New place to trail run

Since I’m working on salvaging the week, much like David insisted, I got my butt out of bed this morning and went to check out the Copp Family Property, a new-ish Town of Groton park. And I liked it.

From the street, it doesn’t look like much, just a 20 car gravel parking lot and a pretty nice wooden and gilt sign. But as a place to run, it is pretty good. I didn’t map it with the forerunner, but I was out for about 40 minutes and didn’t overlap much, and don’t think I took all the branches. The trails weren’t smooth or well graded, but they weren’t completely full of ruts either. I was happy.

Tomorrow’s the boy’s fifth birthday – my lovely wife is kind of worked up about having the party at our house. But I think it’ll be all right. We’re also going to my company’s annual party that evening, so sneaking out for a run or bike will be tough. But I will do it.

Speaking of the bike – I dropped my Ultegra wheels and my lovely wife’s hybrid wheels off at the shop to get trued. On the way back, I saw the sweeper trucks out beginning to pull the sand off of the road for the summer. I cannot wait to get back on the bike…

Sunk

It’s official – this week is a lost cause. Haven’t really met any goals since Monday. Here’s the reason why:

1. I forgot to keep training as a top priority.

There’s a bunch of reasons for why – Change in work routine (I’m on annual training); getting ready for my folks to come to town; stayed up late working on bikes and fixing the iBook. But the root cause is prioritization.

The up side is that there’s still half a week left, and that I can move the tri- training back a week. And maybe it’ll be warmer next week…

Woo Hoo!

My iBook is back! All my data is still intact. Life is good.

Now, to tempt fate, I will repartition the drive, reinstall OS X, and try to get Mandrake PPC running!

Beautiful day, the new plan is kicking my butt, but life is good. I tried climbing the random rope I found in a tree today – didn’t get very far. Tomorrow I will get farther.

March Madness

or “Stop me before I fix again”.

The good news is that the new training program started off gangbusters – 2200 meters in the pool. The first 1700 were great, and I banged out the last 500 without too much whining. It did help that there were chicks swimming this afternoon, so god forbid that the slowly slimming white guy (I’m avoiding the whole “middle aged” which is the surest sign that I’m there) show any signs of weaknenss. No, instead I slowed way down and did the distance swimmer thing of nice big arm circles on the strokes.

Felt really good for not having swum in a couple of weeks. The first three sets of 10 laps were probably the finest 1500 meters I’ve ever swum – every one was big circles with the arms, full extensions through my fingers and toes, and a hard kick off the wall upside down at the end of each 25. The last set of 500, though – can they add Knox Blox mix to the water and change the viscosity? Swear on my sainted mother’s grave (she’s not dead, but bear with), the water just felt thicker.

The other good news is that my beloved iBook is on its way home. I like my Linux machine (Dell Inspiron 3700 PIII 500 MHZ, running Fedora Core 3), but I cannot get the WiFi working on either my D-Link DWL 650+ or Dell 1350 wireless PCMCIA cards, so I’m tethered.

Tonight – did some more work on the T. Rex cutout for the beanbag toss at the Boy’s birthday. Looks good. The big event, though, was the bike clean-a-thon. I degreased the crap out of everythingn that wasn’t welded on to both my Cannnondale and my old Trek. Good stuff. Took the cranks off the Cannondale for the first time since I got it, and remembered the old materials lesson about metals in long-term contact with Aluminium. Oh well – a coat of grease and it’ll be fine for another 4 years.

The Trek is a different story. I’d bought paint at the model shop to patch a couple of scratches. Then I caught Fixedgear referencing a site on home-made headset presses (which work fine, BTW, and don’t cost $100+). Dan Goldenberg (The other site) has got a bit on painting frames. Now that I’ve got the bike apart, the scratching is a little bit more widespread than I though, and I’m seriously thinking about doing it. Be a lot easier to do it now than when it’s back together…

Unless, of course, someone wants to send me a ‘cross frame… (30″ inseam, usually run about a 52-53 cm frame)

Changes

Changes of season, changes of program.

Had a bit of a relapse Friday and Saturday, and decided not to push myself through sickness. Wuss, yes, I know.

But I’m starting my alltriathlon.com program tomorrow – 2200 meters in the pool. Yippie.

Life is good, though. We’re having a birthday party over here next weekend, so I spent much of today cleaning the basement. Yeah, the exciting life of a blogger.

All the best to y’all.

Finish strong

Sometimes, at least.

It’s beginning to look like this year’s first training cycle is going to finish on schedule, on track. Which is an accomplishment, in and of itself. I’ll be honest, it’s the first program I’ve finished. While I stuck with Galloway’s 26 week marathon prep longer pre-kid, I didn’t come close to finishing it. So I’ve got that going for me.

