Let the indoor riding begin

I suppose it had to happen sometime. The weather had held out as unseasonably warm and dry for far too long to last, especially this time of year. For the past few days we've been stuck in a haze of drizzle that doesn't seem to want to go away. Sun? What sun? It hasn't been that cold yet, but that part is coming. However, they seem to keep getting the forecast slightly wrong. While today has certainly been just as windy as predicted, I was pretty sure I was going to be dealing with at least rain, and possibly even some snow. Right now there is neither. If I'd been willing to deal with the wind, I would've been able to do my long ride outside. But with snow predicted, I woke up early and got on the trainer in the dark. I haven't yet settled on a TV series to get into for my long winter of training rides, so for some reason I decided that today I'd finally watch the movie Gone With the Wind. I had 4 hours to kill, and that just about fit the bill and was offered up On Demand. Obviously it is just one of those movies that you always hear about but have never actually seen. I even went to film school and didn't see it. We did watch Citizen Kane in class, but not this one. Far better though was when we got much later in the film history time line and watched Terminator, but anyway...

The ride passed by faster than you'd think 4 hours would take, and now I've finally seen Gone With the Wind. Would you like a movie review? The CGI was incredible. Okay, just kidding. Well, I'd say it was pretty decent for about 2 hours. Then I just kind of got tired of what a bitch Scarlett is. From a purely technical standpoint, it's pretty incredible what they could do in the 30's. But seriously, give me a main character I can actually get behind. I mean - spoiler alert! - her daughter dies when you get close to the end. I didn't really feel sorry for her loss. But hey, it got me through my morning ride and now I can go back to my normal routine of watching mostly movies that would have no chance of ever being nominated for an Academy Award.

And after that, I was outside to the not rain or snow, but lots and lots of wind. I actually got a little nervous running near the trees, but the fact that I'm typing this now shows that obviously I survived the outing. Again, barely more than a walk so it seemed, but done anyway.

You know, I'd been so looking forward to all of these long workouts and really being in training again. I was just about to jump out of my skin towards the end of my break, but now that I actually am training, my motivation has completely disappeared. I don't know what it is, but it's not fun. I'm doing it all anyway, but with the season still so far away it just feels like going through the motions more than anything. We'll see if it changes at all.

So completely unrelated, but the other night I was watching the show The Biggest Loser. I'm always fascinated by these weight loss shows, and I've been watching this one from the beginning. Admittedly, now that they stretch the whole thing out into 2-hour episodes each week, while filling in the time with roughly 20 minutes worth of actual content, you don't so much have to watch it as just have it on in the background and get the results of the weigh-ins. Honestly, it's the same thing every week. They work out, somebody blurts out some astonishingly personal baggage in an emotional breakdown during a hard workout, there is some stupid challenge that is never worth watching, the weigh-in takes up about 40 minutes of the whole show and then the voting off someone at the end takes care of another 20 minutes. But really it's all about how much weight they lose in the end. When the show first started, the heaviest contestant by far was just over 400 pounds. I mean, one of the women, although short, was a whopping 167. Now the lighter people seem to be in the lower 300's, while most of the contestants are over 400 pounds. This year they have the all-time heaviest contestant, who also happens to be a woman, who started the show at 476.

Anyway, like I said, it's really all about how much they lose in the end, which can be pretty incredible. But the night before Thanksgiving they had a "where are they now?" show and featured a bunch of past contestants. Most are doing pretty well, although all seem to be at least a little bit heavier than they showed up to the final weigh-in. But they showed one guy who did the Beach to Battleship iron-distance race just a few weeks ago, and then they showed Matt Hoover, who competed in Kona through a celebrity spot. Unfortunately, he missed the cut-off by a little over 3 minutes. This feature also brought back my own painful memory on the day, as they showed him standing on the shore waiting to get in the water on race day, and I heard Mike Reilly's voice in the background saying, "Who's going to be an Ironman today?" Oh yeah, I remember that exact moment. Not me. Not that day. I hoped that might spark some motivation, but not so much so far. It will get easier, right?