Random musings

Originally composed on 5/10/12:

The biggest challenge at this stage is training my body to ride and run again. The stress on my hands, shoulders, back, and feet is significant; partly a function of my weight and partly relearning how to pedal circles. I rode for an hour last night, and already I notice a big improvement from Saturday. I ran on Sunday night after a two hour nap, and then took off Monday and Tuesday as the feet were complaining. Which brings another thought to mind...I have to hope that my body can physically handle the mileage jumps that I'm going to be throwing at it. The experts tell you to bump it up 10% at a time and I'm sure they have very good reasons for doing that, but I will not be following that advice. My jumps will be more like 20-50%. Even with 13 months to prepare I don't have the time to ease my mileage up. My thinking is that I need to get to 150 miles a day as quickly as my body can handle it. Once there, I have to test my kit (which adds weight). I have to determine how many calories I need, how many hours of sleep do I need, and how my body recovers from multi-day efforts of 150-225 miles.

I just ran the numbers on mileage increases and I may have overestimated. Starting with a base of 20 miles/day and bumping by 10% every week I'll be at 148 miles/day by the end of September. That's not too far off where I would like to be. I guess it's still pretty aggressive as I'm pretty sure you're supposed take a break every month or so to let your body adapt for a week to the increases.

Goal-setting has been in my head since committing to the GDMBR. It's probably not possible to stay focused for the next 13 months with just that singular goal. Frankenbike is around Labor Day and is on my radar. TOSRV in May is something I've always wanted to do. That leaves a huge hole from mid-September through April. I think this might be the year to get into cyclo-cross. Maybe run the Columbus marathon.

I wish I was more committed to collecting data points. I think it would be interesting to chart the change in lifestyle. Some of the more interesting data points in my opinion; weight, resting heart rate, calorie intake, mileage for running and biking, and hours of TV viewing. Alas, I just do not possess that level of attention to detail for more than a few days.