It IS all about the bike

Received in my email inbox this morning, spam from Active Triathlete, which has snippets of a Q&A that finely honed athletes such as myself might be interested in. One of today’s headings was as follows: “Getting your bike ready for the hills” – and the blurb continued:

Not ready for those hills? Don't stress over a hilly bike course - if your training hasn’t addressed the issue of steep inclines, have no worries! These tweaks for your bike will help you get up any hills with ease.

Naturally, I glommed onto that like a rat terrier onto a leafy twig, and discovered that I’ve apparently been basically wasting my time riding hill and dale throughout the bucolic countryside of Huntley and its environs. All I need to do to prepare for my Alpian adventure with Stacey (CACTASS for short) is get different gearing for my bike. Maybe some mountain bike gearing, or a compact crank, or a triple crank. And voila, there you go! Piece of cake!

I immediately scratched all of the training off of my schedule and put in an order for a shipment of bonbons. Who knew it would all be so simple?

Speaking of simple, I attempted to find some Marmotte-esque training tips on the internet*, and had high hopes for this one guy’s blog over at the NYT, called something like “A total newbie prepares for L’Etape, with 5 weeks to train.” Right up my alley, yes?

But, much as I was disappointed when I had googled “total dumbass attempting Ironman after cancer treatment” and found nothing, so too was the letdown huge here. This guy illuminated us as to what his training plan was by squishing that information into a little addendum at the beginning of his posts (“1 hour intense ride with Carmichael group”) – and then blathered on for the rest of it on what saddle to use, how to motivate himself, blah blah blah. Look pal, we don’t give a rat’s ass, okay? Those of us in the same boat want commonsense advice and tips, not your ruminations on life.

Hence, so that my fellow wanderers throughout the blogosphere and the Googles don’t meet with such crushing disappointment themselves, I hereby vow to chronicle my enfeebled attempts to get in some semblance of a shape (i.e. cycling shape, not just round or triangular) to handle CACTASS. I might even start a countdown clock (“42 days to CACTASS!”), if I can figure out how to do that.

Oh, and for those who don’t know, CACTASS = Crazy Ass Cycling Trip to the Alps with Super Stacey. In case that wasn’t intuitive.

I am so going to die on this trip…..

*One of the funniest comments heard on the news lately – and god knows we could all stand a good laugh now and then – was in relation to the Russian spies that were just busted in the U.S., after spending years “infiltrating” the system, and basically just finding people to talk to about foreign affairs and government policies. I don’t think the CIA is too concerned, because as they put it: “What we don’t understand is why they put so much time and energy into these cover-ups and switched identities and subterfuge……when they could have just found all that information on the internet.” Brilliant.

This is second only to the best line ever uttered in a Senate confirmation hearing, when Elena Kagan was asked where she was on Christmas of some year. Her response, after looking a bit incredulous: “Well, I’m Jewish……so I was probably at a Chinese restaurant.” Also brilliant. The news yesterday was just a regular laugh riot…..