Master Baker

Sometimes there's an advantage in having such a wide range of life experiences at work.  Sure, no-one is ever going to call on me to exsanguinate a fish or do a quick spot of PCR or manual sequencing, but I still get to use my mind and it seems nowadays whenever anything needs writing or proof-reading I get the call.  There'll be no more split infinitives on Cyclesmith's website on my watch!  Stephane, our floor manager is a trained chef and when I got to work yesterday I found these on the kitchen table

 It was all I could do not to scarf the lot down immediately.  however, I did consider placing a "Not for consumption; display purposes only" sign on them.  The cupcakes were delicious, either gingerbread or carrot-cake.

Whilst eating my cupcake I had a look on cyclingnews.com, under the pretense that if I was going to cyberslack in a bike-shop, I should be doing so on something that could be construed as work-related.  Actually, velonews.com has a very good tech section, which has to be work-related, but I digress.  Whilst on cn I nearly choked on my cupcake, but in a good way, when I saw the pictures from the Liquigas end-of-season party.  The riders, naturally, were dressed as pure Eurotrash; exhibit A; Vincent Nibali's trousers;

...but then the North Americans were no better.  Who can remember (I'm trying to forget) Garmin-Cervelo's team intro this season and Christian Vande Velde's Norwegian curling trews?  Why?

The Liquigas boys didn't eschew trousers but their guests did;

those are the Miss Ciclismo ladies in the back cavorting in the nearly altogether.  Here's Miss Ciclismo 2011 Nancy Bernacchia there, doing her best to remember the Little Prince has sucked on a bike for nearly a decade now and the Piccolo name-tage is surely wearing thin....

And there is so much a double entendre there.  Maybe thats why Nancy's smiling.  So much for taking women in cycling seriously.  Maybe Bronzini was right.

Still. when you consider the family-safe North American version was David Zabriske doing karaoke, maybe a bit of southern European elan is the lesser of two evils.

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Uncontrolled control.

Maybe it's just human hubris, but we haven't really tamed nature.  We think we have.  Maybe we have it under some sort of control, most of the time, but tamed?  Not really.  It doesn't take long for the checks and balances to become unchecked and unbalanced.  Just ask New Orleans. 

So I was running tonight and a dog came at me; one of those low-slung, muscly ones with the big head (I'm not good with breeds).  Ears back, head down, wide-eyed, tail out, fur up, teeth bared, snarling and making that back-of-the-throat growl that makes you look around for the nearest pointy implement or tall tree. I guess it's an evolutionary thing: five million years ago when an Australopithicine heard that growl it was climb or become dinner (or a very elegant fossil) and as we are, by definition, descended from the survivors, those who climbed and were not dinner, we have retained that instinct.

As any runner knows, the owner was right behind, not quite behind enough to have any of your actual control over the beast but behind enough to utter the familiar refrain, you know the one

"Don't worry, he's quite friendly".

I had the presence of mind to reply 

"Of course; it was the snarl and teeth that gave it away"

and she looked at me like I'd grown an extra head.  The dog, on whose leash she was now standing, looked at me like I was dinner.  I looked at the dog like our Australopithicine ancestors may have done, disguised fear mainly, I held my keys out in front of me (I'd found a pointy implement if not a tall tree) and said 

"if he comes for me again, I'll protect myself"

and, of course, she gave me that extra head look again.  Protect himself?  For why?  Everyone knows that Muffy is a quiet and gentle dog, really very friendly, loves to be scratched and (as the old joke goes) loves children.

As I continued my run, with great trepidation as I was now turning my back to, and behaving like prey towards, a highly mutated top carnivore which had already marked me down as a light snack, I suddenly thought of the reply I should have given.

"Madam" I should have said. "if you do not have the common sense to understand, or find out about, the basic dog psychology or animal behaviour patterns of your dog, you should not be allowed to have a dog".

