Saturday, March 21, 2009

Broken PRs - "Can Youuu Dig It?"

Multiple PRs broken today! Woo hoo, let's see if I can remember 'em all. First to the railroad tracks by division south of town PR by 3 minutes in 31. Then PR by 5 minutes to San Jose in 42. Then I got to Espada or 17 miles by 58 PR by two minutes I think. Made it to the 21 spot by 1:15 or 1:16. Took some salt at 30 then turned around at the Valero on 181. Back at the Missions I hit 50 in 2:55 and then hit 52 in 3:00. Finished 64.5 in 3:48 Nice! Final average including cooldown 16.9. Maximum average out to San Jose 18.6 Dainnngguh. Average to 17 or Espada 18.3. All this with a bit of a strained calf from Thursday nights speed fest.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

So Where the Heck Am I

Well, I'm further than I was during February! I knew I hadn't ridden a whole lot during February because of church, family and school obligations, but dainguh! Ok here I am in the second week of March and I've already ridden twice as much as I did in Feb! Hilarious how life just has its own way of reorganizing what we've planned. For March right now I'm at 176+ and my total for Feb. was 82.5.

Jan/Feb Totals: Bike 493.13 Miles in 34:50.58 Cross-Training Yoga 2:50

You're probably asking what's up with the Yoga. Well Yoga is good for the core and I needed help with that aspect of my training. My back had been giving me problems since before Christmas when I tweaked it moving decorations. Immediately after starting this Yoga program, in other words, three days my back was better. Oddly enough I had no trouble putting miles in on the bike. The stress on my back from the bike was different and not a problem.

I finally went with a computerized/online log! I'm using Active Trainer from the Active Network where one can sign up for races and events it's also endorsed by Cool Running http://www.coolrunning.com. Sorry, but I'm cheap! Hey I teach for a living so I try to give myself a break whenever I can. With the help of Active Trainer, see the link in the title of this article, I have been able to plan and track my workouts including cross training.

Very nice, but then I'm not coming from any other program except about twenty years ago I knew the guy who invented The Athlete's Diary, it was called, from http://www.stevenscreek.com (a guy that was one of the first members of the DRS see the link below and a friend - Steve Patt), but back then my computing capability was crap so I've been using hard copies. {Ok, I just have to give Steve some props - He has made it big and congratulations he has taken a little spreadsheet program from the 80s to the best computing tool for handhelds in the industry here in the 21st Century. His program is used by the likes of George Hincapie and Frankie Andreu since the late 90s and this is it "I knew Steve Patt when!" he was just running the trails around Stephen's Creek!}. One of these days I'm going to buy everything he sells for my iPhone or Palm. I just need to upgrade my phone first! Amazing athletic calculators and race timing software. No longer a program that fits on a computer in your Volkswagen Combi, but an app on your iPhone or palm and for less than a hundred bucks! Please!

This past year I spent quite a bit of time tracking my workouts on a few sites: FitDay http://www.fitday.com/ (great diet help with the food log to help you become aware of all the crap we ingest); The President's Challenge http://thepresidentschallenge.org/ (great source of motivation - I got the Gold by the time October came around and the president's sig on a certificate); and besides my blogs I used an application in Facebook called Fit-Ify http://www.facebook.com/ (Can you say top-ten world-wide from all the users on FB amazing motivation). Some records were still kept in some other form of storage because of limitations of the programs used.

So I had been reading up on tri-drs (Dead Runners Society - Triathlon) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Runners_Society since it is Spring Break and there is TIME! Well, it got me thinking about my totals, plus if my friend Kathy Morgan comes to my site to read I wanted to have something for her to read.