Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Monday, June 28, 2004 8:58 PM

The Start of Summer (Part 2)


On Monday night I have trouble sleeping. I wake up at 2:22 am on Tuesday morning and cannot fall back asleep. So I get up and surf the Internet for a while and talk with friends and acquaintances throughout the world. I go back to try and sleep near 3:40 am.

On Tuesday morning my legs are still a bit sore from the Saturday and Sunday intervals on the bicycle. But other than being physically hungover from the weekend activities, well, I'm still tired!

I lift weights on Thursday morning before work so that I can take the motorcycle in for a tuneup after work. By this time I am getting to an overtrained state - having lifted heavy for 16 of the last 17 days (with one day off). A few more days of heavy lifting and I can look forward to a week of tapering and a week off the weights. After work I drop the motorcycle off at the dealer and it takes two busses to get home (and about 90 minutes). But Thursday night is a relaxing night.

Friday I take off early to go with Person T* to her final walk-through of the new condominium that she is purchasing. There are many things wrong and you can see that the maintenance manager is getting upset with everything that is wrong. I can't tell if he's upset with Person T*, me, or the people who put the condo together. I leave the inspection and battle traffic home. I go to the garage and pump a lot of iron and go walking afterwards in order to relieve the stress of the day. Every joint is sore and hurting now, but I needed the stress relief.

On Saturday I get up and do intervals on the bicycle down and up the Los Angeles river again. But this time I start too fast and cannot complete the last couple of intervals on the way home. Instead I just keep pedaling at a steady rhythm - somewhat like a whipped dog runs with its tail between its legs back to its hiding spot. In this case my hiding spot is home. About an hour later, after having completed the laundry, my kidneys are sore from the extra work of removing lactic acid and toxins built up during the intervals. For the rest of the day I meet with a home appraiser, pick the motorcycle up from the repair shop, lift more weights, and go to work.

At mid-day on Saturday to regress, I pack up a number of Person N_V's things - the things that are remaining in a bedroom that he continually breaks promises about when they will be removed. I drive over to his new apartment and ring the buzzer. I'm in luck - Person N_V's roommate is there, remembers who I am, and let's me in. I make three trips between the car and the apartment in order to move the things that Person N_V refuses to take.

Good things about Saturday:
1) Hard intervals that cause pain, torture, and agony during the workout and kidney pain afterwards.
2) A freshly-tuned motorcycle with all cylinders hitting strongly and evenly and a re-mapped fuel injection with no holes or flat spots.
3) Getting in one more heavy workout with the weights even if every single joint hurts.
4) Going clubbing at the end of a long day.
5) Returning Person N_V's things that he refuses to take when he is not at his new apartment and his roommate is available to let me in.

By 9 pm I leaving work to head for a club in West Hollywood. The music is good, there are a number of friends and acqauintances present, and a number of people want to meet me. But I am staying single for a while and so I stay cold to everyone this time. One of the pursuers starts the conversation with, "Can you send me some of the pictures of ourself from your website?" I am in bed just before 3 am on Sunday morning.

I'm up near 7 am to go cycling. This is a steady cadence ride around the aquarium because I am tired. After cleaning and feeding the roses and having breakfast, i attend to some small errands around the house and then head out for an hour of rollerblading. I work on my stride today and realize that I have almost caught up to the speed of these skates. At the conclusion of the skating I start to feel just horrible. The state of overtraining and the 4 hours of sleep are catching up to me. I get an hour nap in starting at 2am, but then I wake up and shorty thereafter the phone starts ringing. Person Daniel calls later and we're off to see "Fahrenheit 911". It's pretty decent, but the author got off track. It could have been a very powerfull statement, but it was a bit diluted.

Seeing that I still feel horrible, there are going to be mre phone calls tonight, and I'm operating on a sleep shortage in an overtrained physical state, I'm in bed by 10 pm on Sunday night with the mobile phone on silent mode.