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I have been trying to find out if there exists a word or term for hearing a word or phrase spoken by somebody else at the same time I happen to read it. This comes to pass for me many times a day, and usually results in me exclaiming "Ah!". It's like some sort of audiovisual synchronicity.

Parallel to this has been my search for a resource that will help me find a term to describe a particular concept or situation, if a google search yields nothing. I found a reverse dictionary on onelook.com. This is effective up to a point.

There are many online articles with word lists describing concepts I never asked about, containing words I'm pretty sure I'll have forgotten when trying to impress people at a party three years from now. 

So here we are in the Preseason, per Rob Bell's Periodization article I referred to for the Offseason. This should be a six week block of low-intensity technique work (drills), and cross-training (if you like that sort of thing). 

Just as I feared, the Offseason threw me out of my routine and into a funk-and-a-half. So it's taking me some time to get into the Preseason groove. Although there is something alluring about having nothing to do for half an hour except focus on rolling on one skate around half the football field (paved track). 

<a href="http://bl2u.com/events/carolina-century-2011/">http://bl2u.com/events/carolina-century-2011/</a>

No pictures.   :(

Once again, I completed the 102 mile Carolina Century this past Saturday.  The family did the 31 mile option on their bikes.  I need to get my girls used to skating long distances...

Not much to say, the skate was drama-free.  So I'll just give some initial impressions.

What a great skate!  Just like last year, conditions were perfect.  No special difficulty, just a great day to skate.

Four skaters this year: Blake, Elizabeth, Bob Harwell, and me.  Bob and I left Blake and Elizabeth fairly early in the skate, around 5-7 miles in (?).  In Blake's defense, it sounded like he was on his phone quite a bit still working out some issues with other event organizers and volunteers.

Lose all what, exactly? I can't say that this year's training and peaking event season has left me particularly buff, but I would like to retain what little muscle-tone and muscle-memory I did achieve. After some digging around online, I found an article by Rob Bell on inlineplanet, uploaded a few years ago: Periodization Training, Part 1: How to Make the Most of Your Training.

Bell separates the training calendar into these phases:

Many years ago I saw a documentary on PBS. Something about stress in animals, including, supposedly, humans. Anyway, as they were interviewing some human, a sign on one of the cages in the background read, "RAT HAS NO CONTROL." I have almost never stopped laughing about the beautiful truth of those four words of homemade bumper sticker. This is the answer to the majority of the world's questions. 

To be fair, there must have been another cage back there that had a sign reading, "RAT HAS CONTROL." This was the point of the experiment, to show that rats with some control (and predictability of circumstances, as I recall) were much more able to handle rat stress induced upon them by humans. Anyway, great show, and one I've remembered for a long time, eh? 

This site mentions the experiment (check out the base url!):

Location

I'm not sure about access to this article for everyone, but the New York Times had an interesting piece on sports medicine, a booming segment of health care, and one in which roadskaters and roadcyclists are definitely interested. But how do we know there's real science behind the treatments and techniques on offer? The article is interesting on multiple levels, since the author received one of the treatments and wrote about it in an earlier article referenced within.

Fortunately, some people out there are trying to do the follow-up, but most of us wanna be like mike or whatever, so we are susceptible to celebrity ads or buzz. Anyway, not much to say, except this article seems worth a read as background for life on the road. I"m interested in others' thoughts and experiences. I'm certainly not saying that sports medicine has nothing to offer, but like most things that involve hope and money, it's hard to know what's real.