The Dreary Season

So here we are, stuck in the deep, dark armpit of the calendar year, always cold, always dark, sucking the motivation clean out of your system. The malaise has even seemed to spread to my desire to ramble on this here blog-thing, since it's been a while since I dreamed up anything witty (or otherwise) to post here. I had the idea to do the "best of" posts, but then noticed that everyone else in the blog world had covered it very well, and that I was not getting to it in a timely fashion. So none of that kind of rambling from me this year. My late christmas present to you all.

Over here, the new year has brought less thoughts of the old & new years, and more realization that there is more to "life" than racing bikes on the weekends and working. I did notice that apperntley all that time racing over the fall was paid for by neglecting other things, like house cleaning, maintenance, quality time with my wife, and lots of little things like that. I came to that realization after noticing that I've been doing a LOT of the "Cleaning and Maintenance" type chores lately, and not nearly so much riding my bike & playing.

With the new year comes the end of my "break" from "training" that I generally do each holiday season. I end my break by starting back in the gym to work on building up my scrawny body, trying to rebalance the parts of one's body that cycling leaves "lacking", (in other words, everything from the waist up...) and my ongoing battle to keep my right knee and leg functional. Three knee surgeries in, and that knee is no longer working to original spec, and even worse, the riding leads to a dependance on the "good" leg, and even more imbalance. LOTS of one-leg "therapy" each winter seems to be what is keeping me out of the knee replacement shopping store for now. Course the biggest downside of working out in the gym is working out in the gym. Not that much fun. Oh, and that crippling sore muscle thing for the first few weeks is a joy too. Hard to get excited about a bunch of training blocks that involve nothing but picking up and putting down heavy items repeatedly, but it seems to be a requirement for this guy if I want to continue to function.

Did see the appearance of Cyclocross Magazine Issue # 11 in my mailbox today. Always gives me a little bit of a motivational boost to do the ugly and "not Fun" parts of trying to imitate a competitive athelete. Also it has been fun watching a Cyclocross ONLY magazine take off and mature over the last couple of years. Amazing, compared to the "olden days" of cross. This issue even has an article on Greg "I've finally gone completely round the bend" LeMond. I can't wait to see his latest ramblings, given some of his past performances.