{"id":8207,"date":"2014-12-08T08:32:29","date_gmt":"2014-12-08T14:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/?p=8207"},"modified":"2014-12-08T10:59:52","modified_gmt":"2014-12-08T16:59:52","slug":"easy-days-in-the-woods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/?p=8207","title":{"rendered":"Easy Days in the Woods"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late last week, I opened up a “make new blog post” window and then didn’t have anything to say. About the only fun thing and interesting that went on last week was that I started learning the gi in Jiu Jitsu. Prior to that, everything I’d learned was based on Jiu Jitsu that’s useful in MMA, when you’re not wearing a robe that serves as a million different handles for you or your opponent to grab onto, and when\u00a0it’s generally acceptable\u00a0to hammerfist your opponent in the face from mount. The new instructor, Eric Ingram<\/a>, is excellent, and his wife, Anna, is also a somewhat experienced white belt, so of course, she and I got pretty buck on Thursday night…<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6041\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_6046\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I borrowed a gi for the two classes last week, then ordered one of my own. It’s got phoenixes on it, and they’re purple, so I basically had to get it… Tatami Phoenix Gi<\/a><\/p>\n

Friday, it rained nearly all day. I decided to warm myself up with a kickboxing class in the afternoon. I’ve been laying off of any sort of ballistic training (running, jumping, etc) since the onset of both patellar and posterior tibal tendinitis a few weeks ago during my last training run. It doesn’t really hurt as long as I’m not bouncing around on it. Kickboxing is a good test for knee and ankle pain because, while bouncing on my left leg is a necessity for throwing a rear leg round kick, there are a lot of other things I can do that don’t involve rear leg roundkicks. So, it’s great indoor exercise on days like Friday. I just want everything on my left side to hurry and get healed up so I can get back into some more strenuous work.<\/p>\n

Saturday and Sunday were reserved for exploring the woods on cyclocross bikes. The trails were way wet, so Matt and I drove out to Shelby Forest on Saturday and the Collierville Wolf River Greenway on Sunday to get in some low-intensity saddle time and enjoy the scenery.<\/p>\n

Shelby Forest paved-ish bike path:<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6049\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_6050\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_6051\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Wolf River Greenway:<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6053\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_6054\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_6055\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_6056\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Afterward, we checked out a new “fancy Asian fusion” buffet near the house. I give it a solid “meh” review. It’s not much different than other buffets in that its full of nearly stale food and everything tastes like it’s fried in yesterday’s oil. The sushi is a little dried out, too. The place is huge, and I totally missed that it had a Mongolian BBQ section until after I’d already eaten a plate full of regular buffet food. I’d like to go back sometime in the future and try the fresh-cooked option.<\/p>\n

Later, a friend from the gym came over to pick his new (to him) bike up from the house. Matt and I sold him a few parts and put it together for him as the rest of the pieces filtered in from the internet and surrounding bike shops.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_6059\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Back to my original thought… this week may actually be a two (or more!) post week since, on Saturday, I also purchased a pair of Shimano M200 shoes<\/a>. They’re billed as “enduro” shoes, which I don’t really care about one way or the other. I do, however, like the idea of something that’s stiff enough for hammer time, yet also more comfortable than a traditional XC-oriented shoe for getting off the bike and walking on rocks and on other steep isht. I rode in them yesterday, and I plan on talking about them a bit on Just Riding Along<\/a> tonight as well as posting a few pictures and initial thoughts on here once I’ve ridden them a little more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Late last week, I opened up a “make new blog post” window and then didn’t have anything to say. About the only fun thing and interesting that went on last week was that I started learning the gi in Jiu Jitsu. Prior to that, everything I’d learned was based on Jiu Jitsu that’s useful in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[27,5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Uq-28n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8207"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8207"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8223,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8207\/revisions\/8223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brickhouseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}