Training progress report

Today marks the end of my 16th week of training for this tour. That's roughly 4 months of hardcore, smashmouth, in-your-face exercise designed to push your body to the limit.

No, not really. I'm sure freaks like this guy train like that, and in a few more months I may have to start as well, but for the past 4 months or so my training has mostly been comprised of biking back and forth to work. Unless you don't count December, during most of which I ate 30-40 years worth of Chinese Food, reduced my life expectancy 6 years, and I'm pretty sure at one point in there my heart stopped. I also was taking days off work fairly regularly so instead of "biking 20 miles" my exercise mostly consisted of "waving my laser pointer at my cat".

Since I'm always running late (my roommate has a bad habit of constantly making me delicious tea in the mornings so I'm loathe to leave) biking has actually been pretty effective training. It's 9.5 miles each way, so 5 days a week I bike about 19 miles, so over a typical workweek I probably bike about 100 miles.

When I first started back in October, man, it was brutal. It took me about 60-65 minutes to make the trip and I would show up badly winded and out of breath. One day there was a bad headwind and I was 12 minutes late for a shift starting at 12:30 PM. I'd left at 10:45. Goddamn headwinds, man. You could have Elmo fight Mr. Mr. Snuffleupagus in a cage match and the fight would be less one-sided. Cripes.

Incidentally, did you know Mr. Snuffleupagus's first name is Aloysius? And was there a more confusing character on that show? The other muppets were at least fairly identifiable. Oscar was a particularly ugly homeless person, Elmo was a brain damaged infant, Big Bird was a... big bird. Hell even Bert had a unibrow. I could identify with those things, they were vaguely recognizable. What in the HELL is this?



It looks like a cross dressing Wooly Mammoth with a severe spinal injury. Oh and let's not forget the fact that he's imaginary. I bet you don't remember that part, do you? Big Bird would always be like "Hey look there's that giant creepy elephant I always hang out with" and then when the adult turns around Snuffy's using magic/ninjitsu to hide behind a telephone pole or something. There wasn't a single non-terrifying aspect to that monstrosity. *

Wait, where was I? Oh right, biking. So now the same route takes me maybe 35-40 minutes. I'm not tired at all when I show up, and when it's cold out (both days of the year!) I'm not even sweaty. I've gone from averaging maybe 9 miles per hour to right around 15. And this is with 6 months left to train. I mean, don't get me wrong, I realize there's likely going to be a noticeable difference between "biking 10 miles, taking an 8 hour break, then biking another 10" and "Biking 80 miles in 6 hours" but at least I'm making forward progress. The only other thing I've trained for 4 months to do was get a date, and if my biking stuff was going as well as THAT little mission I'd be trying to go to work and end up biking backwards on a unicycle and falling into the Grand Canyon **.

There's still 4, um, let's call them checkpoints to cross. I've set up some completely arbitrary goals for myself and they look a little something like this.

#1. Bike 60 miles in 6 hours without being exhausted
#2. Bike 80 miles in 6 hours without being exhausted
#3. Bike 100 miles in 8 hours without being exhausted
#4. Bike up Mt. Lemmon

If I can do those 4 things before I head out, I'll be sitting pretty. Or sitting, at least*** Goal #1 is coming up within the next month or so, and probably the Mt. Lemmon one too.

Don't worry next post I'll review a tent or my new GPS or something, it'll be funny I promise.









* I'm assuming the Children's Television Workshop is too cash-strapped to be able to afford decent lawyers, but just in case: The writer of the referenced sentence above does not actually feel the copyrighted character Mr. Snuffleupagus is an unstoppable, mystical killing machine.

** "But the Grand Canyon is really far away and riding a unicycle is hard that's a terrible comparison-" Shut up and just go with it!

*** BA-ZING!!!