Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
19
Oct 15

Just some riding shots

Got out and rode a bit this weekend, putting in 40 easy miles and still trying to figure out where I left my legs. Maybe everything will come back this week, I figure. If not I’ll have to drive over to Georgia and see if I dropped them somewhere.

This is one of the big sprints in town.

My app says I only got up to 27.4 miles per hour. So I’m still tired and sore and slow. Or, normal.

I found a new piece of scenery. Turns out there is a pond at town creek. You have to go behind the park and down some paths to find it. But the view is worth it, even as the sun was going down. This was just to add a few turns to the crankset while running an errand.

You go down this hill, it bends a little to the left and then straightens out and turns back to the right and then you take the hard right into another hill. When there’s a car behind you you can actually handle this little stretch and create some distance between you, which is pretty neat.

The same hill, just looking up the other way.

I got to run an errand on my bike. I never get to do that, because I’m never here for it. Doing it felt good, comforting, somehow. Of course it was up the big hill.

Alabama / cycling / Friday / history / photo — Comments Off
16
Oct 15

Remembering the Comers

At lunch today I was reading a forum about race recovery. (And, I promise, I’ll stop talking about this just as soon as the novelty of something I did last Saturday still leaves me feeling wiped out wears off.) The general consensus was that we don’t always know why recovery can take this long or that long. There are things you can do to help speed the process along.

Of course I’m doing very few of those things, it turns out. Maybe next time.

The other consensus was that the duration of your recovery has to do with your overall general fitness. When you think about it, that seems both logically true and annoyingly insulting. I just swam a mile and rode 56 and ran 13. Let’s say I’m in pretty decent shape. Except it is going to take me more days than the average bear to recover.

I did ride for a bit this evening, just plodding along at a slow speed. I think I managed to get into the 20s about four times. So it was a nice, easy 20-mile ride through town. I went up one of the parking decks, just for the view:

That’s Comer Hall, where I spent a lot of my time in undergrad. It is named after Braxton Bragg Comer, the 33rd governor of Alabama, and, later, an appointed senator. Serving in the first quarter of the 20th century he would be considered a progressive. He lowered railroad rates, came out for child labor laws, was a prohibitionist and, also was a big proponent of education, health improvements and conservation. Of course he also served in a time of poll taxes and other segregationist strategies. He went into the governor’s office just six years after blacks were disenfranchised and the Republican party was effectively tamped out in Alabama, something which would take roughly 80 years for the GOP to overcome. Like so many other people and things in the south, the industrialist Comer’s is a tricky legacy.

At home, he and his wife had nine children. They’re all buried in Elmwood, near their parents. One of the sons, Donald, also became an industrialist in his father’s footsteps and would run Avondale Mills while Braxton was in public service. To be of a certain age and from a certain swath of the south and to hear Avondale Mills is to understand the impact of the Comer family on the region. But, then, history is funny like that. When textiles moved away and the economy shifted and commercial impact took on another face, who would know of the legacy of the Comers or their mills or mines? Ans when you think of that you have to wonder, what have we unknowingly forgotten?

Allie, by the way, is very interested in reading some of Comer’s speeches:

photo / running / Thursday / triathlon — Comments Off
15
Oct 15

And I ran, I ran through a 5K

I took this picture in the morning, not knowing how prescient it would be:

Because this afternoon, when I ran for the first time since Saturday’s race, my legs felt like that same expression for about a half hour.

It is sort of a “Is that right?” mixed with a healthy dash of “Oh, really?”

So maybe I’ll feel like myself next week.

photo / triathlon / Wednesday / winded-intellectual property — Comments Off
14
Oct 15

Now fully in recovery mode

You have a lot of time to think when you’re trying to actively not think about how you’re torturing your body for 70.3 miles. Somewhere along the way you can give up thinking about times. For most of us they are just arbitrary goals anyway. And pretty quickly I got down to the “Next power pole — next shade on the asphalt — next step” mantra. Breaking things down into increasingly smaller goals works for a while. After that I just start noticing things. And then my brain turns into what I can only describe most closely as that fuzzy world between being awake and being asleep. Oh, the things you think on your pillowcase. Or on a warm race day.

I was jogging through a wooded exurban landscape and looking at the trees, this was probably around mile nine or so, and thinking Why is the phrase ‘You can’t see the forest for the trees’?

Shouldn’t it be forest for the leaves?

When we came through the finish line the announcer reads off your name and your hometown and cheers you on. it is a nice little touch. “You haven’t been forgotten out there for the better part of eight hours!”

We went back to the finish line for that traditional photograph and the guy says “Hey, weren’t y’all from Auburn? Did you hear about Nick Chubb?”

Dude, we’ve been dragging it up and down this course. And at mile 10 of my run was when the Georgia game was getting ready to start. I know this because they were packing up the aid stations to go inside and watch. So, no, I didn’t hear. But what about him?

He just thought we’d like to know. Not that it will matter in the larger scheme of things. He’s a great running back. Hope he heals up nicely. But it is interesting how football just weaves itself into everything.

Still so tired. But at least I’m not eating everything in site today. Maybe I’ll do something tomorrow. I’ll go run. Yeah. That’ll be good.

food / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
13
Oct 15

In praise of Cheez-Its

I don’t eat these things. You could put boxes of them in our cabinets and I’d move them all out of the way on the off chance that there’s something else behind them that I’d actually like to enjoy.

Four miles into my run this weekend, some 61 miles into my day, I had a handful at an aid station.

And they were easily the most delicious things I’ve ever put in my mouth.

We walked a few miles yesterday, just to move around. I remain a little stiff, but in good shape. Just completely tired. This will last another day or two. But I was thinking about those Cheez-Its when I saw that box in the cabinet this morning.

You eat a light, nutritious breakfast before a race if you can. You eat what you’re accustomed to, really. I had some toast and fruit and jelly and honey. You don’t have anything in the swim, obviously. Somewhere along the way in your training you realize that really the entire experience is about fuel and water. So you have to regularly keep yourself in good shape with both. So you drink a lot of water on the bike and you start eating there, too. There were two or three water stops on the cycling loop and I started eating Shot Bloks and various energy gels. I do those about every 45 minutes, meaning I had … quite a few. (Because I’m slow. Have I mentioned that?)

That goes on through the 56 mile ride and throughout the half marathon, as well. So by mile four I was tired of lukewarm water and gels and bloks. At the little tent at the four mile mark they had a giant bowl of Cheez-Its. Just for variety at that point, because I’m hours into this by then, I had the best cracker snack ever.

Reminded me of the Eddie Murphy bit: If you’re starving and someone throws you a cracker you’ll be like “That’s the best cracker I ever ate in my life! That ain’t no regular cracker was it? What was that a Saltine? That was delicious. That wasn’t no Saltine, that was a Ritz! That wasn’t a Ritz?”

Everything tastes like that after a big workout, though.