So here is Day 2 as recorded via Facebook/Twitter.
7:03 a.m.:Getting ready for day 2. Feeling a little drained right now but will feel better after breakfast and stretching.
8:00 a.m.: Ready to hit the road.
10:02 a.m.: 22 miles so far. Feeling it, but I feel like I have enough in the tank. (Worst hill of the day and ride was at 10 miles.)
11:37 a.m.: 36 miles - lunch break. May need butt replacement surgery when this is done. (Curious as to why a tiny Verizon C.O. was the lunch area. Bikes and people everywhere. Local traffic must have hated us.)
1:12 p.m.: “Tell me where it doesn’t hurt!” “Here” (Raiders of the Lost Ark reference. 50 miles. Everything is killing me at this point.)
2:19 p.m.: Nine miles to go and feeling strong! (Dropped into racing position and suddenly most of the pain was gone.)
3:14 p.m.:Ride complete - 150 miles over two days. Thank you everyone for your support!
So going to write up more details on the ride but here’s a quick summary on Day 1 as I updated Twitter/Facebook. I’ve got some photos even though I hate how fat I look in them.
5:53 a.m.: Wow it’s early. Need coffee.
8:00 a.m. Ride starts
11:18 a.m.: 38 miles complete so far. Still somewhat energetic.
1:28 p.m.: 52 miles down, 31 to go. (Lunch) Feeling my age.
2:31 p.m.: 62 miles down 21 to go.
3:49 p.m.: Current mood - surly. (76 miles in, following a leg-busting climb).
Approximately 4:30 p.m. Day 1 complete, 83.6 miles.
I don’t know if I’ve ever met a person who’s better at making excuses than I am.
If you look at it one way, I do have a bunch of (partially) valid excuses:
My mom has been hospitalized since March and I’ve had to take some time to travel to Toronto to help my Dad out
Every weekend when I should have been out riding I had all these social plans
Work has been crazy and I’ve had to cancel some of my mid-day rides
On some of my longer rides, one of my knees was giving me some serious pain
And just when I was starting to get a nice head of progress going and do some good distance rides, I got a cold. A chest cold - meaning that walking up the stairs was an exertion, let alone getting on the bike. I was so irritated this weekend because the weather was gorgeous and all I wanted to do was get out there in the warm June sunshine and put 40-60 miles under me.
Last night I got extremely frustrated at the amount of riding I’ve done during this training season. My vision had been rides every day of the week, short distances during work days and nice long rides during the weekends. The results have been less than stellar, however - I figure I am probably 300 miles shy of where I wanted to be. I questioned whether I would actually be able to complete the MS150 based on the amount of training I could do between now and the event. In talking with Meredith about it last night, she talked me through what I was feeling and thinking.
In spite of my lack of confidence, I have to say with all seriousness that quitting was not an option. I feel like quitting would let down not only everyone who believed in me, but more importantly would be letting down people with MS, the reason why I am riding to begin with.
At the end of the day, as much as I enjoy the training, enjoy the kind words and the encouragement I get, I don’t do this because of me or because of any honors or accolades I could get. To tell the honest truth, if it wasn’t for the MS150 and the people suffering from MS that I am raising money for, I doubt I would have ever travelled more than 20 miles on a bike at any time.
I was thinking that as crappy as the rides can get, as much as my joints and back may hurt, as much as my thighs may feel like two concrete posts after a 70 miler, that at the end of the day this is something I choose to do. People with MS don’t get to choose what they have to endure. They can’t walk away from it. They can’t make up an excuse. They can’t wake up and say “You know what? I don’t think I’m going to have MS today.” And it may be corny but that’s why I ride.
I did 22 miles on the bike today and I’m doing 150 miles June 27-28, no matter what.
I recently read a great essay in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, about how unconventional strategies help weak opponents beat strong ones. The story focuses on how Vivek Ranadive, an immigrant from India, first looked at basketball when he decided to coach his daughter’s basketball team:
Ranadivé was puzzled by the way Americans played basketball. He is from Mumbai. He grew up with cricket and soccer. He would never forget the first time he saw a basketball game. He thought it was mindless. Team A would score and then immediately retreat to its own end of the court. Team B would inbound the ball and dribble it into Team A’s end, where Team A was patiently waiting. Then the process would reverse itself. A basketball court was ninety-four feet long. But most of the time a team defended only about twenty-four feet of that, conceding the other seventy feet. Occasionally, teams would play a full-court press—that is, they would contest their opponent’s attempt to advance the ball up the court. But they would do it for only a few minutes at a time. It was as if there were a kind of conspiracy in the basketball world about the way the game ought to be played, and Ranadivé thought that that conspiracy had the effect of widening the gap between good teams and weak teams. Good teams, after all, had players who were tall and could dribble and shoot well; they could crisply execute their carefully prepared plays in their opponent’s end. Why, then, did weak teams play in a way that made it easy for good teams to do the very things that made them so good?
The story goes on to explore the classic David and Goliath story, as well as T.E. Lawrence’s strategies in Arabia, Rick Pitino’s coaching strategies, as well as a war games participant who frustrates his opponents by making his theoretical fleet out of thousands of little PT boats instead of battleships.
I enjoy reading people like Gladwell because I enjoy how they challenge conventional thinking. I regularly see people trying to solve problems by trying to pound square pegs into round holes because pounding square pegs is all they are experienced at doing. I always try to take a step back from my situations and employ a more global approach to my work, even when the best solution involves admitting I was doing the wrong thing before.
The Guardian provides an excellent description of the genesis of George Orwell’s masterpiece “1984,” and how the writing of the work during a period of failing health may have ultimately contributed to Orwell’s early death.
So Mere and I finally got to the mecca of wine, WineLibrary, in Springfield NJ. We spent 2.5 hours there and it didn’t seem like any time at all. Here’s what we picked up:
Don’t know how I came across this, but here’s a link to some photos from someone who toured Chernobyl. I’m fascinated by abandoned property, especially in this case where a whole city is a ghost town.
Yes I know that the woman in the ad is an actress and that the whole thing is probably scripted. Nonetheless I feel the ad makes a great point about the price of Apple hardware. I also enjoy the comment “I guess I’m not cool enough to be a Mac person,” which is a great slam against the hipster elitism of the “I’m a Mac” campaign. When did “The computer for the rest of us” become “The computer for those of us who have the disposable income to spend 30-40% on hardware?”
no matter what.