Some sad DC sightings

Last night on my run on Wisconsin Ave NW through Tenleytown and Frienship Heights I saw a guy dragging a cardboard box from the corner of a building. About 10 strides later I saw the make shift home he was making out of carboard boxes.

This morning I didn't ride outside, but I got on the indoor trainer for an hour. As I was stopped at the red light waiting to turn onto Wisconsin Ave a homeless guy (seemed homeless as best I could tell) walked joyfully in front my car through the crosswalk. He looked at me and I smiled. He started loudly, but nicely shouting something and pointing at the left side of my car. I thought he was trying to tell me my headlight was out or something, but then I began to understand what he was saying. He was saying, "Military stickers!" "Military stickers!" and pointing at the DoD stickers on my car which help me gain access to military bases.

After he said it about 3 times he turned square to the car and saluted. I saluted back (I don't wear a uniform for my current assignment) and he continued crossing. I instantly became keenly aware of my wallet sitting in the back right pocket of my pants. I usually never have cash, but I did this time. By the time the thought passed through my mind he was happily on his way and I was able to see the back of the jacket he was wearing.

The jacket had a huge Marine Corps emblem and said "Marine Corps" on it. As he finished crossing the street I saw him move off to right edge of the sidewalk towards the newspaper receptacles, thinking he might be grabbing one of the free papers. A few seconds later a cyclist passed and after letting him pass, the guy again went on his way.

Last night and this morning has caused me to take some pause to be thankful for what I have. I know it will only last a few hours and the grind and the day's events will soon wash the memory and life will seem difficult again.

I don't pretend to know much about it, but I know homelessness is not an easy condition to deal with. There is no easy solution, there is not necessarily an amount of money you can throw at it to eradicate it. What is even more sad is that a large portion of the homeless population are veterans. I'm sure a large portion are Vietnam vets who never got the care and support they needed when they returned home. PTSD is probably also a major factor and although it is a known and the military is using the latest treatment available, there are probably some that still believe it carries a stigma and don't seek treatment and then there are probably those medical providers who also overlook it.

On a side note, for fiscal year 2010 the Department of Veterans Affairs was appropriated (by the House of Representatives, waiting on the Senate) a full $3.2 billion for homeless veterans program, $949 million MORE than they were given in 2009. One of their major programs is Project CHALENG (Community Homelessness Assessment, Local Education and Networking Groups), which was launched in 1994. This program partners the VA with local community-based programs for a more wholistic approach to homelessness. According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, “the most effective programs for homeless and at-risk veterans are community-based, nonprofit, ‘veterans helping veterans’ groups.”

I digress.

The Work Goes On

There is a loud clatter of keyboards banging, interrupted occassionally by somewhat frantic and animated calls from the boss requesting more and more information (one of the topics to be revealed later).

The guy next to me has already professed that he want to break something today. He has done some yelling and banging, during some calls (on mute) and immediately following those calls.

Really a quite typical day for the office, but today is extra special. We're all Federal employees and today is a Federal Holiday. Granted it's "just" Columbus Day, but nevertheless illustrates a commonality across all Federal holidays...they are NOT holidays in this office.

I would be willing to bet a lot of money that of the 534 "other" offices, we are the only one that is fully abuzz as if it was a regular work day, with the FULL staff here. Sure some of the other offices probably have staff in as needed or maybe working from home, but nothing like this.

The only respite today offers is that the 7am-9pm that I've been working lately will not happen today, the hours are more loose, but the tension while we're here is not.

I'm not sure why it surprises me anymore. There is a pension towards the opposite of what a holiday should be. It consists of the "holiday check" or the "holiday get them" or the "just because it's a holiday" mentality which causes a flurry of phone calls and emails to ensure the staff is at work. This pension towards creating work and placing more emphasis on the holidays reminds me of when I was young and it was inevitable that the worst arguments between my parents would occur on the Holidays.

So, as it goes, it was inevitable that there would be extra work today, as there was around July 4th, as there will be on Veteran's day.

However, it's difficult to complain when thinking about those on deployment and those service members in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Almost forgot to mention the important information we were all rushing around to get so that we could craft a press release: info on Christopher Columbus of course!

Early Early Morning Ride

I got out the door around 4:55am this morning. Ugh.

Something had to give...and it wound up being my Wednesday mornings. I'm having a blast riding 45-50 milers on Sunday, but my cycling fitness is steadily declining, in part from my lack of riding and in part because of my starting to run during the week.

