No power

I’m still without my power meter. After the bang-up job I did on it a week ago, it’s still being rebuilt. I often wondered what it would be like to ride without power having had it for over a year now and I certainly miss it, but I have been managing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a number addict. I can remember back in my rowing days when I loved hopping on the erg versus hitting up the water. Why? Simply because I liked the quantitative feedback that the erg could provide. I guess that’s what I like riding on the trainer as well, it’s consistant, and there’s no hiding.

On another note, I’ve got my first race in a week and a half. Nothing big, just a dinky little mountain bike race, but it should be fun to open up my legs especially since I’ve only been on my mountain bike twice since last July :-) Good times!

Track

berlin-start

Originally uploaded by nathasm.

Not only is track such a cool fun sport to watch. I can only imagine what the atmosphere is like in Europe.

Track by itself is cool, but then they had to go and take some shots in black and white…which only adds to the appeal.

Yowza

ouch

Originally uploaded by nathasm.

Somehow I don’t think this ended in a good way

Best of Google Video

Bored at work? Bored at home? Enjoy the….Best of Google Video

Martino’s Bike Lane Diary

Martino’s Bike Lane Diary is probably one of my favorite blogs (except for yours of course!)…more people need to know about it…so now you know!

Are you fastr with flickr?

If you don’t use Flickr, then what ARE you using? Here’s a game that you try to guess the tag associated with the pictures before everyone else…

pya! 水玉潰�

pya! 水玉潰� Get ready to get pwnd!!!111!

Hour of power…and then some

Tonight was really the only tough day of my rest week…a bunch (4) of 20′ pieces at right under my LT with only a couple minutes of rest between each. I was dragging for most of the day so I was a little but worried if I could handle the load, but things went just fine. I probably could have pushed a little bit harder which means I’m getting stronger…I guess. The whole while I watched a mediocre movie called White Noise. Eh…decent…but not worth just watching on the couch…

I will be getting my TT bike built up in the next couple of weeks…can’t wait!

But mom said no…

On my way home I stopped by to get some gas…mind you…since I’ve moved to Seattle my driving miles has decreased, however I’ve lost about 50 miles/tank compared to NY.

While in the store to pay, there was an overweight woman with green eye makeup to match her green sequin top with her 7ish year old in tow. The kid asked politely if he could get a pack of gum and he picked up some non-sugary kind…the mom promptly said NO! All the while she’s peering over the counter for her latest fix and as I was leaving I heard her ask the person behind the counter “What’s the cheapest that you’ve got that aren’t those awful kind”. The whole entire situation was surreal…I would certainly love to have that kid tell his mom NO the next time she goes to buy her addictions or smokes around him…I would love to see that moment.

Under pressure….

So, being the first day of my recovery week I wanted to start it off right. I scheduled myself for, what I thought to be, a nice deep-tissue sports massage. I was recommened by a teammate to go check out this place that was fairly cheap and apparently pretty good. I did some quick reading and thought, what the heck…

Now, the day after, I’ve been deciding weather or not to go back. I’ve had a handful of massages in my day but this one was…well…different. First off, the style of massage (Qi-gong Tuina) is based off of traditional chinese medicine and not your typical swedish/sports/muscle based massage. Briefly, it focuses on the core and essentially pushing the Qi outward through the extremeties…thus regaining balance to the system.

The nice women who was taking care of me applied more pressure to spots than I thought possible on her tiny frame. She worked a lot on the spine, buttocks (yes, I had my butt massaged), and traps. She’d hop on the table to get a better vantage point for the back, then she did some work on the arms and legs and finished it off with a hot towel wipe-down. It hurt, it tickled, it was interesting. When I stood up I could feel all the blood rush to my face since it had been squashed into the massage table for an hour!

We’ll see if I go back…being a cyclist, I have a lot of knots and tightness all over my legs which were barely touched. Although it’s not in the nature of Qi-gong Tuina to focus on the legs, but more on balance of the system…We’ll see if I can still balance on my bike tonight!