Turtle on Wheels

My training schedule has been a little topsy-turvy the last couple weeks, but I think I’m still making progress. I was in Savannah, Georgia last week for a girls’ vacation with my mom and aunt, and I planned to take the passive-aggressive approach to working out–only do it when forced. And what do you know, it actually backfired for the best. My aunt was in the hotel gym nearly every morning and she made sure I was there too. So I think I burned off at least 5% of the Southern cooking I consumed throughout the week (thank you, Paula Dean).

After experiencing spring-like temperatures for the first time in eons, I’m more anxious than ever to take the bike out and I think I’m going to do just that: drag it out of the bike room and defy Mother Nature to snow again. I could’ve taken my bike out on Monday and Tuesday when the weather was within spitting range of the normal temps for this time of year. But my admittedly-lazy butt didn’t get around to doing it and then another snowstorm hit yesterday. The snow didn’t stick though and I think the 40-degree temps predicted for the weekend will be high enough to take out the bike. In the meantime, I’m plugging away at the stationary and I’ve been working on maintaining a higher RPM, or Rotations Per Minute.” According the MS150 training guide, the ideal average is 90-100 RPM. Thankfully the stationary bikes at Ratner measure the RPM for me, and it actually isn’t too hard, at least in short spurts–maintaining 95 RPM for 20-30 minutes gets my heart rate up to my 80% max. But it’ll be a whole different (and probably tougher) story when I start biking on the road, so I’m gradually increasing my high-intensity periods on the stationary until I simulate road conditions somewhat.

As for the MS150 itself, I’m a little behind on the fundraising: As in, my honor roll lists me, myself, and I. So I’m going to send out the mass emails today and hopefully can talk to a few people as well. To tell the truth, the $300 minimum is a little intimidating, especially if people are anything like me: In the past, when I’ve gotten fundraising appeals from friends and non-profits, I often declined them with the excuse that I barely had enough money to cover my own life. But I’ve realized that the $20 I spend on a sweater from New York & Company could just as easily go toward a cause, and I’m hoping that others feel the same. I’ve broken it down in my head several ways that make the goal slightly less daunting: 15 people at $20 apiece, 30 people at $10 apiece, etc. But there’s another stat that looms in my mind: From my last 4 years in book marketing, I’ve learned that direct mail and other marketing pitches usually get a 3-5% response rate. So hmm . . . . Anyway, que sera, sera: I’ll see what happens.

Before I embark on my latest mind-numbing update, I’d like to highlight the greatest thing to hit the Internet in the last 48 hours: Hulu. Admittedly, it’s a totally corporate NBC website, but it streams a bunch of movies and classic TV shows for free with hardly any commercials. And it just so happens that one of the TV shows on the site has been haunting my dreams: WKRP in Cincinnati.

A little background: For the few of us who aren’t paying blood money to Comcast, our sole solace is a station called MeTV. It’s basically a local version of the cable channel TVLand and it shows all these classic TV shows, from staples like I Love Lucy to lesser known fare like, um, The Flying Nun. MeTV just expanded to a second channel so that they can run even more shows, and I’ve been hoping that they’ll start showing WKRP in Cincinnati, a hilarious sitcom from the ’70s that’s a part of my childhood memories from Saturday afternoon reruns. Well, I read about Hulu on New York Magazine’s blog Vulture, checked out the site, and there it was: the first full season of WKRP. So right now, food + Hulu = happiness.

ANYWAY: I went to the gym back-to-back on Wednesday and Thursday, because I totally fell off the training wagon. According to my training schedule, I was supposed to go to the gym last Saturday and this past Tuesday. But I simply forgot to go on Saturday (I got caught up in mountains of laundry); on Sunday morning I had a hangover from Saturday night and then I had to spend the afternoon in Evanston with my sister; on Monday, I had an evening work event, and so I told myself that I didn’t want to make the day even longer by getting up early to go to the gym; and then on Tuesday, I just refused to get out of bed. But by Tuesday night, I knew I needed to get my act together.

So I went to tell my upstairs neighbor to turn his freaking stereo down to normal decibels, so that I could go to bed. My neighbor is this insane old hippie who doesn’t seem to realize he lives in an apartment building in which he shares walls and floors with other people. So he blasts his stereo so loud that I can hear every. single. note. And he likes doing this at late hours–one time my sister stayed over at my place and both of us woke up in the middle of the night to the booming sounds of an action movie. I’ve confronted him multiple times about it and we tentatively agreed that he’d turn down his stereo by 11. But he still forgets. . . .

In any case, I settled that and was able to get enough sleep to get up at 5:30 on Wednesday morning. And when I walked out the door, there was a big surprise: It was still pitch-black outside. Before Daylight Savings, the sun was up and shining–or rather, the sky was a light gray at 6am, and I’d see a number of people jogging or walking their dogs. But this time? Everything was in eerie darkness and the streets were more deserted. Same time of day, completely different atmosphere.

Call me paranoid, but I put my keychain of pepper spray in my coat pocket instead of my iPod, and walked faster than my usual sluggish tread. Another thing: Before I only saw U of C police cars when I cut through the police station parking lot across from Ratner. But this morning, I saw two patrol cars cruising down 56th street and up Woodlawn. I passed only two people during my walk and each encounter was similar: I’d slightly tense up and try to get a look at them, and I think they would do the same, because our eyes would meet just as we passed one another and we’d then exchange a brief hi as a sign of reassurance.

Drama aside, I made it to the gym in one piece. I’ve been focusing my workouts on the stationary bike, and I’m trying to maintain a high heart rate for extended periods of time. But hopefully now that 40- and 50-degree temps have finally arrived, I can drag my real bike out very soon. . . .

Despite my increasing suspicions that I live on the ice planet Hoth and will never have a chance to take my bike out, I’m still plowing through my indoor training. Not that I haven’t considered slacking off: it’s been incredibly busy at work, and I’ve been buried in copywriting for the last week. I was using this work as an excuse for skipping the gym three days in a row, but after my lethargy and vague headache just wouldn’t go away, I decided that maybe some cardio would do me some good.

And what do you know? It worked. I went to Ratner on Wednesday and Thursday–dragging myself out of bed at 5:45am, walking 15 minutes to the gym, and getting an hour in before running back home to get ready for work–and just working up a sweat on the elliptical was invigorating. I considered riding my bike to the gym–the recent mid-30s temperatures were enough to melt most of the ice and snow off the streets–but I figured I wouldn’t save any time. It’d take me a good 15 minutes just to re-inflate my tires, degrease and lube the chain, and make sure everything else is working correctly after a long winter storage. And when I take my bike out, it will be for good. But with 4 inches of snow forecast for this weekend, I doubt the streets will be amenable to hosting my road bike in the near future. . . .