Everyone falls

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competing, cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, training, working out

I finally stopped painting for a bit and bought a new bike. Yes, it was a self-indulgent exercise but I had the all-clear on the home front, I bought it literally with found money and it was something I wanted to do.

For the people out there who care and ask (and there are some) it’s a 2016 GT Grade Alloy Tiagra. It has two wheels that go round and round and handle bars and … Look. It’s so far advanced from my 25-year-old Bianchi that it’s hard to explain the differences. But I took it out last weekend for a 55-km shakedown and it was great.

The rider was less than great, but better than he was a year ago. Maybe I’ll talk about that another day.

But for now, here’s where the story gets fun – for you at least.

For the first time I’ve bought a pair of cycling shoes. People who don’t cycle or spin will be surprised to learn that cycling shoes serve a purpose beyond making you look like some faux-Euro knob clicky walking through Starbucks. No, the actual purpose is to allow you to lock your feet onto the pedals of the bike. (An aside: for the record I don’t drink coffee so I don’t clicky walk in Starbucks, and I also don’t wear the lycra cycle shorts. Mine are baggy even though I’m skinny enough now to get away with Lycra. I just don’t want to cause a scene, right?)

The long weekend

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cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, working out

Some end of the long weekend this and that . . .

Our house is in a quiet neighbourhood. Nothing much ever happens. Occasionally the kids at a nearby pool get a little loud for an hour, or someone has a once-a-summer backyard party that goes into the night. But, pretty tame. We all smile and roll with it.

So yesterday I’m out in the yard cutting, mulching, edging, fertilizing and more. A relatively new neighbour – they’re been there about a year – calls hello over the fence.

Chit chat. Nice guy. Oh, BTW. We’re having a party for my daughter’s first birthday tonight and … it might get a little loud. I wave him off. No worries my friend. Little girls and piñatas? How rowdy can it be? Don’t give it a thought. Enjoy the party.

So, seven hours later at 10:45p, Pad – who has to get up around 6a for work – comes down wondering when the pounding south Asian disco music – and the music was really, really bad – is going to let up. It was so loud that even with the windows and doors closed, we had to turn the volume on the TV almost halfway to full to be able to hear it.

Is it just me …

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cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, music, prince, training, working out

It could be a result of my creeping old age, which some days is less of a creeping like an afternoon shadow across a patio and more like a wild galloping horse from which I have fallen, attached only by a single foot stuck in a stirrup as I get dragged along to an inevitable conclusion.

But my question is this: is it just me, or is it cold?

This spring seems to be slower in arriving than a tax refund. Slower than just about any spring I can recall in the last few years.

It is absolutely true our winter was relatively simply – maybe two or three mornings when shovelling was required and perhaps two or three weeks of true, raw chilling cold. So are we paying the price for that now?

Where are the scientists and their data on global warming, alarming us about the coming tropical reckoning? Even on Saturday and Sunday, days filled with glorious sun and blue skies, it was too cold for my old bones to cycle. The windchill created on a bike moving 25 or 30 km per hour is outside of my comfort zone.

So no biking for me yet – and no, I have not yet replaced the Bianchi. These things take time.

Two in the win column

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cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, training, working out

I will bore you with a short entry today that is large on bragging rights and short on substance. Your humble scribe begs your forgiveness on both those counts.

The humble brags involve two significant “dubs” as the kids say – a dub being a “W” which is a win. So, follow along, I had two big wins.

The first win was Saturday morning when I was part of a small but loud crew from our gym which climbed all 144 flights of stairs in the CN Tower. We were not fastest and I was certainly not fastest among the five of us. But I started last in our crew, and we all finished within two minutes of each other.

My time was 22:14, which I thought was okay for an old guy and well below the 40 minutes or so that we were told was the generic benchmark for average. I am nothing if not average. No pauses or breaks en route to the top, I just climbed.

My caffeine crisis

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cycling, diet, diet pepsi, exercise, family, fitness, training, working out

I almost never drink coffee. I get my caffeine from Diet Pepsi. There are worse vices in life – drugs, gambling, liking Donald Trump, being a Habs fan. Mine is DP.

And lately there’s a crisis.

For most of this week, 500ml bottles of DP have been sold out across downtown Toronto. I have no idea why. Two large Shoppers Drug Marts have been sold out since Monday. Rexall in Commerce Court? Sold out. I’m stuck with Coke Zero.

