Extreme Momentum

You’ve probably had friends or coworkers come down with “the plague”. It’s not the real yersinia pestis, it’s actually just the influenza virus. I’ve been trying to figure out for the past week what’s been going on with me. Last Friday, I got the really bad sinus pain everyone has gotten but I felt better. Then this past Friday, I started with the hacking cough people have been getting, however, I still felt good. Yesterday, I got really tired and felt as if I had a mild fever. Today, my cough went away, but I still feel tired. Weird. I’ve been ingesting thousands of mg of vitamin C a day, and I don’t know if that made a diffrence. All I can do is wait and see what happens.

So, how does the influenza virus infect our cells? Here’s an animation from the Rediscovering Biology textbook.

Let’s see…

On Monday, I had to decide…do I ride the trainer…again…or do I freeze outside? I chose the latter and hit the lake for a tempo ride.  Lots of layers, but mentally it helped.  Thankfully, the next FEW days (note emphasis on few) were warmer.

I did my first 2×20 workout last night in the TT position.  I now see why my training plan had me at only 90% threshold, rather than 100%.  My legs were fried, and had to modify the workout.  Different muscle groups and harder breathing. I’m glad to start going hard in this new aero position now that TTing season is almost here.

And, finally today…the weather just plain sucked.  I was pedaling home into a snow/sleet with a strong headwind.  Had it been January, I wouldn’t have cared.  We even had a thundersnow.  Aren’t we supposed to have T-storms right now? As the WGN Weather Blog stated, “It’ll get warm.  Honest.”  I hope they’re right.

We had about 6 inches of snow in Chicago on Good Friday, which was also the first day of spring. It was a wet and sticky snow that really was beautiful. I had felt like crap in the morning and opted not to go in to work, because I thought I was getting the flu. Cabin fever set in later in the day, so I decided to go for an easy ride on my CX bike to see how I would feel.

I also wanted a chance to try out my Oregon Scientific ATC2K helmet cam that I got for Christmas. I opted for the handlebar mount. Check out the footage below for a brief 2.5 minute highlight of my ride. Included is my white knuckle descent of the hors categorie Cricket Hill. Warning it is not for the faint of heart. Riding my CX was a lot of fun. There were a few drifts where the snow was above my bottom bracket and I was literally pedaling through the snow. Good times, but I can’t wait for warmer weather.