Brick by Brick: Week Three – Settling in

You can tell what stage I am in a project by how loud the voice of my rationalization gets. Today, for example, I could feel the “Hey, why not just take the bus sometime for a nice break? You’re feeling pretty good, after all!” voice coming back. But I did have the wherewithal to recognize that the reason I feel so good is that I’ve been riding 6 days a week and (mostly) paying attention to what I eat.

So far despite Sage’s being sick (she felt really good for about two days then walked a couple blocks to the store and felt crappy again). So I am still doing a bit extra. I am definitely feeling a little sleepier than normal – but it could just as easily be about either fighting off COVID myself or more likely paying better attention to just how much caffeine I’m taking in.

Despite that I kept to my routine pretty well. Instead of looking at it compartmentalized, let’s do a quick snapshot of each day.

Monday: Monday was a holiday last week but I still got up before sunrise and still got on the bike. I chose a route I’d never taken before and headed out. This time I had a GoPro on and got some more active footage. For example, I can’t safely film a video like this holding my phone in one hand.

There were also some nice quiet trails:

There was also a bit of wildlife in the eastern part of my trip:

All told, it was a nice 25 km ride that took just over an hour. The weather was stunning and the more I ride the stronger I feel on climbs and the faster my average speed gets.

My diet on Monday was reasonably good – nothing memorable at all, in fact. But just wait until later this week…

Tuesday: Monday night I didn’t get my gear together and was slow to get started. So my ride was a short one: just a little detour to the north for an extra 5-7 km. This route had lots of nice infrastructure for riding.

Same old boring eating habits though I made homemade Thai Pad See Ew for dinner and even had some left over for lunch.

Wednesday: I really liked Wednesday morning’s ride. I went down to Downsview Park, took a trail I’d never been on before and wound up having an abandoned road all to myself. Then on the way back there were a ton of cormorants at a dam. I later learned that this is called a “Cormorant Convention” – who knew? (Yes, likely many of you!)

We got a brand new and very fancy coffee maker at work. This one not only makes regular drip coffee and espresso, it even makes a cortado. This is an even shorter, more concentrated espresso. I had a couple of those after lunch (which is more than I knew I should have) and wow was it ever motivating. I got SO MUCH DONE. But when I got home I was ravenous and shaky. I had a peanut butter sandwich which did nothing and thought maybe I needed some protein so had some slices of ham and hummus. That did the trick and I was satisfied. Then I needed to go get dinner out so I got some “naked burritos” (beans, meat and veg in a bowl – no tortilla) for everyone at a restaurant. I wasn’t too hungry but I had a little before going to bed. This was a terrible mistake.

Thursday:

I woke for the first time at around 2:00 AM hungry again (thanks to the too much food caused by too much caffeine.) I’d been having terrible dreams and irritating free-floating anxiety. After a bagel with margarine I settled back in to bed and did fall asleep but had more nightmares. Awful!

This is a classic example of a bad habit cascade I have been known to set myself up for. Now, instead of waking at 5:15, I woke at 7:30, rushed to get ready and worked from home after eating the rest of the previous night’s dinner. All day, as you’ll see, my stress levels were high and I didn’t feel very rested. And to be honest, I also wanted tons more coffee – good thing I kept that under control as I could just start a repetitive cycle of this.

Determined to get things back on track, despite its being another warm day outside, I got on the bike right after work at 5PM. This, too, was a mistake. A route that had 27 vehicles pass me at 6:55 AM on a Sunday had 132 with more driver nonsense and chaos. Still I had some good moments. Not only that, I did a pretty good job compared to the same route four days earlier. I climbed the big hill on the route faster with a lower heart rate. I did take 2 min longer for the whole route though. The warm south wind pushing against me as I headed home was not helpful in this respect.

Friday: Back on track again. After a normal dinner on Thursday I was up in the morning again and making a frozen strawberry and banana protein shake for my pre-ride fuelling. Sage came out from the bedroom confused and concerned thinking the grinding of the blender had been me screaming. Oops – maybe I’ll not freeze the bananas next time. The route was lovely – another one I did before and was able to do quite a bit more quickly with personal records on eight out of 13 segments on the trip. I also took on a hill I’d been avoiding for a while (Torontonians – it’s the Cummer Avenue hill) and was pleased with how quickly I was able to do it.

