For a change of pace I went off-road mountain biking today in the Blue Mountain Reservation up in Peekskill. It was a good workout, but I have to admit that my mountain biking skills are a bit rusty. I guess it didn’t help that my MTB is held together with a little more than rust, doesn’t have clipless pedals and never even heard of suspension. The bike is practically from prehistoric times, compared to the mountain bikes of today.

I set off for the trails at 6am this morning under the cover of darkness. The plan was to meet Ben and Erik from the Asphalt Green Triathlon Club by 7am and to start riding soon after. Erik had a very nice Seven mountain bike, with front suspension and disk brakes, whereas Ben had a mountain bike that was literally separated at birth from mine. Unfortunately for Ben, the freewheel on his rear wheel gave out within 20 minutes of our ride. It was a problem I encountered with my MTB two years ago and since corrected. Ben had to walk his bike back to his car to go home, while Erik and I continued on.

If I learned one thing today, it is that I am not ready for Xterra racing. I don’t have the feel for the trails like I used to have. I suppose I should have insisted on going to a trail system that wasn’t so technical. The Blue Mountain trails were very rocky, icy and slippery from many leaves. Really, though, I am going to blame my less than perfect riding skills on the bike. My brakes barely worked and riding in pedal cages just sucked.

We spent about 2.5 hours rolling around the trails. It was excellent cross training, but I would have liked to put in a few more miles. Hopefully, I’ll do another MTB ride in a couple of weeks with an upgraded bike.

I am shocked and dismayed over reading (here, here and here with a picture) about the practice of metzitzah b’peh; basically the sucking of blood from a babies penis after male ritual circumcision (aka mutilation). To make matters worse, several babies that underwent this procedure developed Herpes as a result and one of the babies even died from complications.

I’d be royally pissed if I found that my first blowjob came from a smelly, disgusting rabbi. I would be in a homicidal rage if I found out that a sore on the tip of my penis was from a rabbi who did the procedure with a herpes infected mouth. I question why the practice of circumcision (although I do like my aftermarket conversion) is even continued to this day and think it is an abomination to clean the wound like with a bacteria and virus infested mouth.

All of this begs the question of course, how did the rabbi get herpes in the first place. Exactly where has he been putting his mouth to acquire the virus? Truly we live in a Sick, Sad World.

If such a thing happened to me, I wonder how my life would have been different. Would I have been too shy or embarrassed to pursue a mate and lived an abstinent life? Possibly, I would have taken that pent up sexual frustration and concentrated it on pursuing athletics. I certainly would have had more time to do so, since I never would have had a girlfriend, wife, and kids. Maybe, that is the secret to some of the best athletes in the world. They have an STD and they use athletics as a means to take out their sexual frustrations and aggression.

I am so freaking nervous and depressed today that I can’t stand it. I feel like a crack addict about to rip off a liquor store in order to get enough money for his next fix. I suppose the drug I am coming down from is called endorphins, those mood regulating chemicals that circulate through your body.

I’ve taken two days off from in an attempt to recover from Bronchitis. During this time my mood has decidedly taken a downward spiral. I guess the lack of exercise has allowed my endorphin levels to drop and I am feeling the effects of withdrawal. Taken from the Wikipedia website, exercises that are most likely to produce endorphins include running, swimming, cross-country skiing, bicycling, aerobics, etc. I wonder if there are any studies that show people going into black holes of depression and despair from lack of exercise.

The thing about depression is that it is hard to get motivated to exercise. The endorphin rush is like a raging fire. However, the endorphin fire is difficult to start when you are too depressed to exercise. It’s a nasty catch 22.

I was planning on writing a year end summary of my training and racing for the year 2005 and possibly my goals for 2006, but I got preoccupied with a project that had the hallmarks of an endurance event. The project took me a couple of hours everyday day over the course of a week to complete. It was tedious, tiresome, frustrating and only marginally rewarding. I used up all the time I had for writing in the pursuit of this project.

I stuck with it, because I pretty much had no choice. My children expected me to complete it and I couldn’t leave it unfinished. Basically, I built the Empire State Building from the Landmarks of the World Erector set.

This is a toy with a recommended age of 8+ years old. I would love to meet the 8 year old that would have been capable of following the instructions and displaying the dexterity to complete such a thing. My fingers were rubbed raw and my patience on edge as I tried to build this thing in time for the New Year.

I finished it on New Years Day and we capped it off with a miniature King Kong. This was very fitting since we all saw King Kong at the movies the night before.

