Lactate Threshold at the Office, Singlespeed bliss

Post a retreat weekend that wore me down more than built me back up, this week was another complete blitz. One killer sized project, a second thrown in for good measure, plus two key pitches (discussion documents essentially) for the week that don't just come out of nowhere. One of the above happened to occur in Houston. The scenario of work till midnight, come in at 7:30, work till 3, hour call at airport, in bed in hotel by 1am, wake up at 6, meet for 3 hours, fly home, work from 6pm till midnight, take cell calls in driveway so the neighbours think I'm nuts, isn't something I need to do every single week. More like "when it needs to be done".

90+ hour weeks are tough, that doesn't leave much time for anything else. I survived, but not by much. I don't have 21 year old adrenaline to keep me going anymore either. It's like riding hard tempo continually till you pop, and when you do, you're totally fried. Friday night I slept 13 hours, then thought I'd wake up and ride a bike a little on Saturday. Turns out instead I slept on the deck till noon, sat in a lawn chair all afternoon, ate dinner, then sat around and went to bed. Instead of sleeping restlessly, I slept another 12 hours sound as can be. Wow.

Sunday I spent the entire day in the office, then as I was driving home trying to let Sting and an open sunroof take away some of my angst, a little miracle happened. Craig called. Wanted to ride bikes... now we're talkin!

He could only meet up later, so I blasted off for an hour into a Portuguese-esque headwind north across the prairies, with ominous clouds spitting bits of rain. I suppose a lot of riders would have said it was a bad evening for a ride, cool and blustery. It was my only evening for a ride, and therefore by perfect correlation, it was the perfect time for a ride. Fantastic to watch the clouds move across a blank prairie. Wind noise, not phones, cell phones, blackberries. I looped back to pick up Craig, we stopped by my house to switch over to the SS, and did a couple loops out through Nose Hill.

The single speeds performed beautifully, and this rider tried to keep his head up but was hurtin. Most importantly, the performance wasn't the key (funny youtube video aside). The key was this was two thirty something kids riding bikes with one gear, just like a rewind to grade 2. Didn't matter what the weather was, didn't matter where we were going. We pedaled, and when we needed to go faster, we pedaled harder. We picked the routes that looked fun. We had fun. That's the way I need to end a week more often... just gotta end them before the 90 hour mark too!