Alaskan Pack Fodder

Last night after singing Happy Birthday to me, my daughter told me I was 64.   You're only as old as you feel, and today I feel 64.   She might be onto something there...

January is always a grind for me. I get up at ungodly hours to get on the trainer for whatever punishment that Janice decides I deserve, and then I add on alpine ski coaching duties on top of that. Setting courses and other grunt work, plus the usual technique drills add another layer of fatigue.   This year is worse. While the rest of the country enjoys the weather we usually have, it's in the 40s and all of our snow is rapidly disappearing. Without the snow to reflect the light, it's even darker than usual- which doesn't help the mental state. Skiing is as bad as I've seen it in the last 15 years. To pull off a kids race, we have to work twice as hard to create a suitable venue.   I'm beat.   It will all turn around sooner or later, but that will likely mean that we'll have late snows and spring will take forever to get here. That's what we get for the awesome summer we had last year. We rarely find a good balance here in Southcentral Alaska, but we ...

A couple years ago I participated in a stage race and had the honor to meet Saul Raisin, the former professional cyclist that suffered a debilitating traumatic brain injury during a race in Europe. As I listened to him speak and later read his book about his recovery, I (probably like most people) had two thoughts:                 “What an inspiring story.” …and more callously,                 “Wow, sucked to be him.” The second thought was just a result of thinking it would never happen to me. If you run the odds, it just doesn’t factor into the threat matrix as prominently as teenage girls with cell phones or that sketchy Cat 5 on the brand-new Madone. Then I got my bell rung. I’ve seen my share of stars and cartoon tweety birds over the years, but this was the first time I was knocked unconscious and woke up in an ER...

The plan was to start the diet today- January 1, 2014. A trip to the always predictable Olive Garden for their soup-salad-breadsticks feed trough pretty much killed whatever calorie goal I had for today, so I guess I'm starting 2014 off on a "cheat day". Smooth move, ExLax.   I had been lethargic all day and kept putting off getting on the bike, and when I finally did I wasn't expecting much. I'm in the middle of a recovery week, so the workout wasn't supposed to be intense at all. Once I started turning over the pedals, I was surprised to find a little energy, so I kept pushing it. By the end of the workout, my average was about 25 watts and two power ranges over what Janice asked for. Not a wise idea, since I'm supposed to be recovering for the next 3 or so weeks of workouts. I'll pay for my stupidity.   So, the running theme seems to be I lack focus at the moment. With the baby and the rest of the chaos that is my life, I guess that's unders...