DanBailey.net

The Off-Season Plague seems to have vanished. By yesterday evening, all my symptoms except the swollen glands were gone. Today, those seem to have departed as well. This is a good thing. I’ll definitely be taking a spin on the stationary trainer for about 30 minutes today…but that has to wait until after I get some errands done. I need to go get some champagne for tonight, a new shirt-and-tie to wear to a job interview on Wednesday, and must follow-up on some email/SMS messages today.

So yeah. Hoping I can resume training shortly.

So, I think I’m getting better. The fever seems to be gone, as does the sore throat. These are both good things, as I am sick to death of laying on the couch, drinking 2-3 liters of Gatorade a day, and eating chicken soup. The glands in my neck are still swollen like hell and tender to the touch. (Note, despite the swollen glands, my tongue has not turned black, so we can rule out bubonic plague. I know this disappoints some of you, but whatever.)

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Woke up this morning with one of the worst colds ever. Not sure if it’s the flu, or what, but wow. High fever, swollen glands, nasty sore throat, and the beginnings of a cough. I’ve already taken steps to alleviate the symptoms — 600mg of ibuprofen for the pain in the throat, a couple of cough drop/throat lozenge thingies, and running the humidifier. I’ve also got a half-gallon of Gatorade and about 1500mg of vitamin C sitting here that I need to ingest.

I usually get like this once a year. Funny how it this year it actually waited until the off-season. I’m pretty happy about that, even though I feel like hammered dogshit.

So some searching around, and I finally found a Wordpress template I like enough to modify for use on this site. Some minor graphics tweaks are done, and the next step is to get that little pile of photos in the upper left corner to randomize. My PHP coding is rusty, due to some dalliance with Ruby on Rails, so that’s kinda back-burner for now. I did get Akismet up and running, so I shouldn’t be inundated with comment-spam anymore. Here’s hoping, anyway.

In the realm of the bike, I have finally gotten an arrangement made with Zipp re: the ongoing issues with the rear wheel in my 404 wheelset. I’m dropping that at the UPS store today so it can go and be fixed. I also started ordering the parts for my singlespeed mountain bike, which is going to have to be put on pause, as I (along with several others) lost my job on Monday the 3rd.

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• I think I found a WP template that I am going to modify to create the template for this site. Pretty cool.
• Offseason project #1: pursuit bike. No question about this.
• Offseason project #2: single-speed mountain bike? Many questions about this — need? 26″ or 29″? Mix of the two? Huh.
• I still owe a write-up on the Critical Mass stupidity.
• Also, I choke down way too many pills every day. Last count? Eighteen. A dozen and a half pills. All in the name of better health and more optimum performance. (Yes, everything’s legal and above-board.)

My first run of the off-season last night and I discovered a bug in the Nike+iPod software. At the end of about 2.75 miles of slogging, the iPod showed 4.44 miles completed. Once I uploaded, the data on the Nike+ site matched the treadmill’s data.

The upside to this is that my max heart rate was higher than the sports lab said I’d be able to do, and I felt fine. The downside to it all, is that I’m still a woefully inefficient runner.

Click for a larger view…

Max Heart Rate: 178
Avg. Heart Rate: 152

I’m still not fast, but I really enjoyed myself and felt awesome.