My grandfather passed away on Sunday night.
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I once again learned a new appreciation for my wife. She left town for the weekend. She and her mom took a long weekend away. Certainly my wife needed and deserved the break. But I am glad that she is back.

Normally when she goes away, I am happy to have her back because: (1) I don’t like to cook, (2) I don’t like to do laundry, or (3) the kids are difficult to manage. This time, those didn’t really apply. Cooking wasn’t hard. We had lots of plans, and several of them involved meals, so I only had to cook one dinner, and prepare a breakfast and a lunch. Not hard at all. The kids are old enough to help load the dishwasher, so the dishes weren’t a problem either. I simply did not do laundry this weekend. There was no time to, with all that happened.
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It has been too long since I trained. It has been a full week. Wednesday and Thursday were busy days with nighttime activities that prevented riding. I began to feel sick on Thursday and I spent all day Friday in bed. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, I had the kids at home, while my wife was out of town. We had full days on Saturday and Sunday. By Monday night, I was exhausted and still recovering from being sick. I needed more sleep.

So, tonight, I finally got back on the trainer. I really do need to get out onto real roads one of these days. I rode for an hour. The goal was to continue building an aerobic base. Once I get to the end of February, I will start increasing the intensity. I will have March, April, and May to build fitness and speed. I can taper for the first two weeks of June before I do BRAG.
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I got to train tonight, even though it is Valentine’s Day. My wife had things to do on the computer — so, she sent me out to train for an hour in the garage.

The hour consisted of:
Warm-up 11 minutes, Avg. HR 104
30 minute time trial attempt:
First 10 minutes: Avg. HR 138
Last 20 minuets: Avg. HR 162
Cool Down: 19 minutes, Avg. HR 133
Overall session: 1:00:00, Avg. HR 138, Max. HR 171.

The purpose of the workout was to come up with an initial estimate of my Lactate Threshold HR. According to Friel, the avg. HR over the last 20 minutes of a 30 minute time trial is a close approximation of LTHR. This would put my estimate at 162. But, I don’t think I went hard enough for it to work. I think I need to go harder over the first 10 minutes, and then try to maintain and see if my LTHR is closer to 170. According to my HRM, my theoretical HR Max. is 186. 162 is about 87% HR Max.

I was listening to Piper again. This was his second sermon on Rom. 1:19 (?) about God pouring out his wrath on mankind because they have denied the creator. He spent a significant portion talking about the philosophy of natural evolution and the intelligent design debate. This is a sermon that was given in 1998 or 1999, before the current controversy over intelligent design. His point was that evolutionary theory is one way that humankind denies God.

He then stepped back and made the best part of the sermon in 4 steps.
1. Everyone is made by God.
2. Everyone knows of God, even if they deny him.
3. The problems that we see around us–i.e., crime, homelessness, illness, poverty, drug addiction–are the evidence of God’s wrath being poured out.
4. If we don’t reach out to the people around us, then we are denying God by denying his creation.

I think that I have made his points in the same basic ideas that he made them. He made the sermons much more eloquently.

Tags: training, cycling, bicycle, family, Joe Friel, Cyclist’s Training Bible, wife, John Piper, Romans, Christianity, sermon, Bible, sin, valentines day,

I am a slacker. I just posted goals on Thursday. I now have to admit that on Friday and Saturday, I have not met my goals. I have not ridden yesterday or today. Now it is 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, and I am not riding tonight/this morning.

Need to get back to more serious training next week.

Tags: training, bicycle, cycling, bike, goals, slacker, lazy