Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Monday, August 23, 2004

First Week Back

The first week of the semester is now officially in the history books and the ship is now underway with all passengers aboard (at least in some sense). My classes look like the typical mix of students; some that will do well and some that are already starting the slow slide beneath the water. The series of small crises that seem to always crop up during this time have taken place and hopefully things will settle down a bit. One thing I'll be interested to see is whether the College's early start date will cause any consternation. We have begun about a week earlier than many of the other state schools this year and I expect that a certain number of students didn't read any of the literature that was sent to them and thus will show up today horrified to find that they've missed the first week and their schedules were dropped. Every once in a while I have nightmares like that. I show up to school late only to find that I've been in classes all semester and now it's time for the final. From what I'm told, most folks who spend a lot of time in college have those sorts of nightmares. I remember the first time I had one it really freaked me out. I woke up and it took me most of the day to find my equilibrium. Now I wake up and after a short period of disorientation I usually chuckle over the whole dream. For these folks I expect that it'll take a good deal more to get over what they may experience today.

On the training front, I finally seem to have recovered from traveling to and from Nationals. During last week I didn't feel like I had any fitness or power. I made the mistake of going down to the Pig Trail in Macon on Tuesday and trying to ride hard in wet conditions and my body let me know what a huge mistake that was by having my legs spend the next two days trying to cramp. So I took it a bit easier until this weekend when I ripped off two really solid rides, one on the road and one on the dirt. I was able to keep the heart rate at around 165 and I was able to push up over 180 on the hard bits. I'm tired today, but its a good kind of tired. Tonight I'll spin out and then head down for another Pig trail ride on Tuesday. We race on the trail on Sunday and I'd like to get a good result for the Bike Tech team. Hopefully I''ll be able to finally break through to a top five finish but I'd just like to ride really hard and have a trouble free ride. Also, on Saturday I'll contest the Georgia State Time Trial Championships. I'm looking for a top five there also though the competition will be at a higher level than it was in South Carolina.

GCF is getting underway as well. Things seem to be shaping up really well and hopefully we can have a good push into this first semester. We have a number of solid activities planned and I think we'll have a chance to do some neat things over the course of the year. OUr biggest difficulty this year may in finding a place to hold the Bible study. Last year we had people sitting ont he backs of the couches in the house so I'm not sure what we'll do if we get too many more.

Thanks for reading.

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