I was hoping to begin 2006 with another strong week of training. However on New Years Eve day, I woke up with the feeling of Bronchitis in my chest and the occasional hacking up of green goop. This is very annoying. I was finally getting my training back into gear and I just hit another bump in the road. There is no way you can train through Bronchitis, unless you want to make yourself sicker. I did a ride on New Years Day, but by the end my chest was starting to feel very congested. I probably should have taken off.

I hate when I get sick and have to miss training. I get all out of sorts and start to feel depressed. It is not how I want to start the New Year. Then again, maybe I am just depressed because I have to go to work tomorrow after a week off and it reminds me from when I was a kid and had to go back to school.

I am too tired to make a blog entry. I went to bed late last night (around 10pm) and woke up at 2am with a splitting headache. So I got out of bed, took two Excedrin, drank a pre workout meal and went back to bed. This allowed me to rest somewhat peaceably until 4am when I got up to prepare for the day’s workouts.

Today I rode 22 miles, did an hour worth of strength training, swam 2500 meters and ran 7 miles, so it’s little wonder why I am tired. All of this is base training, where my goal is just to get my volume up. I suspect that 2006 will bring lot’s more volume compared to my training in 2005, but that is ok. If that’s what it takes to make the grade, then so be it.

So I am off to bed. Only one more workout left to do for 2005. It may be tough to get in. My kids are having a sleep over and I suspect I’ll be called upon to cook pancakes and generally be available in the morning.

Is a chocolate Santa Claus is Kosher? I am going to my sister’s house this evening and I am wondering if she would appreciate the irony of giving her orthodox Jewish children chocolate Santas for Hanukkah. The label of the chocolate designates its kosher status with a circle U. However, doe the fact that they don’t believe in Christmas or Santa Claus make it inappropriate for them to eat a kosher chocolate Santa? Should a chocolate Santa even be kosher? For that matter, what does it say about the Rabbi that would bless a chocolate Santa to certify it kosher?

Now that it is the holiday season, the streets of NYC are filled with tourists snapping photos. I was walking towards the subway yesterday when I spotted a Japanese couple with one of them snapping a photo of the other in front of the Trump Tower on 5th Avenue. My initial inclination was to jump into the picture with my arm around the guy. I’ve done this before to a bunch of Japanese tourist down in Battery Park and they seemed to be greatly amused by it. The thought of me being in a photo album back in Japan 50 years from now is funny. I can just imagine these people pointing out to their grandkids the crazy New Yorker who wanted to be in their picture. Maybe I will inspire future generations to visit New York.

I didn’t jump into the picture this time, but I thought how I could stage a prank where I asked the couple if they wanted me to take a picture of them. After I snapped it, another person would come along and ask if we wanted to have our picture taken, whereupon I would insist that we get a shot of the three of us. This would continue on with more and more people coming along, each insisting that we that the current picture taker get into the picture. I thought this sounds like something you would see on David Letterman.

Perhaps I just have too much time on my hands so my mind gets filled with inane thoughts. I spend so much time training, that I can’t help but let my mind wander. Today I rode 23 miles, ran 8 miles and swam 3000 yards which accounted for just over 3 hours of training time. Plenty of time for stupid random thoughts to pop into my head.

My computer no longer hibernates. Computer hibernation is a special function that effectively shutdowns your computer, but allows it to restart at the exact point you left off when you turn it back on. It stopped hibernating right after I added memory to it. Evidently when a computer has too much memory, Windows XP losses its ability to go into hibernation mode.

Memory, can do all sorts of funny things. When I was forced to ride my bike to work during last week’s transit strike, I was suddenly remembered how much I enjoyed bike riding in tough conditions. This reawakened my passion for training and I feel rejuvenated as if I just woke up from a long hibernation.

This rejuvenation is also apparent on my new Tanita Body Composition Monitor. This is a fancy scale that measures Body Weight, Body Fat %, Total Body Water %, Muscle Mass, Daily Caloric Intake, Bone Mass, Metabolic Age and Visceral Fat. It also gives you a Physique Rating by calculating all of these variables. My scale tells me that I am the metabolic equivalent of a 15 year old, which ain’t bad for a 40 year old.

I’ve been weighing myself everyday and tracking my progress, but I suspect I will soon go to once a week, now that I have a seven day average. The numbers don’t change very much on a daily basis, which is why I suppose they say you should only way yourself a couple of times per month. To keep it interesting, I could weight myself before and after I take a dump in the morning and see the difference in readings. I could add another column to my measurements that include the weight of my dump by calculating the difference in my weight before and after I take a shit. I remember weighing myself before and after years ago and telling a friend I lost over 3 pounds. He found that to be greatly amusing and couldn’t believe that it weighed so much, but was very impressed when I convinced him it was true.

