Was only a difference of 3-ish hours for me. I went to bed about 2am, and was at various stages of waking up by 5am. I do not do well with little sleep. I know Bryan is a master at such feats, being that his job forces him to be, and he handles it amazingly well. When I'm on my 6:30am - 3:30pm shift at work, I do best when going to bed around 10:30pm. I went just slightly past that last night.
It started off with me cleaning my bike, which some of you know, I'm just a little finicky about. I started the cleaning process at 7pm and was done at oh, about 9:30pm. Everything is sparkly again, just the way I like. Seriously, if I can't look at my crankset and see it as a potential stainless steel plate ready to eat off of, it's not clean. So I put everything away and remembered I hadn't eaten dinner yet. Oops. I pop in a Kashi frozen pizza since it was quick and easy. Yummy....cardboard crust....
So I scarf down the pizza, watch the weather on the 10 o'clock news and discover that there's no way I'm riding to work in the morning. Especially not on my clean-enough-to-eat-off-of bike. Unless they were wrong about the rain, which has happened a couple times in recent memory. But it seemed like they were pretty certain, so I figured I should drive to work and therefore had a whole half hour more to sleep in, a very nice thing for Monday morning. I flip around the channels and find the World Series of Poker '07 championships on ESPN (8 - the Ocho, I love that channel...can't get enough of it). They were running back to back episodes (each an hour long) of this progression of elimination. This is a tournament where a ton of people start, but eventually, all the chips remain with a final selection of great/lucky players. It was interesting because the guy who is credited with making Texas Holdem poker popular in 2003, Chris Moneymaker, was knocked out early in the tournament. Mr. Moneymaker made the "sport" well known because he, as a 25 year old, got into a poker tournament with $50 and made it all the way to the end to win something like $1.5 mill. I remember watching that and thinking, "Wow, that's like hitting the jackpot, but you increase your chances exponentially by being a great player." Anyway, I watched a few hours of this tournament, so this put me at about 1:30am. My late dinner finally settled and I was ready for bed. Waaaaaaaaaay past my bed time.
Our condo loft has a skylight that sits right above our bed. It's a good thing to have when it's cold out cause the sun shines through and heats the place well. However, since it's right above our bed, when it rains it is LOUD!! I guess some people sleep well when there's a droning sound like that, but with the rain we get, it's quiet for a little while, then comes down in buckets, then quiets down, then pours again. So it's not constant. I sleep much better in silence anyway. So the rain started around 4am and I had my alarm set for 5:30am. There's nothing worse than being woken up before you really want to get up. Especially when you haven't had much sleep to begin with. Very frustrating cause all you want to do is sleep, but you got this rain coming in waves, then your cat notices you're stirring so it must be time for canned food, so she jumps all over you. I angrily drifted in and out of slumber till 6am, got up, got dressed, (lightly) kicked the cat out of my way since I was too groggy and would step on her if she did her normal clingy thing. I got in my car, drove slowly to work, parked in the neighborhood just South of UNMC (free parking is the right price, just not very convenient), and got very wet walking the 5 blocks before reaching the cover of a building. What a great way to start a Monday.
So needless to say, I'm on a lot of coffee this morning. Luckily work is light, but that means I have to do something otherwise I'm going to fall over and start snoring. And now, after proofing this post for the 4th time to catch all my grogginess-induced mistakes, I'm done.
How do you fair with very little sleep and a crappy Monday morning?
Edit: Oh yeah, and a weekend report. Saturday; 3.5 hours with evil headwind/lovely tailwind ride with Brady. Thanks Brady, for sticking it out with me and I hope your position issues are solved so bike practicing is more fun. Sunday; first 3rd of the Bike Masters Century. It was wet at the start, but got pretty nice, Bryan and I broke off early since we both had stuff to do and I found out the meaning of pain as we rode Bryan's work-to-home commute route. Being he rode that route on a single speed, I can see why it was just a little hard on the training. Rollercoasters have less ups and downs than that route. So overall, 3-ish hours each day, not a bad weekend. Man I love riding my bike. I can't imagine doing anything else. Yes, I'm that tired that I'm getting mushy.
