Category Archives: Cycling

Undone by a Turkey

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Well I beat Doughnut Day and escaped without falling prey to their tasty plot.  I even went home with Adam’s Cycleops fluid trainer and rode for an hour and half.  However I drove to work Friday and as it was our office Thanksgiving celebration, I promptly gorged myself on deep-fried turkey, stuffing, a bun and a baked potato with bacon bits.  And some yams.  And dessert.  Pretty sure I had enough caloric intake to ride my 80 kilometre loop to Chestermere but I didn’t.  Ride that is.  Nooo…Instead I packed up the family and headed off to gorge myself further  on more turkey dinner  visit my parents.

Friday night came and went without too much untoward culinary scarfing.  My dad had BBQ’d up some fantastic chicken breasts some chicken breasts in the fridge so Trace cooked them up and we had some super-tasty chicken-breast sandwiches for supper.  Saturday was spent grazing primarily on my staple toast-with-peanut-butter and anything else that couldn’t escape my grasp in time like the box of Junior Mints, the Three Muskateers bar, ice cream, frozen yogurt and yet another birthday cupcake.  I now had enough food packed away to ride the 120 kilometre trip home.

Sunday was of course Thanksgiving, held at my aunt’s place for the first time in a few years.  She is a notoriously, unbelievably excellent cook.  The dishes are prepared perfectly and are all, without exception, mouth-watering.  The usuals  – turkey cooked to perfection, fluffy mashed potatoes, melt-in-your-mouth buns, perfect stuffing and gravy from heaven – and the family staples – a strawberry-and-goat-cheese salad, turnips prepared with butter and brown sugar, yam prepared with goat cheese and I-don’t-know-what-else-but-wow-it’s-good, beets, artichoke hearts, pineapple salad, homemade cranberry sauce and…more.  There was so much fantastic food I can’t even remember it all.  I ate some of everything and went back for seconds.  I suffered a massive bout of self-induced turkelepsy.

After all the leftovers were packed away and the dishes done – which is no small feat for 13 people, though I had no part in the clean-up shamefully – we had dessert.  Two kinds of pie – pumpkin and peach, topped with real whipped cream.  As one who is lactose-intolerant and generally avoids cow-based dairy of all types, I slid the whipped cream off and spread it on the kid’s pie.  No.  No I didn’t.  I took that quarter-pie piece of peach pie topped with homemade whipped cream and what did I do?  I put it in my piehole.  All of it.  However when I was offered an equally over-sized piece of pumpkin pie piled high with more homemade whipped cream, I turned it down.  No…that’s a lie.  It chased the peach pie down the piehole and tried calling for reinforcements.  I do believe of the 5 definitions St. Thomas Aquinas used defining gluttony, I hit 4 right out of the park, the lone hold-out being the inappropriate time (when is it an inappropriate time to eat food one might ask).

I capped this weekend orgy of food off this morning with not one but two of my aunt’s absolutely stellar cinnamon buns.  No other cinnamon bun comes even remotely close to delivering the sheer pleasure that these carry.  They’re so good I’m not sure I feel guilty.  However…  I hopped back on the trainer after arriving home this afternoon and couldn’t avoid noticing the extra padding I’d developed.  While trying to recover from the interval sprints I’d been riding, I was laid out across the bike, my forearms resting across the bars, head hanging gasping for air while I pedaled feebly and tried not to puke continued a more relaxed pace and speed.  This position nicely amplified the smack smack smack smack of my sweaty thighs meeting my sweaty belly with each pedal stroke.  Or maybe that was my heart trying to pump the weekend’s adventure through my system.  Either way, I’m pretty sure I have enough energy stores to do the Chestermere loop and the Red Deer loop now.  In succession.

Ah well.  It looks like a week of cold but otherwise excellent commuting weather ahead of me so perhaps the trainer and I will spend some evenings together to address some of this excess.  Or not.

The Thin End of the Sugary Wedge

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Over the course of the summer I’ve managed to shed an unnecessary 30 pounds and for the first time in over a decade, have seen the scale read under 200 pounds.  Without resting on the counter.  It has been an unplanned side-effect of the riding as fitness hadn’t been one of the drivers to keep riding.  I’ll take it though.

I was complaining commenting the other day that some combinations of my riding gear seemed more prone than others to funnel the fall wind down my back when Adam correctly noted that “that’s because your shirt doesn’t fit you anymore – it’s too big”.  He’s right – it doesn’t, and it is.  That’s pretty cool and that it was noticed by someone else is even more rewarding.  In typical Adam fashion however, it should be noted that while I’ve lost 30 pounds, he’s lost in excess of 60.  That’s amazing.  Really.  And it looks good on him.

There’s always the thin end of the wedge lurking just around the corner though.  The thin, deep-fried, sugar-coated edge of the doughnut wedge.  Tomorrow is doughnut day – nemesis day.  It’s threatening to derail my sub-200 progress entirely.  Earlier in the week I wanted some fat-laden dough-circles in the worst way.  They were haunting my every waking moment, driving me to distraction.  And why?  Because I’d had one two on Thursday, followed by some of the home-made cookies in the pantry on Friday, the rest of them on Saturday and Middle-Monster’s icing-coating chocolate birthday cupcakes on Sunday.  And pizza.  And hotdogs.  You see what I mean by the thin end of the sugary wedge?  When it comes to doughnuts, one really is the loneliest number!  Luckily my laziness trumps my appetite – I’m unlikely to cycle to the nearest Tim’s for a doughnut.

