Tool

This weekend was almost a loss. Mid 40's and raining. Consistently. From Friday morning until Sunday morning, it didn't even stop long enough for the patio to show the slightest hint of light gray at the cracks and high spots. As I mentioned in my last post, I am woefully behind on my base due to The Sickness (also know as the yack, aptly named by my cycling buddy Steve Laurel). I'm not too worried about the base endurance for racing, as I'll be mostly focusing on track this year and with the longest event I'm riding coming in at about 15 kilometers (or 20 if I have lost my sanity enough to try the Madison), being able to sprint or ride solo after 2 hours of riding isn't as big of a deal. But I am worried about having enough base to really pound the intervals for sprints and for threshold training for Team Pursuit.

So Thursday, my gift subscription to Bicycling magazine shows up in my in box. Bicycling magazine always has a few articles that remind me more of Redbook than an athletic magazine. The 5 things you can do to loose 10 lbs fast! Ride faster while training 2 hours a week and breathing through a drinking straw! You know, the classic too good to be true stuff. So the cover article about building your base in only 10 days left me a little dubious. I looked it up anyway. Well, it was by Chris Carmichael, which gave it credibility for me. I've based most of my training off of one of his books, so I wasn't straying too far from reality. And it was actually 3 weeks, not 10 days, when you include the rest leading up to and following the main endurance block. So, I decided to give it a try.

Which is where Tool comes in. I was supposed to ride 2:30 Friday and 3:00 Saturday. Due to the aforementioned weather, there was no way I was going to start out if it was raining that hard. So, to the trainer. And so as not to go crazy, slightly shortened sessions, with long Tempo intervals. There is no better music to ride Tempo to than Tool. The short songs are 5 1/2 minutes long. From there it's 8, 9, 10, 17 minutes. When your doing an hour long interval, having a nice steady build from the tunes makes a real difference. Plus the sound is so complex and layered that you can hear the same songs over again and always find some section or part that you didn't notice before. Very, very talented guys.

And when I could take that any more, I watched some Cowboy Beebop. Too fun. Speaking of Japanese animation, has anyone ever seen Kappa Mikey? He's an American cartoon character (heavy outlines, bright colors) working on an Anime cartoon show. As the theme song says, "lost in Japan". So I'm thinking I'm going to start the Kappa Mikey Keirin team. Let me know if you want to join. I'm sure we'll have t-shirts or socks or something. Maybe I can get Chris Hoy to join....