"Dogs are pack animals.  Your dog loves you because you are the alpha-male in his pack.  He looks up to you as the leader.  He fawns at you because he is essentially sacred of you, and when you scold him he puts his tail between his legs and whimpers because deep down, some animal part of his brain thinks you might quite literally rip out his throat."

"To your dog anyone not in his pack, viz, you and him, is an outsider and either trying to steal his food, his territory or somehow threaten his pack.  Like any good pack animal, he'll respond violently to such threats.  Either that or you're food, and lets face it, you respond the same way.  No prey animal ever lay down willingly to be eaten, you have to chase the buggers down and bite them repeatedly until they get the message."     

"Of course, not all dogs behave like this all of the time.  Most of the dogs I encounter as a runner or in real life either don't give a shit that I'm there or regard me with a certain contempt once they realise I do not have any food on me.   But deep down in their DNA there's a wolf and sometimes other dogs, runners, children, sheep, whatever can turn into a threat or food.  So your well behaved, cute house-pet can quite literally turn into a monster given the right cues.  We don't always get those cues and can't always predict when Muffy's going to go all postal. If you don't understand that, you probably shouldn't have a dog. and you certainly shouldn't let it off it's leash on the Halifax Commons (local bylaws notwithstanding)."

"I know the theory of what do do in these situations.  Don't run: you look like prey.  Puff yourself up: you'll look bigger and more threatening.  Don't smile: it bares your teeth and looks like a threat-display.  Oh, and look for a pointy implement or a tall tree.  If it's (apparently) incumbent on me to know enough of the psychology of your dog so I don't get attacked, the least you can do is understand the psychology of your dog so when it tries to attack me you realize that "don't worry, he's quite friendly" isn't really going to cut it!"

That's what I should have said.  

Ah, hindsight.  Still, maybe I'll print it out, laminate it and hand it out to dog-owners the next time I'm running from their little darlings.  Who knows, maybe it'll give us something to talk about while I wait for someone to put the sutures in my calf and they're shaking their heads in disbelief saying "but he's such a good dog at home"

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Musical Chairs

So I just returned from Son#1's Christmas, I mean Holiday, concert.  Something I approached with not a little trepidation.  Let me say that no matter how much you love and cherish the little darlings, there is nothing quite like an school Christmas, I mean Holiday, concert.

Let me too be the first to say, with some surprise, that I actually quite enjoyed it.  No-one is more surprised at this turn of events as I.

I think it's because he's finally at Junior High and whereas the raw talent may still be lacking, there's a ton more practice, which is starting to make some semblance of perfect,

Also, there was the subject matter in the concert.  Your average Elementary School Christmas, I mean Holiday, concert is primarily composed of neutered, culturally defanged (yet curiously culturally appropriate), politically correct Holiday songs, the subject matter of which seems to be the one thing your average Westerner (or Western-dwelling ex-plant) can agree on: presents. There may be the occasional "Silent Night" but the play-list reinforces the general idea that this is a great gift-receiving time of the year, the occasional TV John Lewis TV advert notwithstanding.

If the Guardian is to be believed, that advert pretty much has grown men weeping into their tea the length and breadth of the country.  And kudos to Slow Moving Millie for taking a Smiths track and bringing it down an emotional notch or two.  Because let's face it, ITTET what the world needs now is not love but a more depressing version of an already depressing classic.  

Where were we?  Oh yes, another SockSnob aside.  So, the subject matter.  A couple of unapologetic carols and Jingle Bells, which apparently was originally an American Thanksgiving song.  Who knew?   The rest of it was surprisingly adult.  Maybe given the average age of your average parent with a kid in Junior High there is an understanding that maybe stuff the parents might actually like would be a winner.  So we had some pretty passable versions of Let It Be, Stand By Me and Lean On Me,  Of course, I would have preferred Ain't No Sunshine instead but that's just me.  Son#1 told me they were going to do Sweet Caroline as well (which I love, reminds me of being 8 all over again and listening to Neil Diamond with my parents) but their teacher didn't think they were up to it.  Quelle dommage.  I was excited to see Hallelujah on the program thinking we'd get a blast of Handel but it turned out to be Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah instead, which was fine by me. 

