Sick house...

Reid came home from a birthday party last night and went right to bed, he felt sick. This morning he was feeling no better, his head was hot and cheeks red. With the swine flu going around, you start to worry more than you normally would.

I've seen some TV shows lately that show healthy, athletic kids getting H1N1 and end up in the hospital fighting for their lives. One of the parents said that "you never think it would happen to your kid". That resonated. Alice took him to the walk-in clinic this morning and the doctor said he has a virus. Hopefully that's all it is.

Alice is also getting sick and I'm getting my second cold sore. I know I've gotten my cold sore from eating too much chocolate. My experience is that the sugar overload weakens my immune system. Alice is a diabetic and knows all about the power of sugar. She tells me that eating too much sugar is not good, it causes major insulin spikes. Mark Allen agrees and says those spikes shut down your fat burning system for a day or two. Alice says if I'm eating all that chocolate, I may as well be drinking beer.

That got me thinking and I decided to do a 20 day challenge with myself. The rules are simple. No chocolate, candy, junk food or beer and no eating past 8 pm. My motivation is to lose some weight for Clearwater and get my fat burning system to work efficiently. Plus, I need to get rid of some "love handles" I just noticed creeping up. It's going to be hard, but I'm determined to do it.

I did my long ride today. The autumn leaves looked beautiful. The first 56 km of the ride was mostly into a 27 kph head wind. At the halfway point my average speed was only 27.7 kph. Going up some of those hills with a direct head wind was slow going. I actually didn't mind the slow speed. My original plan was to ride with Carlos today and take it easy.

It was a cool ride, but the good news was that it didn't rain. It spit a bit, but no rain. On the way back from the turnaround with the wind at my back I was able to get my overall ride speed to a respectable 30.5 kph average. With about 8 km left to go, a young cyclist came up behind me and I could tell he thought he'd easily pass me.

My competitive juices got going, after all I've got to show those cyclists that triathletes can ride. We had some hills coming up and I put it into gear, going up some of them at 36 kph. After about 5 minutes of riding I looked back and he was moving farther back. I had made my point, a guy with Aero bars is not to be messed with. For the rest of the ride I didn't see him again.

It felt great to finish. Afterwards I had a nice stretch and a really hot shower. Now for the rest of the day I'm going to relax and fight the urge to eat junk food. My experience is that the first 2 days will be the toughest and then it gets easier from there.

Long Bike - 3:43:40 / 113.49 km / 30.5 kph / 132 avg hr / 2911 ft climbing