

It was beautiful.

Again, HOW do people not get clipped out in time?! I just don't get it!

There were roughly 20 mph winds for the whole second half, which seemed to be working against us for about 45 of the last 60 miles.

Some people just don't know how to eat for a long ride. I'm not one of them.

Hopefully I'll get the pictures and a better report up soon. See everyone after Easter!

How not to fight a cold...

If you've been following my Twit feed on the sidebar, you know that I've been sick. What started as just a light cough like you get when you've been breathing too much dry air has now turned into a SARS-like painful, phlegmy bronchiole hailstorm. But the weather was finally acting spring-like, and breathing knives just wasn't a good enough excuse to miss a solid weekend of outdoor riding. Plus, I was signed up for a 100K ride in the Berkshires, and I couldn't let those $10 go to waste.

On Saturday I managed to squeeze in just under 50 miles before my front tire punctured 4 short (but not short enough) miles from home. So my fifth flat in 2 weeks led me to the bike shop for the third time in 24 hours, and I was pissed. I didn't even want to SEE my unreliable, sorry excuse for a bicycle by the time the day was over. I just wanted to give someone an earful and dump my misery on someone else before I went home to sulk for the evening. The flat turned into a happy accident, though. Instead of getting one of the grease monkey boys as my mechanic, I got the only girl in the shop... the one I've been checking out for some months now. I couldn't very well dump my sour mood on her. In the end that flat tire it lead to dinner with a very nice young lady whose only unattractive feature was that she rides a pink mountain bike (not actually the bike pictured at left). So I can't complain. By the time I got home, I only had 3 hours before my 3:30 wake-up call. By the time I quit tossing and turning, obsessing about what an awkward fool I am, I was at roughly T-minus 2 hours. And I couldn't have caffeine in the morning. This was going to suck.

I hit the road at 4:30 in order to be at the start by 6:30 with plenty of time to set up before the 7 am start. Why the hell did we have to start at 7 am when the ride was only 60 miles long, and the sun didn't rise until after 6:30?! It was going to be nearly 60º later in the day, but right now it was still well below freezing. By the time the world's slowest pooper finished his business, I had precious few minutes to pee, get everything organized in my many pockets and pouches and hit the road. When everybody left, I was still pumping up my tires. I took off down the road after them, and then realized that my helmet and gloves were still sitting in front of the shop. By the time I caught up with the group around half a mile later, my hands were already frozen. I hadn't thought to bring warm gloves, and even my fingerless cycling gloves were in my back pocket (since I'd been in such a hurry to leave). Before the 5-mile mark, I was already thinking of turning back.

It was so cold! I had seen the weather report saying that it was going to be in the high 20's until 9:00, but rather than coming prepared, I decided to ignore it. How could it possibly be in the 20's in the morning when it planned to get up to the 60's in the afternoon? Impossible! But lo and behold, people who had thermometers on their bikes said that it didn't get above 25º for the first 2 hours of the ride. On the first noticeable descent I was thinking seriously about if I could follow the cue sheet backwards back to the shop, when the ubiquitous gregarious rider (the one who kept saying "HOOOOO-ly....!" every time we went over some potholes and kept expecting everyone to laugh) commented on my naked hands. Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers, because when a girl on the ass-end of a tandem heard that, she reached into her partner's backpack and took out a spare pair without ever even having to stop the bike.

With my frozen hands taken care of, I now noticed how cold the rest of me was. I could feel the cold air blowing though the vents on my helmet, and I hadn't thought to wear a hat underneath. My feet were frozen and aching because I had no booties and hadn't even thought to wear warm socks. And even though I was wearing winter tights on the bottom, and 4 layers on top, none of them were wind blocking, and I felt naked in the wind. All I wanted was to hit the far checkpoint so that I could warm up a bit. Despite having lungs that felt like they were stuffed with cotton, I was keeping up with the lead riders without any extra effort. I was alright as long as I didn't have to breathe hard. It was windy, and no one was pulling a particularly fast pace. As long as I sat in on someone's wheel, I could hang in there.

