Going to the dark side

Face it, I'm not a big fan of technology. I have 3 remote controls for the tv, satellite, and vcr because I cant figure out how to program the universal remote. Cliff gave me a cool Garmin for Christmas and I rarely use it, it's just so much easier to call J, aka map lady and have her give me directions. And the cell phone, I cant do the call waiting pick up thing.

So.... James has been hounding me to get a power tap, and I've been resisting much harder. When I was a fairly competitive runner our coach tried to get us on heart rate monitors and J and I proved exactly how uncoachable we could be. I tried it, she didn't. At the end of 2 months I gave mine away. I got paranoid looking at the numbers, and the lag time of 5 seconds between effort and show up on the monitor was killing me.

So I did it. I got a good deal with a 20% off coupon and just went ahead and ordered it. 7-10 days and it should be at the house ready for me to try to figure out. With as much as this sucker cost, I had better use it. And, it had better make me stronger!

What I am hoping is that it cures a notorious problem of mine. When I was a runner Coach Benson told me that I had a classic problem, I ran medium hard all the time. I rarely ran easy enough to be a rest day, a real rest day. At the same time, except for in races, I never really ran hard enough to be a really hard day. So I taught myself to go one speed. (Trust me, slow for Coach Roy was something above a walking pace, and not a J walking pace...) If I'm training by power numbers, I'm hoping for a clearer definition in my pea brain of what is hard enough, and what is easy enough. The middle numbers should be fairly self evident.

So here's hoping that I don't get the normal brain freeze when I'm listening to James. It typically starts off ok, but then turns into a Charlie Brown scene. You know, when the teacher is explaining something, and all Charlie hears is "Blah, Blah, wha wha, blah, blah." Good luck James, you will end up loosing your hair over this one I'm sure!