T & W

Yeah, I know what some of you are thinking. Tits and Who-ha. I'll have you know I run a classy blog here and would never refer to bodily parts or fluids or anything the least not classy. Right???

Tuesday. I got home to severe thunderstorm warnings, a magnificent thunderhead just north of us, and crazy gusty winds. I bailed on my ride, but worked on core for a half hour. Yes, plank and pushups to failure, but lots of good stretches.

Wednesday. Great swim. Chatted with the girl who swims my speed and suggested we should be taking turns practicing drafting. Turns out she's doing GWN and IMC as well. Maybe I'll draft off her during the swim. Not quite an hour in the pool.

Got home and went face down in the bean dip. I've been struggling with sleep lately. I don't sleep well when it's hot and I'm really tired. Got up for yoga since it's the last one of the session and wanted to give my thanks to Fiona. She's really helped a lot.

That damn ice cream scooter

The swim plan was littered with "hard" all over it like the white on rice. Now, it just says "hard" a bunch of times but I know perfectly well that what is meant is "HARD!!!!!!". And being the obedient sort that I am, I went hard. Lots. Often. Afen. (Do you know what it is to be an awfen? Sorry, guess which comic opera just went through my mind.)

I should have coordinated my plan with the girl swimming in the next lane and we could have taken turns drafting. She swims the same speed I do, but does an open turn so I pass her doing a flip turn. Keeping up, or trying to stay ahead was great fun. My inner shark came out to play again, which is nice to see. He cruised along, critiquing my stroke, and hers though there isn't much to say there. 1 hr.

To tell the truth I did not feel much like running this evening. Still, I headed out there. (obedient, that's me.) Stretched a bit, especially the hams. They were tight. Walked a bit to warm up and started with an easy run. At first the run was everything I feared it would be; plodding, slow, heavy, joggly. Which didn't help the sloshy tummy.

But a funny thing happened just after 10 minutes in. My stride evened out and picked up a bit. I found I was running along at my old "slow and steady pace". A while later things got better and I was running faster with less effort. Breathing was high zone 2 at the most. The slosh went away. I started really enjoying the run. It was a beautiful evening out, warm, sunny, with a bit of a breeze. A nice night for a run. Except for the ice cream truck and the ding dong songs it plays. I've often thought the drivers of those little scooters are either functionally deaf or have really good hearing protection, and must have done something terrible in a previous lifetime. From about the one quarter mark I could hear the truck. Sometimes louder, sometimes quieter, but always there. Grrrr.

Ran 45 minutes, maybe 6.5 K and ended up enjoying it quite a bit. My legs felt pretty good by the end. I could have run longer but there were beginning to be some reminders that they had worked really hard yesterday, and weren't out of the hole yet, but were just doing me this favour.

Walked and stretched after.

CDA, strong bike, and snot

As I write this Julie and Darryl are part way through their IM CDA run.
Go Julie Go!
Go Darryl Go!

One of the things I don't like about the video coverage during the race is that they focus so much on the leader, especially the guy. I'd prefer to see ordinary people.

Took some time first thing to clean Estela. She's a beautiful bike and likes to look nice. The only problem was getting the chain apart. Last year it was easy as pie. This year on a new chain I couldn't get it apart so I just cleaned as much of the grit off as I could. For some reason afterward the rear deraileur adjustment changed, and I had to tighten the cable. It was all good during the ride.

The plan called for a 4 hour bike today. I'm trying to push a bit harder on the bike and find how hard I can go. I've always held back a bit on the bike. At first it was to be sure I was going to get back from what I thought of as longer rides. When I had a run after, it was to be more sure I could do that. But today I decided to push a bit harder. The very worst that would happen is that I would poop out part way and have to get Linda to rescue me. There are some other things that could happen, but I figured I could cope.

So after a good warmup I pushed. Right from the start my heart rate was a bit higher than I would have thought from my breathing, but I didn't really care. There was a very light wind helping along, but I still made excellent time. 40 minutes to get to the 22 turnoff. Passed a group of 5 people. On the other side of the road there were a zillion people riding. Later I found out it was a cancer ride thing.

