Monday, May 17, 2010

Weather or Not

So how's the in your neck of the woods. It's supposed to be in the 70's F here for the next 10 days. Perfect riding weather for sure, so let's all take advantage of it. I know I am. This weekend was fabulous, got some MTB rides in on the trails going into Jay Cooke State Park off of the Munger Trail. I hadn't explored them much, but I was on my MTB, so why not give them a try. It was well worth it, nice trails in a great setting.

Matt Fitzgerald wrote a book called Racing Weight aimed at endurance athletes trying to get to optimum body weight for peak performance. I read some excerpts from it and it looks like it would be nice to follow to get lean and faster. The most notable thing I gleaned from what I read was this: For every ten pounds overweight you are, you have to expend 6.5% more energy to do the same effort. This means I have to produce 65% more power than I should to climb the same hill. Scary, to say the least. Not to mention how hard it is on your body to carry that much around on a day to day basis. No wonder I'm so slow on the climbs. This is a proof that the scale doesn't lie, it's proven accurate every time I get on the bike. I ride strong all day on the flats, but once the road goes up, my time does too.

On a final note, we are two more pets down. Spencer, our seal point Siamese cat disappeared over three weeks ago. He went outside in the evening never to return. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Brooklyn the Airedale developed a nose bleed the lasted for about ten hours. We took him to the vet and discovered his blood platelet count was 150. It should be at least 80,000. They gave us some steroids to give him, and he was rechecked a week later. This time he was at a normal count of 143,000. This didn't last long. Last Thursday he was bleeding out again, so we had him put down. L had him for almost ten years and they were inseparable. So first Simon, then Spencer, and now Brooklyn. Poor Piper, Simon's mother, is very lonely now that they're all gone. We may get her a kitten to keep her company and her mind off of the others.



 


                                    

2 comments:

rlove2bike said...

Sorry to hear of your pets passing. Speaking from experience, I know pets are hard to lose. I have only had the MTB out one time. Good weather might be the key to get it out again.

Boz said...

Thanks, it's like the old adage that bad things happen in threes. This seems like one of those times.
The biking gods have sent us an early present, so you have to use it.