The Grade 8 guitars did Ode To Joy (awakening the sleeping soccer fan in me)....

We lost on Penalties.  Kuntz!

Anyway, after that they switched track completely and played Romanza.  Not only is that my favourite piece of classical guitar after Rodrigos Concierto d'Aranjuez (or Concierto d'Orange Juice if you like) but a piece I remember playing at a school concert at about the same age as these kids!

Even though I've had "All I want For Christmas" as an earworm all week, I found the whole school concert thing tonight more About A Boy

rather than Love Actually.

Maybe I've been reading too much Nic Hornby recently.

Unfortunately, the evening did not end up with Rachel Weisz at my door offering to go to bed with me.  Oh well, you can't have everything!

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Ten percent per week my arse!

This one straight from the "do as I say, don't do as I do" file.  Crikey, my knees ache.  Why?  Age-related perhaps but all self-inflicted!

I went straight from my Marathon-Maniacs qualifying streak to the cyclocross season.  Of course, racing on Sunday meant no long runs, which I suppose was a good way of recovering from the long runs and ensuring no inadvertent 30 km Sunday runs with Rami.  Before you start saying I have no discipline and willingly head out on 30 km Sunday runs the week after a marathon, you've clearly never run with Rami.  A "short ten miles" can all too easily turn into a water-less, gel-less epic as you end up by the Rotary and Rami quietly suggests "yacht-squadron anyone?" and all of a sudden you're at Herring Cove without a paddle.  Or a bus-ticket.

Still, I managed to head out nearly every day a pied and still racked in 50 to 60 km weeks, a nice relaxed weekly distance.  Just what I'd expect to do in the off-season without any races in the near future.

Anyway, since the Cyclesmith cyclocross finished last week I just started running this week as per what I considered to be my usual schedule; nice easy long-run with the club last Sunday (we ended up at the Rotary but luckily Rami wasn't with us so we didn't do the Yacht Squadron) and what with thus and that without really trying to do it, had a 90km week (last bar in the graph below). Oops.  Not just a >30% increase on the previous week (for four previous weeks!) but one of the highest weeks of the year, and I'm supposed to be in easy mode.  Double oops.

As you can see from the graph (sorry for the crappy graph, I really miss Graphpad! Wow, how geeky does that sound?)  I did hit another running milestone this week and passed 3000km running for this year; a target I usually hit.  Since I started keeping a training log again in 2004, this makes it a shade over 24000 km (or 18000 miles).

No wonder my knees ache!

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Fabada!

Cold and blustery.  Sure, it's going to get colder yet, but still this week was the week that we were reminded that winter had not forgotten us; there's been frost more mornings than not and we had that short but vicious flurry on Thursday.  As a runner and a cyclist, this has been the week that the longs all came out; long-sleeved tops, long tights, long-fingered gloves all topped off with a toque.

Just the day for a warming recipe, so I tried making a fabada or Asturian Bean Stew; something I had when in Spain a couple of months back.  Nothing too complicated, just white haricot beans and sofrito.  If you're watching your cholesterol then the original, served with chorizo, blood-pudding and pork belly can be a bit much (although they are all food-stuffs I love dearly) so I added a lean pork chop instead.

I'm sure it would have been nicer at Casa Fernando, but a couple of bowls of that, fresh bread and a little too much Rioja than was strictly necessary and I perked right up.

This was a needed meal after quite a full weekend.  Headed for the usual club run yesterday and ended up running ridiculously fast for an easy Saturday.  However it felt good, it was nice to know the legs were still (kinda) there and it was a great excuse for a breakfast sandwich.