I still have the faint vestiges of that cold, with a bit of a cough sometimes, and periodic snot buildups. As some of you know, Missy has decided to stop updating her blog. Sigh. She always had a good spirit about the various bodily fluid adventures that befall athletes and was a hell of a good writer besides. I really enjoyed it, but I'm not going to break her stones about it. She's a grownup and can make her own decisions. (Though maybe if I do, she'll come here for a race and to kick my ass. hmmmmm.) So in her spirit, I'll get a bit graphic here.

Periodically along rides I see people put their hand to their nose, turn their head, and with a meaty thunk a small pellet flies off to the side. Hopefully they looked to be sure nobody was riding there. I'd done a few suck and spits, but the build up today was happening faster. So I tried. I give myself a passing grade on the right nostril, mainly because I didn't get any on myself, but it wasn't particularly neat. I give myself a big fat F minus for the left nostril. I ended up wearing it all over the moustashe and cheek. Probably on my shirt too but I didn't look. After a while it dried up and I could flake it off. And yes, the Weird Al Yankovic song was running through my mind. I guess I'm a dribbler.

I hit the 45 K mark in 1:39 and kept going. 2 hours and kept going. I know that going home is faster on this course (out and back 22X) by what could be a considerable amount, depending on wind, and I for sure wanted to get the 4 hours in. So I kept going. I was sort of hoping to get right to the end of the road at Elbow Falls. But the hills start getting bigger, and the wind started getting stronger. At the 61 K / 2:29 mark I called it and turned around. I'd be choked if Elbow Falls was just out of sight, but so what. I was getting tired.

Coming out of K country is fast. Rode on the road a lot since the shoulder was really gritty. Plus, I figure if I'm doing a large fraction of the speed limit the drivers can darn well treat me like a car. 90 K in 3:27 so I'd slowed down a bit. About this point I started getting a bit fidgety on the bike and started coasting more. My low back was starting to complain, and my hams were giving me hell. We won't even talk about my sit bones, (though Missy and many others would) and my arms and hands were going numb a lot.

After I passed 22 (from the south) I started finding more of the cancer riders. No idea how much they'd been riding, but I was blowing past them, and feeling like a bike pro. My inner shark even showed up for a bit. He loves passing prey and snapping his jaws at them. And some of the riders would have been good meals even for a big shark. We zoomed past lots and lots of people. Even though I was getting really tired, I was inspired to keep up the pace, and keep pushing.

Turned left onto 37 st, with a whole crew of people waving at me to be going somewhere else. I guess they thought I was one of them. I wasn't. I wanted to get home and off the bike. It had been a really good ride, but I wanted to straighten up. Home at 4:42, 122.1 K altogether for about a 26 Kph average pace. This is the longest ride of the year so far, and maybe the second or third longest ever. Average heart rate for the ride was 127, which is a bit ridiculous given my heart rates from a ride last week. I'd had a terrible time getting my heart rate past 125 for a short interval, and here my average over almost 5 hours is 127??? I think that's just variability in my metabolism or something. Which is why I do my races based on perceived effort, rather than a heart rate number.

For the first time in a long time I had to start my brick run with a walk. Hell, I was in doubt about standing at first, and was glad I had my bike to lean on. Most of the run was a run walk. My heart rate was good, and my breathing fine, and even though it was a pretty hot day for Calgary my temperature was fine. It was my legs. They were barely up to walking, let along run. But by the end of the half hour they were coming around. Very tired. I didn't even go into the house at first. I got a drink from the hose and soaked my hat and face. Then lay down in the grass with my feet up against the house. I was enjoying looking at the clouds, and thinking about the life of a cloud.

My thinking is that I pushed the bike pretty hard, on a hilly route, on a windy day, so it's no surprise the run sucked. But what's important for me is that I did push the bike pretty hard and mostly felt pretty strong. I need to figure out where I can ride for long distances. That means pushing progressively harder and harder and risking failure. Today I think I reached my current bike maximums for speed and effort. For now. Pity I didn't have a power watt meter, but oh well, that's just another number.