The last two days have kicked my butt mentally and physically. Mentally – yesterday, my mother-in-law was flying up to spend her spring break playing with her grandkids. Yippee. It was going to work out gang-busters: I’d be able to pick her up at the airport on my way home from work, no problem. So I had been planning on finishing up kind of early and getting in an afternoon run. Yep, I knew that there was a cold front expected to blow through, but how bad could it be?

Well, y’know on those bags of frozen veggies, how they’re always bragging about “flash-freezing”? Rhode Island did that Tuesday afternoon. It’d been high 30’s and rainy all day, but right about 4:15, the temperature dropped straight through to like 15 in the space of minutes. The roads were quite literally sheets of ice, and the wind picked up to well over 30 knots (and that’s being extremely conservative). So I bagged on runnning and had supper with a friend while waiting for news from Missy’s mom. Eventually her flight got through, and we left TF Green about midnight, and were home well after 1 AM.

This morning – slept in a bit, worked about a half day, and knocked out six, yep 6 miles on the trails in Arcadia State Park. Great run, but I’m beat. We left the kids with my wonderful mother-in-law (honestly, she’s great) and headed down to the monthly trivia night at the Harp and Hound, a 19th century pub downtown. Our team came in a strong second out of about 15 teams on the strength of a round of baby animal names (Guess there weren’t a whole lot of other folks in the place with small kids at home), but ended up getting screwed by a lack of knowledge of Oscar trivia.

The other demon I’ve been fighting is my iBook. It got bit by the dreaded logic board bug. Apple’s going to fix it, but I’ve been struggling to back up pictures, etc. I think it’s done, but the lesson learned is that if you’re going to encrypt everything on your hard drive, back it up in the clear. Stupid paranoia…

So sorry I haven’t made the rounds today. Might not until Friday or Saturday.

Connundrum

At the end of this week, I finish the “build to 20 mile base” that I’ve been working on out of The Runner’s Training Diary”. I’ve been wondering what to do to bridge the gap between now and the end of June when Marathon training begins in earnest, and Annalisa may have the answer in her plan to work up to a Tri.

It meets a bunch of my desires:
1. Good blend of running, swimming, and cycling* (the weather is about to get SO much better, I just know it…)
2. It’s a plan. I cannot emphasize enough how much having someone else do the research and planning for me is when it comes to fitness. I’d love to be a self-made man, but let’s face it – I’ve spent over three decades mucking it up. In an ideal world, I’d go out and grab a personal trainer or coach, but, frankly, I’m cheap. Maybe next year. This year, I think I want to save for a PowerBook.
3. Kind of a bridge to sustain a reasonable amount of effort and hopefully let some weight come off without worrying too much about creating a stress injury and a setback
4. Did I mention I don’t have to think, just execute?

She mentioned she got the program from AllTriathlon. They seemed pretty cheap, and I didn’t want to boost content from someone who looks like he’s got what I need, so I went ahead and signed up for an 8 week fitness and weight loss plan. $20, probably could have gotten it out of a book or something, but hey – it’s all about experimentation. I’ll keep you posted…

Found a great new NPR show this weekend: Weekend America. It is, honest to god, a new program. I caught their bit about Chi Running, which I think Chris has covered. They’ve got runners on their splash screen, support RSS and Podcasting (If only Garrison could be so hip), but don’t have Bob Edwards… wait, nowhere on NPR has Bob Edwards’ dulcet tones any more.

*There’s a bunch of motorcycle riders in the office, and we’ve got a tenuous truce. “Cycling” refers to riding a bicycle, usually wearing some form of tights, but not necessarily. “Biking” involves gasoline and much higher speeds. Though, in the case of a couple of knuckleheads, less protective equipment.

Monday Weigh-In / Tour de Rant

175 on the old scale. Which is good.

What was even better was Saturday up at Military Medical (MilMed) – 171 fully dressed without shoes. Looks like the old scale WAS about 5 lbs heavy. Missy picked up a new one later on Monday, and Tuesday morning weigh-in was 170. I kid you not. The upside is that I’m down like 10 lbs since the beginning of the year, which is all good. I’ll probably continue to use the old scale for consistiency, but will revise target weights upwards.

Monday was a rest day. And I rested. But I think I may be better – I felt like a racehorse in the paddock all day – kind of twichy and really wanting to run. I felt GOOD. We’ll see if I still feel good when I strap on the old shoes later today.

On to the real topic of discussion: Cycling and the new season. Jeff over at Boingo Blog dropped me the following:

So, what’s your take on Lance this year? Think he’ll be able to pull off another win in France? Jan is looking really strong this season, and there’s some other climbers that will really give him a run for his money…

And Tyler will most likely be gone. Dang. Man, I had so much respect for him when he took fourth the year he spilled on the second stage and broke his clavicle. It’s almost like baseball now, you have to assume that everyone is using something, somehow.

