Spin Class

Today was the first Spin class session with the Team. The original training schedule showed us starting last week but it was an error. It was actually lucky for me that it was canceled because I didn't realize that I needed a spin trainer to do the class. You see, this class is different that gym spin classes because you get to use your own bike. You also get to have class in a parking lot outside of a bike store. Having to buy the trainer was an unexpected expense but I was able to find a really nice condition used one off of craigslist for under $100. Take a look:















No batteries required. It is a fluid resistance trainer and is set up so that your back tire gets viced into place and you rear wheel travels on a roller. The fluid inside the radiator looking gizmo provides the resistance. The fins dissipate the heat that is generated from your work out. The wire off the edge clips onto your bike and allows you to further adjust the rolling resistance. Not pictured is a plastic block for your front tire so that your bike is level while you train.

Class consisted of about 70-80 people, with three different teams training there. The store, Hi-Tech Bikes appears to be a real hub for biking in the SD area and they are very TnT friendly.

Training on your own bike is definitely a much different feel than on a standard gym bikes. First of all, the bike is already fitted for you. Second of all, the shifting is a lot more controlled as you have real gears to go through rather than turning a resistance knob. Thirdly, you are able to work on your balance and bike handling coordination.

We did several different training exercises, paying close attention to cadence. Cadence is the speed at which you turn your cranks and is measured in revolutions per minute. I don't claim to fully understand the concept yet, but it appears that you want to maintain a consistent cadence when cycling for optimum performance. You shift up and down depending on terrain features such as hills. You want to get into a nice steady pace for maximum efficiency. We start at 65 RPM and sped up by 5 rpm every couple of minutes until we got the heart really pumping at 95 RPM. I didn't have a device to actually measure my cadence so I had to just watch my neighbors legs closely and tried to match their speed. It appears that I need to buy more gear.

We also did another exercise, ILT (individual leg training). When you first learned to ride a bike, you probably didn't have clip-in pedals. Consequently, when you pedaled, you got you power during the down stroke. With clip-in pedals, you are actually able to generate power during the upstoke. The upstroke uses the quads while the downstroke uses the hamstrings. The exercise trains you to use the quads for pedaling.

Next was 3-3-3's. Pick pretty hard gear and pedal. It should be enough resistance so that you can comfortably still chat with your neighbor. Do that for 3 minutes. Then shift to the next higher gear. You can still talk to your neighbor but its pretty hard, maybe a few words. 3 more minutes and then shift up again. At this point, you're lucky if you can grunt. This one is tough.

The last one we did was a standing hill climb. This was a brutal 8-minute exercise. My foot was still pretty sore for the half from hell on Sunday and I was only able to stand for a couple of minutes at a time. Even without the injury, I don't think I could have gone much longer than 3-4 minutes.

Great work out.

Half from Hell

Today, Christine and I did the San Dieguito Half-Marathon. I initially thought I wasn't going to do this one as I might be tired after all the recent biking but I actually felt pretty good and it was looking like it was going to be a good day so what the hey.

We show up early and still had to park nearly a mile away from the start. We gear up and head over. The race started promptly at 8am and we hit the road. The field is 95% runners, including a lot of 5K and 10K people. There weren't that many walkers but since the course time limit was 4 hours I wasn't worried. My last few halfs were just a few minutes over 3 hours.

It was a pretty tough course. I don't know how it is possible but about 8-9 miles of the course was uphill. Nothing too steep but just a constant grind. Tough workout but within my abilities. I love a good hill.

Everything was going pretty well until Mile 7. The race marshal drives by in a van and asks if everyone was alright. Yup, doing fine. Mile 9 is the turnaround. The support people who hand out water seem to be packing up, with tables folded and dixie cups of water sitting on the ground. Weird but whatever. Those were the last event staff I saw on the course. Apparently, since the majority of the field was runners, they didn't feel that they had to stay on the course to support the rest of us. The last 4 miles of the course were unmanned by the support staff, including no water. Around mile 11, Christine and I get to a road intersection and there is no indication of which is the correct way to go. There is no one else in sight. We flag down a car passing by and ask if they know which way the course goes and they pointed to the road ahead. Guess what? They were wrong. Long story short, Christine and I got lost, and did an extra 3 miles before we got on course. We had to ask for directions 3 times before we made it back. I estimate that there were 20-25 people behind us including other walkers, and slower runners. One of the people behind us was an elderly man in his 70's, two teen-age girls and a young man who was really struggling. I hope they made it ok.

I was pretty mad when we crossed the finish line and there was basically no one there. We hike up the hill from the finish line to the park area and find the event coordinator and give her a piece of our mind. We let her know that the course is unmarked, we got lost and that there are other people on the course without any support. She apologizes and says that she will get someone out there. I ask and we at least get a medal.

