Good News!

I’ve learned to walk naked on stilts! – Homer Simpson

The good news is only sort of …

I hit the pool this afternoon. The Y pool, mostly out of guilt of using the base pool last week. 1700 yards, mostly good. I wasn’t quite into it, but I was making do. The pool was kind of crowded, but I figure that’s just good practice if I ever do actually do a race…

Anyhow, things were going well until I hurt myself.

Yep, I hurt myself swimming.

Really.

Dig this – I was doing a flip turn, all good and proper – tucked my head into my chest, pulled my legs up and over, and BANG! clocked my ankle on the edge of the pool. Then, I clocked my head on the bottom. Ouch.

Popped up out of the water with my ankle throbbing. Wiggled it for a while, and decided that I was done swimming for the day. Sat on the edge of the pool ’til I thought I could put weight on it without falling, and then limped to the locker room. I think it’s going to be all right for running tomorrow, but if it hadn’t been raining all day, I’d shift cycling/running days to keep the weight off.

Random Monday Bits

Weigh in: 169 this morning! First time I’ve seen the light side of 170 since 1998, I believe. Though I may have been 165 during my last attempt at marathon workups, before adding about 30 lbs during a sympathy pregnancy.

Pro Cycling: Bobby Julich won the Criterium International over the weekend. I don’t have much cogent to say, other than to point out that he won Paris-Nice this year, and is having a bang-up year after having a lot of folks say he should have quit after last year. Bobby Julich is rapidly becoming to American cycling fans this year what Tyler Hamilton was last year – the cool, indie alternative to fealty to Lance Armstrong. Plus, he rides a cool Canadian bike.

Haven’t watched the entire tape yet, but the final climb on Sunday (before the time trial – these guys are nuts; a mountain stage and a time trial on the same day) was a thing of beauty. A 4 man break featuring CSC’s Julich and Ivan Basso (a stud in his own right; remember the Pyranees last July?), Jorge Jasche; and Thomas (Don’t call me Eric – stole that from the TDF Blog) Dekker on the final climb. Each rider was at redline, each attempted several escapes, and Dekker finally was able to chase down Jasche and cross the line in first. Huge effort, tactically beautiful, great racing.

I was down on OLN after they essentially dropped cycling from their lineup after the 2004 tour. But I’ll go ahead and say that their hour and a half show every Sunday rocks. Much as I’d like live coverage of everything, Bob Roll and the Brits doing kind of a weekly “CyclingCenter” is working out pretty well. If they’d add live coverage of the Giro and the Vuelta, I’d be completely satiated.

Random Bike Bits: I started stripping the paint off of my old Trek frame this weekend. It doesn’t want to come off easily at all. Part of the problem could be the cold – I was doing it outside with the temps in the 40’s, but I think the biggest contributor is the generally fine paint job that was on the bike. But it’s exciting to watch the steel emerge from under the yellow. The biggest lesson learned, though, is that the chainstay protector should come off before you start the stripping process…

Good Friday

Great Friday, actually, after my earlier rant…

I’m doing taxes this week, so will not be commenting much. I will still be reading y’all’s stuff – it keeps me going.

Anyhoo, after griping here Friday morning, and raining on Chris’ parade, I got off my butt and decided to talke a long lunch Friday, said “Snot be darned”, and hied hither to the pool. 1700 meters, felt great.

Then, I drove over to the Copp Family Property town park, parked the car, and hopped on the bike. 14 miles @ 15 MPH average, 56 minutes. THEN I strapped on the sneakers and ran a quick three miles. OK, ran a quick first mile, then slogged through two more.

I dunno, I guess spring was in the air…

The swim was great. I have no idea what my swimming pace is. As far as how have I been working on form – I’ve been using two guiding principles: First, if you look at critters that swim, usually they do it without making much of a rucus at the air-water interface. I suppose there’s some stealth involved, but my biggest guess is that splashing is pretty darn inefficient. Some energy that could go to pushing a body through water must go to making sound and displacing water vigorously enough to break surface tension and arc the water through the air. The second is that the motion needs to feel, well, fluid. I’ve scanned a couple books on swimming, and those two principles seem to bear out.

The bike ride: 15 MPH – Honestly, I’m a little disappointed. I thought I could push out at least a 16 MPH ride. BUT, I was holding back a bit since I wanted to at least run a little bit, and I intentionally hit a couple of pretty long climbs. For a first real ride of the season, I’m not entirely upset.

The run was much better than I’d expected after swimming and cycling. Other than your core, the three sports do work drastically different muscle groups. First mile was in the 7:30 range, second in the 8:30, and last in the 9:30 range, so I was clearly fading fast.

