Swim Bike Yoga, fun fun fun

It doesn't get any better than this. Another perfect summer day.

Swam, working on being smooth, with mixed success. 10 min warm up, 5 x 100 on 2 min, all of them 1:45 or faster, 10 min cool down, though most of it wasn't. Today I was working on trying to keep my body as straight as possible, especially my head when I'm breathing. Another guy was swimming just a hair slower than I do, so I got the pull buoy and drafted him for most of the "cool down".  Then into the dive tank for a half hour of core and flexibility, mainly working the hips.

Sitting in the hot tub for a few minutes I got talking to LS, who finished IMC just a few minutes before I did. I've often seen her swimming but we've never chatted before. Always nice to meet another Ironman. Now I realize who she is. Holy Crap!

Did I say today was a perfect day for biking? It just doesn't get any nicer. I headed out on 22X but went down the road to the Priddis Greens golf course and country club. A very ritzy, swanky, EXPENSIVE course, even by the standards of the local nose in the air country clubs. I wasn't in a rush so I stopped a few times along the way for photos. Mainly tried to spin nice and easy.

Some days the mountains are right there in your face on this ride. Other times they are coy and reclusive. Today was the latter, but even so, the view was great!

The view from 22X and 37 st, looking west.

The view SW from the hill where you first see where 22 meets 22X

The view from just after 22, looking west.

The entrance to the golf course. You can just see the mountains in the background. The smell of money is thick in the air.

Yoga this evening. Nice. Fell asleep during shavasana. Linda says I snored.

All in all a big day, 1 hr in the pool 50/50 cardio and core, 2 hrs on the bike, and 1.25 hrs yoga.

To fb or not to fb -

that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The pricks and pangs of outrageous privacy invasions,
Or to take notice of a wave of "friends"
 And, by accepting, greet them. To fb, to share
 No more – and by share to say we end
 The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That loneliness is heir to – ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To fb, to share
To greet, perchance to meet. Ay, there's the rub,
 For in that meeting of strangers what ill may come,
When we have signed that mortal software license,
 Must give us pause. There's the rape
Of data from so long a life.
For who would bear the delays and shortfalls of email,
Th’ bloggers errors,  missing a friends invitation,
The crashing hard drive, the internet's delay,
The insolence of Microsoft, and the spurns
That patient merit of unread email takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a few key stokes? Who would packet errors bear,
To send and read in a bad web browser,
But that the dread of something after fb,
 The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No data is erased, puzzles me lots
And makes me rather bear those ills we know
Than fly to others that we know not of?
 Thus prudence doth make cowards of me at least,
And thus the native hue of signing up
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of restraining thought,
 And interactions of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
 And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
Convince me I'm wrong, that fb is a boon unalloyed
And not a database of sins remembered.

With apologies to W Shakespeare

No fitness stuff so far, though I have ambitions about getting downstairs for some stretching and core work.

She massaged. I whimpered. Lots.

Sunday was a painful day, in a good way. My well beloved massage therapist that moved to Canmore, and if you live there and are very nice to me, I will give you her contact info, referred a therapist to her clients. Yesterday was the first massage from JL. My goodness. And. Holy Cow!

She worked me over good. I needed it. You know how many therapists slide their fingers along a muscle, and the pressure builds, and then releases as they slide past a trigger point? JL stops on the trigger point and hoooooooooollllllllllllllllds it there. She doesn't just work along the muscles, she also works across them as well. I hadn't thought there were any issues with my right shoulder, but she found lots of tender spots. In general my left side is tight as a guitar string, and the right considerably more relaxed. She worked me over for two whole hours. She'll be back next Sunday.

Today started with a nice swim. I had a lane to myself. Solid warmup, then 500 m timed, though I wasn't trying to be fast, just steady and smooth. I wanted to see where I was. 9:49. A few times I'd have the water feel, and would swoosh along. Then I'd lose it and thrash along for a while, then get it back again. Good cool down. Stretching in the pool. Then about a half hour of core work in the dive tank with a bit of deep water running. My legs aren't liking that much for some reason.

Coffee after with my buddy SKH. Then hanging out at home waiting for packages to arrive and job phone calls. The new iPhone bumper fits nice and makes it a bit easier to hang onto the phone. Oh, and I'm planning to ride with another buddy on Friday. Let me know if you want in. Easy ride.

