I woke up at 4:15a.m this morning with the intention of going to my first morning run in Fukuda but within about 5 seconds decided to go back to sleep.
Feeling guilty about that most of the day I did a lot. Well, a lot more than I usually do.
1: Home center. More pebbles for the garden 180kgs. Some 1.8m wooden boards, screws and brackets to make a divider low wall in the dog pen. Puppies one side, Mum’s resting area a hop over to the other.
2: Filled about 6 garbage bags with rubbish from around the house and garden.
3: Built the wall divider.
4: Watched a movie.
5: Washed the dishes.
6: Walked the big dogs.
7: Had a chat with both next door neighbors.
8: Bought a lot of food for family (includes dogs). There is this shop near here selling the biggest Aussie rump steaks I have ever seen for about 600 yen each ($6) Ive been stocking up on those. Lunar gets some too.
9: Cleaned out the bicycle room.
10: Cleaned my racing bike.
11:Sushi and steak for lunch.
Not a good idea to ride tonight as our training course is on one of the more famous cherry blossom viewing areas in Chiba and they light it up at night. We therefore had to be careful of drivers who were looking up at the trees rather than the road. Usually there are very few cars. Tonight there were many. Police hiding around a corner booking people running red lights and people walking everywhere. Some drunk.
The start pace has been faster than normal and with the traffic a few of us had to stop and got dropped in the warm-up laps. Luckily we don’t count those for the final sprint, so I just dawdled till they came back and made sure, no matter what, not to get dropped again.
After about lap 5 the pace was still frantic and traffic was bad but I was determined to stay near the front.
At one point around lap 7 a car came around a corner in front of us then stopped mid way. This split us all up again and 2 at the front escaped. I followed and the rest were stuck behind the car ( I guess). After about a km I managed to get to the two and then we worked together to make sure none of the others could get back to us. Somewhere with more car problems we dropped one and picked up somebody we were lapping. Was hard to figure out who was who and when I looked down and saw we had been going exactly an hour I knew that ‘officially’ it would be the last lap. Two out of the three of us had figured this out and I just sat on the other guys tail for the sprint and pipped him on the post. He did most of the hard work for the night but I think I did my fair share as well. I’m not good at pulling but on stretches that suited me I did my best.
A few things I did to improve today. I washed my bike this afternoon and cleaned the chain properly three times with the special chain cleaning device I have. It was filthy. The grease just kept on dripping off for about 30 minutes. I also took off my old wobbly 6 year old Bontrager wheels and put on my best racing Cosmics. They really make a difference. I hope I never break these babies. I still want to raise the handle bars so I can bend my elbows easily and reduce my frontal surface area. I always assumed the lower the handle bars the better but the more I think about it I need to keep my arms parallel to the road not reaching down increasing the wind resistance. My lower back is straining a bit as well. I should be able to keep it flatter with the handle bars higher as well. Why didn’t I think of this before?
The 60km I did yesterday and the 60 on Sunday were good warm ups. I think I’M BACK!.
Going to hit the gym tomorrow and relax more than anything else. May go for a swim, sit in the massage chair, have a sauna and a hot bath. Work meetings on Thursday and an afternoon lesson. The dogs will be on their own for most of the day. (That is if my son sleeps all day). Full back to work schedule from the 15th. My eldest son will be home until late afternoon everyday so hoping he helps till his younger brother or I come home.