Cross Training?

The Plan

For a couple of days last week I planned out a Saturday morning training route in my head. Maybe I've got some kind of condition but I like to plan out training rides days in advance so I know exactly how it's going to play out. My entire Saturday was booked after 10am so my plan was to wake up at 4:30, gobble down some food and be out on the bike by 5:00. That way I could pound out a good training ride and be back in time to get ready for a piano recital that 3 people in my family were participating in at 10. Along the way I also planned on picking up that bottle of Gatorade with my century to nowhere earnings so I could single handedly kick start the economy. I was also looking forward to getting to the recital and quoting Hannibal from the A-Team "I love it when a plan comes together". Well, I never even got close to uttering those words on Saturday because along the way my plan fell apart. I guess everyone will have to wait another week for the economy to get back on track. Here's how the plan really happened.

What time did you say?

Friday night my oldest son graduated from High School. By the time the graduation was over it was almost 10PM. After the ceremony we had kids going in a couple of different directions so Jenny and I plotted out who was going to take who where. I drew the straw to drive my oldest son and 6 of his friends on the first leg of their graduation party. As I asked about the details I found out that my driving responsibilities weren't going to end until 1:30am which meant that I probably wouldn't be in getting to bed until around 2am.

Planned Flushed :-(

At that point I could tell that any chances of getting up at 4:30 for a ride were not going to happen unless I wanted to ride on only a couple of hours of sleep. I could hear a giant flushing sound off in the distance. I surmised that it was my ride plans being flushed for Saturday. In the long run, I can always go on a ride but I only get to be transportation for graduation parties once per kid so it was OK.

Cross Training Opportunity

One of the graduation activities for the night was to play a couple of hours of WhirlyBall. If you've never seen WhirlyBall before you should check out the link because it's like nothing you've seen before. Basically, it's like playing basketball only you're throwing a whilfle ball with a hand-held scoop. By the way, you do all of this while driving a bumper car with a funky steer wheel. All of the kids absolutely loved playing and it was really funny to watch them. Now for the cross training opportunity. After a couple of games a group of kids came out of the court and challenged the parents to a game or two. At first I was a little nervous just on the sheer foolishness factor but I got over it quickly and was ready to go. After all since my ride plans had been scrubbed I thought maybe I could use this as some good cross training.

Crash Training Opportunity

The first game that we played was a blast. After figuring out how to navigate the bumper cars the adults whipped on the kids in the first game. Since we won the first game we stayed on the court to challenge the next group of kids. The next game was quite a bit different. The second group of opponents included a couple of kids that were really large and their sole intent was to ram into their opponents with their cars at full speed. I think this had something to do with them lettering in (American) football. As we played I would be looking over to where the ball was so I could get into position and all of the sudden some kid would smack into my car at full speed. It was quite the whiplash experience. After a disastrous loss all of the adults wandered off the court dazed and confused. All of us were holding body parts and wondering how sore we were going to be in the morning. After a brief discussion the adult team retired from competition and let the kids beat up on themselves for the rest of the night.

In the final analysis, whirlyball isn't much of a cross training activity for cycling unless you have a need to train for bike crashes. If you ever get the chance to play take a very close look at your opponents before you wander out on the court and have fun. By the way, I was able to get a short training ride in on Saturday night after all.