Once I got home I had my usual eggs and kimchi breakfast and had a good work day. And since then have been eating (and, no surprise, sleeping) well afterwards.

Saturday: Saturday I had to say goodbye to my fast bike. It was time for its first post-purchase tuneup/checkup. This gives them a chance to check in on how it’s doing and also do things like tighten any of the cables that can stretch a bit upon first use. My bike shop is all the way downtown so I had to either take the subway down or ride. I was a bit adventurous and chose to take Bayview Avenue all the way down. It’s relatively busy on the one hand but on the other the lights are far apart, there are some nice downhill stretches and the pavement is nice and smooth. While it might’ve taken me 80 minutes to go downtown via side streets and paths, taking this route meant I had one of my highest average speeds at 24.9 km/hr and topped out at 52.1 km/hr – around the speed limit for cars on this road. On the other hand, I also had an average heart rate of 164 bpm and topped out near my max at 180 bpm. I was working hard. But in the end I made it there about twice as fast: 40 minutes flat.

Sunday: A well-deserved rest day. Daegan and I headed over to Woodbine Mall and Fantasy Fair which is a place the likes of which we’ve never seen. Most malls just close their doors when they go out of business but this one just keeps on going. A few big stores are filled with boxes of all sorts of odd goods and dead stock from the late 90s/early 2000s. There were a few shoppers but finding staff was almost impossible though the one we did see told us that the prices were all 50% off. Going into the mall there was one area that was active – a small indoor amusement park with, surprisingly, a beautiful carousel over a century old and weird animatronic dinosaurs that had seen better days. Outside of there there were a number of stores that were still open. However, inside there was nobody. A shoe store simply had a piece of paper on one shelf that said “Pay at Baby Village”. A door to the back of the store was wide open and nobody was inside. There were several stores like this. It was such a surreal experience and felt a little like none of us should be there. You can see some photos and videos one person took here. We had a blast and ended the day with (reasonably sized) chicken roti from a restaurant on the way home.

The data:

Here’s what my data is looking like over the past week and how it compares:

Last week I rode 177 km. This week: 152.32 with an average daily distance of 19.04 km. A little low.

How was my sleep?

I’m interested to note that in my head my sleep was poor but actually all things considered, it wasn’t bad. My bar for what constitutes a “good sleep” is going up, apparently. I’m being pretty consistent about my bedtimes and waking times too. This actually surprises me.

And what about Stress?

Another surprise. All lower as well. Likely in great part to my lower level of exercise and increasing fitness. But let’s see how it goes over the next few weeks.

Intensity Minutes:

I started tracking the number of minutes of exercise – the Garmin software doubles the number of minutes for strenuous versus gentle exercise so thus the name “intensity minutes”. This past week was lighter – 895 versus 1066 the week before.

Summary:

As you can see, I’m sleeping more and better and my stress is going down though I didn’t push myself as hard. I did feel more tired than usual so perhaps not pushing myself was a good instinct in preserving my health even as on some level I’ve doubtless had to fight off (or am fighting off) COVID.

The week was challenging, partly from Sage’s being sick, and partly from my own self-sabotage through excessive caffeine and eating. (I don’t think I would’ve pinpointed caffeine as the root cause without this review.) But I have met my cycling and meditation goals so I’m actually pretty pleased.

So moving forward I think being consistent about caffeine will be important. The other thing I want to do is figure out how to get my rides to be a little longer. It’s been hard to get out before 6:30 when I wake at 5:15, do 15 min meditation and have breakfast. I am already going to bed at 9:00 so waking up earlier means losing sleep. The answer may be to just do what I can for now and when Sage feels better and can make dinner 1-2 times/week I can go for morning and evening rides those days.

But let’s see how it goes over the upcoming weeks. I do see my first new challenge coming in the next couple of days: rain in the forecast. I have rain gear, I’m mostly water resistant. I should get out there. Let’s see if I stick to it.