Then it was my turn to pull. I hopped on the front and barreled into the wind. I like pulling, but I find it so disorienting. You can't see anyone but the person directly behind you, so you can't tell if people are keeping up or dropping off the back. You're working 20-30% harder than you were back in the pack, so it's hard to tell if you're speeding up or slowing down. Plus, you have to point out obstacles. I'm no good at pointing out potholes and crap in the road. I don't notice it until I'm practically on top of it myself, and whenever I try to talk at speed, my voice always comes out quieter and breathier than I expected. Not to mention, my arms were frozen, and my wrists felt sluggish. Rather than waving my hand over gravel, all I was able to muster was a wrist flick. Instead of pointing at potholes, all I could manage was to drop my arm off the handlebars and point limply as I rode past it. And there were potholes and shit in the road everywhere. Some of them were only an inch or two deep, but there were several the size of Madagascar that went a good 6–8" into the pavement. I was very aware that if I got a flat tire, I wouldn't be able to stop shivering enough to change it. I zoned out for a few seconds staring at a particularly large pothole that might lead to China for all I knew and thinking of all the horrible things it could do to a bike, when I went splashing through a mostly-frozen puddle. I felt my bike slipping and yelled out, "ICE!!!", but it wouldn't have been in time for anyone to avoid it. Luckily, I didn't fall over and most people swerved around the puddle. Finally, after about the puddle and 5-10 minutes of pulling, I decided it was time to drop back and let someone else take the lead.

By the time we hit the checkpoint, even my legs were feeling sluggish. Everything below the knees was burning, and the same rigor mortis that had taken over my wrists was taking over my legs as well. The checkpoint was a huge Irving gas station with a Dunkin' Donuts and a Subway inside, and after getting my brevet card signed to prove I'd been there, I parked myself smack in the middle of that gas station and I stood there until I stopped shivering. Once I got outside again, most of the faster riders I'd come in with had already left. The guys that were still there were the kinds on vintage bicycles who brought bar bags on a 60-mile ride and took the non-competitive aspect of a brevet very seriously. I had a goal of not having to look at a cue sheet for the entire ride, so I decided to wait for them as they shoved entire bagels or Subway sandwiches into their mouths. It was much warmer now, and I had only begun to shiver again by the time they finished their food and saddled up.

I hate riding with cue sheets. As soon as I start traveling down a road, I wonder if I've already missed the turn. What if I have to double back? How long will it take me to figure out that I'm going the wrong way? What if the street sign is missing? These guys knew the course, but they were moving so much slower than I would have ever ridden normally. Every time there was a short hill, I was one of the first to the top. What I really couldn't understand was why they were taking so long to get down the hill on the other side. I was sitting up and braking, and they still seemed to be dropping farther and farther back. I was getting colder rather than warmer as we rode, and my shoulders were really starting to cramp up from the shivering. When 2 faster riders came along (one of whom had toppled over in the gas station parking lot because he couldn't get clipped out in time – again, who DOES that???), I hopped on with them.

Finally, in the last 5 miles or so, I started to feel warm. Temperatures were just climbing into the forties, and I was already finishing my ride. What the hell??? I managed to track down the tandem riders and give back the gloves. "You might want to wash them," I said sheepishly. "I didn't want to, but I kind of snotted all over them." The girl who had lent them to me was much prettier in normal clothes than she had been in a helmet and sunglasses, and I thought that maybe hating all female riders who thought they could keep up with me might actually be a mistake on my part.

An example of what a brevet card looks like. Not mine.

After I shot the shit for several minutes with the tandem couple, I had to chat with the 2 guys who I had ridden in to the finish with, and then with the comedian when he rolled up, I went in to hand in my card. When I finally walked in the door and the girl in the shop wrote the time on my brevet card, I tried not to cringe. All those lost minutes! But brevets are supposed to be non-competitive. And I was feeling like shit. I wasn't trying to ride hard today. Still, I was a bit chagrined to think that these results would be posted.

All in all, I suppose that I probably would have been better served to stay in bed on Sunday morning rather than riding in the freezing cold at the crack of dawn with a chest cold. But the course was beautiful and easy. I just can't wait until winter is done with us once and for all! Sorry there were no pictures, but I didn't have the dexterity with gloves on to pull my camera out and take a couple of shots. I promise more pictures soon.

