oops

I've been busy with this and that, which means little riding and no writing. Today I decided to take some time, put my new repair stand to work, and perform the much needed maintenance on my bikes. In doing so I discovered that the front tire on the Raleigh was dead, the loud and scary way.

As in, I pumped it up to almost full pressure (90 of a max 100 psi) and about 20 minutes later it blew out. Thankfully I wasn't working on the bike anymore and it was back against the wall, otherwise I would have been changing my pants and cleaning the floor instead of blogging...

Crossfit?

I've been swapping emails with my brother, he of the Panama City Beach Iron Man, and he's been recommending that I look into Crossfit as an alternative to the standard gym-based or private coaching. I know a little about it, and know that he (and my sis-in-law) have been working out with a guy who based his program on it, but that's about it. When I did some digging I discovered an affiliate about a half mile from my office and another about two miles from my house. Neither of those is far enough away to pose an obstacle and now I'm intrigued.

Anyone have any experience with Crossfit that they want to share?

100 (or less) Miles of Nowhere

In my last post I mentioned that I hoped I would be in shape (primarily my back) for the upcoming 100 Miles of Nowhere ride. For those who aren't aware of it, this "ride" started as a fundraising bet by the Fat Cyclist that he could do 100 miles in a single day on rollers (he won). The response was so massive that he opened it up to other participants, with the support of Twin Six and other companies. This year's official date is May 8.

The large and very stuffed goody-bag from Twin Six

I recently got my bag of stuff form Twin Six, which (morally) obligates me to ride. I won't be doing so on May 8 due to a barbeque (that I'm hosting). I may try for May 9 - it would be a good way to work off the barbeque and get me ready for my first vacation in something like two years, which starts on May 10.

The inside of the goody-bag

Either way, I doubt I'll be hitting the full 100 miles. My goal is to do 65, a metric century, to see how my training is going for the LiveStrong ride. Since I haven't been doing any training I already know the answer to that question but this might be a good way to jump start the new batch of training. One thing I do need to figure out is how I can determine my distance since I've shifted over to a GPS system, which won't measure anything on the trainer or rollers.

Starting over from scratch

As the long silence might have indicated, I've been lax. Not just in writing, but in riding and just about everything that had been contributing to my physical well-being. Well, it caught up with me on Monday. I was moving and unpacking some not-all-that-heavy boxes and managed to tweak my back, leading to the last couple of days being spent in varying degrees of pain/discomfort and working from home.

This has been a wake up call for me, and come Monday (when I'm well enough to go back to work) one of my stops will be the gym to meet with the person in charge of their trainers. I need to find someone that I can see for both the minor rehab (mainly stretching) my back needs to get the last of the spasm under control, and then for moving forward. I need to focus on weight loss and flexibility, and hopefully there's someone there I can work with.

I hope I can be ready to go for the 100 miles of nowhere ride (post coming to discuss) and more importantly for the LiveStrong ride in July, but right now, I just don't know.

An interesting experiment

The last two or so weeks I've been very strictly monitoring my diet including keeping a food journal. I hate keeping a food journal. However, keeping that close of an eve on my intake has allowed me to drop back almost to where I was a few months ago (~25 lbs down) before I got lazy. During that time I have been very lax about exercising, having gotten in only one true ride, no runs, and a heap of yard work/activity of daily living stuff.

The next two weeks will be almost the polar opposite.

I have two weeks of travel coming up, most of it for work, and the nature of the trips will limit my ability to control my food choices. The first week I'll be in a fairly small town for a training and doubt that there will be much available, in addition I'm in a standard hotel (as opposed to an "extended stay" style one with a kitchen) which limits cooking options. The following week I'll be traveling to Honolulu for meetings, but won't have a car, which reduces me to joining my colleagues in their food choices or guiding them to mine. What I will be doing is bringing my running shoes (and for the first trip my bicycle) and planning to work out for ~60 min per day.

All in all, it will provide an interesting comparison - which is better for me when it comes to losing or at least maintaining weight: rigorous calorie counting/food choice limitation or exercising?

On hydration and being fat

Warning - I will be writing about proper hydration, and as any fitness person knows that means discussing what happens after proper hydration.

I've finally gotten back on track with watching my diet, and as such have seen my weight start heading back down. After a couple of days though I noticed something odd - my body fat % (measured by bio-electrical impedance) was climbing. Climbing at a rate of 1.0 to 1.5% a day. Keeping in mind that my scale reports in 0.5% increments this still seemed like a lot (not to mention odd) so I looked up the impact of hydration (lack of) on this sort of measurement. Short version, the worse your hydration is the higher your apparent body fat %, because it screws with the conductive properties of non-fat body mass.

