Every third week in the training schedule is a recovery week. Supposedly the training gets easier that week so your body recovers from tough training in the other two weeks. The only difference I see is that Friday is a day off, not just an optional day off; the other days seem just as hard.

When you are training at the level it takes to do an Ironman race, bodily functions become an integral part of the training process. So if this part on human activities grosses you out just skip through it, hit the delete button, and spare yourself nightmares.

This part of the year, from now until mid-June, is allergy season for me. After mid-June things settle down but now I’m in the middle of a constantly runny nose. That coupled with the cold weather on the bike rides and runs and I look like our kids when they were babies with snot everywhere. You know I’m not as dainty as many in our group and am not averse to blowing “snot rockets” to clear the nasal passages; in fact I do it all the time.

Lately I’ve not been sleeping well. I wake up at 2 in the morning and just can’t get back to sleep so I think about everything under the sun. Most of it is time wasted but every once in a while I strike an epiphany and this is the one for this week. My nose is running while I lay there so I lay on my back so I won’t drip on my pillow. Of course the mucous (snot) runs down my throat and, to put it socially acceptable, my body reprocesses it.

I’ve been trying to lose some weight over the winter and have gotten down to the mid 180s but I’ve been in a plateau stage where I’ve stayed at the same weight for two weeks. I’ve been hungry this past week and, since Jean has all kinds of snacks around for temptation, I’ve eaten everything in sight. I got on the scales after four days of “binge eating” that included pie, cookies, dinner rolls, peanuts, peanut butter by the spoonful, and meals in between the snacking (my digital ones that coincide with the scales in Dr. Weatherhead’s office) dreading the results and had gone from 186 to 184.5, hence the epiphany.

I may enlist Becky to help me figure the exact measurements involved but, for now, I’m just estimating. I think I left at least a gallon of snot on the roadways last week on the ride to and from Hopkins (I hope there were no accidents; those snot spots are slick like black ice). I’m guessing that snot has a different weight per volume than water but we all know that “a pint’s a pound the world around” so that’s like leaving eight pounds of body weight behind. I drank around 40 ounces of G-Push on the ride and another 40 ounces when I got back. I added some calories by eating peanuts and the Chocolate Mint Manure Clif Bar but I think I left a net one pound of body weight on the asphalt.

When I write the book I’ll call it the “Trilander Snot Diet” and donate the proceeds to charity (payback for my inappropriate thoughts about overweight people in last week’s note).

My Saturday long ride was a shorter 2-3 hour at a lower intensity (HR1) than the last couple of weeks. Jean, Diane and I left together and, as expected, Jean took off and left us in the dust. When we pulled across M-37 from Heath Road I pulled out in front of Diane (not on purpose) and we rode out toward Gun Lake. We planned the “Wayland loop” which worked out well for the terrain and the 44 miles of length.

When I got to Yankee Springs Road I stopped, looked back, and Diane had dropped back a short distance. We all know that Diane is master of her own domain and, as she came up to the corner, said “If you’re going to blow snot rockets you should be behind me, not ahead”. We swapped spots and things worked out well.

That brings me to bodily function number two. Well, it’s actually about number one, but it’s the second one in the e-mail. Now I’m confused. Anyway, we got to the McDonalds at Patterson Road and I had to pee. I had just gone before we left home too. I stopped and Diane continued. I caught up with her at Bradley when she stopped to take her jacket off. We continued through Wayland and as we went up the long hill out of town, I had to pee again. I found some evergreens near the road, drained the overflow, and caught up with her again as we turned onto Payne Lake Road. When we came up to the Yankee Springs corner she said I should go ahead and I told her I had to stop again. For some reason my body was getting rid of excess fluids.

Daughter Sara stopped by later in the day and we were talking about hunting mushrooms. She told me about a recent episode while she was driving a friend’s car. Her friend was in the back seat (sounds like “Driving Miss Daisy” to me) and a wasp was on her friend’s knee. She flicked it with her finger to get rid of it. For some reason Sara was leaning forward in the driver’s seat and the wasp went down her back, into her pants, and stung and bit her several times on the butt. They were on a dirt road when Sara stopped the car, rolled out the passenger side, and dropped her pants to get rid of the wasp.

I don’t know where she gets that because, as you know from these reports, nothing like that ever happens to me!

Sayonara,

Just (Getting Fitter By The Minute) Jack