If I had a hammer, I'd hammer out an incoherent blerhg in the morning

Three day Christmas weekend.  As one who doesn't choose to travel for the holidays, the best thing I usually do with all this spare time on my hands is ride my bike and clean out the gutters.  That said, I didn't like the idea of crawling around on my roof when it's in the teens outside, and I'm doing (almost) everything I can do to respect my health and get over the remaining symptoms from my cold.

Not much riding outdoors, but some of this mebbe:

For better or worse, that's my setup.  Some shelf/stand thing my neighbors had thrown out.  The TV that was previously relegated to our bedroom that doesn't power on with the remote anymore.  Two end tables that The Pie financed from Value City Furniture back in 1991 stacked on top of each other.  The Lasko fan I bought to replace my stalwart, decades old air mover that died at this past year's Trans-Sylvania Epic.  Last but not least, the Elite Direto XR-T smart trainer that found its way to me last year but never saw much use until now. 

So yeah, not riding outside and hurting my lungs in the cold, dry air... but I can totally sit in my house at 64° and use some of the large amounts of free time I'm fortunate enough to have doing something to make myself a better/fitter human person.  I'd told myself that I'd only Zwift for thirty to forty minutes of intervals a coupla/few nights a week, but desperate times call for even more desperate measures.

I'm not much of a planner when it comes to these things.  Group ride?  Sure.  Who the hell are these people?  Why am I getting "thumbs up" things for not doing anything necessarily spectacular?  Why are they chatting like they know each other?  Should I even be here (in a virtual sense)?  Why did I even jump in a group ride if I hardly even rode with anyone, or when I did, I felt like I just walked up to two guys having a conversation in a bar and just stood there staring at them... with a booger in my nose?

Either way, almost an hour and a half, and I didn't wake up coughing that night from the effort... so worth it?

Next day, some ride I member Dahn mentioning when I asked him about things to do that hurt... which I thought I'd never do because it can't be done (by a casual athlete) in under forty minutes, Alpe de Zwift on the Road to Sky.

I knew it was a "long climb," so I started at a reserved pace and slowly increased my watts and stuff with each switchback.  I enjoyed the undulations and the need to shift and stand up because the bike... well, because that's how smart trainers work.

I'm an idiot tho in some respects.  As an outdoor cyclist, I can't imagine climbing almost 3,500 feet without enjoying the ride back down the mountain.  I don't even know what that means when you're TV cycling, but I did it anyways.  And... to be as stupid as possible, I tore myself apart trying to go over fifty miles an hour on the way back down.

And failed.

But somehow along the way of doing downhill intervals tryna break fifty miles an hour when I shoulda been cooling down after climbing for over an hour, I hit over six hundred watts.

I do not know if that is bad or good for a many four apples tall that is getting over a cold.  I still don't know what my FTP truly is, and I only have a limited grasp on what that would mean if I did know or what I could do with that information if I take the time and make the effort to acquire it.

What I do know is that I got over three hours of pedaling in over two days, and that woulda been no hours if I didn't have this setup and had I stuck to my commitment to NOT ride outside recreationally in the name of getting my health back to where it should be.  I'm actually amazed at what a distraction Zwift can be when compared to riding the dumb trainer that I bought for The Pie whilst watching movies (I did that... once).  I honestly don't think I ever woulda spent $500+ on a smart trainer because I never woulda thought it could be somewhat engaging (with minimal effort spent setting it up and learning how to sorta use it).  

Three or so hours wasn't close to the amount of time I had on my hands this weekend, so obvs there was some visiting with the few members of my family that live in Charlotte.

Boppit was either hiding from company in the corner of my bike room with his eyes closed thinking that meant they can't see him (I've tried this), or he was concerned that I walked away from the halfway rebuilt garvel drooper on my bench.

I mean, the intention is to actually ride the garvel bike OUTSIDE when I can or have to because the trails are closed.

With so much time to kill, I was super stressed when I woke up Saturday morning with the power out at 7:00AM, as I'd planned on sonic cleansing all the things I could.  Yeth, it's kind of a privileged place to be in a tiny house with a gas fireplace and water heater, so the biggest inconveniences of a power outage is no internet, TV, Zwift, or sonic cleaners.  We are blessed.

I continued to avoid the gutter cleansing and instead stayed inside and organized the two junk drawers (do we need this five+ year expired Costco card?), tossed out decades old spices we're never going to use, cleaned under the fridge and stove (my grandpa would be proud that I finally used the ramrod from the muzzle loader he built for me), and straightened up the coozie drawer.

Anyways, I bailed kinda last minute (hour?) on riding outside with dem bois on a Sad Dad­­™ on Monday because... *

I've only called in sick as a bike messenger once in my life, and that's because I passed out tryna get ready to ride 13 miles to work in November '96 with a flu.  I did have to call out for Covid because "rules," and respect for other's health, but I digress.  My point being that I let pride make my decisions, and I've done all manner of things whilst sick that only served to make me sicker.  Winter camping, New Year's Day ride down Heartbreak Ridge in the snow, not skipping a Winter Shart Tarck race, etc.  The list goes on.  

Despite wanting to ride outside if even for just the sake of my mental health, there's something to acknowledging that it's linked to physical health as well.  My job and lack of desire to ever drive to work give me plenty of chances to be "hard," so whatever to bundling up and freezing my dick off for IG points.  I'm back on the bike, commuting and working four days this week (and back and forth to trivia night), so I'll get plenty of outdoor time soon enough... and hope to make the most of the next three day weekend by being outside as much as possible (to include quite possibly hunching around on my roof cleaning gutters FML).

* I ended up doing a short (1+ hour) race, and despite being totally honest about my abilities regarding how many watts per kilo I thought I'd average, I got my doors completely blown off.  It didn't help when my old PC shut down because for some reason I changed the battery saving mode to "fuck all."  It started with me getting dropped from the main field, hanging with the next group of mid-packers for as long as I could before chasing a break, exploding, falling completely off, riding alone, dropping back to the next pack, losing power on my PC, and then finishing alone.  Such fun.  Just like real racing.