Guru Weekend
What an incredible GURU weekend. That's guru, as in my cycling guru and my swimming guru, a.k.a.
Da Fish. The weekend started out with great weather Friday evening after work. I went down to the Town Lake Trail and hardly anybody was there for some reason. Beautiful weather. Just the right temperature. Good pace and no issues with the knee or hip. The accupuncture has worked so well on the hip that I can hardly tell there was anything there.
So anyway, the guru weekend started on Saturday. My cycling guru lives across the street. The Kahuna has RoboStu. I have a cycling guru living across the street. He was getting ready to conduct a Road 101 class at the veloway and said we could probably get a few laps before the class started. That's all I needed to hear. I was about to do bamboo flooring. Not. Got changed. Got the bottles filled. Got Pawn Shop Bike down from the rafters. Crap! I didn't place the rear brakes back on PSB. Oh well, I still had the front brake.
Cycling Guru and I went a couple of laps on the veloway without any issues. No issues if you call losing half your gears as no issues. I had installed new bar-end-shifters and the chain was moving back and forth on the chain rings. However, when on the ground the derailer required more tension. We found his students. We found some tools. We got the chain to go in the larger chain ring as the guys changed from going on the veloway to going out on Mopac and practising peloton skills of trading the lead. Gulp!
I held it together for as long as I could with half my gears. We got four miles in and I even made it past the long, tall hill before waving them on. My heart rate had red lined in the larger chain ring going up the hill and needed to settle down. The peloton was going 25 mph at this point and didn't look like it was going to slow down.
I was disappointed PSB couldn't hang but I think it could have given it had a full set of gears. Given that the other bikes were two $6000 Pinarellos and one $2000 Fuji. I got home and put the bike on the rack to make some adjustments. A great ride regardless.
Da Fish called me Sunday morning to see if I'd want to check out the new University of Texas pool. Hell yeah! Brand spanking new sweet set of indoor and outdoor pools to choose from. Twelve lanes in the outdoor pool and six in the indoor.
I hadn't had a swim since the last triathlon, Sept. 10. Over six weeks ago. My goggles were still in my triathlon bucket on the porch and covered in sand. A quick wash up and they were good to go.
The pool was prettier than the photographs indicated. I had a lane all to myself so I dove in and started to enjoy the water. For some reason I can't do math while swimming. Everytime I try and figure mileage with laps I mess it up. I have to figure it all out before I leave the house. I paused somewhere around 45 minutes when
Da Fish was paused. He asked how far I was going and I said a mile. He said I was way past that as he was working on 3500 yards so I must have been at about 2500. For the life of me I couldn't get my head around the simple multiplication of 60 laps x 50 yards = 3000 yards. I said, "On this perfect day, I'm not going to fight to get my brain to work. I'm going for a little longer," not wanting to stop. Whatever it was was what it was going to be. It was 3000 yards and it felt so good.
Some Week
Something about the seasonal change that throws me for a loop and gets my schedule all out of whack. I thought I had it in my head to run at noon or afternoon or evening now. What I didn't bet on was Tuesday watching stupid weathermen forecasting 100 percent chance of rain so I pack weight room clothes and eat a weights-workout-30-gram-protein lunch then having a beautiful day appear, making me want to run and doing so, then to have my entire abdomen feel like Alien was busting through my gut for two and a half friggin' miles. Jeeeeeez!
Chalk it up for the worst run of the season.
Diddo for Thursday. Can you believe it? I did again on Thursday except this time I only threw down 13g of protein. It didn't feel like Alien was busting through. It was just uncomfortable. It was also hot as hell. In the 90s. Probably the last run-without-your-shirt-run of the year.
OK, so I'm thinking about when my marathon training program should get serious. I mean how many more weeks do I have to suck down as much beer and BBQ as my body can stand? So I take out my pencil and paper and start with Feb. 18, counting back a couple of taper weeks and then start with my longest run. This time I add some cross training weeks inbetween long runs. January, December, November, October. October? This is the last week of October. Yep. Marathon training is supposed to start this week. Serious marathon training in order to get where I want to be come Feb. 18. So last night I passed on sucking down a couple brews with coworkers and instead ran eight miles with protein in the gut.
The best thing about yesterday's run was the way I felt this morning. After my run last night I took some MSM, CoQ10, a whey protein shake with blueberries and strawberries, 2 Liquid Advils and 2 Miller Lites. Damn my legs felt better than they have for six months.
BTW, the acupuncture worked on my knee and hip. They feel great. Now I can start ramping up the miles again. If I start to get the twinge again, I'll look into scheduling more sessions.
Pawn Shop Bike is Finished!