After we got home la belle said let's go for a ride on the BLT trail to the Bike And Bean cafe. I didn't really feel up to it, the morning's run had left me feeling a little empty and my knees were aching but hey, it was warm (or at least not cold) and the wind wasn't too bad so why not?  I'm sure there were coffee shops closer (it's a 60km round trip) but it was pleasant enough.

This morning was the cross.  Again, it was warm and like last week warm enough to essentially race in summer kit

....although I did my practice-laps in my Team Canada jacket (I managed to get another one after swapping my original with Raul for an FETri running top).

The course had dried out quite a lot and it was quite fast.  I managed to have my 'cross head on again and had a good race, for me.  Like last week I was in a sprint for 37th place (or something) but unlike last week I won it!   The wind was insane, 50kph gusts according to Environment Canada.  On the back part of the course we were blown along, you were pedalling but it was like the chain wasn't there.  On the grass the wind was mostly in our faces and coming around the last 180 before the barriers/finish I was quite literally stopped dead in my tracks as I turned beam-on into the wind!  

The wind notwithstanding, it was a tough race for me.   Despite doing the same number of laps as last week in almost exact;y the same time, after a couple of laps I started to feel the effects of the previous day's run.  It's one thing to do a >160bpm run for 45 minutes, but at my age I'm starting to find that it's quite another to ask your body to do another 45 minute >160bpm effort 24 hours later.

Tomorrow's a rest day for sure!

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Stadium of Shite

Shit, from the Old English scitan.  Sometimes in parts of northern England is Shite (pronounced to rhyme with "light") and one wonders if that pronunciation is perhaps a language fossil from a much earlier  time.  It is one of the earthier Anglo-Saxon words in our current lexicon, and perhaps the most socially acceptable.  In fact you could probably get away with it before the nine o'clock BBC watershed, unlike fuck and definitely unlike cunt, which is apparently the last taboo word. 

I mention it because today, November 19th is the Halifax Parade of Lights, the de facto Christmas season opener.  Whenever I hear the expression Parade of Light my brain often transforms it into Parade of Shite, perhaps because of Sunderland FCs home-ground the Stadium of Light which rival Newcastle fans (think Montreal Canadiens - Toronto Maple Leafs for the level of intensity) immediately christened the Stadium of Shite.  Rather like Atlantic Tit-Chiming it's an expression which rather rolls off the tongue and for better or worse almost always comes unbidden to mind.  

Unbidden but perhaps an appropriate mental Spoonerism.  It's November 19th!  Barely mid-November and we're doing Christmas already?  What gives?  At least in the States the Christmas season cannot start until after Thanksgiving (which is next Thursday) and this puts a natural check into the start of proceedings.  Here, with Canadian Thanksgiving so early, there is no such hurdle.  Rememberance Day perhaps; no evergreen before poppies seems reasonable and whilst some stores didn't respect this unwritten rule (or guideline); our local Sobeys has been the full Christmas nightmare for a fortnight now, private houses did.  Now the wreaths have been laid?  Well on the Sunday afterwards (November 13th for the record) I saw at least two houses decked out to the nines, including one with the full-on candy-canes-in-the-front-card-lit-up-bushes-and-trees.

Yup, I don't like Christmas.  OK, to clarify; it's not the holiday as such as the falsity, the anti-genuine, the supposititiousness behind it.  For one day a year, or so it seems, we are told, instructed, expected to, have a good time.  If your family is even slightly dysfunctional (I'm not talking Simpsons here, I'm talking your regular run-of-the-mill dysfunctional family) then you are expected, forced, told (whatever) to do this with people you may not even talk to for the other 364 days of the year.  Yet for one day you have to be all hale-fellow-well-met and transform the usual family bickering into a picture-perfect Normal Rockwell Time cover.  The irony of course being such an image likely never existed anyway, yet here we are trying desperately to recreate something that wasn't there in the first place!

