Big Bikes

Run Fat Boy...Walk...
Hobble...Puke...Die

M and I leave for our Honeymoon tomorrow. There will be no biking on our vacation nor will there be any blogging. Starting with this post, I will be post-dating some posts*. Hey, CNN doesn't take a week off or even a day off, so why should Big Bikes? Of course CNN doesn't take weekends off, but the entire staff of CNN isn't off bike-racing. The news might be less depressing if they were. Unless they sucked at it and liked to whine about how much they sucked at it.

Due to the oddly seasonal weather, mountain biking is out right now, and it's not quite time to begin logging thankless, frozen base miles on the road (though that time is looming). As mentioned-afore, I have met and surpassed my winter weight-gain goals. It is time for flabbage control. Thus I began running. Not with the recommended short, slow almost walk, but with a full-on three mile run. I hate going slow.

The problem with being a Demi-Pro racer on the mountain bike is that relative to the majority of the populace, I have a pretty damn good aerobic engine (even if relative to the majority of Pro-racers I have a pretty damn mediocre one). A problem arises when I go to run — I can't get my heart rate and breathing up while running at a rate that won't cause my body to break apart like a meteorite entering the earth's atmosphere. There's an analogy here somewhere, let's see.

It's like...it's like...putting a 500 Horsepower V-8 engine in a used Pinto. It'll go zero to sixty to wheels falling off to spinning into a jersey barrier in six seconds.

But that's beside the point. The point is that to motivate myself to go on a run I needed a rabbit to chase...and then eat. My mission: run the 3 mile round trip to Dave's Fresh Pasta to get a delicious sandwich for lunch. I was out the door in a flash.



My ankles began to hurt before I cleared my block. My back began to hurt two blocks in. My knees began to hurt a quarter mile in. Like I said: Pinto. I pointedly ran by my parent's house (I'm not a townie, they moved to my town, MY TOWN!) to see if there was anyone there, any possibility of getting a ride home after I procured and devoured my delicious sandwich. It looked good, there were two cars out front. Bail out looked highly feasible.



I arrived at Dave's, where I ordered the Spicy, smokey Turkey with chipotle mayo pressed on Iggy's Rye. I then ran as quickly as I could to my parent's house, saliva cascading down my face, freezing into a beautiful drool-cicle. But when I got there, no dice. No one home, bail out was not an option, I was running it, like it or not.



I ran even faster on the way home (faster = more pain and soreness the next day and even more the day after that) motivated by my hunger, by the fact that I had to pee, and by the fact that when I slowed or came down to a walking pace, I began to freeze.

With a about five blocks to go I was a hobbling mess, the only thoughts in my brain: "Ow-ow-ow-this sucks-ow-ow-ow-I wish I was riding my bike-ow-ow-ow!"

But in the end I was sitting at my desk, eating a delicious turkey sandwich. It was so worth it.

I'm already plotting farther off culinarily motivational destinations for my future runs.

Did I just say "future runs"? Is a lobotomy considered elective surgery?



* Late edit: turned out there is not time for the creation and post-dating of all those alleged posts. There will be no Xmas post (sorry to all my Atheist-non-consumer brethren and all the Big Bikes readers in most of the rest of the world). Look for a Monday post, but after that it'll be a dead zone over here until Monday the 4th.