It’s just after 7 AM on Sunday morning, there’s no football on for another couple of hours, and my weekly mileage goal as part of the 2023 Soil The Woods Tour was met roughly 20 hours, 4 beers, two failed chicken tacos, and one pre-bed peanut butter and syrup sandwich ago. So, with no better place to be— here I am.
It’s been ages since my last post, and I’d like to say that is because I’m out there living my best life with no time for this digital fish wrap. However, since even writing “living my best life” fills me with embarrassment and dread, we can probably assume I was not.
I remember back in the days when I thought I was “training” for mountain bike races (AKA, paying an exorbitant—borderline criminal—entry fee as a solo racer to ride my bike for a long time, become totally dehydrated, and destroy myself and my bikes in the name of perceived fun).
In those days I would follow a lightly researched, poorly self-prescribed plan that loosely followed periods of building, pushing, and recovery based on the periodization model “real” athletes follow that includes Base, Build, Peak, and Race. Since I have no inherent talent for bike racing, and a couple of 3rd place finishes were the best I ever had, mostly due to Solo attrition rates, this plan either worked extremely well or not at all.
After a long winter of trails packed with ice and snow, I have been like a fat guy in a beer store since temperatures warmed, trying to gobble up miles and work on increasing my fitness. Sometimes that feels like pissing in the ocean, but sometimes, just sometimes, it feels pretty darn not bad.
It’s been a while, I know. That’s the thing about being an unpaid Slacker Blogger; there are no rules, no money, no deadlines, and no mid-level boss man wearing short sleeves with a tie to give me the hairy eyeball or question why I am looking at NSFW photos on the web whilst sitting in my “fat pants,” burping up the morning’s breakfast, and listening to the thunderstorm beat against my office window, instead of writing a blog post that no one, not even me, will likely read.
With that said, here is a post.
