The Beast of Provence -Ventoux

I love when the Tour hits Mont Ventoux. As long as I can remember it’s just such an iconic stage. I can remember seeing photos of Eddie powering up it when I was a kid, as well as Lance, and Froome and Contador.

Van Aert on Ventoux. (Image: Reuters)

chapeau to Wout van Aert for his victory today. It’s just a surreal place to ride a bike, and it’s been decisive so many times. It’s a bucket list ride for me, even if I only survive it.

Mount Ventoux. Like a moonscape.

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Mark freakin Cavendish yo

33.

What else is there to say?

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Thoughts on training…

I am in need of a reset as to my training methodology. A reset taking into count my kind of new reality. The ‘ol leg is telling me we may never be the same again. I do believe that while it may not be the same, it will be as good or better in a different way. The problem statement here, which is pretty obvious I suppose is simply put, “how do we get there?”.

The answer isnt so obvious, at least not to me. I spend a good bit of time researching and staying abreast of training information online, and with friends in the same or similar boats. Getting professional information has been more challenging in the new COVID-19 world reality.

I went to the PCM last week with complaints about my hip, a new type of pain, more of a burning than a sharper pain as I’d become accustomed to it. The response was to send me for an X-ray (which in their defense is the approved first step per my insurance), though this seems to be in direct contraindication to the description I’ve given. Meh, in the end, its a road right. The PA who did my write up asked if she could touch my hip before I left, and she immediately stated “it’s hot”. I said that while I appreciated it, I thought we should keep things professional (

) which thankfully she found amusing. That being said, she was right, it was hot to the touch, a good 4 or 5 degrees warmer than the tissue around it. So she did some quick tests and decided that I have a sub dermal infection of sorts, in the soft tissue. Not uncommon in post surgical areas, however it has been quite a while since the last cut. The gist was that removal of tissue creates voids internally that invite infection. Thus, I got the broad spectrum anti biotics that destroy your stomach, and I’m feeling in general like someone is laying on me all the time.

I hope to shed the wet blanket feeling in the next few days and get back on the horse with both feet in the stirrups to follow my analogy further down the road. Today is a ride day, with no real goal other than at least 45 minutes of time spent spinning the pedals. I am likely producing a normalized power of like 150 over these rides which hurts me to say, but it’s the reality. So the loose plan I’m following right now is M-W-F Run/Walk, T-Th-Sa Ride. The weekday rides are 45m and 60m respectively with 90m on Saturday. Monday is a run day, roughly 40 minutes overland, Wednesday is a ruck day, and Friday is an hour of running/walking mix. I’ve been riding the cross bike single-track style during the week to build strength and re-true my bike handling skills, with a nice longer pure road ride on Saturday.

This plan hasn’t changed in a bit, but there have been a bunch of setbacks that I’d like to think I might be passed at this point. I’ve kind of accepted the new slow me, and while I dont like it, I can deal with it. I’m treating it in a sense like I’m a rank beginner. A rank beginner with some pretty nice bikes

. By going this way I keep my expectations in check, and in a reasonable zone, but I can also flex to accept improvements.

Time will tell I guess.

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The new hotness

I’ve been doing a bunch of reorganizing and such here tonight. This is something I’ve planned for a while, but only just got real about.

I use this blog to post mostly about 2 wheeled things, and Motorsport in general, so I’ve finally cleaned it up to reflect that.

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New Jazz and Plans

I’m listening to the Apple Music “Jazz Currents” playlist this morning, as I slept in and missed Sunday Morning Jazz on KUTX. It is described as “Every Jazz era had its modernists, but here the focus is the present-and a look into the future. Rhythmically daring and emotionally intense, today’s jazz is an art that perpetually surprises and evolves”.

Presently playing is “The Messenger” by Theo Croker (featuring ELEW), and that description is as apt as I could imagine. I enjoy this playlist, it’s pretty much my go-to for Sunday mornings unless I feel nostalgic.

Apple Music has gotten significantly better over the last year, and I’ve gone back and forth between it, Spotify, and even Tidal for years now, but since switching my earbuds game to AirPods Pro, it’s been just more comfortable to stick with the apple offering. I still find that some of the generated playlists on Spotify are more to my liking, but I usually just import them over to Apple Music. As to Tidal, I really liked it a lot when I was listening to audiophile earbuds. There is no doubt the original master level of streaming made a huge difference in audio quality. I remember passing them to Torrie one night at dinner to hear 6lack through them, and her eyes just lit up, and she said, “Wow…” so I bought her a set of the same earbuds, and she promptly lost them. Lesson learned, I guess.

I’m trying to find some predictability to my weekends again, with Saturday being a productivity day and Sunday being more of a rest and reset day. I like to sleep in a little, and then get up and nurse coffee for an hour or two while listening to mellow music to set the mood. I think its good for the spirit to get some real reset time on the weekends, I firmly subscribe to the idea that I don’t live to work. That being said, I haven’t done anything but work for the last year really, between the optempo at JFHQ, the Sergeants Major Academy, and now the COVID lockdowns, the idea of tossing it all on a Saturday morning and going somewhere nice just hasn’t come to be. Given that we’ve had some car troubles and the kid’s schedules have been pretty nuts, it’s been like a perfect storm of “stay home and catch up.”

