New Training Plan

With just seven days until the Tour de Gainesville, I began to train yesterday.  I rode for two hours, often on the gravel roads, for about thirty miles.  I went beyond riding with no hands and soft pedaling.  I made a serious effort to keep my hands on the bars and turning over the pedals.  The result?  30 miles of electric shock therapy.  Every bump was torture (I mean training), a sharp pain from my right buttocks all the way around to my hip.  This morning my range of motion is quite restricted.  My new self diagnosis?  Piriformis Syndrome.  Here is the map of yesterday's ride:


View Ride1 in a larger map

A New Look

I have decided to try a simple look for this blog.  No more sidebar with bicycle descriptions, prices, and links to manufacturers.  I did keep the blue and green.  What do you think?  For now, you will see mostly text, pictures, baiku, and stories of my adventures.

We are back in Loganistan.  Here are a few pictures from the trip.  Here is Lupine, sitting on a rock. Can't see her?

Here is the close up with Sen in the picture.

Lupine has her drivers license now.

We did a family ride here.  I did see this trailhead sign.  Patty was the only family member to make it to the end of the trail.

And it looked like this:

This is a picture from Florida, not Moab.  I need to post it because there will soon come a day when Daddy-Daughter naps will be a distant memory.

Enough. There's laundry to hang and a bike ride to take.

Tourist Town

I'm still in Moab.  I have quite a few thoughts to share this morning.  I want this post to be a ramble, not a rant, so please read on, knowing it all has a positive tone.  Right.

Moab is one of those places where your eyes stop working when you try to absorb and comprehend its beauty and visual complexity.  It's too much.  Your visual cortex fills up because there is so much to see, so much that after a while you don't even see it.  Visual overload.  Perhaps someday there will be an external hard drive to plug into the human brain.  Then, we might be able to "see" such a place.  Thank you, Ron, for the photo.  I stole it from your web site.

The bicycles here, in my opinion, are so over the top.  Hardly no one pedals "up" the trail.  Most people start at the top and leave a car at the bottom.  Cars, cars, cars.  There are more bicycles on cars than on the trails.  If you are driving a car around Moab and you do not have bicycles strapped on, you are not normal.  Yes, I am guilty too, my car has three bikes on it.  My question is, "What happened to the pedal to the trail-head philosophy?" that for a time seemed to be gaining some momentum.  The answer, I know, is that the over the top bicycles that people ride and rent here in Moab are in fact not bicycles at all.  They are motorcycles without engines.  Bicycles in name only, so heavy, shock absorbing, and inefficient, they can not be pedaled up a hill.  When you visit the bike shops here and look at their rental bikes, they are all down-hill, free-ride, full on slush puppies.  If I were to ask about renting a "single-speed rigid 29er," I wonder what they would say?  Yes, I am far from the mainstream.  I'm the crazy one.  I did the White Rim Trail in one day on a cyclocross bike.

Speaking of momentum, yesterday I did go on a bike ride.  I tried to ride gingerly.  When you soft-pedal a mountain bike, it tends to fall over quite a bit.  So, "riding" did not hurt my back, and my "psyche" is quite intact.  Falling off, however, was quite painful.  I ended up doing a lot of hike-a-bike.  That was good too.

The Next Lodge

And now, we are here.  Moab is one of the most popular places on the entire planet to ride a mountain bike, and I still have real trouble tying my shoes.  Good thing they have Velcro.  I'm going to put them on and go for a spin down the road.  When I get to the Porcupine Rim Trail-head, I will give it a go.  I don't know what will hurt worse, the pain in my back from riding my mountain bike in Moab, or my psyche from being in Moab and not being able to ride my mountain bike.

Where's Robert?

We are still in Montana, being wildlife ecologists.  Last night, we were here.  The night before, In Idaho, here.

Hot springs have not cured my back.

The Angle Of The Sun

Hope starting to fade
Like winter snow in shadows
With Spring's longer days

It's been 23days now, post-injury.  I'm becoming less optimistic about a full and fast recovery.  I'm moving a little better, but I still have unbearable pain in my butt and around to the front of my hip.  Sometimes when I walk I get a very sharp, shocking, stab of pain.  It's almost electrical.  Obviously, I still have bulging disc pushing on a nerve.

The days are getting noticeably longer here in north Utah.  Spring is not far away.  The returning meadowlarks, sparrows, kestrels, and waxwings told me so.  It's good to see them again.

I pedaled for an hour yesterday.  Again, I mostly rode no-hands, just soft pedaling.  I hope to be out of pain and have just a smidgen of base fitness for the Tour de Gainesville on March 27.  Yes, a smidgen of base and absolutely no aerobic capacity.  The last time I rode a TT ride in Gainesville, Jason A. said I was "feeling frisky."  In 16 days, he'll say I'm "looking like a stiff."

A Quick Post

I'm working late tonight.  My back and hip are still pretty bad.  Today makes three weeks.  February 16, I believe it was, the day the pain started.  I may just have to live with it.  I rode 25 miles with Greg W. on Sunday, mostly no-handed, in about 2 hours of pain.  I'm so fast.  I did some bike repairs today and that really hurt too.  Perhaps the years of bicycle repair has somthing to do with my back.  Who knows?

Quacks

There are 127 different species of duck at our local zoo, and even more quacks on the internet.  That will teach me to google herniated disc.