Need to try and combine these two cool tools: Jott Your Way to Evernote Bliss.
(Cross-posted from Wired.com. See all cycling entries there.)
Harrisburg: River Run
Harwich Port Run
Bristol: Wood/Hope/High Street Run
Bristol: Wood Street and Hill Repeats
Bristol: Wood/High Street Run
The lack of updates on my training hasn't been for the lack of training -- it's been about where that training has been taking place. I'm off work for a month, taking the remainder of the paternity leave for our new daughter's birth, and part of the month we decided to spend on the East Coast. But not just one stop. We set up a whole East Coast Tour, from Rhode Island to Cape Cod to Pennsylvania and then to Washington, DC. Two kids, eight bags, 17 days.
And no bike.
So what's a newly-ambitious athlete to do? I asked my coach, and the answer was as clear as it was unwelcome.
It was time to run.
Now, there's a reason that I'm a cyclist, and not a runner. Not to put too fine a point on it, but running...well, running sucks. It's hard. It's slow. It beats up your body.
And did I mention that it's hard? I've never really run with any sort of fitness intent before, and I was surprised just how tough it was to maintain what my runner friends would find to be a pretty easy pace, about 9 minutes a mile, give or take. Made sense, as I thought about it, lungs burning and heart rate soaring -- you're obviously using many more muscles to try and get through the run, especially in the upper body. The next day, it wasn't my legs that were sore or tired, it was my shoulders.
But trucking down the street in the East Coast humidity, sweat soaking through my shirt, I think I had a little bit of a conversion experience. I could see the same Zen in running that I find on the bike, the same winnowing of the world down to just keeping your speed up, feeling your breathing, and putting one foot (or pedal) in front of the other. And of course, given that there's always some running in a cyclocross race, I need to get used to this at some point.
Plus, there's the benefit that a 45 minute run feels like a lot more useful exercise than a ride of the same length. I might try and mix in some runs at lunch when time is tight, just to get more bang for my buck.
That said, I was back on the bike for the first time yesterday, and it was an interesting experience. Cardio-wise, I felt good, which was kind of the point of running. But my legs felt slow, my pedal stroke noticeably less fluid.
The trick here I suspect is, as ever, balance. And getting a travel bike.
Been traveling around seeing friends and family, so not a lot of time for blogging. More soon, including exciting updates on the training regimen.
(Cross-posted from Bike Geek at Wired.com)
Workout data, 6/16/08 Workout data, 6/18/08 Workout data, 6/20/08
So, the first week of my classes at Endurance is over.
Wow.
Seriously, just wow. I like to think of myself as in decent shape, but doing really intense interval training is a completely different animal than heading out to just tool around on the bike for a couple of hours. That's the point, of course -- training right below and right above your anaerobic threshold is how you get better at riding at it, but it's hard.
It doesn't help that I've been sick for going on two weeks now with some sort of mutant cold that I can't shake. I think it's a fact of life that when you have small kids in the house that there's just going to be a higher level of germ circulation than you might like.
One thing that has become clear is that I need to be religious about stretching and doing other body work outside of class. Boosting my intensity this quickly might not be the smartest thing I've ever done (although so far, I feel pretty decent). But my muscles are definitely tight, especially my IT band, which can be a bugaboo for cyclists as well as runners. Last night, I spent 30 minutes trying to loosen it up with a foam roller, one of those activities that's squarely between helpful and excruciating.
Today's class was particularly tough, especially the last interval set, which was meant to simulate the dreaded Seven Sisters, a particularly annoying set of rolling hills that sit on Ridgecrest Road in Marin County. If you check out the data from the workout, and especially that sawtooth pattern for my heart rate, you can see how I waver back and forth just over and just under my threshold heart rate. Brutial, but no doubt effective.
Before that last interval, I actually felt like I was handling the intensity slightly better than earlier in the week. One benefit of riding indoors is that you can really focus on technique, and making sure that you're activating your hamstrings and glutes as well as your quads as you pedal. I've been concentrating on that.
The other day in class, I had an interesting thought. I was looking around the room, and even though I was dying, it occurred to me that other people in the class felt even worse.
It's perhaps not nice, but their pain somehow made me feel better, and like I might actually be a competitve racer by the time this process is over.
If you're thinking that ten speeds on your freewheel aren't enough, Campagnolo has announced new 11-speed components.
I've started a series of blog posts over at Wired.com called Bike Geek -- I'll be charting my progress in a cycling training regimen designed to get me ready to race this fall. To read all the posts, you can go to the Bike Geek home page. I'll also try and remember to post links to individual posts here. Here's the start of the first entry:
I used to be a pretty good bike racer. Not a world beater, but competitive at a state-wide level. But that was many years ago. Since then, things like a job and a wife and two kids have cut into my cycling hobby. I used to ride 300 miles a week. Now, I'm lucky to ride a third of that.
