Unless you have been living in a cave on the island of Kahoʻolawe you have heard, repeatedly, stories about the upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in the world of sports. Nowhere has the impact been greater than in the realm of Olympic athletes. They only get one chance every four years. There is no getting around the fact that age is a critical factor in sports. In another four years we can expect a wave of fresh young athletes to sweep aside many of today's best.
When the IOC announced the postponement of this year's games they -- or was it Japan? -- promised to hold the games next year. One year is better than four, but is this a reasonable expectation? As I write this, discussions about what comes next are headline news. There is no consensus. On one extreme we have scientists who predict that our lives cannot return to normal until we have an effective vaccine that is available to all, and we should not expect that until Fall 2021 -- more than a year from now. On the other extreme we have anarchists protesting against government imposed stay-at-home orders, people who believe their intuition and gut feeling is all they need and explicitly reject the advice from scientists. Running back and forth between these extremes, changing direction so fast and so often it makes my head spin, we have our President, who justifies his decisions with magical thinking. The man who thought we should have business back to normal by Easter. The Easter we just had. I am on the side of science, so I doubt we will have anything looking like a normal athletic season until 2022.
The last time I posted here I was working to correct my double vision. My optometrist had suggested I go back to contacts. The results were not good. A real disappointment. I loved the wide angle view and the opportunity to use the visor on my Rudy Project aero helmet. But, as before, roughly an hour into the ride my double vision would show up, and get progressively worse, to the point where it was not safe to continue.
Some friends had suggested I see an ophthalmologist, so I got a referral and had an exam just as the COVID-19 stay-at-home order was taking effect here in Hawaii. The result? Yes I have double vision and contacts were no help. I also found out my Rudy Project sunglasses corrective lenses are too strong, which is why I never had good vision from the beginning. The fix is to add a prism effect to the right eye. This will lift the image just enough so that the eye muscles are not constantly struggling to align the images. We decided to try to implement this first in a new set of lenses for my sunglasses. The project it on hold until social distancing guidelines allow me to see the optician.
In the meantime I do most of my bike workouts on the turbo-trainer. Which is not a bad thing, since two a week are designed for that. I still do long rides on the road. Just not as long as I might otherwise, and I take a break when needed.
In my next post I plan to explain why two bike workouts a week are better done on the trainer. That and a whole lot more. For now I am going to head down to my sailboat and visit Kahoʻolawe, just to see if there really are any caves on the island. We can still sail, right?
(No, I don't actually own a sailboat.)
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