Weekly Summary
Swim 3.25 hrs
Bike 7.75 hrs
Run 2.66 hrs
Walk .5 hrs
Total Cardio 14.17 hrs (highest ever, I think.)
Core 2.0 hrs
Total 16.1 hrs.

Riding in the rain

Swim. Warmup. 2K as a main set. Happy with time. Canyon Meadows shower room nearly made me spew it smelled so gross. 1 hr

Rode Estela home from work for the first time. It was sort of fun plotting a route home, since there is a freeway and a river to cross which means major roads. For the people in Calgary that know the streets, through Vista Heights to 16th Ave, down Centre street, across 3rd ave, down 5th street to Elbow and down that to Anderson. Playing dodge'em with cars the whole way. Kind of fun accelerating off the lights and getting up to speed as fast as possible, and hanging on till the next lights. The bike computer says one hour flat, but the timer stops when the bike stops, so I think about an hour and 5 or 10 minutes max. Several times it's taken longer to drive home.

It's 2 or 3 K shorter than the bike path and about 20 minutes faster. The bike path doesn't have stoplights but you can't go near as fast. Elbow has that long reduced speed section so I was keeping up with traffic quite easily. The only problem was the construction on 5th street. There was a little bit of rain leaving the office and  a bit more rain downtown. Drafting another bike in the rain is not the smartest thing in the world. The rest of the ride was sunny and warm. Poor Estela is filthy now and needs a bath. Saturday.

A tiger and two camels

Walk into a bar. No, they don't, different story. This story turns out well, but it was a bit scary for a while. Some thieves stole a truck and trailer transporting a tiger and two camels (Jonas, Shawn, and Todd, respectively.) Nobody knows why exactly, or how long it took before they discovered exactly who was in the trailer. One can imagine their surprise. The trailer, complete with critters, was discovered almost a week later with the animals in good condition. They are now back at the zoo. One wag suggested the thieves will never be found precisely because the tiger is in good condition. Who says nothing ever happens in Canada?

Throughout the entire episode, the name that kept coming to mind was John Dortmunder. Some of you are smiling already. The rest of you need to find out who he is, and you're in for a treat. I could just picture this as a Dortmunder story, except that Westlake (may he rest in peace) would never have come up with anything so far fetched. Anyways, that was running through my mind during my run today. Just trying to imagine the various scenarios and the look on the crooks faces when they figure out exactly what they've got.

As usual, the day started with a swim. Lots of people in the pool today and I'm grateful for small blessings, all of them stayed out of my way. Not that I was in a hurry or anything, but I was swimming very purposefully. 4x 50 golf on 65 sec, 90, 89, 88, 86 which is not particularly impressive for me, though normally I give myself a bit more time between rounds. 1.25 hrs.

Hot and humid for the run. Down into Fish Creek. No idea how far. It took almost half the run to get into a happy running place. The first half felt kind of plodding, heart rate high zone 2. There was some surges at the halfway point, and from there it was much easier to settle back into my normal pace with my heart rate picking up into low zone 3. My hams had been on the verge of cramping, then after the surge they were ok. Go figure. More tired surges at the 80 minute point, then hanging on till the 90 minute mark. I didn't quite get back to my starting place even though I was running better in the second half. I remind you the second half is all uphill. Tired at the end, beginning to feel the heat in my face. I suspect I was getting red, but I manage to keep running.  I'm hoping to get more hot and humid runs in. I need the practice.

Seriously. Go look up John Dortmunder the character, in books by Donald Westlake. Oh, what the heck. I'm feeling generous. Click here. Drowned Hopes is my fave, though it's hard to pick. What's special about it is there is a chapter that is shared in another book by a different author. Same scene, same characters, different point of view. Both are hilarious. I'll let you figure it out.

Oh, and yoga. Lots of pigeon pose. I was happy. The rest of the class was not. This is the second last class. Bedtime now.