12 comments:
Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays!
I'm in the same boat right now
Hey, give us an update as soon as you know about your, um, announcement you're going to make, and has the fax for my purdy new bike gone through yet? I'm sure you've done it since you're the man, but this weekend was crazy in Trek world, so I was wondering when you think I might see some action on this?
that route was GREAT for training. It was hard on functioning for the rest of the day. Seriously, at the end of October I felt STRONG on the bike. I was just a zombie at all other hours of the day.
Need sleep so much that I recently cold-turkey'ed my caffeine habit. As little as one cup in the morning was making my sleep less restful. I'm 3 days clean and reaping the rewards. So nice to wake up and be alert right off, w/o having to bring the caffeine level up.
Hey Syd, I only recently started the coffee thing and the main reason was cycling. I hate the taste, so I always add a bunch of creamer and sugar to make it bearable. The caffeine was the main reason I even tried it. On a Thursday morning after doing the Wed night worlds and maybe a Tuesday interval session also, coffee took the pain out of my legs and kept me awake. I have since gone from building up a tolerance (where no amount of coffee really helped anymore), to going cold turkey, to getting back to 1 maybe 2 cups a day. But you're right. It becomes more of a habit thing that you really don't need if you take care of yourself otherwise. If I would stretch properly and get as much sleep as possible, I wouldn't need caffeine at all. I don't think I could ever give up soda though. That's more for the sugar than the caffeine. Nothing like a huge Coke right after a long hard day of riding. Sure wish I could find a source to get cane sugar Coke.
mike -- get the Coke in the Mexican food aisle at Hy-Vee. It's in the little 8oz bottles and imported.
Good ride on Saturday Mike. It was 64 miles from my place and had no troubles with the knee afterwards.
Already faxed and out of my hands.
announcement? new bike? what? what blog post did I miss?
Since I gave up alcohol for most of 08 so far (exception of vacation in moab & valentines day) I have gone from being a 6+ cups a day coffee drinker to a 1 cup a day guy. Pretty cool. I do some green tea in afternoons occassionally (very mild/low caffeine content) and after a long ride.
It is amazing how much your body comes to rely on caffeine habits. Congrats on the cold turkey syd. I would have probably lost my job if I tried quitting cold turkey.
Of course, "1 cup a day" means one short shot of espresso, consumed as a latte. Yes, I grind daily for the 1.5 tblsps of coffee necessary to make the shot. Discipline.
That same mentality also motivated me to purchase a Park Tool derailluer hanger alignment guide as a moab/fruita souvenir. I am convinced that weekly tuning of my der hangers will make me faster.
Actually, its not for me, its for Rox. All my SRAM stuff works great even if the hanger is bent.
Sometimes first thing in morning I put an espresso shot in a chocolate strawberry banana protein shake as breakfast. OMG it makes want to go on dancing with the stars and makes me sing bon jovi all the way to work. Amazing concoction.
Mike- scale sunday said 157 lbs. Jan 3 scale said 178lbs. Not shabby. I was a bit dehydrated though. I expect to level out around 162-4 once some muscle mass comes back. I had to buy new jeans. Old ones make my ass look fat.
Holy crap, Ryan. Great job on the weight loss. My guess is that you're in the lead. I think you might be getting some money to use for race entry fees in the future. The first week of May is the cut-off point so there's one month left. I will hopefully drop down to 160, but lack of consistent riding is making that difficult. Oh well. I'm still having a blast just riding my bike.
announcement has been made check out my blog.
I've lost 2 or 3 lbs. Total. I eat too much and tend to stay up all night writing papers, so that doesn't help my weight management. Nor does eating frozen pizzas and burritos all the time.
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