The Second Half

Monday night’s hillclimb resumed this week. It was close to 30 degrees, we had a full moon, and almost a completely clear road to the top. Normally these would be ideal conditions to put down a nice time, right? Wrong. I started out OK, and then things just got worse. I felt weak, my heart rate was too high, and I got stone cold dropped by MG on the steepest section about 4 miles in. It wasn’t even that painful, I just didn’t have the horsepower to compete – so I just found a rhythm and ground out the last two miles. I’ve eaten enough crow in this sport to feel comfortable with that scenario, and sometimes just finishing feels OK.

Home, shower, chowed some grub, and D looked at me and said “you look horrible”. I didn’t feel all that bad, but I guess I looked the part. So, I went to bed, and woke up at 5am – that’s pretty much when I felt horrible and matched the look from the night before. Ahhh, I was greeted with a nice low grade fever, cramps, and the same level of headache as a person on day 3 of caffeine withdrawl. I was working from home anyway because the road to work is closed for landslide repairs – so that worked out great. I have a feeling I picked up this crud from either my niece or my nephew down in Tucson.

I think I’ll dust this little cold pretty quick, but I had to calm myself down this AM as I looked at the calendar and the number of days decreasing between now and the race on April 24th. I need mileage, mileage, and hours on the bike – and this cold is just getting in the way right now.

Taking the long way to work today, a 3 hour round trip commute – sucks. However, it gave me a chance to listen to an album that still gets it done. Van Halen’s 1984. “Hot for Teacher”, “I’ll Wait”, “Panama”, “Drop Dead Legs”, “Top Jimmy”, and even “Jump” still rock hard. I remember buying that cassette at Target 26 some years ago, and it sounds as good today as it did then.

“I think of all the education that I missed
But then my homework was never quite like this!
I got it made, got it made, got it made
I’m hot for teacher!”