Mmmm ... 5-cent Powerbar

Date: July 12
Mileage: 30.1
July mileage: 335.7
Temperature upon departure: 55

If you ever make it down to the End of the Road, Alaska, the Homer Tribune just published my own limited and subjective Biking Guide to Homer. Those are the trails. Here's the mountain/road package. Hey, I tried.

Theroretically, I should be entering the "peak" of my summer bicycling season in the next few weeks. It's hard to peak out when there aren't any more hours in the day to train. Since I still only have about an hour or two each weekday to ride, I've been trying to up the intensity - more hills, more attempts at speed, etc. I'm not all that savvy as to what these efforts have won me in fitness, but they sure do make me voraciously hungry.

This irritates me, because the hunger binges are becoming harder to avoid - and doing so just makes me grumpy. If I actually sit it out long enough, my appetite returns to normal and I can be satisfied with the appropriate number of calories. But if I don't sit it out, it's all-out, hands-in-the-Froot-Loop-Box binging. Must ... resist.

Geoff recently returned from Utah. Before he flew home, he made a stop at Market Square in west Salt Lake. Market Square sells discount food in the academic sense - although as far as quality, it ranks somewhere below a church food pantry but above the City Dump.

Anyway, he returned with two huge sacks full of assorted energy bars: some mashed, some melted, most expired, but all well under a dime a piece. I ate one yesterday - I believe it was flavored like Honey Nut Cheerios - and to my astonishment, I didn't feel the urge to double over or sprint frantically to the bathroom. At least I know they're probably safe. Geoff has many dozens of these bars stashed around the house, so my new plan is to regulate myself to these when I feel the urge to binge - by carrying them on rides and also by setting up a strict, self-regulated rule that only the bars are available for an hour after a hard ride. My hope is, that when left to the choice of waiting out my cravings or choking down some unidentifiable 5-cent barwith French packaging and the look of a Tootsie Roll that has spent the past decade eroding beneath a couch cushion - that I'll take the path of easy resistance.