Interval training is so much fun!

Thursday nights have become nights to look forward to ever since Beth began organizing interval training rides at the port. Tonight, the plan was to do: (1) tempo/tt pace efforts (2) sprints (3) leadouts.

The interval training participants tonight were: Beth, Alicia, Morgan, Laura and myself.





The first interval felt soooo long. We did one port lap and I figured that we would end our effort somewhere before making that first right-curve turn. Nope, Beth, Laura and Morgan were still pedaling hard up ahead so I kept going. I had to start playing games with myself to distract myself from the heavy breathing I was doing (e.g., tell myself I just had 60 more seconds to go, count down from 60 and then start all over again). It wasn't until we neared the train tracks underneath the bart tracks that we went into our recovery mode. Ughhh, that felt hard!

For the second interval set, Beth sprayed two green lines to mark the start and end points for our sprints. Unfortunately, the green paint was hard to see and we kept having to search for them. Despite our difficulty in finding our start and end lines, I really enjoyed doing the second interval set. It was cool seeing my computer monitor read 25 mph. (Nonetheless, I hope to get faster by the end of the summer.)





The third set was a little confusing at first. However, I did a leadout with Beth and it then became clearer what the objective was. I think this is something I'll need to practice a lot.

After we were done with our intervals, Beth, Laura and I headed over to Manzanita Restaurant in Emeryville/Oakland for a vegetarian dinner. Except for the bland thing in the middle, the dinner was really good.




It was during this meal that I learned that I'm not the only one who eats two lunches at work (lunch # 1 for me is around 11 a.m. and lunch # 2 is around 1:30 p.m.) It turns out that Laura & Beth also eat two lunches while at work! Cool, now I don't feel like such a piggy.





The ride back home was chilly but at least I had a yummy meal in my tummy.

By the way, I measured my quads when I got home and I'm now at 58 cm!!!!! If I keep doing these interval rides, I just may catch up to Beth's 59+ cm quad measurements. Yes!

(Other pics from tonight's ride can be found at my flickr album: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yinyangcarol/sets/72157604005149810/

The Joys of Online Dating

I recently posted a personals ad looking to meet a specific type of guy: Brazilian, Italian or a Spaniard, single, 28-38, cute, fun, and athletic. I got a wide range of responses, some of which I thought I would post here and comment on them.

MOST OUTRAGEOUS:
"This is the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA – not the Diversified States of America
If you love your ethnicity so much – move back to your country of ethnic origin
F.Y.I. My ancestors are Native American Indian and I am tired of all your illegal bull shit Join the U. S. Marine Corps like I did and earn the right to be an American
I am proud to be an American ... and I only speak English"

My Thoughts? The guy's a friggin'bitter loser. I could go on with an angry rampage but I won't.

MOST PERVERTED:
"cute/hot/sexy/fit/clean/healthy/hung, educated/professional/witty/charming/deep, fun/adventurous/naughty 30's WM in SF is "up" for exploring a connection with you..."(This email was accompanied with a picture of a guy's exposed penis.)

My Thoughts: Dude, I've seen better-looking penises.

NONSENSICAL #1:
The email starts out with all of the guy's self-proclaimed wonderful qualities. Then he follows it with: "But then there is a caveat to it :-( I am in US only for next 2weeks and leaving country forever."

My Thoughts: Hey, bubba, why do you think I want to meet someone who's leaving the country in two weeks???

NONSENSICAL #2
"I want you to look into my green eyes"

My thoughts: If you want me to look into your green eyes, why did you send me a picture of you wearing sun shades????


MOST OUT OF TOUCH WITH REALITY:
"so what you say: u think I am that mr. right then what are u waiting for, get back to me. what u got to loose? you will have good time and if I am not your type, slap me and get on with your life. you have to give chance to some one, then why not me? now don't keep me waiting,get back to me,the sooner u do, the sooner u are close to happiness. have a great day."

My Thoughts: (1) Learn how to spell, dumbass. (2) Actually, the sooner I delete this egotistical email, the sooner I will be closer to happiness.


MOST HYPERSENSITIVE
"Hi,I dont know why you dont like indians,If i can impress you ,are u ok with indian,"

My Thoughts: Hey, who said I don't like Indians? I just have a preference for certain type of men. Keep browsing the ads, dude. I'm sure you'll find someone who has a preference for Indians or someone who has no preference at all.

Despite the specificity of my ad, I still got responses from guys who:(1)were from other ethnic groups but assumed that their proficiency of the Spanish language (whatever that proficiency may be) somehow would make me overlook the fact that they were neither Brazilian, Italian or Spanish. (2) much older than 38 (I'm talking guys old enough to be my dad!) and (3) Guys who didn't even come close to being athletic (unless you consider competitive eating to be an athletic sport!)

