The above A.P. photo of Vincenzo Nibali from Stage 20 of the 2013 Giro in NO way represents the “ride” I did today. However, the original photo by Fabio Ferrari (that I played around with) is pretty bad ass, but I digress and now move on to a blog post containing all the lackluster quality all four of my readers have come to expect…
Day After A.M.
It’s Saturday and the first full day back home after a week of Christmas sloth in Western PA and for the first four hours of the day I did shit all aside from drink coffee, make eggs and toast and watch several hours of footy.
I wanted to cross-country ski but sun, temps nearing 40˚ and the prospect of melting sluggish trails made that a less than attractive choice. Not to mention I am clinging on to my Christmas head cold; the gift that keeps on giving in the form of generous amounts of multi-colored snot. The lingering illness also put the idea of a short ride on slushy pavement out of my head and the decision to climb on the trainer and “sweat out” the stank remains of the cold and Christmas cheer IN it. Riding the trainer is not something I particularly want to do, but after a week of adding to my rolls of man-blubber it’s gonna have to do. Planned soundtrack? Maiden England ’88.
Day After: Doing Stuff
I was eager to do something, ANYTHING today. Sadly my brain was more eager to do something than my body, which is still in the midst of fighting off aforementioned illness. Still, I needed to do something and that something was a 20 mile ride to nowhere on the trainer. Vincenzo Nibali I was/am not.
Nibali had to have hot tea poured over his hands to relieve the cold after crossing the line, so he could take off his wet gloves without pain. -thestar.com
Yeah, Nibali had to have hot tea poured on him to relieve the pain after a grueling 197km of racing. I rode twenty miles in my fucking basement, merely took off my sweaty corn chip smelling gloves, cleaned up the plethora of snot rockets that exited my nose during the ride off the stank basement carpet and took a shower. I told you I was no Nibali.
I was happy to see that, despite my illness, I did SLIGHTLY better than last week’s trainer ride of the same distance with increased speed, increased average heart rate and increased estimated calories. Yeah, I know I am grasping at fucking straws in the attempts to justify doing nothing for a week and trying to bounce back with a ride on the trainer. Fuck it, watch some Stage 20 Giro highlights…