An Americain classic.
Cyclist: Greg Lemond
Materials used: Skippy creamy peanut butter, Smuckers Concord grape jelly
Notes:
- Running around Tokyo trying to find grape jelly was totally, totally worth it.
[The full Flickr set for this project is here.]
Some days can be pretty perfect, even without the bike.
The Manx Missile: as polarizing as Marmite.
Cyclist: Mark Cavendish
Materials used: Marmite
Notes:
- This stuff is almost unmanageably sticky [in the best and worst kind of way], hence the super simplified portrait of Cav.
- It took 30 years for me to buy/hunt down my first jar of Marmite. In Tokyo, of all places.
[The Flickr set for this project is here.]
I love to hate Pitbull.
I love to hate his lyrics, which are either so stupid, they’re actually confusing, or they’re so blatant, it doesn’t seem right to actually call them “lyrics.”
I love to hate his product endorsements, which include vodka, small cars, and Kodak cameras, mostly because I don’t like to be reminded that the terrible state of the world economy is affecting even the high rollers, these days.
I also love to listen to Pitbull. Like the running program I started last week, Pitbull is surprisingly – disappointingly – addictive.
I’d never been drawn to running as a recreational activity. It’s always seemed more like a basic survival skill than something a reasonable person does for fun. Probably because, having lived in cities for most of my life, I’ve never had to run for my life. In fact, in the past two years, I can count the number of times I’ve mustered my legs into something resembling a jog. It was always to either cross the street or catch a train, and never lasted more than five seconds. But with a winter that seems to be lasting forever, and the beckoning warmth of the gym, learning how to run seemed like a good idea.
The problem and inherent advantage of running is that it jolts you into reality. Literally. While cycling is kind in the sense that it will keep you in the dark about your power to weight ratio [a.k.a. your big, fat ass], running does the exact opposite. As my foot landed on the treadmill last week, a tsunami of excess flab rippled up my leg and exploded around my waist. I was prepared for the sensation of having a belt made out of Jello wrapped around me, but it also felt like I was dragging and bouncing an anchor on my lower back. What is that, I briefly wondered to myself, before realizing that it was my abundant butt – the one that’s used to being comfortably seated on a bike saddle – that was jerking up and down behind me.
The horror of that experience had me up and running three times last week.
I am, however, using that word in its more general sense, to mean anything that is faster than a slow walk. I am walking as much, or more than, I am running, but if you judged by the traumatized look on my pathetically sweaty face, you’d think otherwise.
There is, however, a happy constant: Pitbull in my earphones, chanting those dumb, catchy lyrics as I pound my way through my scheduled jog. He reminds me that you don’t necessarily have to be good at whatever you want to do, you just have to work really hard at it.
An Italian favorite...in a chocolate-hazelnut Italian favorite.
Cyclist: Filippo Pozzato
Materials used: Nutella
Notes:
- Reeking of Nutella is a lactose intolerant person's nightmare.
- The smell of chocolate can actually become nauseating.
Over a decade after its first season aired, I’m finally getting around to watching 24.
If, like me, you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t seen this show, there are moments when the time will appear in digital format, with beeps accompanying the seconds as they tick by, closer and closer to catastrophe. This display is sometimes accompanied by a montage of all the simultaneously occurring events, all of which are also preventing Kiefer Sutherland from thwarting certain disaster.
There is a possibility – a small one, given that I only watch like five different shows a day – that I watch too much TV. I’d like to think that 24’s ticking, beeping clock is so characteristically ominous that it will linger, even for those who aren’t actively destroying their hard-earned educations with a flood of bad television shows. I suspect that the show itself is genetically engineered to trigger that beeping whenever something in a viewer’s life involves a countdown. Which is to say, that clock will haunt everything you do.
I suppose, then, that I shouldn’t have been surprised when I heard that beeping in my head as I tried to crest a small hill a few days ago. While caught in the vice grip of intense pain and a failing cardiovascular system, I wondered what I was supposed to be mentally counting down to [assassination of the president? Another nuclear meltdown?]. Then I realized there was no rushed crescendo of beeps. More like a slowing down towards the inevitable flat-lining of energy, availability of oxygen, and the will to go on. The inescapable consequence of over a month of inconsistent [“nonexistent” might be more accurate] riding.
It was 16C out, and gorgeous, but I limped home after a mere 2.5 hours on the bike, unacceptably exhausted. I heard that beep again, on the way home. This time, it was my Garmin. “Battery is low,” read the screen, as if stating the painfully obvious state of my legs and lungs. It died soon afterwards, and I was almost tempted to pull a Marcel Kittel:
The ride and my addiction to 24 reinforced what is so easy to forget: that the problem with time is that it happens. It keeps happening, even when you’re trying to hit the pause button on training, an assassination, or bikini season. This means that there’s really nothing left to do except to do it; claw your way back to fitness, save the world, or get a set of amazing abs. The time will pass, either way.
And besides, if Kiefer Sutherland ever died/failed, there wouldn’t be eight seasons of the show…right?