I am attending a pre-dawn spin class on Tuesdays and Thursdays now because it’s too cold and rainy to ride my bike outside very much. As part of it, the coach has you do a lactate threshhold test (LT) to guage what kind of power you can output over two 20 minute periods with a two minute rest in between. This number will help you judge how much resistance to use on the bike and will be compared with the numbers from a second test in march or some time to see how you have improved over the winter.

My output number was around 210, which compared to highly trained pro riders is just above what a kitten with the flu can do.

So, I’m pissed and I want to retake my LT test so my workouts over the next two cold months won’t be less hardcore than they need to be. I can do better. My coach said I can try again.

I’m screwed anyway as a cyclist, because my power-to-weight ratio (PWR) at 6′ 210lbs (95kg) is an extremely sucky 2.21. TdF pros have a PWR of something like 5.61 or twice what my wattage for 20 minutes is.

Granted, those guys weigh more like 150 lbs (68kg), so at my 210 watts my PWR would be more like 3.08 which is more like the ability of an intermediate male rider. Or a kitten on steroids. Maybe an adolescent cat on steroids.

So, as long as we don’t have to go up any hills, I am as fast as most people, but Tour riders are still twice as strong and weigh 3/4 as much. Which explains why I was able to midpack all of my races this year. Among beginner athletes, I’m about average or a tiny bit above.

And I have to get up in 5 hours and head to my Thursday spin and suck it up and get something more like 250. So I won’t fail at life and eventually end up living under a bridge. Because that’s how important cycling is and how important my ironman race is.

I am tired all the time from being at rehearsals until 11pm and waking up at 430am to go spin and then going back to bed for a few minutes. I feel like I am never really rested, nor is my stomach ever really full. It’s very uncomfortable. I’m irritable.

I wish I could take a long shower and go to sleep for a few days and then wake up and ride a dinosaur and meet a girl and eat a steak and go to a party. Instead it’s been raining for weeks and I have a bruise on my face and it’s cold and I am sleepy and I have to be up in 5 hours to punish my legs.

Sometimes I feel like I am being dragged by a rope behind a boat in the dark water with only gulps of air from time to time as I bob to the surface, and all I can do is hang on to the string I am being dragged by.

Having said all that, I know I will never give up.

Someday I hope to understand myself.

Last night I went to the Thrasher’s game and had a ball. A friend of mine had tickets to a suite so there was free food and free booze (even though I didn’t drink any). It was really cool, especially since I hadn’t been to a hockey game in Atlanta yet.

The game went into overtime, and then into sudden death, and after all that we finally won. I feel lucky that I got to see a lot of hockey. There were a couple of fights, lots of loud noises, hot girlies shoveling the ice every few minutes, and even a pair of flamethrowers that spit huge gouts of flame when our team scored. What more can you ask for?

Now I’m awake at ten till seven on a saturday preparing to go run 6 miles with my TnT people. I have a headache, a sore throat, and I didn’t sleep well at all.

Yesterday I received in the mail a copy of the seven habits of highly effective people which I ordered with a gift certificate that I got for christmas, only to discover that I had somehow mistakenly ordered the miniature hardcover edition. It’s smaller than my cell phone. I don’t even know if it contains the whole book or not.

Life is a strange thing.

I’m reading A Thousand Splendid Suns right now, by Khaled Hosseini. I feel like not reading it anymore.

My problem with it is that it’s highly disconnected with reality, and the main theme of the book seems to be that men are horrible assholes. What a thing to want to demonstrate. Sometimes humans do shitty things to one another. Reading this book is like living in a world where everyone is negative all the time. It makes me feel disquieted and upset and irritable.

The book first lost me when a girl of fifteen started standing up for herself emotionally to all the evil men in her life that were screwing her over, displaying strength of character that not even adults usually have. There is just no way.

I know I’m supposed to suspend my disbelief and just go along with the story in order to get the author’s meaning, like a parable, but these leaps of faith are of a size that ruins the Afghani perspective I was trying to get out of this book for me.

Oh well, Khaled Hosseini.

My street is the quietest I have ever heard it. Its very cold outside.

I missed the daytime entirely by alternately sleeping, talking on the phone in bed, and vomiting. Right now my sheets are in the dryer. I guess I had fun… who can say?

I am ready to climb forth from my epic holiday slack and start the long train up to my ironman race. Not exercising and eating like shit has made me restless, bored, and feeling pretty crappy all round. I have no idea how I ever lived like this full time. I feel insane and fidgety.

I am supposed to appear on TV in a little over a week with an artist whose material I haven’t learned yet.

I’ve only been awake for about five hours and I intend to go to bed soon.

That’s what’s up with me.