Up the beer garden. We catch the last 5 minutes and who should we see but the race marshal who has been enjoying himself swilling beer for the last 90 minute while there were still people on the course. By this time, he's heard what has happened and I overhear him talking to another of the event staff basically not believing what we were saying and making it sound like we had to be a bunch of dummies to get lost. I speak up and tell him that the course wasn't marked. He swears up and down that he marked every intersection with a "half pound of flour". Christine steps in and continues talking to him about it. His story is that he did his "sweep" and everyone was alright and that he had a police car follow the last walker in to make sure they finish. He is responsible for the safety of the individuals but was content to make his final sweep 2 hours before the completion of the course time and then retire to drink beer. He refused to go back out and look for any other people on the course because he had been drinking. Whatever. Send someone, dude. As near as I can tell, what had happened is that

1) he was too lazy to see his job though. He should have had support staff available for the entire course time.

2) marking the course intersections in flour is a bad idea when hundreds of runners and cars are trampling by. I think that by the time we got to the intersection, the flour had blown away.

3) He wouldn't acknowledge that he had done anything wrong or that anything was even wrong. Boo for him.

Anyway, we called it a day and went out for pancakes. After it was all said and done, we walked over 17-miles when it should have been 13.1.

You're killing 'em

Today was the first TnT training session for the century bike ride in Tahoe. The cycle team consists of about 20-30 people of varying experience levels. Christine and I are pretty green, although I used to be a really consistent mountain bike rider about 10 years ago.

Training was at Fiesta Island, a small area on Mission Bay popular for cyclists. There are two paved loops around the island with one being slightly over 5-miles long that is perfect for training. After introductions and a few basic instructions we split into groups based on experience and fitness level.

Group A is for novice riders who don't currently exercise regularly.

Group B is split into three groups:
B1: Some bike experience but not completely comfortable, exercise a couple times a week.
B2: Bike experience, exercise regularly.
B3: Experienced riders who exercise regularly

C's: Very experience riders with great fitness. Have completed other endurance bike riding events.

I chose B2 because it seemed the best fit for me and after that, we finally got out on the road.

The lesson for the day consisted of learning about pace lines. I didn't realize it before, but cycling is a real team sport. Riders form a line of bikes and ride in a cooperative manner for the good of the group.

A few basic concepts:

1) Drafting: The lead rider creates a break in the wind providing less resistance for the riders following behind. Riders behind the pace leader expend only 70% of the energy that the leader does.

2) Signaling: The pace leader is responsible for the safety of the followers. The leader is the only one that can clearly see the obstacles in the road. It is their job to signal or call out road hazards such as glass, gravel, potholes, pedestrians. Usually, the leader calls out something along the lines of "glass-right", indicating the hazard and the direction. Often they will wave their hand in the direction of the hazard to make it very clear. When you are riding at a good clip, you don't have time to say much more than that.

3) The pace leader sets the pace (duh). When the leader tires, they will drop to the back of the entire pace line and the rider that was directly behind them, will become the new pace leader. As the pace leader drops back, the last rider in the line will indicate "I'm last rider" so that the former pace leader knows when to fall back into line without having to constantly look over their shoulder. They will then indicate that they are in the line "rider clear!" and the word will be passed up the line rider to rider until the new pace leader acknowledges it by raising their hand.

4) Holding the Line: This is when the riders work in concert to use the overall line length and size to create a group affect. A driver of a car may not see a single rider, but they can't miss a line of 10 riders. The group of riders become the size of a semi and use their number to claim road real estate when navigating difficult stretches of roads or at critical turn-offs.

There is much more to it, but those are the basics.

I spent the majority of the time following along learning the system but finally got a chance to be the pace leader towards the end of the session. It was a lot of fun. I settled into a nice steady pace. After a good 10 minutes at this pace, Mentor DJ came up the to the front of the line, looked me over and said "oh, it's because you don't have bike computer". I thought that I might have been going to slow. "Nope, you're killing 'em." Apparently I was doing around a 15-17 mph pace when I was supposed to be doing a 12 mph pace. Whoops!

I'm going to try and move up to the next faster group this coming weekend and see how that goes. We ended up doing 25 miles. Not bad for a rookie.

Training Log February 3-9

Time to start tracking this stuff again:

Monday: 2 mile walk during lunch, 2-mile walk in the evening. Cold!

Tuesday: We were supposed to have our first TnT cycle team spin class today at 6:15pm. Got an email at 5:10pm saying oops, they start next week! Too bad I lugged my bike to work and skipped my normal lunchtime workout in preparation for the class. Not a trivial item when you drive an Audi A4. Exercise ended up being a short walk to the polls, 2 mile walk after work.

Wednesday: Nothing

Thursday: Nothing!

Friday: Bike to work. 20 miles

Saturday: TnT Ride - Fiesta Island - 25 miles

Sunday: San Dieguito 1/2 marathon from hell...

