Exercise Makes me Sick

My cold symptoms have returned!  Like in February, I am back to waking up every morning unable to swallow, then hacking up a gigantic green booger.  It's unpleasant, to say the least.

And I'm wondering if it's a result of "overtraining".  Now, Bruce scoffed at me recently when I suggested that my sudden immune system failure (after years of never getting sick) could be from overtraining.  I'm barely training at all, let alone overtraining.  But my reasoning isn't that wacky.  I read in this book:

...that overtraining can happen to anyone (even schmucks like me) because it isn't just the training that causes the immune system to be run down, but the cumulative life stress of the trainee in question.  Admittedly, I don't handle stress well and I generally use my down time to re-charge.  Lately, I've spent a lot more of my down time exercising than ever before.  I've also taken on more responsibility at work.  I feel stretched out, like "butter scraped over too much bread" (-Bilbo Baggins).

The other factor is that we went for a road ride on Friday afternoon.  The weather was gorgeous, the road was dry, and I felt really good for the whole ride.  Then I got sick.  I know correlation does not equal causation and all that, but I really feel like if I push myself past my limits my body won't respond well.  And, unfortunately, my limits don't seem very high at the moment.

(Training Techniques for Cyclists also gave me a few other training gems.  It's a short book - I read it in one sitting - but I thought it was useful.)

Why Does Everyone Pick on Poor Portland?

Both PZ Myers and BikeSnob have made fun of hipsters from Portland this week (granted, BikeSnob always makes fun of hipsters from Portland, but still).  I wonder, could these two intelligent and witty bloggers in fact be the same person?

  

See?  They both have very suspicious looking beards and part their hair on the left side.  You'll note that the PZ disguise features grey dye in the beard, glasses, and a pretentiously Portlandish shoulder bag that BikeSnob would never be caught dead in.

It's a clever trick, but I'm onto him.  Whoever he is.

Warm Fuzzies

There is a lot of warm fuzzy bike feelings in the air.  I think this might be a direct result of the spring-ish weather that has been around for the past few days.  Up here in the north, we've been cooped up indoors for the better part of five months, and now we're ready to get outside and enjoy it (even though it's only 10 degrees C, which would keep us indoors at any other time of year).  Many of us are choosing to enjoy the outdoors via bicycle, which is an excellent idea. 

Perhaps it's just a result of "like attracts like" that I seem to be surrounded by so many other bike-minded people.  However, if I allow my optimism to run rampant, I have to admit that it seems like our city might be becoming more bike-friendly than ever before, and that perhaps cycling is experiencing a resurgence in popularity here.

For example, our local bike shop is once again putting on the Trek $30 for 20.  Basically, you keep track of how much you bike to work and they give you a $30 gift card for every 20 rides.  I participated last year and it helped to motivate me to continue bike commuting throughout the summer.  Plus, I bought my first pair of baggy mountain bike shorts with the proceeds!

Also, a while back our city had a workshop about how to love our city and make it a better place called "Love GP".  There were two suggestions for community building projects that received $500 in funding and one of them was a bike takeover.  So now I've joined up with the Grande Fondo committee to plan something bike-alicious for the community.  It's pretty cool that a bike event was chosen out of all the great ideas presented at the Love GP workshop. 

But who doesn't like riding a bike?  It's just nice.