I’m not happy about drinking Coke Zero. Not happy at all. And the body of the Shoppers clerk who shrugged when I asked today when the country’s largest pharmaceutical chain might deign to restock its Diet Pepsi cooler will stand as cold testament to my patience.

I need DP. And when I need DP, I REALLY need DP. Don’t test me on this one.

11

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cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, spinning

I was all ready to go this morning, just like I always am. An almond-milk-and-fruit concoction in the fridge and my day’s clothes hanging in the mudroom to minimize disruption to those I love most as I exit home at 530a.

Which is a bit of a canard. In the universe that is our home I am the most disruptive force, a belt of careening asteroids at the best of times, colliding gracelessly with objects both inanimate and organic regardless of proximity to my path. And at 520a, brace for impact.

Anyway, to get to the point, they had to get by without me this morning at the gym and I am confident they did just fine.

Today is my first down day in the last 27 – the sprint run to the end of the challenge motivated me to forego a couple of dates that normally would have been rest days, but the nasty weather and a couple creaky joints made it an easy call this morning. Me and the asteroid belt called an inaudible audible and I slept (sort of) for an extra hour.

It wasn’t supposed to be easy. It wasn’t

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competing, cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, training, working out

If it had been easy, he wouldn’t have called it a challenge.

The 81-day Athlete Training Centre Challenge is all but over. It was harder than it looked, but easier than some thought. I’ll let that contradiction ricochet around your mind for a while.

The brain child of Athlete Training Centre boss trainer Richard Clark, the challenge was meant to push us physically, challenge us mentally (in terms of exceeding our own perceptions of our boundaries) and stimulate us intellectually to fully understand the implications of our food choices on ourselves and the environment.

That’s my interpretation. Others may have heard other messages. The rules: no alcohol. No dairy. Meat only four times a week. A minimum of five one-hour workouts per week. Just do it. And have fun. No bitching.

The physical challenge seemed a success for many of us “adult athletes.” I lost more than a dozen pounds, I lift more weight and I’m stronger, I hit new lows in body fat readings, improved my cardio to the extent that I could actually run six kilometres, and made a lot of the new clothes I bought last fall feel a little baggy.

Work through it

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cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, kids hockey, training, working out

Dinner time conversation in our house.

(Fade in, scene of someone opening the Advil.)

G: Knee?

L: (Getting ice pack for knee) Knee.

(G takes the Advil, opens it again, with heating pad on elbow.)

L: Elbow?

G: Elbow.

Both: We’re falling apart.

L: Stay home or work through it.

G: Work through it. I’ll get you wine.

L: There’s sparkling water in the fridge.

(Fade out as theme music for House of Cards rises . . .)

– – –

One day more

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competing, cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, hockey, Minor hockey, training, working out

Tomorrow we’ll discover
What our God in Heaven has in store!
One more dawn
One more day
One day more!

— One Day More, Les Miserables, Boubill and Natel

It’s March and that means playoff hockey in Oakville.

Our team – the peewee red Packers – faceoff tonight in a semi final with the season on the line. There are no best-of-five or two-game-total-goal series in house league. It’s one and done. Win, and you get to be sweaty on the blueline after the championship game, win or lose. Lose and your season ends.

It’s not life or death and Donald Trump won’t show up and make fun of us if we don’t get the outcome we want. But it’s still a big deal.

Our opponents are a solid squad. They have beaten us, we have beaten them (the last time just two weeks ago in the last game of the regular season with 2^nd place on the line.) But after nearly two decades of this I know that in a one-game playoff, expect the unexpected and stuff will happen.

Win or lose, we are already proud of our guys.

While you were sleeping

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cycling, diet, exercise, family, fitness, training, working out

Another week at the ATC is almost in the bag. We were wrapping up the Friday workout just before 7a, as most of Oakville was barely waking up.

It’s the end of what is perhaps the last wintry weekend of the 2015-16 season. Double digit temperatures are forecast for early next week. The new snow will have a mercifully brief lifespan. And there are just 28 days left in the ATC Winter Challenge.

Things are looking up.

The 81-day challenge started on January 11. The format was to create five teams of adult athletes from the crew at the Athlete Training Centre and challenge us to look at what we eat in a new way.

Yes, there is a challenging physical component – bonus points for working outs five times a week, bonuses for special challenges around pushups, pullups and distance spinning. But the real emphasis is on diet.

We are challenged to only eat meat and eggs four days a week. No dairy at all. No alcohol. 81 days. Eat more plants, that’s the idea.