My own personal bike to work day

I was dying to ride my new bike. The weather has been lousy and my schedule way to full to allow it but I set a goal to ride my bike to work today. I work half days on Fridays and it is casual dress day as well so I thought it was a perfect time to do it. It had been raining and the forecast called for raing. Keeping hope alive, I prepped all my gear the night before in hopes of getting an early start if the skies were clear. I set the alarm for 5:30 am and rushed to look out the front door. Clear enough. Suited up in my skin-tight padded bike shorts, dorky looking helmet, sleek new biking gloves and long-sleeve biking jersey and headed out the door.

I had planned my route the night before from a bike transit map I ordered. There are several obstacles to traverse on my way to the office including getting across Mission Valley with Interstate 8 smack in the way. The route I chose took me about a 2-miles east out of my way to be able to get to a road with a bike lane that got me across the Valley. The trip was pretty dodgy in parts when my bike lane suddenly disappeared when a car lane merged in from the right and I ended up in no man's land. Not great when you are speeding down a steep hill going 25 mph. I was very careful and just stopped when I need to until I got a clear path. Overall the trip was 9-miles each way and took me 45-minutes. A very reasonable commute that I will definitely repeat.

Carlsbad Half

Christine and I did the Carlsbad 1/2-marathon today. It was brutally cold in the morning so I was glad to have my long sleeve shirts and Ireland-found gloves to walk in. There was incredible traffic and we showed up at the start line just as the race gun went off. No time to stretch. Not good. We had both set a goal to try and complete the race at 3hrs flat. This is my second 1/2-marathon. My time for the Rose Bowl one in December was 3hrs 8mins. I didn't push too hard on that one so I was confident I could improve my time, although 3 hours was pretty ambitious. To hit that mark, I needed to average a 13.43 min/mile. I can regularly cruise at 13.30 so I thought it was possible.

No stretching means that we started out more slowly than I would have liked in order to loosen up. I had also left my GPS watch on "bike" mode so I had to struggle with changing the setting while on the move. We warmed up after a mile or so and then tried to pick up the pace. We tried to make up time and were going at around a 13:20 min/mile pace for a large portion of the race. Around mile 9 or so, I started to run out of steam and my speed really started to slow down. I think pushing too hard early one really just wore me out for the last few miles. The last mile was an incredible slow 16:50ish min/mile!

Final time was 3hrs 6mins. It is still a respectable time for a walker but there is definitely room to improve. A couple of things that I will change for the next race:

1) More sleep! 5 hours of sleep before a race is not enough
2) Eat more on the course. I was lazy with my gels and lost energy on the way
3) Remember to eat salt on the course. I was trained better than this
4) No biking the day before. It was only 10-miles but my legs were tired out. I tend to put a lot of miles on them.

Next race is probably San Dieguito on February 10.

The next big thing...

is my new bike! I'm now the proud owner of a 2007 Lemond Versaille road bike. Christine and I tested a bunch of different models and brands while we searched for the perfect bike do our next TnT event. We are going to be riding our new bikes 100 miles at the, (and I quote) America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride. Take a look at this Map. Crazy. We looked at a lot of brands including Giant, Trek, Specialized, Scattante, and Bianchi. I also looked at Fuji and Schwinns. The Lemond was the one that I liked the best and it was on sale. Not bad when you can get a $2,100 bike for $1300. It's purty...see














I picked it up late Friday night after getting "fitted" by one of the bike technicians at the bike store. First step was to buy pedals and shoes. It's important because the height of the shoes and the position of the clips affects the position of the rider on the bike. Next step is to adjust the height and lateral position of the seat. Then they look at the position of the rider in relation to the position of the cranks. It's best to have your knee be 1 tiny centimeter behind the crank to be in the optimum driving position so that you don't waste energy pushing out on the pedal when you should be pushing down. The final step involves positioning of the handlebars and sometimes swapping out the top stem so that the rider isn't so stretched out reaching for the bars. Of course with so many variables, one item affects the others so it ends up being an interative process. After about an hour, I was all set but it was too dark to ride!

Christine and I got to the bike store way too late so consequently, she wasn't able to get fitted on her bike. I was pretty bummed because we had planned our first ride at Lake Miramar the next morning. Sadly it was not to be. So we ate some pho.

















I took my new baby out for a ride on Saturday afternoon. I had planned a ride around Lake Miramar because it is pretty flat and is exactly a 5-mile loop. Geared up and took a ride. It was awesome. The bike is so fast and light. Spec says that it is less than 18 lbs! Damn, my dumbells at home weigh more than that. Using the clip pedals and shoes took a bit of getting used to but not too bad. 5-Miles came too soon so I decided to take another 5, making a total of 10-miles.

Good times.

I would have kept going but the next day was the Carlsbad 1/2 marathon.