Thursday, August 9, 2012

Here's the thing about living in Boulder : Everyone looks like they just finished running a marathon, and most of the people here probably did. Road bikes are everywhere, and I'm not talking your average, commuter-friendly recreational cyclist kind of roadie. I'm talking a bike worth more than the BMW to which it is affixed. Of course, you'll find plenty of bikes under people, too. There's even a bike share program, where the Boulder smugness is mandatory but the spandex? Totally optional.

It's kind of surreal, actually.

The point here is that there exists great pressure to be fit when living in Boulder, and greater pressure still when competing on the bike. You have to get up every morning, shove some vitamin A down your gullet, followed by  vitamin D, and maybe some vitamin E, until you've spelled the mnemonic sentence, "A MAN IS BAKED IN YOUR BAD CAB." You have to eat nothing but microgreens and swear off consuming anything white because it will certainly cause death in mere hours. You have to find the discipline and the drive and the inner strength and the sheer GUTS to go procure your human growth hormone, your EPO...

Wait, what???


Yeah.  
The aforementioned publication had a nice story about David Anthony, a 41 year old CAT3 cyclist who got popped for doping. He's not from Boulder, by the way. The idea, however, is that his story is probably more common than anyone realizes, and the fact of the matter is that the list of cyclists banned from the sport is filled with names no one would ever know. More Anthonys than Schlecks. Still, it begs the obvious question: Why is a 41 year old CAT3 cyclist such a douche?

Anyway, as a diabetic I have to shoot up enough as it is, and I'm way too poor to shell out the kind of cash required to dope...so I'm stuck with the "exercise regimen." If that sounds stuffy and lame - like "meeting agenda" - well, that's because stuffy and lame is what I do best. Ask my trainer. His job is to listen to me complain about exercise, give me a little pep talk, and shoot me with tranquilizer darts if I try to crawl away on my hunger-weak limbs when I hear him say the word, "intervals." I loathe intervals. I know they are supposed to make me stronger and faster...but if I had a gold brick for every time I pleaded with my trainer to skip them, I could build a mighty fortress that would most certainly get ransacked by bandits since gold bricks are bound to attract that kind of criminal element, unless I had ninjas guarding it...ninjas with a fierce loyalty to me who also were willing to accept gold bricks as payment...

I digress.

I'm usually pretty good about avoiding excuses, making time to workout, whatever. But right now, it's a little tougher. Dennis just had major back surgery, and has been laid up for the last week, loopy on all kinds of fun drugs that make him say things he might later regret. The kids are home for two more weeks. Running a business takes up a shit-ton of time. It’s a little like being in school: there’s always something you ought to be doing and, at any given moment, I’m usually not doing most of those things because I’m wasting time or thinking about something else or procrastinating or training. And when I’m not training, I’m sucking up to my kids so they will still speak to me when they are teenagers and will make sure to find a nice, clean nursing facility for me in my old age.

It's making me a bit crazy, honestly, and I've been stress-eating my way through about 8000lbs of Cheezy Kale Chips (made without cheese, by the way) to get through it. Because that's how we roll here in Boulder.

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