It is a totally beautiful day out there. Summer weather. Seriously. +20 C (68 F) Right after the UPS gal came I was dressed and out there. Walked to warm up, then started with an easy easy run. And wow did it ever feel good! My legs relaxed and moved well. I think I've lost a bit of cardio fitness, but not much. Ran at varying speeds, going totally by feel, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. Walked to cool down. I was out for just over an hour. Stretched after, and even did some plank of my own free will, a whole minute's worth.

And just for my faithful blog readers, and because Neil took a bunch of photos of the east end of Fish Creek park, I took the iphone with me to take some photos and video of the west end of the park during my run. I'm going to find it tough to believe you have nicer scenery where you run. Enjoy.

This is where I start on the 37th St path, looking south.

This is the view from the very west end of the park, at the top of the hill, looking west.

This is near the top of the hill, looking south east. Just beyond the top of the far  hill there is more city.

I took a slight detour onto bridge two. This is looking downstream.

The path runs through mixed forest. Bear in mind this is within the City of Calgary.

Every now and then, you can see Fish Creek. The large mounds of gravel are from the floods of a few years ago, when the river changed its course in many places. In one place the river bed moved over 100 m.

More mixed forest, some nice evergreens. It smells so nice along here.

Some birch.

 Just as you leave the forest and come to the parking lot at the bottom of 24th St, you see these trees. The camera really doesn't do justice to the colour against the sky.

Video link if you want to go there directly or send it to your friends. Because, doesn't everyone want to see what Fish Creek Park looks like? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m96gG_U7u_Q

Oh, and the aero bars. Nobody mentioned a word about them. I guess I'll hang onto them for a while longer. Maybe all my local blog readers either have aero bars already, or are tall. Anybody have any interest in a satellite radio I found, still in the box?

Plummer's Road

Today was my first "real" ride after IMC. I've had a few, but they've been easy, in town, gentle, not far from home rides. For a while now I've seen and chatted with one of my neighbours in the cul-de-sac behind our house. He's been riding back and forth downtown for many years, and heading out for longer weekend rides. We've seen each other coming or going several times, and finally got ourselves organized to ride together today. Small world in that he also knows Chris and Jill.

Turns out neither of us had ridden out Plummer's road. Which isn't marked that way on the maps, but that's what the signs say. On this map it's the road heading west from the 22 marker in the middle of the map. We rode along it, turned left at the T, and went south, then west again to about where the bottom of the embiggen tool is.

Here's 3 photos of what that area looks like. It's a very pretty ride to get there, on really nice pavement.

The new pavement ends and battered old chip seal takes over. If we'd wanted to ride up the hill, at some point there would be a great view of the mountains. We'd been out for about 1.5 hrs at that point so we turned around. There's lots of nice roads in this area to explore, so I'll be trying that while I can.

Altogether it was just under 3 hours for about 70 K. We stopped for a snack where I took the photos. It started out a bit cool, and warmed up to the point where I was beginning to feel a bit hot in my jacket. My legs feel great afterward, and it turns out we rode about my regular pace for rides in that area. I think he's in a bit better shape than me, I had to work to keep up a few times.

Stretched after. Legs feel great! I feel great! It's so nice to be out on the bike again.

Don't forget to comment for your chance to win a set of aero bars, at the FREE posting. All you need to do is say why you ought to win them. So far, nobody has expressed an interest. Which means your odds of winning are excellent!

The first nice day in FOREVER!, not forgetting FREE

We have had very un-Calgary-like weather ever since we got home from Penticton. Normally Labour Day to almost Christmas is clear sunny days, with temps ranging from summertime warm to crisp. Not a surprise to see frost in the mornings, but it goes away soon. There might be a flurry or too, but that goes away soon too. Normally.

What have we had so far? Rain almost every day. Cloudy. Damp. Foggy even some days. Get this - our lawns are still green, and we still need to cut them. Normally the last cut is near the beginning of August. Then it's brown, because I don't water the lawn. Water costs money you know! And besides, water it, and the grass will grow, and then I have to cut it, and I certainly have things to do that are more fun than cutting grass.