I figure if I can get up early Tuesday and Thursday for a run, then I can get up early Wednesday for a ride. I don't like the cycle of: get up before 5am, run or bike, go to work, work twelve and a half hours, go home, eat dinner, go to bed and repeat tomorrow. But, what else can I do? It's going to get worse when Congress is back in session and I won't be able to leave work at 7:30pm...with my departure guaranteed to usually be between 8-9pm.

Getting up early today was helped because Cezanne had to get up at 4:30am today for work. I set everything up for the ride last night, including driving home along the streets where I was going to ride and confirming that Tilden St. NW (where I wanted to do some short/steep hill repeats) was well lit. Tilden St. comes out of Rock Creek Park and has a bike lane plus another 8-10 feet between the bike lane and curb, so it makes riding a little safer and easy to move out of the bike lane, closer to the curb when I hear a car coming from behind.

I only rode a little less than 11 miles this morning in the hour that I was out there...I know, that is a horribly slow ride, but it was early and I got in over 2,000 feet of climbing in that 11 miles.

The above pic is my view climbing up Tilden at around 5:15am this morning. It's a little blurry because it was taken with the iPhone, it was basically at night, and most importantly, I was blazing fast up the hill at around 7 mph... The pic does do a good job at showing the amount of room to bike and the level of street lighting.

Here is the ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/12408648

Click on the "elevation" tab, it's pretty funny to look at, perfect sawtooths. I climbed the short hill 11 times.

This is Mr. Bono in the back seat of the Prius on our way to Annapolis last Saturday to have dinner with my Mom for her birthday. The bed sheet we put on the back seat was falling down a bit. He's a handsome devil.

Last Sunday I did a group ride that started out with 6 and ended up with 4, not because they were dropped, but they had other things to get back to. I wound up going with Sig, Chris Chapel and Brian Laubscher, 3 really good dudes (on and off the bike). It was a ton of fun, but I don't know how long I can keep up the facade that I can keep riding with these guys with my current riding amount. If it were this past February through April, it wouldn't be much of a problem and while I would still be the weakest of the 4, I would be a lot stronger than I am right now. I just don't want to be "that guy" that can't pull (literally) my weight in trading pulls throughout the ride.

I wound up averaging just under 20 mph for the ride, which I think would have been around 20 mph if I had any legs on Anglers hill or at the lead-in to the final sprint of the ride.

Here is the ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/12198575

Here is Siggy's blog about his sweet new wheels and the Sunday ride: http://sigberto.blogspot.com/2009/08/new-secret-weapon.html

He's got a photo of the group coming down Clara Barton Parkway. You can just make out my bright yellow shoes at the bottom of the photo.

Cezanne is right, I need an editor

I wrote that last blog a little fast, and with that, the mistakes came.

Cezanne said I need an editor and she's right. I guess slowing down and re-reading the post before I publish could also work too.

My saddle broke on the left side, not the right. My bib shorts were snagging obviously on the left, not the right. Correction made.

I also think I wasn't making sense when I was talking about someone at the Bicycle Pro Shop telling me that Specialized Saddles eventually break. I think instead of writing "someone at," I wrote "some of" the Bicycle Pro Shop...

Above pic is of my older bro Jason and his twins on their trip to D.C. He was back from Djibouti, Africa for a short trip. Can't wait for him to get back for good! Cezanne was there too and went to the museums with them. Yup, she's the best! Unfortunately I couldn't go because of work. I just took the metro down a stop to meet them, hung out for 10 minutes, then went back to work.

My Specialized Toupe broke

I was wondering why my bib shorts have been snagging on the right side the last few weeks. This is why. I noticed today that my fat butt has weakened the plastic on the right side of my specialized toupe saddle.


I liked this saddle. I've had it for a while, but favored my semi-custom cedesius saddle until the Jeff Cup crash bent the titanium rails on that saddle. It's interesting because some of the Bicycle Pro Shop in Georgetown said that the specialized toupe would eventually fail, it's just what it does. It did!

This saddle hasn't been in any crashes and I'm not too fat...

What to do now. A year or two ago I did Competitive Cyclist's saddle demo program, so I'll look back at that blog post to see which one was my favorite. I think it was the Selle Italia SLR Gel Flow. I'm also going to try to bend back the cedesius, but not sure if the carbon is compromised by the Jeff Cup crash. I do like the specialized toupe, so maybe I'll look into getting another one, but a white one instead of black.