We’re planning a little trip to the coast in October, likely the third weekend or maybe even Halloween, and that should go a long way toward helping get the minds back on track that there is more to life than work.

This weekend though, I’ve still got a fair bit to do with the cruiser prep, some shelves that I’ve been promising to hang, and general cleanup around the yard in advance of this week. Maybe this coming weekend, which is Labor Day, I can get zeroed out and check a few tasks off the list. I think once the truck is up and going, I’ll pile Jack in and head up to the lake for some fishing. Plans.

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Lookijng for a reason to write this morning…

Lately, I think we’ve all been a little anxious, to use a heavily overused word, in my life anyway. Everyone is worried about the world situation with the COVID-19 pandemic and the crisis in our country with regards to race relations, politics, and our collective future. How will things ever get better?

Well, that comes down to why you think we’re here, I believe. Some believe we have a “greater purpose” and that we are put on earth for a reason. While this is a belief I don’t share, I respect those who do, and those very same people have accomplished some great things. Of course, Hitler believed that too…

There are people who think life has no purpose whatsoever. We are just collections of biological goo, going around on this earth waiting for whatever other collection of goo or some cosmic cataclysm to do us in and end our turn. I also don’t share this opinion, but I say that with a few caveats.

I personally agree that we are mostly just a collection of biological goo. Still, I think that the consciousness that we see as ourselves sets us up to create a meaning for our lives that, even if no one else around us sees it, or cares about it, does indeed define our existence. If you listen to the voices available today, the mainstream of them would have you believe that only external approval counts and that true happiness comes from acceptance and praise from our peers. Indeed, we have evolved to enjoy that experience, probably something to do with being a successful contributor to the continued existence of the tribe or whatever. I would counter that this is shallow satisfaction and that the very seeking of it leads to unhappiness. Very Buddhist of me, I know. There are, of course, environments where external approval matters to some extent, the workplace and education environments come to mind. Again though, it is that same need to feel that we are contributing to the tribe’s success. The company we work for is simply an extension of the tribe. When we were all hunter-gatherers, work, and life tribes were one and the same. Today, of course, they are typically separated, at least to some extent. As athletes, we are members of another tribe, desperately seeking approval through race results, or hanging on to the tail end of the blazing group ride Sunday morning. Usually, that release of endorphins makes us feel good enough to come back and suffer through that experience again the next race weekend, or the next blazing group ride on Sunday morning.

In that sentence, I used the word that defines the whole thing, “endorphins.” Most of what we do is driven by hormones. Endorphins are a generic name for peptide and neuropeptide hormones released by the pituitary gland. They are generally thought to be linked to our natural reward circuits, in a nutshell, to make us feel good when we do something good for the body. Eating, drinking, sex, exercise, are all triggers for the release of endorphins. I’m not a doctor or a researcher, I just like to read, and I want to understand the world and myself as much as I can. I know that a lot of our behavior is driven by the desire to feel the release of endorphins and that many of the things that cause that release are physical in nature. Once we understand that our behavior is driven by this release and that our “conscious thinking” is really just a search for things that will make us feel good, it’s a lot easier to understand why we do what we do.

Yuval Harari makes a pretty solid argument in his book “Homo Deus” that this is the ONLY thing that drives us, that this explains what we see as our “consciousness” and that there is nothing more to it. I’ve read that book twice now, and I have decided (or my collections of hormones has if he is correct) that I don’t accept this as all we are.

I’m not going to go into a long rant about my beliefs on consciousness, or what I think it even is, but I’ve read and studied numerous sources on it, and I think we have a say in our actions that is driven by something more than just hormones. So that being said, I still understand how strong that desire for satisfaction is. I am also driven by the desire to trigger my brain’s reward center, and I like the way it feels. We spend so much of our lives searching for that feeling without understanding what causes it. We are constantly bombarded by messages that if we buy this thing, or look at the things others have bought, we will find true happiness, even if it’s only till the next version of the thing is released and brings even more pleasure. Sounds pretty shallow, I think.

I’ve made a few changes in my life in the last ten years, and while I haven’t been 100% successful, I’ve gone a very long way toward finding satisfaction internally, without the praise or approval of others. I am happy or less happy with my own performance based on my own critique, rather than others’ opinion or determination. I’m not saying I don’t still share, I absolutely do, I have Instagram, I have an active Strava account and the like, but I don’t dwell on any of the feedback I receive unless it is decidedly constructive in nature. In a way, one could argue that it is an extension of the philosophy of cutting the negative out of my life, and maybe that’s somewhat true. I haven’t even begun to talk about the impact of stress hormones on happiness or performance. I’ll save that for another day. I still have a long way to find this blissful nirvana I describe, but its a goal to work toward, and I have found myself to be so much happier than ever before once I accepted it as the way I travel.

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Just finished a Run on Strava for 14 minutes, 26 seconds going 576.0m. https://ift.tt/3fRWouR

Kevin

Leonard Freed, New York City, 1963

You can’t think about saving the world. You have to think about saving one person.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

F-14 Tomcat Launch