I am often amazed at how many electronic gadgets I carry along with me. Twenty years ago, I probably would have carried none. Today, without even giving it a second thought, I was carrying six; seven if you count the transponder embedded onto my new Chase Blink credit card (inside my wallet). All of this I had with me while I was doing my long run.

My inventory included a Polar 625x (foot pod, watch, HR transmitter), Treo 650, USB Keyfob and remote alarm transmitter. The gadgets plus my water bottle and gel flask contributed to a very heavy feeling while I was running. I had the water bottle secured by a special running pouch and the rest of the stuff was in the back pockets of my Hammer Gel winter jacket. To keep it all from bouncing around, I tucked the pockets and water bottle underneath the waist band of my running tights. It made my ass appear to be the size of a baboon’s.

The course I took today was a new one. I didn’t have much time to run, so I made part of my route be the way to my mother-in-law’s house. I told my wife I would meet her and the children there for lunch, after which we would go to my wife’s aunt’s house in New Jersey. I asked my wife to take my laptop with her. I would have carried it with me, but that was one electronic gadget I thought would be too heavy to run with.

Unfortunately, my laptop was somehow left behind. When I discovered this fact, I was apoplectic. I needed this device with me. I had so much stuff I NEEDED to do with it that I wasn’t sure I could function. It was like someone took the air away from me and I found myself gasping for breath. How was I supposed to upload my HR information to my computer for careful analysis of my run? I began to hyperventilate and tried to calm down.

Sure, some of the things I needed to do could be done on the computer at my wife’s aunt’s house. But I preferred my own computer, just as I also prefer my own toilet to that of a public restroom’s. My computer is a safe haven. It has everything I could possibly need. My computer bag even carries special comfort food and headache medicine. Now I am like a blind man thrown into an unfamiliar location and told to make himself at home.

I’ll have to log my workout the old fashioned way. That is, scroll through the file information on my watch and manually enter it into my training log. Yuck, what a pain in the ass. Fortunately, though, I’ve had a couple of beers and I am nice and calm now. I am even starting to feel hungry again. Maybe the world won’t end. I still want my own computer back.

For the record, I ran 11 miles in 1:44:59 with a HR of 136/150. A bit short on the distance, but I had to get to my in-laws to watch my kids open presents.

I was just listening to the news while I am getting for my morning bike ride. Evidently, someone is making a stink about the government secretly checking mosques and other such places for nuclear material in the days following 9/11.

What is the big fucking deal? The government, as far as I am concerned can check for illicit nuclear material anytime, any day or any place they like. Hell, they can even come to my house in case the person who owned it before me was a terrorist.

Does anyone really think that the American people would have preferred to suffer a dirty bomb in order to preserve the rights of some radical extremist? At least the government was doing it secretly, in order to spare the feelings of those who may be insulted that they were search for nuclear material. Heck, if they found some, they may have prevented some innocents from getting cancer due to exposure.

So anyway I am off for my ride. Secretly, I will be looking for nuclear material or anything else that looks suspicious. Prospect Park does have some strange looking people and I will be checking them out closely; secretly of course.

I think my mother-in-law would have made a good endurance athlete. Even though she was never athletic, never participated in sports and never really showed any interest, I still think she would have been suited for endurance athletics.

Practically from the day I’ve met her, she has been looking towards retirement. It was all she would talk about. Then, finally, when the day arrived that she could retire, she decided that she would work another year or two. She has done this a couple of times already.

I know exactly why she does this. I do something like this on almost a regular basis. It is like when you are going for a run and you have completed your minimum goal for the training day, but it is so easy to continue to get the extra distance that you just keep going. Even though all you were to do is a certain distance, once you accomplished that goal, it is so easy to continue on. You can quit at any time, knowing you met you stated goal, but anything beyond that is extra bonus. This is what my mother-in-law is doing.

Sometimes we are forced into retirement; oftentimes through injury. I hope that won’t be the case for Matthew Long, the athlete I wrote about previously. I understand his injuries are extensive and I suspect that it will be a long time before he can make a comeback. I joined a ride of 25 athletes and Asphalt Green Tri Club members for a ride around Central Park as a vigil for Matt. He has many people pulling for him. It must be a great feeling to know you have so many people thinking of you.