Great group ride today with NCVC. I think I burned the one match I have the days on Anglers hill. It was tough with my heart rate around 184-186 on the way up, but I was hanging kind of close to the front, but definitely couldn't hang with the first 3-4 guys crushing it.

Here is the ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/11770464

Recovery? Do these work?

I've found myself in this weird routine of running once or twice during the week and riding once or twice on the weekend. The running is more of a pounding on my legs than I remember and biking once a week for 50 miles is well, interesting. I think one ride, relatively tough/long, once a week does little to retain your fitness and a lot to keep you fatigued. It's this mix of...I used to ride over 150-200 miles/week, so sure I can ride 50 miles, but I'm only doing it once a week, so my legs are kind of fried afterward from getting their weekly shock to the system.

With my legs being sore after the runs and my looking to next year where I'm going to some how be a competitive bike racer while training for a half-ironman (don't see how that is going to happen, I mean the being competitive at bike racing when I'm also swimming and running), I explored the option of getting some recovery tights. Cezanne kind of laughed and said she could get me some cheap hospital ones that would probably be better than anything I bought. Maybe she could have, but you know how it goes for cyclist, nothing that is cheap is good???

So last night they came in the mail. I had heard that it would take about 10 minutes the first time to get the recovery tights on. It took me 9 minutes, but I wasn't rushing. Since they have graduated compression, getting them on around your feet/ankles is the hardest part. I was a little hesitant because I didn't want to rip them, but they held up.

So, I was strutting around the house last night in these tights with Cezanne laughing at me (just a little bit). I decided to wear them to bed, just to see if I could sleep in them. I was up at 3am and restless which is not out of the ordinary for me, but my left foot was in pain. The material was really digging into the soft tissue on the outside of my left foot towards the heel. I got out of bed and it was painful to walk. I think this is the opposite of the desired outcome! The rest of my legs felt good though. I still have some tenderness in that area, so I have to figure out what happened and why the material was pinching down so hard. This was something I really wasn't interested in investigating at 3am, I just wanted to take them off.

I did a great group ride last Sunday, led by my teammates Siggy and Nate H. We had about 8-10 folks, which is a good size. It was fun and felt good, but I was definitely hurting on some of the hills and later portions. Here is the ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/11308512

Similar ride this Sunday, looking forward to it. Hopefully I'll be able to sneak in an early Saturday morning ride too before heading to work.

All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

My long bike rides have been taking place on Sunday. This is part function that Sunday is the only day I don't work and although I only work from about 10-3pm on Saturdays I wind up pretty drained (probably the accumulation of fatigue from the week) from the 13-14 hour work days Monday through Friday.

Last Saturday was no different and I was looking forward to Sunday since the Sunday before that I was able to get in a 47 mile ride. Rain was in the forecast for the afternoon, so I got ready to leave around 9:30am. As I got outside, it started pouring rain. I turned back around and put my feet up on the couch.

I checked the weather and the thunderstorms looked like they would be around for a while and more were forecasted for later in the day, so I knew it was going to be a day inside on the trainer. With this in mind, I was no rush to hop on the trainer, so like any normal cyclist, I laid around the house in my cycling spandex. The only thing worse would be to lay around in just the bib shorts with no jersey. It's scientifically proven that that outfit combo is the least attractive of any ever worn.

Poor bike, all ready to go and all you'll see is the trainer. I do think it's time for at least a new rear tire. The Sunday when I did the 47 mile ride some of the roads were a little wet and when I got out of the saddle on some of the climbs, the tire would lose traction and slip with each pedal stroke.

I'm not really doing any sort of specific training now on the bike, just trying to maintain a little bit of cycling fitness. I have been running during the week. I did my first 5 mile run in a really long time last Tuesday. I take my bike computer with me so I can get the mileage, heart rate and pace data. The Garmin 705 is chunky to carry, but it's not too bad. The run is here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/10487293. It was a pretty slow run, but all of mine are. I'm just trying to get my legs used to it again. This Tuesday I signed up to do a Half-Ironman next June... My younger brother Jon did it this year and he convinced me to sign up. Should be interesting.

My right achilles tendon has been overly sore after that 5 mile run, so this morning I found a running route that is less hilly and hopefully I can train my legs on it as I'm starting out. The route I was running took me along Massachusetts Ave, which goes by the Vice President's House and the way back up is a constant 4-6% gradient, which wasn't working well with my achilles tendon I guess.

I'm hoping to get a ride in this weekend before work on Saturday and then a long one on Sunday. We'll see.