I'm now a Twit!

I've been quiet, I know. I haven't been posting as much, and I've been truant in all your comment sections as well. I apologize. I've had a drought of things to report right around the time that I discovered Netflix instant viewing, and my reading and writing time has taken a huge hit as a result. Pretty soon, though, I will run out of Law & Order SVU seasons to watch, the bike season will pick up, and I'll burst back on the blog scene.

In the meantime, though, I've joined Twitter. It was kind of an accident, really. I just wanted to see what the site was all about, but I couldn't figure out how to browse without setting up an account, so I did. I'm not entirely convinced that people want to know about it every time I sneeze, but I think that this could have some pretty useful applications this summer. First of all, I figured out how to put a feed on my sidebar (see it???). So now when there are long silences from me, you can see what's been going on in mini-posts that are guaranteed never to exceed 140 characters in length.

Also, since I can "tweet" (or "twit") from my phone, I'll be able to give instant updates from races and trips. I'll be able to keep you posted from the road in France, let you know when I'm stranded in the middle of buttfuck New York, and have friends update on my progress in some of the longer races that I do. In the off-times I'm going to try to keep the play-by-play on bodily functions to a minimum, and instead "twit" about interesting articles I read, or cool tid-bits I pick up from books. I'm going to TRY to keep it an interesting way to share information that everyone would care about.

And speaking of interesting tid-bits from books... I'm reading The Cyclist's Training Bible (little more than The Triathlete's Training Bible or Going Long with a different picture on the front and less consideration for swimming and running. Friel has made a mint printing the same book under 3 different titles! It's not even the best book out there, fer goodness' sake...). In the "Special Considerations for Women" section, he had an interesting paragraph about "Contraception." It went like this:

Contraceptives and Performance

A study at the University of Illinois showed that women who are on the pill may have an advantage in endurance sports such as cycling. During long endurance runs at a low intensity, women taking oral contraceptives showed an increase in growth hormone. They used significantly find [sic] carbohydrates and more fat for fuel than those women not taking the pill. This suggests that using oral contraceptives may improve a woman's capacity for burning fat, may allow her to get into shape faster, and may extend her endurance range in races. I am not aware of any other studies that have tested this finding, so the results should be taken with some reservation.
If you are not currently using an oral contraceptive, talk with your health-care provider before starting. Don't take the pill only for race-performance reasons.

I find this fascinating! I'm not on the pill, nor have I ever been. I have reasons for considering it (not for contraception, obviously, and not for performance enhancement, duh), but have always discarded the idea because of the oversimplified assumption that if testosterone makes you faster, then estrogen must make you slower. Boys = fast, girls = slow. So don't take extra girl hormones. I've heard that the pill can make you fat. Fat = slow.

Anyway, as the voices of experience, what have you ladies found?

Innocent? (play Barry White tune here)

Or DIRTY???

(play Riding Dirty here)

Followup

Some of you may remember my post from last week about The Sprinkler, who was leaving messes on the toilet seat. After a particularly messy bathroom afternoon, my co-conspirators and I had had enough. I wrote to the office manager (a man) again and begged him to put up a note addressing our specific problem. I even included a sarcastic suggestion of what I thought the note should say, including terms like "for the love of God" and "you throw like a girl." Much to my surprise, the office manager came over and said that the note was fine how it was. It conveyed anger and humor at the same time, and showed that this behavior was unacceptable. "I can't go in there, though," he said. "You hang it up."

Me?! Accept responsibility for this?! Nuh uh! If any of this blew up in our faces, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't the only vigilante taking matters into her own hands. So I recruited my co-conspirators. Fellow runner, and member of the hardest working production team in the publishing world, Liz aka Za-beth took my words and brought them to life with her design and production knowledge. She took out some of the more offensive wording, and designed the sign to maintain but soften the sarcastic tone. Within 24 hours, the following sign was posted in both bathrooms:

Please excuse the comment sticker. The image was made from a PDF at the final stage of editing. Yes, when you work in publishing, even the signs for the bathroom go through a couple of editing passes.