Despite all of the above, it hasn't been all bad. I've exchanged emails and met with some folks who have been fun to chat with and who have piqued my curiosity to learn more about them. People ask me what I expect to get out of this whole online dating thing given the tons of weirdos that are out there in the virtual dating world. Very simply, I want to meet people from particular cultural groups with whom I can practice speaking other languages with and with whom I might share other common interests with. If a romantic connection happens to come out of one these encounters, great. And, if not, maybe I've made a cool friend with whom I can just chat and chill with on occasions.

An awesome Valentine's Day ride with some bad-ass ladies

So, Valentines Day started out kinda crappy for me. I felt really sluggish during the day. The one thing I looked forward to was the interval ride with Beth and the other gals. If there's one thing that can distract me from a crappy mood it's a bike workout!

Morgan met me in front of my building and we rode over to the port. We did a warm-up lap and had a nice chat. As we finished our first lap, we saw Beth heading our way. As the three of us rode alongside, Beth proceeded to explain to us what her interval plan was and Morgan and I decided to do it with her. Before we got started on our intervals, who do we see riding in the opposite direction but bad-ass racer, Karla K. Yay!

Although Karla was doing her own tempo ride, she observed our forms on our bikes as we began our intervals. If I remember correctly, it was two 6 minute intervals at a moderate tempo (for me that was at a 165'ish hr) with a 4 minute rest, then we did 10 second sprints with 50 second rests ( can't remember how long we did that for). I'm sure there was a 3rd interval set but I can't remember what it was. In any case, we got some good work in and some great tips from Coach Karla. She suggested that, during off-the-saddle sprints, we shift into a harder gear, keep our upper body still, and maneuver the bike side to side. I practiced Karla's sprint tip a few times and felt like I had a better handle of the bike while at the same time making it go faster. Awesome!

After our training was over, we decided to grab a post-ride dinner. Morgan already had dinner plans so Beth, Karla and I headed over to What the Pho? for some Vietnamese food. We talked about some of our favorite subjects: food, boys, and sex. It was the best Valentine's Day dinner I've had in a long time.

Measurements:
BICEPS: 28 CM
QUADS: 57 CM
CALVES 37 CM

Birthdays Rock!

This year I decided to celebrate my birthday celebrity-style and make it a multiple-day event so I made plans for Thursday through Sunday. On Thursday, I met up with some friends at a Cuban restaurant and enjoyed a few drinks with them. On Friday, my best friends took me out for Thai dinner and a movie. On Saturday, I spent the day shopping with friends before hitting the town in the evening.

My friends and I were originally going to have dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. However, when we learned that the wait for a table was going to be an hour and forty-five minutes, we decided to skip it and look elsewhere. We didn't know where we were going to end up eating but we were confident that we would still have a good dining experience. We happened to walk by Farallon, an upscale French-inspired seafood restaurant and decided, what the hell, let's splurge and eat at Farallon's.

Despite not having reservations, we were seated fairly quickly. We enjoyed lobster claws, scallops, striped bass, truffle soup, chocolate cake and a bottle of pinot noir. The meal was absolutely fabulous! We happened to mention to our waiter that we were celebrating my birthday and, before we knew it, he brought out three miniature sorbet dishes for us (mine had Happy Birthday written in chocolate). We were happy campers when we left Farallon.






We decided to hit an Irish bar for lemon drop shots before heading over to the dance club. By the time we arrived at the club, we were in super-duper spirits.

This particular club we went to was once a speakeasy and it has a slide that you can go down on to enter the club. Unfortunately, I was wearing a skirt and was not allowed to go down the slide (apparently, you go down the slide so fast you can get body burns if you're exposing too much skin.) However, my friends Jessie and Katie did get to experience going down the slide. Despite getting burned on her arm while going down the slide (she forgot to tuck in her elbows), Jessie had a blast going down the slide, as did Katie. (Next time, I'm wearing pants so I can go down the slide, damn it!)




The music was pumping and the drinks began flowing. We danced, drank, and frolicked for a few hours before cabbing back to Katie's apartment. Despite having gotten blitzed, I surprisingly did not wake up with a hangover. (I guess taking two advils before drinking to oblivion does keep hangovers at bay.) I looked like shit but I at least didn't feel like it.



I made it home in time to shower, eat and unwind before heading back into the city for a 90-minute massage. Ahhh, what a perfect ending to an awesome birthday weekend!

---------------------------------------------

Before I forget, it's measurements time again:

BICEPS: 28 CM
QUADS: 57 CM (up 1 cm...woo-hoo!
CALVES: 37 CM