A Special Kind of Patience

An Exercise in Weird

Derek suggested that I, his wife, write the blog post this morning.

This morning started like many other mornings, feeding the baby at 4:30am, realising that Derek was already up and hearing him having breakfast. However, when the baby woke me up again at 6:15am and I got up to make a cup of tea, I noticed the P5 was still sitting there, so knew Derek was still here. When I asked him why he hadn’t gone yet, he was measuring his cranks. As you do for half an hour in the morning! Don’t most people? The reason he gave when pressed, was that he’d been having trouble reaching the power ratings on his P5 that he typically achieved on his training bike.

Apparently, the equation the power meter uses takes into account the crank length. The default of 172.5mm was appropriate for his training bike, and he had assumed the P5 was the same. However, after half an hour with a ruler from 5:30am, he determined that his P5 cranks were probably 170mm. I didn’t want to say “What’s 2.5mm between friends?” because I could see that he’d just spend half an hour of quality time with his ruler, and I didn’t want to take that away from him. But that’s what I was thinking!
I can see his point though, that 2.5mm, however small, would make a difference to the power output, especially if that length is squared or something. So that was weird thing number 1 for the morning.

Weird thing number 2 came at about 7:30am, after Derek had been gone for about half an hour. A taxi pulled up, asking for a Derek, at our address.  Obviously a Derek did live here, but he was out, so the likelihood of him having called a taxi was low. Plus he’s never called a taxi before. There is a house behind ours with the same number plus a letter, so I told the driver  to check there, but thought it was unlikely that a Derek was staying there as well (the lady who lives behind us is not named Derek – of that I am sure!). Meanwhile, I came inside and checked where Derek was on the Garmin map. I am definitely loving the Garmin 510 and its ability to tell me where Derek currently is during his rides. This morning was one of those mornings. After seeing he was somewhere on the Freeway, then waiting a minute to refresh the screen and see he was still travelling at the same pace and was further down the Freeway, I relaxed. 

I’d had several scenarios going through my head:

1. Derek had come off his bike and called a taxi to bring him home. A bit weird, since he’s more likely to call me. Also weird as the taxi came to our house, rather than where he was. Given the Garmin 510’s reassurance that he hadn’t crashed and was lying in a gutter somewhere, that scenario was discounted. Which brings us to scenario 2.

2. Derek is on call for work, and they had sent a taxi (for some reason) to collect him. Had that been the case, I knew there wasn’t much I could do about that with him out on a ride. I tried calling him and sent him a couple of texts, explaining the taxi, and pointing out that if he was on call, he really should be answering his phone. Not that it worked, as he didn’t call me back, but on his return he did check his phone.

3. The last scenario I could think of what that it was a prank on Derek. Honestly, this is still the highest on my plausible list of scenarios, and if it was a prank, unlikely to ever be answered. But given Derek wasn’t even there at the time, was more an inconvenience for a poor taxi driver than a prank on Derek! And don’t even get me started on pranks that effect innocent by-standers like taxi drivers, that’s just plain mean.

Once Derek did return from his ride (which went fine, thanks for asking) and I explained about the taxi turning up, Derek came up with Scenario 4.

4.    One of his devices called a taxi without his knowledge.

Apparently some devices can do this, but he doesn’t think the Garmin 510 has the capability, and his phone doesn’t show any calls this morning, apart from mine. Plus, the other reason to discount this scenario is that it would have called a taxi to his location, rather than his house (which wouldn’t be all that useful if he had fallen off and needed a taxi).

So it is still a mystery, and can only be described as weird. Hopefully it doesn’t happen again.

In other Derek training news (kind of the point of the blog I guess) his swim with Swim Smooth yesterday afternoon was good (his words, not mine)! Descriptive, I know! Typically he enjoys the Saturday swims, as they have the toughness of a normal Swim Smooth session, with something different. I don’t know what yesterday had to make it a good swim, but on other occasions I know they have taken the lane ropes out to simulate the mass start, or if he’s had a wetsuit on, he starts behind the pack and has to try and swim through people. I think it sounds like Saturdays are the interesting session. In trying to make it equivalent to an open water swim, the folk at Swim Smooth come up with a bunch of creative ways to do that.

Derek’s ride this morning, for those of you who are reading this blog for the training element (I’m looking at you Daryl) was fine, he went down the freeway again (which I knew thanks to the Garmin 510) and managed to hold his speeds etc. He had a run that followed, but before going (after I’d told him about the taxi) he was saying his gut feeling was that his back wasn’t up for it. That perhaps he’d pushed it a bit hard on Thursday, and it was only now feeling as good (comparatively) as it had before that run. Hence, his plan had been to start it out as a walk and take it easy, perhaps trying the pieces at a run as he felt up to them, so as not to do any damage to his back. On his return, he had cut the distance short, only doing 11kms, and he wasn’t sure how his back was feeling. I haven’t seen him yet, as he went straight into stretching, as he does.