Week 48: Review

Things are definitely starting to look like winter around these parts, and as I haven't had a chance to bring the bike it yet to get switched over for the trainer my cycling mileage is still pretty pathetic this week. I did manage to get out on Monday thanks to a brief interruption in the weather pattern, but pretty much every other day was shot down by the conditions outdoors. I had hoped to bring the bike in on Friday so I'd be able to use it on the trainer on the weekend, but unfortunately other commitments got in the way of that.

Fortunately, while the cold and snow have been somewhat unpleasant on the runs, it wasn't enough to get in the way so I managed to get everything in as planned. This morning's 13 miler was a reminder of what it's going to look like in the not-to-distant future, with heavy blowing snow for the duration and windchill approaching -10C (in a month or two that'll be a warm day, but I'm still not acclimated to it).

While the conditions themselves didn't pose too much of a problem, it's going to take a bit of getting used to breathing through a neck warmer again. Again, in a month it will be second nature, but at this point in the season having to pull that air volume through a layer of technical fabric added an extra degree of difficulty to the run. As much as I hate it, however, it's a necessity as in these sorts of conditions having any exposed skin for a long run is a bad idea.

Swimming-wise things went pretty much to plan as the indoor nature of this sport pretty much makes it immune to the weather. I did have to skip some of my drills on Thursday due to other commitments, but I was able to get the main sets done so the mileage didn't suffer too much.

Week 48 Totals:
Running: 47.4km (29.4mi)
Walking: 1.9km (1.2mi)
Cycling: 30.4km (18.9mi)
Swimming: 8.3km (5.1mi)
Total: 88.0km (54.7mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 2078.1km (1291.3mi)
Walking: 92.1km (57.2mi)
Cycling: 4412.4km (2741.7mi)
Swimming: 314.2km (195.2mi)
Total: 6896.8km (4285.5mi)

I'm hoping to bring the bike into the shop tomorrow to get everything ready for use on the trainer (change the rear tire/skewer, drivetrain cleaning, full tune-up, etc.). Once that is done, I'll be able to ride whenever scheduled so my mileage will hopefully climb back up to where it was. Naturally, the prospect of staring at a wall for hours isn't particularly appealing, but I've procrastinated enough on this front and need to get back into a normal routine.

On that front, I've been looking to figure out a better way to fight off the boredom on the trainer this year. Last year I just relied on an old TV and whatever re-runs happened to be on at the time, but that was hit and miss. I love the idea of Netflix for this sort of thing (being able to pull up whatever I want up on a whim), but their Canadian catalog looks pretty pathetic (I can live without just released stuff, but they don't even have much classic stuff either) so I'm not sure that's a viable choice just yet (and with atrociously punitive UBB fees coming down the pike for Canadian ISPs, it's viability will be hurt even more). I'm also flirting with the idea of either setting up an XBox or an old computer down there so that I could play stuff from my media center, but that would require a lot of planning and preparation before each session (ie intentionally not catching stuff live so that I can watch the recordings on the bike).

Either way, I'm playing around with all my options and trying to figure out what will work for this task. The kicker is that there appear to be plenty of great options for Americans, but unfortunately all of them are either crippled (eg Netflix) or simply not available up here (eg Hulu). I can cobble something together by recording stuff from broadcast television, but seeing all of the great options available down there makes me feel like we're stuck in the dark ages :oP