bike rides ... by abby

friday i did active rest as a 50-minute easy mountain bike ride. and then i ate about half a can of pringles. so i figure those cancel each other out. i think i will start swimming on fridays soon. today is a cross day, and i just got back from a 19-mile road bike ride to the aptly named town of churchill, where there is indeed a church on the hill. (view from the bike at right). we've been having this flawlessly beautiful days, and it's so peaceful first thing in the morning. i always enjoy my road bike rides, but i particularly enjoyed this one. nothing much to report except a lot of dead gophers, one unlucky bunny with its guts all on the road and a left hamstring that is not cooperating fully.

but i would like to dispel the myth that i am a fast runner. gerlinda thinks i am, but i'm not. the only things i do fast are shower and spell. i'm not even that *good* of a runner. it's just i've been doing this longer. if i knew i had to run only one mile, and i really really went all out, i could probably do it in 7 minutes. but then i would collapse and die. i haven't trained to be fast. i have all this lsd training (that's Long Slow Distance, not to be confused with the drug), so i've built up a lot of endurance over the years. i've never been fast; i can just go and go and go. this i believe i inherited from my baseball-player dad -- some kind of slow-twitch muscle thing or something. it's also partly why i'm better at individual distance sports than i am at team sports or sprints. the point of lsd is to go slower over longer periods of time -- like only 60% of your target heart rate or anaerobic threshold or one of those terms like that. so. see. not fast.

ANYWAY. now, i'm going to float the yellowstone.