For obvious reasons, we have to be clandestine about it. But at least one sweet, soft-spoken long-time employee has given positive feedback. We win!

Another thing I have to follow up on is the detox. We're going on 11 days now, and dare I say that I'm adapting? I mentioned the trouble giving up caffeine, that has now passed. I'm still dependent on sleep aids (I'm beginning to think that nothing natural will cure my insomnia), but I've been able to sleep every night that I've taken something (which doesn't always happen, even when I do overdose on nighttime over-the-counter stuff).

For the first week I was absolutely wiped physically. I'd dug deeper than I thought in the Hyannis not-even-close Marathon, and my body just felt so crappy that I was convinced that I was going to have to take a week off of training altogether to feel human again. And then, on the seventh day, after only 2 hours' sleep (that was the night I tried going without the Advil PM), I got up to go for a long swim... and I felt awesome! Without putting in any special effort, I took about 8-10 seconds off my usual 300 time, and after swimming 4,000 hard yards, I still felt like I could have kept swimming all morning. I stayed home from work that day to take a nap (I still had a sick day coming to me, and I'm useless when I'm tired anyway), and around lunchtime I got on my trainer. I ground out a hard 2 hours with 5-minute stints as hard as I could go every 15 minutes. The sluggishness in my legs from earlier in the week was suddenly gone, and I was averaging roughly 2 mph faster that I usually would on a similar workout. Even my runs have been fantastic. That night I ran a short interval workout, and despite being dehydrated and depleted from my ride, the run went great, as did the tempo run with hills that I did on Thursday. Where I thought I was going to have to take a week of bedrest next week, now I feel like I'm already coming off a rest week. I feel like Artie: The Strongest Man... in the World!

And the willpower thing hasn't been as difficult as I thought. In the first week I thought I'd kill for some yogurt covered raisins. I couldn't imagine how I was going to get through 40-some days without sugar. I still crave sugar when I'm hungry, and that's been the hardest, but I'm not about to start murdering babies and selling my soul to get it. I found myself standing in the aisle of Whole Foods for 10 minutes last night, debating the identity of raw sugar, evaporated cane juice, and other "natural" sweeteners like "raisin juice concentrate" and "fruit sweetener." In the end I decided that in the body, sugar is sugar no matter where it comes from. In a huge feat of willpower I put the hippie cereal back on the shelf. (I have had to put some maple syrup in my iced tea for hard runs, but got through an 80-mile trainer ride on fruit alone.)

I miss the comfort of decaf coffee once or twice a week, but I'm trying all kinds of different herbal teas, and it's almost as comforting. Almost. I don't miss cheese nearly as much as I thought I would and I'm drinking soy milk for the first time in years. And giving up the processed grains has been more of a challenge to my social life than my appetite. No changes in body composition, except maybe tipping the scales about 1% heavier (.1% more body fat), but I'm not too worried about it. My weight has fluctuated within 3 lb in either direction for over a year, but it's not long before it comes back home.

So for those of you who are wondering how I'm doing living off tree bark, nuts, rocks, and berries, I'm doing just fine, thank you very much. And it's WAY easier than I thought it would be.

Detox

It's lent.

I know, I know. I've given some of you a hard time about your faith, and you have all been kind enough to take it with a sense of humor. I am not a religious person, and never felt "inspired" by God when I was growing up. Mom used to drag me to church every other Sunday, and I couldn't understand, if there was a God, why He would want me to be so bored for 2 hours on a perfectly good Sunday morning on His account. If He really was the one that made that bright, sunny day outside, then why did he want me standing in this dark church singing songs that sounded like moaning? I respect other people's religious beliefs, and I do think that it's nice that the church (or temple, or mosque, or whatever your place of worship) can be such a guiding force for people. As I so eloquently put it to Rocketpants, "I think it's cool that you... you know... like, love Jesus and stuff." I'm not so hot on the people who use their religion as an instrument of hate, but I know that they are in the minority.

