Monday, February 16, 2009

Pretty Pink Gloves


This was my Valentine's Day present from Adam: pretty pink Defeet gloves to go with my pretty pink Defeet booties. He's had a pair of these for a couple of years and really likes them, but I haven't tried mine out yet since the temperature dropped back to normal February level a few days ago and I think they will be 45-60 degree gloves for me. Yeah, I know. "Normal" people probably don't need 60 degree gloves, but my fingers are the last body part to see daylight in the spring (okay, well, of the body parts that EVER see daylight).

Nothing too exciting riding-wise. I experimenting with hard-ish riding a bit now, with about a 10 minute threshold effort on Friday and a 30-40 minute tempo effort yesterday. These are by no means formal. I just figure it's time to move beyond just pedaling around, so I'll tell myself "ride this effort from here to here" on one of my standard loops.

Yesterday, I tried to keep my cadence a lot higher than normal during my tempo effort, since the other day I noticed that I can produce a lot more watts for the same rate of perceived exertion if I pedal faster rather than shifting to a harder gear. However, I'm not used to spinning and while it's easier on major cycling muscles, it's definitely made me tight/sore in a lot of the smaller muscles that don't get used as much at lower cadences. For some reason my back and shoulders are really sore today, and my already uncomfortable desk chair is exacerbating the problem.

I'm plan to ask for a chair upgrade eventually, but I haven't worked up the nerve yet. I wish I could have brought my chair from my old job. Old Chair + New Job would be perfect.

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