What's news?

Obviously everything was going as planned, right up until I figured out that I had Covid after I got back from Breck Epic.  I know it doesn't sound like me, but I had A PLAN.  In the lead up to Breck, I started doing shrooms about a month or so out.

What Shroom Sport is supposed to do:

What did I think it do?

I have to say, that's the best I've felt day in, day out at the Breck Epic.  I did mention that I limited my time above my lactate threshold while out on the course (instead of throwing pointless haymakers at clouds), but I'm also more than a decade older than I was the first time I did it in 2009.  

Mebbe after nine times of coming from 750' above sea level and riding at altitude with basically zero days to acclimate to 10,000'+  makes me a low level expert on what worked and didn't work (for me).  Each scoop/serving of Shroom Sport also has 23 grams of protein, making it that much easier to just drink it as a recovery drink every evening.  The taste was palatable enough (like a nutty milkshake) that I didn't have to force myself to drink it, although once I got Covid and everything tasted like pocket change, I was forcing myself to consume any liquid or solid for a few days.  

Even beer tasted bad.  Beer.

Jambalaya was okay tho.

That said, and with no better "plan" for the next one and a half months that I had "planned" for, I'm keeping the hammer down with a daily dose of Shroom Sport until the Font Flora Barnburner.

I did a lot of the right things for the first three or four days of Covid.  I was as productive as possible... from the couch.  

If you lie down amongst my laundry, you become my laundry.

I watched Syd and Macky's YouTube review of Covid.

Obviously, they are real "athletes" and had a coach to talk to and power meters with numbers to let them know how their bodies were actually reacting and everyone's got a different Covid story to tell at this point...

That didn't stop me from going down some dark and pointless roads.

I mean, fuck it.  Where there once was a grand plan, through Breck right up to the Shenandoah Mountain 100k and beyond, there is now no plan.  I had all the benefits of pre-Breck prep, five (supposed to be six) days of riding above 10,000', naturally boosted blood from a week up high, but then Covid... but with it "forced recovery" I woulda otherwise not taken...

So where does that leave me, other than with a (still) bad taste in my mouth?

Who even knows?  I rode my mountain bike a couple times towards the end of the week (after two days of not touching a bike and one short Sad Dad ride), and I didn't notice any spikes in my heart rate or unusually high heart rates at... what I call perceived (hard but not peak) efforts.  Also, my resting heart rate is pretty much where I started before I got sick.  Sure, I've had some coughing keeping me up at night, until I remember my doctor prescribed something to reduce that "tickle sensation," and then I take it and... okay.  I'm also tired, like fall fast asleep tired, after behaving like a normal human.  As in a dead-to-the-world hour long nap after I rode nineteen miles Saturday.

Since that leaves me with no clue how my body will act almost two weeks out from my first symptoms, and all my best plans and intentions are out the window, and because I've wanted to try the Epic EVO as a single speed since I got it, why not now?  Even if my body decides it doesn't wanna work on the climbs, at least I'll have the most fun possible coming down.

Mounted my not-so-awesome but what I had laying around bell to the right side so my thumb has something to do all day long.

By no means do I think 53 year old post-Covid me will have a shot against the likes of Johnny Hamboogers, who will be riding a similarly stupid bike, has just got done with the Great Divide and a SS win at the 300 mile Garvel Worlds, and is also one year older than my youngest kid.  He's even got a mullet now, and has passed out in a ditch, so obvs really leaning into the single speed culture.

This is not a long term goal nor a last ditch effort to fall in love with yet another full suspension shifty bike before throwing it in the virtual front yard with a for sale sign on it.

I still like this bike a lot, and I can't have that much overlap in my "quiver."  Things degreased and (where appropriate) sonic cleansed.  I've even already put a new cable on the shifter for when it all goes back together.*

When's that?

I'd say right after the Pisgah 55.5 K on October 1st.  Why not shit my dick off riding down Turkey Pen, Pilot Rock, and Black Mountain while I have this bike set up as a stupid single speed?  Then again, the first thing I did when I got back from Breck (before my positive Covid test) was to put the Vertigo Meatplow V.7 back together, clean it up, and get it ready for the Shenandoah Mountain 100k... and that worked out so well, right?

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.  I think Charlie Brown said that.

So unless things change... that's the plan.  Until I come up with another plan.

* TBH: If money were no object, I'd throw down for some AXS and make this as easy as a few turns of a wrench and the pop of a quick link.  That is, f I wanted to go back and forth down the road.  Which I don't know if I wanna do.  But it is a lot cheaper than my current fantasy, which at my age is sadly a lot less David Lee Roth video and more just a 53 year old who wants a lifted Mazda Miata or a slammed Suzuki Samurai.