But there are two things that I liked about the dose of religion I got growing up: Christmas (because I got presents and the week off of school), and Lent. For some reason, the idea of a period of reflection and giving up a luxury or a vice for really speaks to me. It gives you an opportunity to cleanse yourself of any bad jujies (whether physical or mental), while making you appreciate things that you might take for granted. So for reasons that have nothing to do with God or Jesus, I like to try to give something up every year for the 40+ days that just so happen to coincide with Lent. (I don't know why the Christians need to drag out the suffering, but it was explained to me this week that Lent does not actually include Holy Week, and therefore, when you give something up for Lent, you give it up for more like 46 days. Lame!) Anyway, saying that you've given something up for lent is somehow easier than explaining to people why you would quit something temporarily for any other reason. If you just "give it up" for no reason, they tell you it's not necessary, and then they gloat when you're back to your old ways.

Last year I gave up reruns. I was successful, except for when I was sick... which happened to be much of Lent anyway. This year I decided to be a little more rigid. At new years, Princess did a 4-week detox during which she ate no wheat, sugar, caffeine, dairy, or meat. Watching her go through it, and talking through all the reasons she wasn't eating this and that made me look at my own diet and realize that it wasn't as clean as I would like to think. Most of the time, I don't eat processed grains like white flour, or white rice. But I was eating more and more sugar. I would come home from a workout starving, and go straight for the stash of cookies. If I was in a bad mood, I would eat pizza or macaroni and cheese, or something "bad" to make myself feel better. Whenever there were sweets in the kitchen at work, I was among the first to help myself. After long workouts, I would eat whatever I wanted as a "reward". I was drinking more and more "decaf" (which from Starbucks is more caffeinated than most regular coffees), and even regular coffees regularly. And then there was Disney, where I think that an overdose of high fructose corn syrup was responsible for my stomach problems and spending most of my time in the "Porcelain Kingdom" over the next couple of days.

So for Lent, I designed my own little detox. It would go a little something like this:
No processed grains: meaning no white flour, no white rice, no white pasta, bread, or white anything. I don't usually eat that crap except when I eat out, so this means that I basically won't be able to eat any restaurant food for about 40 days.  Hey, at least I'll save some money!
No dairy: meaning that I'll have to use an alternative to my whey protein (hemp or flax will do). But the main challenge is NO CHEESE! Is life even worth living without cheese??? Actually, so far this has been the easiest to give up.
No caffeine: meaning no more Starbucks on the weekends (why even get out of bed then?!). Not even decaf. I'd noticed that when I drank a full strength coffee, even at 6:00 in the morning on a Sunday, I would go to bed at my usual 9:00 bedtime, but I wasn't able to sleep until 11 or 12. When I missed the umpteenth Monday swim workout in a row, I finally made the connection. And no more green tea either, unless it's decaf. I thought that this would be easy, but the first day that I switched out my regular green tea with red tea (all the antioxidants, and naturally caffeine free), I got the telltale headaches and slow-motion feeling of caffeine withdrawal. Who woulda' known?
And the mother of all challenges, No sugar: sugar is poison. It rots your teeth, messes with your insulin and glucose levels, makes you fat, screws with your brain chemistry, and makes you more susceptible to pretty much every illness under the sun. The problem? It's indispensable for endurance athletes. Not so much sucrose, but simple sugars. So the main challenge for this little experiment is finding alternatives to sports drinks and gels (or in my case, gum drops) with natural sugars in them (so far I've used dates, apples, bananas, grapes, and dried apricots). I am also doing my best to avoid "raw" sugars, and processed "natural" sugars because they are no different when inside your body than the plain old white stuff. (You can extract sugar from a sugar beet, or you can extract it from grapes, process the hell out of it, and get basically the same thing with the same effects on the body.  But the grape sugar can be labeled by the FDA as "natural flavors" rather than sugar. Yikes!) So I'm getting my sugar from fruits instead.

On Fat Tuesday after shoving two Cadbury Creme Eggs in my pie hole I got a base reading for my weight and body fat percentage (using one of those terribly inaccurate scales), and took some "Before" pictures. We'll see on April 12 how it all turns out... Maybe I'll finally have that 6-pack I've been after my whole life???