Of course, to get over some of the guilt you may feel over such heretical anti-Christmas feelings, well you can spend your way out of guilt.  An idea so old that even the Catholic church doesn't ask you to do that any more; just you try asking Father Ignatius after midnight mass for an indulgence.  I'm sorry my child, we haven't done that since Martin Luther!  Here was a guy who the Roman Catholic church loved so much they excommunicated him on the basis of his writings but they still said hey, putting a stop to the whole buying your way out of purgatory, not a bad idea that! 

It reminds me a bit of being told to go out and enjoy myself in the snow.  The logic being it's snowing, snow is nice, nice is fun, so if you go out in the snow then you will automatically have fun.  Of course the truth of the matter is you climb into umpteen layers of fleece and go outside and hey presto, I'm cold and wet.  Now what?  Are we having fun yet?  Like Christmas, well I'm here, I've spent tons of money but I'm still not happy.  What did I do wrong?  Nothing.  You can't force anyone to have fun, whether it's snowing or Christmas.  I'll have fun when I'm doing things I enjoy with people I like.  So guess what?  By that definition I can have Christmas nearly every day!  I might not get any free stuff, but I'm smiling and laughing (odd behaviour for a misanthrope I know, but it does happen) with people I genuinely care about.  You can't force such a thing.

So please don't try.  I'll respect your enthusiasm for this holiday, if you'll respect my lack of enthusiasm for same.

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Ponzoña

So, it's what, November already? Oops, I guess I haven't been blogging for a while. Truth be told. I've written some pretty damn fine pieces, albeit in my head. I just don't seem to have to have the time to get it down on paper, well the screen, you know what I mean. Somehow, tonight, the stars have aligned: the will to write, the want to write and, perhaps more importantly, the opportunity to write. I've been told that writing is good for me, and that might be true. so perhaps blogging will be part catharsis, part therapy, part stopping-me-from-wasting-all-night-on-youtube.

As I've said before, I don't really get any "free" computer time nowadays and it's worth reiterating that I never realized how much government time, both federal and provincial, I wasted blogging, either for myself or for TNS. I apolgise to Laura and Stewart and Tarjei and Hussain. Well, the former three anyway; the latter needs to, well, never mind.

I think I'll try and get back on track, and even though it's been a couple of months since last putting pen to paper, they haven't been quiet months, quite the opposite in fact. The blog may end up jumping around in time as we travel between events that may, or may not, be causally connected but as the joke goes: " 'I'm sorry Sir, we don't serve particles faster than light'. A neutrino walks into a bar".

As with all years, my racing season seems to have started late: only three races until August 31: two marathons (one as a pace-bunny) and a team duathlon. I seemed to be living that Clash song,

If you liked that, try the acoustic-Mick-Jones-in-a-public-library version. Fricking awesome!

Anyway, after that, I seemed to get racing with Shubie (as per the belated post below), Worlds, a couple of marathons and then the customary cyclocross, or "humiliation on a bike by pros and 14 year-old girls" as I like to call it. I might yet get ten races in this year (as opposed to the 20 + last year) but with over half shoe-horned into the last three months of the year after every self-respecting triathlete has already bolted their bike into a CycleOps. Of course, I'm not a self-respecting triathlete, so 'cross, here we come.

The first 'cross race I did this season, the second of the series (I missed the first because of a marathon: there's the first cause-and-effect or effect-and-cause of my next few posts'), was a true, Belgian 'cross day. Windy and rainy. Horizontal rain actually, interspersed with hail and sleet! The course was slick and the mud-pit was well over our rims.

The Cyclesmith 'cross has really ballooned in size. Five years ago it was twenty, thirty guys max, now a bad day is sixty. The joke is that BNS should rename all their races "cyclocross" and they'd see some decent size packs again! La belle did it one year, but now says she's a little intimidated by the size of the event. I can see that: your only mass-start race of the year and it's off-road single track. Plus the front row is 50% local pros. It's a bit different at the back: it's not quite the proverbial laughing group, we're serious too, but we know where we stand in the pecking order, fight it out amongst ourselves and get the hell out of the way when the big guys come steaming through to lap us! There's no need to get intimidated out of the race: just readjust your goals (finishing without hospitalization is a reasonably achievable aim) and have fun!