Two major thunderstorms and a tornado watch, sooooooo

I rode outside. Who wouldn't? There I was at the office, cheering on the thunder and lightning and hail, hoping that it would get over and done with. That one did, then I drove into the tail end of another one coming home. These were major enough so that in some places city streets were flooded to several feet deep, leave an inch of hail in place, knock out traffic signals and produce a pretty good lightning show. This is pretty typical Calgary weather for June and July - rain like hell in the afternoon, and have a nice evening. During the drive home they announced a tornado watch. That's pretty rare here, but it does happen.

Once I got home the sun was beginning to come out and the streets were starting to dry, so I dressed and went. Today was intervals. Warmup, a strong 10 minutes, then 4 x 7 minutes hard with 3 easy after, then another strong 10 minutes, cool down. It was the perfect temp for riding, and it only rained on me a little. So little I barely noticed because I get wetter than that sweating.

Here's the average heart rates for the 4 hards: 127, 129, 124, 124. That last one ended just as I was merging back onto 22X. After the 3 easy I decided to ride strong till I got back to 37 st. With a bit of a tail wind, I was flying, and it took only 18 minutes, with average heart rate of 122. From there I did easy spin up 37 st and around the neighbourhood to fill out the 2 hours. My legs felt strong today, and I felt very comfortable on the bike. Right now I feel like I could get back on the bike and do it again. Except that I just ate supper, and it's 8:40. It would be getting well into dusk by the time I got home.

I'm a little surprised at that 3rd interval, I was going mostly uphill and mostly into the wind, so I'd have thought it would be higher. The last one doesn't surprise me, since much of that was downhill, with me  sitting up for more wind resistance and pedaling like a maniac trying to keep my heart rate up.

This is still a limited data set, but I'm beginning to suspect my long ride bike pace should be about 120 bpm. Any lower and I'm dogging it. I'll have to try that next long ride. The worst that will happen is that I will knacker myself and have to call Linda to come get me, or stop to have a nap in the shade.

Core. The key words here are "to failure". No, not the plan, me.
First set
held squat ok
plank to failure
standing rows ok
seated chest press ok
tricep dip to failure (which surprised me, normally these are pretty good.)
bicycle crunches ok

Second set
held squat barely ok
plank failure even quicker
standing rows ok
seated chest press ok but getting sloppy
tricep dip to failure, same as before
bicycle crunches ok

Third set
squat to failure
plank rapid failure
standing rows sloppy and just barely
seated chest press very tired and sloppy but just barely
tricep dip I chickened out
bicycle crunches, after a rest, powered through them

Tired legs

I was looking forward to the swim, even with the "all out" lurking in there. 4 times. Well, once really, but there was a 4x in front of it, so you know what I mean.

I had a lane to myself for most of the swim, until I was starting the all out stuff. Then a guy who couldn't swim hopped into the lane, but fortunately he spent more time panting at the end of the lane than swimming in it, so he didn't get in my way. Good warmup and lots of drill stuff, then into the all out. Which went pretty good, consistent at least. Now, by all out, some of you probably envision me swimming myself right out of the pool up on the deck with teeth clenched and regretting the little bit of breakfast I had. Not so. Sorry to disappoint you. I had to sneak in a couple extra breaths rather than be strictly bilateral. (But then, if bi-vegetarian can mean being open to meat, then bilateral can include some same side breathing.) At least I'm not unilateral.

Anyways. 1 hr in the pool, feeling pretty good. Happy with the times, and hope my coach is too.

Last you heard, I was thinking about heading downstairs for some core work. I fell asleep instead. But never fear, I started the core tonight before the run. Plank and pushups to failure. Tricep dips to very tired arms. Squats were fine, but taken cautiously to be careful of knees. Lots of fitball crunches. That was 20 minutes. Started with really easy run, and very gradually getting my stride. It took about 15 minutes to find the groove, and another 15 before I felt able to push it faster than a very very slow run. The next 20 minutes was good, feeling surprisingly strong, with good turnover and good breathing. All good things come to an end, and the last 5 minutes of very easy to cool down came just in time. Walked another 5 minutes, stretched, and did a bit more core.