Life On Two Wheels

Along the river and toward the mountains a morning shadow shimmers across the road. The rays of the first light jet through the trees and across a figure gliding upon the road. His breath trails in short spurts, petrified as it hits the icy air. All is quiet except the slight sound of the athlete as he summons himself for yet another days work. Soon the rest of the world will bustle with life as well and the brief simplicity of cyclist and nature will disappear into the everyday struggle of life in full motion; the errands and intervals, the appointments and intersections, and the deadlines and finish lines OutPaceTheRace

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Sleigh bells in the... rain

North Bend, WA
Thursday, December 28, 2006

I don’t include stomach flu or flu on my list of true illnesses; therefore, my streak of illness-free living will remain untarnished- regardless of the wily flu bug. With that said, I used the time off for the flu as recovery. I took three days totally off the bike, and used the third day to ease back into it with a light bout of easy yoga and weights. The “sickness” was actually rather timely, just a bit early. I think I was set to take the break over Christmas; instead I ended up taking it early and doing 2.5 hours Christmas Eve and 3 hours on Christmas. It wasn’t so bad, I just pretended like I was riding a sleigh in the rain… So that’s a total of 5 days of recovery (two days confined to my bed), with Christmas to ease back in.
Right after Christmas training got rough again, immediately instituting the use of AM/PM days: several hours in the morning, sleep, yoga & weights in the evening. It feels like you’re working out the whole day. I did that Tuesday and Wednesday, & surprisingly I’m not totally wasted. This is good, since I’ve got two more of them Friday and Saturday… I’m already excited.
Of course, I’ve been working out with Bernard in the gym. I’ve kind of kept him in the dark as to what I want to accomplish with him, otherwise he’ll take the initiative and go ahead and design some eccentric training regime that’ll leave me walking out of the gym on two hands. So I work out with him and then do the leg stuff that I need to do. None of the exercises that he does are consistent, so it’s impossible to build an unacceptable amount of muscle mass (when I say unacceptable I mean 30+ lbs, 20lbs is fine)… It’s always arm, leg, and core work-outs, but never the same ones more than once a week. So it’s fine to an extent, I just do my specific leg stuff following my little session with him.

I found this interesting, though I'd venture it's not entirely accurate: http://www.success-and-culture.net/articles/percapitaincome.shtml
Table 1: National Average Per Capita Income using PPP method
Rank/Country
Per Capita Income in US$
1 Luxembourg
54,430
2 Bermuda
N/A 36,000
3 United States
37,500
4 Norway
37,300
5 Liechtenstein
N/A 25,000
6 Channel Islands
N/A
7 Switzerland
32,030
8 Denmark
31,210
9 Ireland
30,450
10 Iceland
30,140


Table 3: National Average Per Capita Income using Atlas method
Rank/Country
Per Capita Income in US$
1 Bermuda
N/A
2 Luxembourg
43,940
3 Norway
43,350
4 Switzerland
39,880
5 United States
37,610
6 Liechtenstein
N/A
7 Japan
34,510
8 Denmark
33,750
9 Channel Islands
N/A
10 Iceland
30,810