Part of the last little while has been domesticating my iPhone and getting the wireless network working. That was a bit tricky. Now I need to figure out why some people's blogs crash the internet connection to the computer, but not to the iphone. In fact, I had one blog page that crashed on the computer, but loaded fine on the iPhone at almost exactly the same time. I don't know about that. It's probably a Safari plug in thing.

The iPhone apps so far are Evernote, Errands, Sudoku, and Urbanspoon. I'm still going through the list you guys shared with me. Thanks again!

Tuesday was a flurry of job related stuff that would bore all of you to tears. Wednesday was a bit more basement org stuff, and yoga in the evening. Some of the poses just kill me to do. She says, "hold this for a couple more breaths", and I start counting. About 12 or 16 breaths later she talks us out of the pose. No Sun Salutes with their plank and pushups yet, but I'm sure they'll come just as I'm sure the sun will rise tomorrow. Other poses I'm just getting relaxed into it, and she makes us stop.

I've been dying for a bike ride. My legs are still a bit creaky, especially the right quad from the inner top corner of my knee cap and up my leg. That's been bugging me for a while, and I'm beginning to think it's time to get it looked at more seriously. Rest, light activity, stretching, massage, and some icing have made no real change to it. Driving home today I had the revelation that that particular muscle is also used in controlling my foot as it operates the gas pedal.

Today being nice, sunny and about 15 C (59 F), and even though I've got a bit of a cold going, I had to get out. HAD TO! Just to see how my legs would feel after some easy spin. Went down James McKevit, up 22X and back 37 St in about 45 minutes nice and easy, plus stopping for a few minutes to take some photos, see below. 3 years ago I did this as the very first ride on Estela. It took almost exactly the same time, only then I was pushing practically all out. Today was easy; I'd be surprised if my heart rate got higher than mid zone 2.

On the way out I saw one of my biking neighbours coming in. When I got back he was doing some yard work. We've made tentative arrangements to ride on Saturday.

This is what I see as I'm coming back into Calgary on 37th Street, just south of 146 Ave. You get a great view of the city with some of it's vast sprawl. From here it takes maybe 5 to 10 minutes max to get home by bike.

Looking a bit more to the right you see endless subdivisions.

Looking to the left you see cows. This is all within city limits. If you were to walk past the cows to the top of the hill you'd get a stunning view of the mountains. Next nice day I'll take some shots of what I see when I'm riding west.

Don't forget to comment for your chance to win a set of aero bars, at the FREE posting. All you need to do is say why you ought to win them. So far, nobody has expressed an interest. Which means your odds of winning are excellent!

Swimming in the rain, and FREE

Today was the first real "workout" swim. Not that I was given a plan or anything. Not that I wanted a plan.  I took over the fast lane and had a nice warm up. Today I could really feel the water. The first few laps felt really smooth and strong. I was working on catch, and trying to coordinate the body roll with the arm stroke. More work is needed. Once I felt warmed up I did 5 x 100 on 2 min. The first one was 100 seconds even, and it didn't even feel like I was working that hard. All the rest were 106 or 107 seconds and it seemed like I was working a lot harder for these. Funny how that goes. Cooled down with some pull, for a total of 30 minutes.

I went into the dive tank for some deep water running, but my legs weren't really too happy about that so I stopped fairly quick.

The high point of the swim was chatting to Mr. Elegant about his day at IMC. He's really pleased, and given his time he should be!

The rest of the day was running errands and continuing the great basement cleanup project. I'm not sure if I'm getting a cold, or it's all the dust I've been breathing. I continue to be amazed at the things I find. The most unexpected item was one of those plastic thingies cab drivers used to have to process credit card slips. Remember, the actual paper and carbon slips? That we used to use for ALL credit card transactions? I have no idea at all why we have one.

Wed looks to be sunny and warm! Who's willing to play hooky from work and go for a bike ride with me?

Don't forget to comment for your chance to win a set of aero bars, at the FREE posting. All you need to do is say why you ought to win them.

test video, but don't forget the FREE offer

This is a momentous occasion. The second video shot on my iphone today at the zoo, and the first uploaded to YouTube.

Or, you could go see it on YouTube. It looks much nicer on YouTube.

Don't forget to comment for your chance to win a set of aero bars, at the FREE posting.