A year later, Pawn Shop Bike is finished. Just about everything I wanted to do to the bike to improve it's speed and my comfort, has been bought and installed onto the bike. Most of the improvements have come from eBay, although a couple of purchases were made from Jack and Adam's Bicycles.
Here's a list of everything purchased and the new total cost of the bike.
- Bianchi bike bought at pawn shop $69.00
- Shimano 8 Speed Bar End Shifters $45.00
- Spinergy Rev X Carbon 700C Rear, Shim, Tubular $75.00
- Edge Aero Carbon Fork 700C 1 Inch Threaded $51.00
- Shimano WH-540 front wheel and rear hub and parts $49.00
- Nashbar Double Cranksets 53x39 $45.00 NEW
- Saddle $40.00 NEW
- Time Trial Brake Levers $40.00 NEW
- Aero Bars $15.00
- Clipless Pedals $35.00 NEW
- Total Cost $464.00
I took the finished Pawn Shop Bike (PSB) out to the veloway yesterday to see what it could do. My computer failed so all I could base it's performance on was how many other bikes passed me or that I passed. I was passed by 0 but PSB passed 2 Specialized, 1 Fuji, 2 Cannondales, and 1 Ciocc. We couldn't find any Felts to pass. Very unscientific but promising.
Addendum - Two days before the 2007 CapTexTri I bought a 2.8 lb., CAAD 4 Cannondale frame at Frankenbike for $35.00
Ba-Da-Bing Ba-da-Boom Snowball
I haven't been keeping up with my daily workout post. In fact, I've barely been keeping track of the times and heart rates for later analysis in notes or on the computer. This week has been hectic with trying to get to
sixty running miles and increased hours at work and filling in to coach another person's running class. You know the saying that starts a butterfly flaps it's wings in China which results in an eventual hurricane in Florida. So the butterfly flapped its wings, I didn't make my morning run and took Kayla to school. This gave me the feeling I was being flexible, helping out, and I knew I could get the 10-mile run in at noon or after work.
Fast forward to 4:30 in the afternoon. Ready for the run. Crap, it's 94 degrees outside. Thirty degrees over what I normally run in, although I ran all of last year in the afternoons or evenings. My sweat rate doubled, which was ok as I had plenty to hydrate with. The problem started to snowball. A change of time caused the workout in the heat, which caused a greater loss of fluids, minerals, ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom, snowball. It didn't stop there. The late workout caused me to get about four hours of sleep which meant the snowball rolled into the next day.
I stopped in and talked to my fitness guru Pat. Just shootin' the s*&!^t who asked how many miles I was doing. Once I mentioned sixty for this week he went off into a diatribe on signs of overtraining. I wasn't listening whole-heartedly but some bells went off later. Actually, it wasn't little bells, it was little voice who said, "back off, you're not ready for 60 miles." It's the same little voice that wanted me to daily check Ebay or Craig's List first thing after I woke to see if their were any Zipp Z99 for cheap.
I told you Pawn Shop Bike is done. After the bar end shifters, it's done. Finito. Plus, we haven't fully tried out the Spinergy Rev X wheel.
You shouldn't ride that thing.
Why not?
Cause they call it the "Lawsuit Wheel".
What's up with that?
Apparently, this dude was just riding along, his hand goes into the wheel, and ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom, three fingers are chopped off. Instant lawsuit. You're a keyboard jockey. You can't afford to be missing fingers.
I don't think that's how it went. For one, hands just don't go into the rear wheel. Nevermind, you've hijacked my blog. I'm riding that wheel, which means you're riding that wheel. We'll go fast. You'll see. Pawn Shop Bike is done after I get the other bar-end shifter installed tonight.
So anyway, I started comparing my lethargy with what Guru Pat said. He did mention lethargy. Dang! I wore the knee brace all week, except for coaching sessions. It's not good for the coach to wear a knee brace. My calves were in pain all week. Dang, two from Guru Pat's list! Not enthused about working out. That's number three from the list.
So in the end, even with a one-hour Swedish massage in the middle of the week, I've recognized that I need to insert a recovery week come Monday. My knee needs some easy days, my calves definitely need some easy days or they're going to split wide open, and my head needs some easy days. One of these bad boys needs some rest as well. 1. Piriformis or 2. Gemellus Superior or 3. Obturator Internus or 4. Gemellus Inferior or 5. Obturator Externus or 6. Quadratus Femoris. One of them hurts like hell when I do my morning crunches so they're out for the rest of the week and next. I can do the crunches with a weight belt but something else may be stressing.
One cool thing coming out of this week has been the heart rate in the 120s. when I started base building my slowest run was always in the 130s. today my hert rate kept dipping into the 120s and stayed there for most of the ten miles ths morning. That's also with no cool front and the usual high humidity and temps in the seveties.
