Checking In

Man, it's been a while since a post. These days it's getting harder and harder to stay on top of things, and that includes blogging in out.

Most of my evenings these days consist of some sort of organization chore(s), and, reading about what to expect in the coming 3 or so weeks when Biscuit decides he's done cooking. It's been pretty enjoyable setting up and testing out the baby montior (yeah, seriously, it is!), and talking with Amy about what kind of things we're going to experience. The excitement builds daily, no...hourly, and we just can't wait. It's funny, every night around 7:30 or so when we're winding down on the couch after dinner, Biscuit wants to play. Seriously! Typically around this time, Amy is sorta rubbing her belly while reading because it feels good to her after eating, and, he almost immediately takes this as a signal that it's time for soccer/karate practice. He squrims, kicks, and flips around, eventually forming a very funny shape within her belly that exhibits a "crooked shelf-like" appearance on the outside. When he really wallops & moves, you can see a little limb tracing the inside of her belly, and bulging out through her skin (well not through, but, more of a moving lump). After this, we both gasp and say aloud "wow!" and giggle like crazy. This goes on for about 10 or 15 minutes more, and, eventually he settles down into her belly all happy and relieved for play time. Eventually, he wakes up again as soon as she lays down for bed, but, quickly settles down. We started reading to him a few months or so ago when he started moving, and, now, he responds like CRAZY to it. Typically, I do the reading while Amy rubs her belly in bed and the 1-2 punch he gets from our voices really gets him going. It's so funny. We usually read the Dr Seuss book "Oh Baby, the places you'll go" to him, and, he flips out...literally. There is a short passage at the beginning of the book that talks about how babies respond to reading in the womb, and, more specifically to a Dr Seuss book. Apparently they did a study, and, the cadence of your voice when you read his book is very noticeably different than reading a typical book. They noticed too that babies that were read the same book over and over while in utero, were more responsive to the book they were read inside than outside. Basically, if you read them Marvin K. Mooney in utero, they'd like that book more when they were born, than say, Cat in the Hat. They did notice too that ANY Dr Seuss book was better than a regular book, again, because of the cadence/etc. I'm constantly amazed by some of the data/research about the growth of a baby & our bodies as humans. Seriously an amazing amazing thing!

Enough baby stuff, onto a cycling update! The last few weeks have been pretty good as far as ridnig goes. I'm not venturing much further than 1.5 hrs from the house for a total of about 3-4 hrs TOTAL ride time, erring on the side of caution for 3hrs. The "tapering" down from the mega back to backs I've been doing has been good for me, and, I'm increasing the intensity of the ride for all the decreases in the time. This past weekend I did grapevine solo, and, felt really really good as I made sure I tempoed the climb and tried to keep my cadence up. I struggle when my cadence drops, so, this has been one of my main focuses during the training sessions...just keeping the cadence up. Not sure what I'm going to do this coming weekend, but, it will involve some climbing so I can continue to practice. I did some interval work out at cherry creek yesterday during lunch (2x8 Z4 intervals) and made sure to keep the cadence as high as tolerable as I could (sometimes too high is too high!), and, voila...everything went great. I probably could have gone a bit harder, but, that'll be for next week. I've done only 2x10s so far, and, want to bump it up to 2x15s. I might even try to incorporate that into a climb this weekend. Ok I'm rambilng.

I'll probably get maybe 1 or 2 more posts in before Biscuit decides to show up. When he does, I'll be sure to put something up.

Until then, namaste mon freiers!!!