How Much Fitness Can You Cram Into 27 Days????

Well, I guess I’m going to find out.  On May 28th, I and several friends will begin the ride to celebrate (lament?) my 50th year on this earth….the problem is that I’m not in any kind of shape to actually ride from here to Tahoe, so I’ll spend the rest of this month trying to get in to the kind of shape I need to be in to pull this off.

It was actually supposed to start last weekend with a 60 mile ride up in Chico with my sister and brother. Every year we get together for the Chico Wildflower ride and do the 60 mile “flatflower” loop which is a lot of fun, has gorgeous scenery and definitely has THE best food of all the organized rides I do. Unfortunately, my sister has an overuse injury from tennis and big back to back tournaments the next two weekends so she was hoping to take it easy. This combined with the fact that my brother hasn’t ridden at all this year and my basic laziness convinced us all just to do the 30 mile loop.
It was a great weekend though and hanging out with them and my brother in law the night before and all day on Sunday was way more fun than chalking up some random number for mileage.

So, this week I’ll try to get my act together and log some decent miles and elevation in an effort to coerce my body into some sort of shape by the end of the month. Tonight I’ll start with a ride up Mt Diablo. Granted, this isn’t much mileage, but it is almost 4,000 ft of climbing and the suffering that goes along with it should if nothing else act as penance for a winter of TV and couch surfing.

I’ll rest tomorrow, ride again on Thursday and then this weekend I’m going to try to do back to back rides. Saturday morning I’ll get out for an early ride and hopefully do at least 50 miles. Sunday we’ll be in Napa for the annual Tour de Cure which is another low mileage, but really fun ride we do with family and friends.

I guess the good news is that the anniversary of my half century on earth proves that if nothing else, at least I’m consistent. Its not that I procrastinate, I just prefer to put myself in positions where I’m forced to rise to the occasion…

One of my favorite quotes about procrastination is - "I love deadlines. Especially the whooshing sound they make as they pass by." ~ Douglas Adams