Tyler broke my heart last year. Removing all the gay overtones, I really had a man-crush on him since the broken collarbone tour. He just seemed like one of the guys, y’know? One of the ones who you ride with from time to time when they want a really easy day.

As far as 7 goes – I don’t know if Lance has the fire in his belly any more. At least not for le Tour. He’s done the impossible and won 6, any more is gloating; although he did learn a valuable lesson in 2000 with Pantani that unless you completely and truly crush the opposition, Euros don’t give Yanks credit.

What I’d like to see (not necessarily what I think we will see) is Lance taking the classics seriously. One of the most valid criticisms of him has been that, unlike Merckx, Hinault, etc, LA is quite literally a one trick pony. In July, he’s the best cyclist in the world. For the rest of the year, he’s quite literally a non-starter. The one exception has been Amstel Gold for the last few years, but even then he’s been able to blow off not winning by saying his training for le Tour is on track.

Armstrong started off as a strong one-day race rider, and especially over some of the hillier classics could be a factor. At the very least, he could give Hincapie a run for his money (Yes, I know they’re teammates) – I think Georgie’s scant palmares reflect his dedication to making sure Lance wins the Tour; Lance going out and busting heads in northern Europe for April and May could break down the field enough for George to take Roubaix or L-B-L, races that Hincapie has talked about wanting to win.

Ullrich? Armstrong should be waking up in his oxygen tent every night with the cold sweats if Ullrich has been training as much as has been reported, provided he bounces back from his current illness. Ullrich has been a factor ever since he won in 1997, despite his appreciation of booze and recreational pharmacuticals in the off-season. I’d love to see the diesel actually perform – I think that 2004’s tour was a wake-up for him, watching Basso drop him.

My “guys to watch” for this year, though, are Cunego (the guy who won the Giro last year, I know I killed his name) and Thomas Voeckler(10 days in Yellow in July). Cunego just kicked ass in Italy, and Voeckler has the build (dude’s tiny) and the tenacity (I forget which stage it was last year, but he fought tooth and nail on a final climb, got dropped and regained the leaders – less Armstrong and Basso – six times that day, and robbed Armstrong of a day in yellow by less than a minute) to have an impact. Could he burn out? Maybe. But he’s a guy to watch.

(See how I avoided all discussion of doping? If I don’t think about it, it’s not happening… Seriously, though, I wish to high heaven that the culture of cycling, and sport in general) would change to make doping completely unacceptable at the athelete level. How to do that? Dunno….)

In any case, I strongly recommend the following cycling sites:

The Tour de France blog – not affiliated with le Tour in any way that I can tell, just a really dedicated and enthusiastic fan. Don’t know if he rides. He’s got an rss feed.

Cycling News – Absolutely terrible web layout – tiny print, confusing columns, no RSS. But a great source for race info, tech, and training.

VeloNews – The USA’s cycling rag. They’ve picked up more Euro coverage later, but are still pretty US centered. Which is cool. Good classifieds, and a regional racing calendar. A couple of great columnists. They had Hamilton last year, but seem to have had a pretty public falling out with him over doping. And Friday’s Foaming Rants are hilarious. VeloNews has no RSS feed. Bums.

BBC Sport – (link is to their RSS feed) If you’re into world sports, you probably already know about the Beeb. Good stuff.

Le Tour’s homepage is a pretty useful site. Not only is it the place to be in July, but the Tour’s organizers put on a pretty comprehensive calendar of other races.

Graham Watson – The king of cycling photographers. Watson has an eye for composition that cannot be matched.

Back on track

No bonus mileage this week, but I’m back on track running wise. No really noteworthy runs, but somehow I’m pleased with muddling through.

The sun may be a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace, where hydrogen is made into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees, but it didn’t make much of a difference today. Plus, it was thinking about snowing all day, so the air was heavy with humidity. Yep, cold and humid, so I banged out my three miles for the end of the week on the treadmill. 9 minute pace. Dunno why, but lately I’ve felt a lot slower on the ‘mill than on the roads. But it’s all good. Hopefully, I can get the runner’s high kicking again, soon.

First day of Paris-Nice was just a 4 Km time-trial prologue. Frankly, (and I say this as a cycling fan) individual time trials bore the snot out of me. Yes, there’s the race against the clock, and the thrill of watching finely tuned athletes on the verge of greatness, but time trial stages always leave me cold. There was Bobbke’s kid though. And it was actual cycling on US TV, so I’m there.

Next weekend? Selection Sunday…

Five Miles

Did it today. Didn’t feel great, didn’t feel bad. Average pace was 8:14. Last mile was 7:33.

So a large part of the good but not great run may have been that I was pushing myself pretty hard for the first time in a couple of weeks. We’ll see how the legs feel during tomorrow’s three miles.

The forerunner came in great today. I was able to do side streets and such and end up with exactly the mileage I was shooting for.