Since I was already in "fun with Google" mode I decided to see what I could find about "proper" hydration. Sure, I've heard the old "8 x 8 oz glasses per day" thing, but it has always struck me as odd that my wee little friend Pest, who's maybe 5 feet tall in heels and weighs significantly less than I do, would need the same amount of liquid as me. The old stand-by is "clear and copious" urine and I knew I was failing that test, but the closest thing to a formula I found was to halve your body weight in pounds to get the number of oz of water you should drink. A little math gives us:

275/2 = 137.5

For comparison - 8 x 8 = 64

So, I need to be drinking not 8 8 oz glasses, but 17.

No wonder my body fat % has been climbing. I've made the effort for the last couple of days, managed to get close to 80 oz each day (and that was rough) and the body fat % has started reversing. Keeping up this level of drinking (water) is going to be tough.

The awesomeness....

On my ride home tonight I was passed by a, dare I say, dapper gentleman (slacks, cardigan, neatly-trimmed grey beard) riding

a unicycle.

It was one of those days where my desire to have had a camera in my bike bag was unimaginable. He was moving down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, an older Bell (all white, obvious red logo) on his head looking like he'd stepped out of a college-based coming of age movie.

As I said, the awesomeness...

(Possible) Upcoming solo mini-tour

I've got a class for work near the end of the month that will take me up into the Red Bluff (CA) area. After posting on Bike Forums for some good 2-3 day routes in the area I've come down on doing a loop around Lake Almanor. Sure, it's only a little over 30 miles, but this would be my first tour and it looks like I'll need to carry food with me (not fully loaded, but reserve).

Image from MapMyRide

The class is M-Th, so my plan would be to drive over from Red Bluff after the class ends, crash somewhere for the night and leave my truck at the hotel while I do the ride. I plan to finish in 2 days (one night on the road) and would probably stay at the same place after so I can rest before the drive home (3+ hours) which I wouldn't want to do right after the ride.

This would give me plenty of time for the riding and to check out the area. I'm not sure about the terrain, but it looks pretty level. If that's the case and I do the whole 30+ in one day then it will turn into a couple of day trips from the hotel. I would still ride fully loaded and can use it as a chance to check out the bags and get used to the balance of a loaded bike.

Rainy birthday

Should be out riding today to celebrate, but work and weather have gotten in the way...So I'll just post a pic from riding in Carson City a few months back.

GPS oddities and my commute

A little while back I switched from a wheel magnet based bike computer to a GPS one. This was mainly to make it easier to track my running and biking with a single device (read: toy). I had a couple of odd runs before I figured out that you have to wait until the signal is strong (correct number of blinks per minute) before starting off. Now though, I'm having a different issue.

Simply put, the GPS doesn't like my place of business. I can sit outside my building for 10 min (and I have) waiting for the signal and it won't come through. On multiple occasions I've given up waiting and ride the short distance (0.6 mi) from the building to Jack London Square and re-tried, only to get a connection in about 30 sec. Annoying, if not actually significant.

Punch it...

Last time I rode, home specifically, I encountered another rider heading my way. He passed me when a light changed and, mainly because I was in the @$$-end of my ride, the part where no matter how great I feel when I'm putting along my legs start to die on me, I decide to pace him. Keep in mind that I was in mountain shorts (nobody wants to see me in spandex these days) and had a pannier on the back end full of clothes, and my semi-companion was in nothing but bike clothing with a wee-little Camelback.

For about 2 miles (out of my 10) I went harder than I've done for a while - held better than 17 mph and cranking at around 85 rpm. It felt great.

The next morning - not so much...

Perfect temperature for riding

I rode in yesterday and my morning commute is done in work clothes. I discovered that 56F is the perfect temperature to bike in long pants and a button, long-sleeved shirt. Cool enough that I didn't overheat, warm enough that I didn't need any excess "stuff".

Riding home it was 60F, which was just about perfect for riding in my kit.

Keep in mind that I've ridden in everything from snow to 100F+, bone-dry and muggy-wet. I do love riding in extreme heat, if it's dry, but that's a special event kind of thing. For my daily, regular riding give me the mid-60s.

Did Bell make "British" versions of their city helmets?

Riding in this morning I found myself wondering that, are there "British" versions of the Bell city helmets (the Citi and Metro)? These helmets were great because they have little accessory kits that include a mirror, rain cover, and air vent plugs for cold weather. My morning commute it primarily through downtown Oakland on one way streets, most of the time on the left side of the road. That makes my (ordinarily very handy) mirror almost worthless, unless I want to check out the parked cars.

When I got to work I noticed that the visor has a slot on the right side for a mirror, but that the one I have is left-sided only (which makes me wonder if there really are left-handed smoke shifters, no matter what the people at the Wolfeboro Trading Post said). Are there right-sided ones for people who use the other side of the street?