My food consumption wasn’t all bad over the weekend however, but it was…unusual.  I was sitting at the table feeling lifeless and worn out after a morning of single-parenting the monsters, trying to sort out this craving I hadn’t been able to satisfy.  Then it dawned on me.  I wanted pickles and not just any pickles.  I wanted Bicks Polskie Ogorki pickles specifically.  What makes that so odd is – I don’t eat pickles.  I don’t not eat them, they’re just not something I ever put in the shopping cart.  I pinged Trace and asked her to pick some up on the way home.  I fished them out of the bag the moment she stepped in the door and proceeded to eat half the jar.  She thinks I might be pregnant.

And then there’s the staple, my favourite, my stand-by.  Smooth peanut butter – oh how I love thee.  In the morning, in the evening, when I’m up or down, peanut butter is the perfect food.  None of this organic, processed-by-envirocherubs-in-an-outdoor-unfactory stuff either.  Gimme the gluco and the hydro and the addiditive and the preservative.  In a kitchen over-flowing with organic whole foods in one stage or another of becoming award-worthy healthy meals, it is the one commercial food I refuse to relinquish.

What about you – what’s your wedge?  What are you unwilling to sacrifice?

If you’ll excuse me I think I’ll go get some PB now…and another pickle.

My Winter Conundrum

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With fall in full swing and winter seemingly around the corner, I’ve been pondering my cycling options.  While it’s true I’ve said I intend to ride all winter long, it should not be construed as “I’m going to ride my daily commute irrespective of the weather”.  Based on 20ish years in Calgary, I expect I’ll be able to get some path/road rides at least every month, if not every week.  I don’t expect to ride outdoors every day by any stretch – I’m not that damaged.

I’ve participated in outdoor activities in the dead of winter.  I’ve put on the long underwear, fleece pants, snow pants, t-shirt, long-sleeve, sweater and finally winter jacket, followed by regular socks, then wool socks and winter boots, a scarf, a balaclava and finally a helmet to go and ride my snowmobile when it’s -30˚C.  You sweat and almost overheat while getting dressed and out to the snowmobile, then the wind sucks away all but the minimum of heat and you’re sledding feeling reasonably comfortable, except that you’re wearing an extra forty pounds of clothing.  This doesn’t sound conducive to cycling.

I’m also not keen on the idea of spending more time pushing than riding.  If I leave early enough to avoid the traffic that will certainly be looking to run me into the snowdrifts, I will get to the paths without trouble.  The path network however is not like our sidewalks – they are not all slated to be cleared.  I can only imagine how much fun it’s going to be to start doing the hike-a-bike in winter gear after a big dump of snow.  So when it’s too bleeding cold or there’s too much snow to ride outside what shall I do?

Ride inside is the obvious answer.  I could ride in the basement once the kids have gone to bed, or before they got up.  Well…not before they got up – that’s not possible – my middle monster doesn’t actually sleep, she only lies in her bed until she’s bored of lying there and then she’s up again.  Looking for company.  I could set up and ride in the garage – private, no little fingers poking into things, no concerns about break downs or flat tires leaving me sweaty and stranded in the middle of nowhere, still winter-cold but no wind so I can dress warm enough to keep from freezing without ending up like A Christmas Story.

So we have the where, now I need the what.  What kind of contraption do I use to ride?  Oh and there are all kinds of options here.  Fluid trainers, mag trainers, wind trainers, inertial trainers, rollers, rollers with resistance, free-motion rollers, trainers that are internet-enabled, trainers that let you rock – or in my case, wobble – back and forth.  The list is almost endless with prices running from under a hundred for the no-name mag trainers to a couple of grand for the internet-enabled, remote controlled, alien-inspired, laser-guided version.  Okay, that last bit isn’t entirely true – you have to use your own laser. Tangent: I don’t have a maintenance stand for the bike so I hang it from the garage roof with a couple of straps.  Once, on a whim and understanding the foolishness of it, I suspended my bike from the garage ceiling such that I could climb aboard and pedal it.  You have not lived until you’ve ridden a suspended bicycle as fast as you can (I was only willing to do it once however as the foolishness exceeded my repeat threshold). /tangent

I’m not in a position to buy the alien technology though I’m sure hooking it into the internet so a virtual Lance Armstrong can lap me before I’ve shifted out of the small ring would do wonders for my ego.  I’m faced with two categories – rollers or trainers?  Rollers will, through negative reinforcement encourage me to use a more disciplined riding style and to pay attention to “my line”.  I like the free-standing aspect – nothing but balance and gyro holding up the bike, lots of focus on cadence and riding smooth. Unless I buy (or build) the free-motion rollers though, I can’t stand and sprint on them.  On the other hand, a fluid or mag trainer can be set up to provide a load for aerobic training or strength training depending on what you’re after, but there’s not the discipline on form enforced as the bike is pinned to the trainer and – at least theoretically – it can’t fall over.

I can throw the bike on the rollers and ride – theoretically – without having to do any more than I would if I was going for a ride on the paths.  The trainers all lock on to the rear axle, an act that would take at least 15, perhaps 30 seconds of my precious ride time.  A trainer is rumoured to be harder on the rear wheel than rollers, but rollers require two smooth (IE not winter knobbies) tires or you’ll be spinning and buzzing the entire time.  In a perfect world I’d have both – the galacticaly-connected super trainer with ego-crushing option and the full-motion rollers with resistance and throw-you-down-and-humiliate options with dedicated bikes for each, in a specially air-conditioned room with large-screen televisions and an endless supply of mental distractions to keep me riding.  This is not a perfect world however.

What say you?  Do you have rollers?  A trainer?  Should I buy the Amazon $60 trainer or will that just be $60 I didn’t put toward the Cycleops trainer or a set of rollers? Have you tried the opposite?  Would you have both if you could?  Have you lost focus at high speed and ridden off the side of your rollers only to have your wheel’s spinning inertia blast you forward into your precariously balanced distraction device, therein wreaking havoc upon your domain?  ’Cause that would be a good story.