Closing Out a Good-(ish) Year: 2015

From `the neck up' it has been a good and informative year.  In my heart, however ... eh!  Not so good. 

A few months from entry into my eighth decade I find that I'm more alert to signs of aging than I am aware of them.  It's like leaning into a curve and then ... no curve.  Am I just fatigued?  Or is this `age?'  Despite the numbers I don't really have anything to compare it to.  When I was `younger' I worked like a slave and got tired.  Got up the next morning and did it again.  And got tired. 

Now, I do the same amount of work but don't feel the hot breath of fear and panic on my neck.  And I get tired.  And that means?????

Opening a door and closing another.  2016 Should be the `year of the body.'  The `body' came in a distant fourth or fifth this year. 

Started up a new private practice. 

Got back into indoor rowing (ergometer), did some team competitions.  Tore a major peripheral nerve (ulnar) and was `impaired' for three months.  No cycling.  For that matter, no sleep either.  Enormous pain.  Did I say ENORMOUS?! Pain killers send one into a semi-conscious purgatory ... without the hope.  

And then spent the last 4 months squeezing the last drops of design capability out of my stick bike.  I'd be on a 100 mile training ride only to stop half a dozen times to adjust this, tweak that.  More a test of the equipment than of the rider. 

Ended the `season' with a perfectly adequate performance at the Borrego Springs 12 Hour Time Trial in mid-November.  `Perfectly adequate' just short of embarrassing.  I got out what I put in.  What I would call `rule outs.' 

So, aside from family priorities -- always first and last -- the private practice is more than thriving.  Such that I have to be deliberate about setting limits.  The bike design considerations have been dealt with.  No more `adjusting' or `tweaking.'  More on that at a later time. 

2016 is to be `the year of the body.'  A tightly designed training plan to increase power and endurance.  And here are some learnings along the way.

When I moved to the mountains I was determined to learn how to climb tens of thousands of feet in a few thousand miles.  In three years I climbed more than a million and a half feet on the bike.  Long Slow Distance (up!). 

I did a few Arizona brevets and realized that there are only two lane highways with trucks, RVs and other vehicles travelling at 80 miles per hour out here.  The accomplishment was not athletic.  Long Slow Distance. 

Long.  Slow.  Distance. 

I.  Don't.  Have.  Patience.  For.  That.  Anymore. 

So I bought a high end power meter and will be pushing harder on the pedal for longer in order to go faster and faster and faster.  High Intensity Training. 

Who wants to live forever!!!