But last winter, after over 15 years away from competitive cycling, I tried a cyclocross race. Cross, a melding of road racing and off road racing, is kind of like steeplechase on a bike. You ride, but you also have to carry your bike up steep climbs and over unrideable obstacles. It's kind of absurd, really hard, and an insane amount of fun. One race, and I was hooked.
I decided that I wanted to race cyclocross for the 2008-09 season, and I wanted to be competitive. But with the aforementioned job and family commitments, my time is limited. That means that every moment of training that I do has to be very, very focused on exactly the kind of fitness I need to race; I just don't have any time to waste.
When I raced before, heart rate monitors were just entering the mainstream. Today, the advent of power meters which measure exactly how much work you're doing on your bike, combined with GPS and heart rate, can provide an incredibly detailed portrait of your workouts. In combination with fitness testing, this lets you target your weaknesses exactly, and spend all your time doing exactly what you need to do to improve quickly.
So here's the challenge I've set myself. By the start of cyclocross season in September, I want to be ready to be competitive.
Productivity nirvana: OmniFocus for iPhone and iPod touch. Merlin Mann has more.
New bata software out, a Subversion client for the Mac called Versions.
If you're as much of a Photoshop novice as I am, you'll appreciate Unsharp Mask: How Do You Actually Use That Thing?
Getting ready for the season finale tomorrow, here's all of the Lost flash-forwards in chronological order.
If you can't get enough of Keith Olbermann's self-righteous rants, you'll love Keith’s Komments.
Great story from a great sports writer: Pat Jordan on the trouble with sports journalism.
After I moved here in 1999, and then my good friend Jamie from New York moved here a year later, we went from messing around with music at his apartment to forming an honest-to-goodness band. Lakeside Rebar played what we called "roots pop," and for the next few years, the four of us had a hell of a good time, whether it was rehearsing with a few Budweisers, or playing at various clubs in San Francisco. Along the way, we had spent an embarrassingly long time working on an album. One of the great things about the home recording revolution is that you have as much time as you need to get things how you want them.
The downside is that you have as much time as you need, without a clock ticking. So it took us a couple of years to finish.
And after it was done, we didn't do anything with it. Jonathan had moved to New York City, and never replaced him. So the band wasn't playing out as Rebar, and that was that.
Until today. Here is is, for the 20 or so people who might be reading this: Come & Gone, by Lakeside Rebar.
It is my strong belief that the classic sandwich at Chick-fil-a, the (mostly) Southern fast food chain, is just about perfect. It's just a chicken breast, breaded and pressure-cooked, served on a white bun that's been toasted and buttered. Garnished with dill pickle chips. Between the seasoning, which is excellent, and the contrast of the soft bun with the snap and acidity of the pickle, it's just terrific. My mouth's watering writing this, I kid you not. Given that the nearest Chick-fil-a outlet is 40 miles away from me, what am I to do? McDonald's has a new solution: the awkwardly-named "Southern Style Chicken Sandwich." It's clearly an homage (rip-off?) of the Chick-fil-a version, consisting of a breaded chicken breast, a "buttery tasting" bun, and garnished with dill pickles.
A former boss and I have spent years bemoaning our lack of Chick-fil-a access, so when this sandwich was announced, we wondered if it might just be good enough to satisfy our desire. You can check out his review on his blog.
I finally had one yesterday. How was it? Actually, pretty good. I would imagine if you had never had a Chick-fil-a sandwich, you'd be impressed. The breading is much heavier than a Chick-fil-a, and the seasoning isn't quite as strong (a quick check of the nutritional information shows that the Chick-fil-a packs a whopping 1300mg of sodium, while the McD's makes due with a paltry 1090mgs).
And the bun doesn't measure up to the toasted, buttered Chick-fil-a bun. "Buttery tasting" (which comes from liquid margarine) isn't a substitute, although it has the same soft texture.
But overall, it's tasty. Good, even. Given the number of food scientists that McDonald's employs, I guess it's unsurprising that they can ape a competitor's dish well.
If the Chick-fil-a is an A, it's a B for sure. Good enough, in fact, that I'm thinking of heading there right now.
Brian Lam, the editor of Gizmodo and former Wired gear ninja, writes about our look back at the Worst Gadgets Ever From Wired's Fetish. I'm glad to see he liked it!
The big gadget news today is the release of Roku's Netflix movie streaming box. You can check out my review at Wired.com
One reason I'm proud to live here: California Supreme Court says same-sex couples have right to marry.
More Nokia data: Wired Wednesday Lunch Ride.