Thank Goodness for the Counter

The countdown counter bluntly serves up a dose of reality therapy. That is, if I even have time to look at it. Our house renovation project dominates our life. I thought about it today and figured that we spend 70-80 hours per week attending to it. That is ending very shortly. We finally got our CO(certificate of occupancy) and now we need to finish what we call the piddly things, but what the rest of the world might call huge projects. We need to install 14 more doors, which need to be painted first. After the doors are installed the baseboard and other moulding can be installed. We still have windows to re-build. All of these needs to be done by the end of the week.

And training? What’s that? I have always trained for our extended cycling trips, not counting the last one to the Yucatan. I just didn’t have the time. I survived ok. Much of bicycle touring is mental rather than physical, but the physical part is still important. Right now, I am figuring out how long it will take to go 30 miles if I walk most of the way. Now that’s not the right attititude, but I know that the area around Astoria is hilly and hills are not my friends. I have never learned to embrace them, especially when I don’t train on them.

Some training is better than none, so starting April 1, I will ride the bicycle daily, either on the trainer or on the road. I’ve seen some cyclists out already as the weather is warming up a bit. That should be some incentive to get out and ride and after this week, I should be relatively free to spend an hour or so getting into shape. It really isn’t the physical part of it that worries me, well, maybe it is a little. I am mostly concerned about not having any saddle time and therefore not having any callouses in the areas that count, if you know whatI mean. It’s always possible to force the muscles to work a little harder, but if the butt is really sore, the muscles don’t really matter.