I didn't think the 'cross Gods were smiling on me as I crashed on the course riding to get to the start, a silly little 10kph prat-fall on an off-camber descent that gets me every time. I started at the back and the first lap was little more of a warm-up riding behind people slower than me and, thankfully, the same kind of bike-handler. This allowed me to get my eye in for the terrain and the obstacles and I slowly picked it up as the race went along. I missed the bell-lap as I was in the funny no-mans-land between the leader and the flag. I know I could have made the bell-lap but there was strangely something missing. It took me a day or two to realize what it was. After a month or two of concentrating on long races, where tempering your tempo was the name of the game, my head just wasn't into the 40-minutes-or-bust attitude that was 'cross. I was coasting over the top of the hills and taking too much rest on the straights.

Still, it made for some epic racing and one of the advantages of taking the first race piano was that I didn't crash in anger!

It's not blurry, its' the rain!

However epic it felt, it doesn't top the epic-ness of last years epic 'cross shot...

Terry Tomlin said it was the full Mount Surabachi and whilst such comparisons are meaningless and trivial at this time of year (I am assiduously avoiding any use of a Paschendale metaphor with regards to certain sections of the course), I think secretly, we all agree with that.

This week I went with my 'cross head squarely screwed on, and even listened to a bit of JLo to get my heart-rate pumping before we started. Not that I've turned into a JLo fan in the last six weeks, but events have conspired to make On The Floor this season's warm-up track!

The weather was much better than last week, sunny and warm. Unfortunately, the mud had dried out to a much slicker consistency. It was like cornering on ice. Except for the mud-pit which was still over your rims, but sticky. Imagine cycling through a 30 metre semi-cooked waffle, already coated with maple syrup. If the Inuit supposedly have 57 words for snow, we need 57 words for mud, as this was clearly a different mud to last week! Raul Martin commented it might be called ponzoña or poison in Spanish. Poison to your race perhaps, trying to get a bike through that, but it smelt pretty toxic too. The passage of so many tyres has churned the mud up and reanimated some previously dormant sulphrogenic bacteria. My bike positively reeked when I washed it. I've no idea what latent anaerobe we've awoken from the deep but if it escapes, it's going to be armageddon!

By my own standards I had a good race. Again I started at the back and picked my way through the field. Instead of coasting and floating through some sections, I pedaled through them. One person I caught on the last lap said I "really picked it up at the end". I don't think so, I think it more likely that the three-hour engine I've been cultivating all summer helped me keep an even pace. Plus, I know my bike-handling limits and whilst I may not have been chucking it through the corners, riding reasonably conservatively through the technical sections meant staying upright and not losing time remounting, re-hitching dropped chains and cleaning small shrubs out of the drive-train. The closest I got to crashing was spinning the bike around nearly 180 coming around a U-turn and ending up pointing back the way I came! I got an extra lap in compared to the previous week and I was pleasantly happy with the event. Plus, I'd trued my own front wheel the day before, not something I do often, and I wasn't sure that doing that and then heading to 'cross was a good idea! Well, the wheel held up; there was a slight squooshing coming from the front end by the end of the race, but it was only mud build-up under the fork-crown!

The tale of the tape tells it better than any words. For the first race my Garmin gave me a 163 average, 172 max over 44 minutes. This week, I got in an extra lap for 51 minutes, but a 170 average and 180 max! The SD this week was lower too, so I was riding more consistently throughout. That max, 180? How do you like them apples? So much for 220 minus your age.

Plus, for the rest of the day I had that funny hacking cough I only get after red-lining it in the cold! Sweet times.

Well, that's all for now, I'll try and make a start on getting some of that other stuff down.

Later

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