On a less-whimsical note I could see this being handy for international touring, especially if there is just a second wee little mirror to pick up.

Travel and training

The next couple of months involve a lot of travel for me, most of it short trips of the "fly one day, sleep, meeting, then fly home" variety. This is killing my ability to train. In most cases I work a partial day and then head straight to the airport, getting to my destination in the late evening (8pm or later). Since I am an evening-trainer, this means no workout those days. The following day is meeting, followed by a late flight home, arriving in the same time window (8pm or later), which means a second day without training. Again, in most cases I'm pretty thrashed and playing catch-up the third day, which means a late night at work and again no training. Additionally, it means two or three days where I don't eat the way I should. All in all, it's bad news.

Any ideas on ways to still get some training in with all this travel?

Running in the rain

Tonight was my running night and so, despite a pretty heavy rainfall, I put on my gear and headed out. The run wasn't so great in terms of time or distance, but it was just what I needed. I'm trying to build my rhythm for working out so that I get into the pattern of run one, bike one, lift one, repeat, and like I said, tonight was the run one.

It wasn't a great run, but it was fun. If it had been just a tad warmer (it's about 50F here right now) I would have headed out without the hoodie, just shorts and t-shirt. There's something about heading out into the rain fully intending to get soaked that just makes it fun. The walk home form BART in my work clothes? not so great. Running in the rain, really great.

I think it comes back to the whole "accepting reality as it is" thing which is so key to Zen (and which Texafornia from ZenTri spoke about in a recent podcast from ZenTri camp). My "knowledge" of Zen being pretty basic (by that I mean I haven't studied a lot of writings by masters, I've read accounts of the way they lived and developed my understanding from there) I won't try to pass on some teaching from this. For me it was more a perfect opportunity to experience the difference mind (in a Zen sense) can make. There was no difference in the world between my walk home (~15 min) and my run (~20 min, maybe 10 minutes after I got home) but the way I reacted to it was entirely different, and all because I headed out for the run fully intending to get wet.

The world is what it is, but they way we react to it is entirely up to us. I've now experienced that in a very profound way.

I am stronger than pizza (tonight)

Tonight was my first bike commute in a long-ish time, probably a couple of months. It felt much longer than it was given that it took me the same time it always has (around an hour). There's one stretch where I always feel whooped and wish I had SAG support and for some reason when I hit that spot tonight (it was already full dark) I wanted pizza so bad I could almost taste it. Then, just a few blocks from home I passed a Little Caesar's and I still wanted pizza, even if it was pizza pizza.

But no, I'll be good and heat up my stew.

Running > aggravation

Without going into details, by the time I was heading out of work today I was miffed. or peeved. or salty. Take your pick. Personally, I'm going with so aggravated my eyes were bleeding. There are a number of reasons why I felt that way, and none of them matter now.

I was also very keyed up, almost jittery. So I decided to go for a run, something I haven't done for the better part of a month. On that run I ran (ha ha) into my friend Slav and his wife who live somewhat close to me. They were loading their kids into the car to go get dinner and we chatted for a couple of minutes, something else I haven't done for far too long.

A few minutes later I realized that I felt great, at least emotionally. My body was making it very clear that being overweight and taking a month off of running were a bad combo, but the borderline rage I'd been feeling for the last few hours was just gone.

Getting out to run, being able to let my brain switch as close to off as I can (I won't even get into how long it's been since I meditated), and pounding pavement let me subconsciously resolve the battles I'd been fighting in my head. Since there is nothing I can do about any of the things that had me so irked, I let them go. All without actually thinking about it, by just getting into the rhythm of the run.

Like I said in the title - running is greater than aggravation.

Rededication

Last night I did something I've been meaning to do for a while now - I shaved my head again. I seem to have an anti-Samson complex or something, the more I let my hair grow the less focused I get. I need my focus back because I've signed on for another round of the LiveStrong Challenge and want to have a better showing than last year.

As before, I'm riding for Team Fatty, I plan on doing the metric century, and I'm asking for donations.

Unlike before I want to train with focus, hence the head shaving.

In truth, I haven't done any real training since the Turkey Tri at Thanksgiving which some of you may remember whooped me, and not just because of the REALLY cold swim. I have a plan this time around (unlike last year) which involves some mild running and roller/trainer riding for a couple of weeks and then getting more serious. I've picked up a book (Friel's triathlete training bible) and will be keeping a paper log to complement my electronic on on ActiveBody. I will also be posting here regularly as I train, and because I want to shame myself into sticking to it I'll be posting those reports to Facebook.

The ride is in July, which gives me a good six months to get into serious shape, and this time around I want to do just that.