Get Fit Slowly

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I’m getting a lot of milage out of last Saturday’s marathon workout session, aren’t I? Well here’s a little more.

As we were reaching the end of our biking path, Susan pulled a daredevil stunt. Sitting upright, riding with no hands, she turned sideways for several seconds and snapped a few photos of me, including this one:

You can’t tell from this shot, but I’m thinking, “Oh my god, oh my god, please don’t let Susan fall into the culvert!”

Looking at the photo now, I have to laugh at what a dork I am. How dorky am I? Let me count the ways.

1. Nobody looks good in a bike helmet. I know that. But most people look like they have big growths on small heads. I look like a I have a small growth on a big head.
2. I love the shirt (is it a shirt?) that I’m wearing for my outer layer. It’s some super deluxe exercise shirt (is it a shirt?) with a half-zipper thing on the front and sleeves that pull up (and stay up!). It’s made of astronaut fabric to wick away moisture but keep me warm in the vacuum of space. Or something like that.
3. The shirt underneath is my official “in training for the 2008 Portland Marathon” t-shirt. Pam laughed at me when she heard I got the shirt. “That’s like $20,” she said. “That’s not very frugal.” She’s absolutely right. Plus it shrunk after the first wash. What was once a large is now a small. I have to wear it as an under layer.
4. My biking shorts are awesome. Ten years ago, I bought a normal pair of biking shorts — tights with a padded crotch. They’re not very flattering (on me or anyone else). During the past decade, some genius came up with a brilliant concept: keep the biking tights, but wrap them in a sort-of-normal-looking pair of shorts. I love them.
5. On my left wrist you can see the watch-based receiver for my heart-rate monitor. I haven’t written much about this tool yet, but it’s an integral part of my exercise routine. I bought it in mid-March, and was worried I would regret the $150 I spent on it. Now I wish I’d spent more for a model with GPS tracking! I love the thing.
6. I’m wearing my “driving gloves”. When I used to commute to work every day, I wore this pair of gloves during the cold parts of the year. Now I use them for biking. They’re not biking gloves. They’re just normal gloves.
7. You can just barely see my right ankle, which reveals I’m wearing a pair of “no-show” socks. I never even knew these existed until after my first marathon training run. After getting some nasty blisters, I bought a pair just to test them. They were expensive ($8? $12?). But now that I’ve tried them, I wish I had another pair. They’re thick wool, padded in all the right places.
8. You can see on the handlebar, just to the left of the reflector, a place for my bike computer. That keen device tells me how fast I’m going, how far I’ve already gone, and how long it has taken me to do it. But in order for the bike computer to work, I have to know where it is. Which I don’t. I’ve lost it. It must be somewhere in the house (and probably in my office) but I cannot locate it. It drives me crazy!
9. Finally, there’s my beloved 1997 Bianchi Volpe touring bicycle, which I bought new in March 1998 for about $750. I’ve clocked several thousand miles on this thing, though closer to zero miles in the past five years. It’s finicky, but it’s my baby.

Yessir, that’s J.D. the dork. But he’s a happy dork.

And now that I’ve mined last week’s exercise bonanza for three entries, I promise I’ll write something useful for you next week.