FitOldDog is a lucky guy. His exercise tip today it, “Have balance in your life and on the bike.” Is it really luck? With Deb on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Photo by a kind passing stranger.
Hi folks! Welcome.
Cath and Steve, great Australian athletes that we met at the 2013 70.3 Ironman World Championships in Los Vegas, NV. Photo by FitOldDog.
My exercise tips for the day are to recommend that you have balance in your life and on the bike, and always wear your bike gloves.
When I tell people that I just enjoyed a trip somewhere interesting they often say, “You lucky devil, wish I could go there.” But it has almost nothing to do with so called luck, it is a result, generally, of my saving some cash, making a plan, courting a great woman, buying tickets, and off we go. You could argue that luck put me on the planet in the first place. But what is luck?
I have a few things in common with Albert Einstein, two of those being:
(1) Experiencing a life-threatening abdominal aortic aneurysm, but Albert was unfortunate (fortune?) to have been born a little too early technology-wise to last, as his repair burst, though he did pretty well with ‘Saran Wrap,’ whilst I have my Cook Zenith Stent Graft – lucky Kevin. In addition to not playing dice, I suspect that ‘God’ doesn’t make stent grafts either.
(2) A general resistance to the concept of chance.
[Hot Air Aside – I know about the rules of statistics, and the power of probability theory in the unleashing of the highly effective quantum mechanical theories, but it would appear to me, given the extreme dependence of many things on initial conditions (like planet Earth existing and me being on it, so I could ask Deb out), that we can’t tell determinism from chance, so I opt for determinism, assuming that in a remote future we’ll find a way to discover the nature of the myriad chance events that account for things.]
One recent, probably not chance event (my electing to not wear bike gloves in race), has me convinced that I should wear bike gloves, even during races.
Tamara Sanders of The Clean Machine bike shop in Carrboro, NC, whose bike knowledge and patience I greatly admire. Photo with permission by FitOldDog.
I left them off to save 20 seconds in transition, like most people on the course, as far as I could tell. A bike wreck revealed their value with respect to their potential to reduce wear and tear on me. In fact, if I had been wearing gloves my hand injury would have been much reduced – OR – taking 20 seconds to put my gloves on my wet hands after the swim (let’s say 1.5 minutes) may have prevented the accident entirely, as I would have been somewhere else at the time of the wreck.
So! Wear your bike gloves, my friends (and a firmly attached helmet, too!), and if you have to break the first rule of cycling (‘keep the rubber side down’), hang onto the bike as it can protect you too. I asked Tamara of The Clean Machine, whose bike knowledge I respect, and she agreed:
“Hang onto the bike if you can!”
-k @FitOldDog
Hang on, if you can!
The problem is the reflex to protect your head with your hands, whereas tuck and roll, whilst gripping the bike is a better way to go.
“Fortuna is the arbiter in half of our affairs” Machiavelli, ‘The Prince’
Yes! I’m sure the Bard said that, or Bacon, or whoever it was, but what did he know of Chaos and Complexity theories. He seemed to live in a world of human emotion – not the best guide to understanding the nature of the universe, in my opinion. I suspect that the rules of chaotic determinism approximiate the rules of probability theory, and that is why people continue to be happy to use the terms ‘chance’ and ‘luck.’ No different to the word god! What does it mean if undefined? So much hoopla but fascinating stuff. Makes one think, at least. Thanks for your quote. -k
PS your request is not forgotten, I was just a little busy this weekend. Let’s see what I can find. -k
Oh dear, there you go again!
Human emotion is essential and not to be too readily dismissed.
We are only fully equipped when we have both reason and emotion at our disposal.
Machiavelli was writing from the real life experience of being on the losing side and being tortured. This led him to understand the chaotic world of Renaissance Italy and its politics and write the basic text on political power.
Unpredictability and cruelty were paralleled in his political culture much like the unpredictability of the friction (measure in P.S.V. or polished stone value) of the surface of that patch of road just ahead of you as you enter that bend. Now when you hit that smooth patch and things go from under you, that is the time to hold on.
OK! My point is purely left brain logic. The love of my sanity. Love?
Kevin the gloves are very important the helmet it´s essential, but the most important thing in the bike it´s not to fall o your hip and shoulder could have a problem like my jaja
Hi Luis, great to hear from you. Sounds as though you are recovering nicely, and getting ready to compete again. I’m pleased about that. I think that hanging onto the bike may help protect one’s hips to some degree, and especially your hands and arms. It is still a matter of luck, though good conditioning also helps survival and subsequent recovery rate. Ride on, young man. -kevin