Saturday and Sunday were both yard work and family days. I’d been late at the office a couple of nights last week, so rather than carving time for working out, the boys and I spent a bunch of time in the yard, on the swingset, laying down lime and fertilizer, and clearing brush.

Stupid Flu

OK, probably not actual flu, but some terrible head cold anyway.

The bike ride didn’t happen on Wednesday, and the dual day didn’t happen today. The bike ride was called off on account of freakish late season snow – it was cold and wet most of Wednesday.

Wednesday night I went to sleep about 8:30, right after the kids were in bed. And woke up at about 6:45, running late.

Today was a pretty busy day at work, trying to tie up what I’ve been doing enough that it’s useful. So I blew off swimming, figuring I’d run on the way home. Ah, but then I remembered that there were a couple of errands to run, so that was shot. Fortunately one involved an appliance that had been delivered without the appropriate cables hoses and doo-dads necessary to hook it up and that, after a month of waiting for it to be delivered, was going to be at least another week to get the proper gear brought out …. In any case, I called the store, made sure they had the parts, and told them I’d hook it up myself provided they’d give me the parts for free. Sure ’nuff, when I get to the store, I’m told “You spoke to who? That’s impossible since I’ve been answering the phone all day.” Grrr… I’m logging it as Cardio.

Tomorrow will be better.

Another close to great day!

Training continues to improve. The head cold is kind of hanging around and making me feel generally sluggish, but not so bad that it kills me.

Today I used the base pool for the first time – Man, was it cadillac! Kind of soft, squishy walls, crystal clear water, a degree or two warmer than the Y, beautiful building with lots and lots of natural light through opaque glass bricks, and possibly the best showers I’ve ever run into in a gym. Nice, clean, warm locker room, too, though it had wet/dry carpet, which always kind of creeps me out disease-wise.

The actual swim was good, too – 2000 yards (goal was 2200, but I’ve come to realize that the alltriathlon.com projected workload is a bit more than I can tote; since I’m not training for an event, I’m shooting for 80-90% of the scheduled workouts). Breakdown as follows:

250 yds Breast – Warmup
500 yds – Moderately hard
100 yds Breast – recovery
1,000 yds – easy, but the goal was the distance – all but one turn was a good flip; the other was a hand on wall turn
100 yds – hard, practicing breathing on both sides – kind of screwed me up setting up for turns, but I felt like I was really cutting through the water; nice strong strokes
50 yds Breast – cooldown

And I was shot at the end.

No major insights today, though I have finally learned how to swim at a moderate pace instead of having to thrash to keep my head above water. I was much quicker to start breathing every stroke on the left instead of every other stroke, and I think that helped me avoid oxygen debt. But I’m sure I looked like a wuss.

Tomorrow – An hour on the bike! I am so completely pumped I cannot express it in words. I may even actually go to bed early tonight!

So Close

Today was supposed to be a swim day. But, the base pool was closed, and I missed the morning session at the Y. Flexibility being the name of the game, I went and ran Bluff Point on my way home from work. And it was almost, but not quite, a good run. Which has me completely pumped for my next running day (Thursday – it’s a dual sport day, so I fully expect to die.). I have so missed the fabled runner’s high during the last couple weeks of difficulty.

There were moments during the run when I felt as if I could potentially nudge over the edge and into endorphin fueled-bliss, but I just couldn’t quite get there. My guess is that it’s the pseudo cold I’ve had since Sunday (probably because I didn’t wear a hat on Saturday’s ride) holding me back. The run in and of itself was pretty decent. The paths were all solid but not frozen hard, the temperature was tolerable without a jacket, and it wasn’t raining, though it was threatening.

While I haven’t investigated any of the funky running methods other than the bit I heard on NPR about Chi Running, I have been working a bunch more on smoothing out my form. Dianna talked about sucking in one’s butt today, and Mark’s going crazy with the stuff, but I’ve got the old trial and error (mostly error) working for me.

On Saturday while riding, I noticed that my pedaling style had completely and totally gone to crap over the winter. I was stomping each pedal stroke down into the bottom of the crank arc and jerking each one up into the top rather than pushing down, scraping the mud off at the bottom, pulling up, and kicking forward like I do when I’ve been riding for a while. While running today, I realized that I’d been doing much the same thing running lately – kicking out the front foot, striking with my heel and knee locked, then lurching up as my extended leg scribed an arc under my hips lifting a (decreasing but) sizeable mass up about 4 inches, then pushing off a little bit so I could get the next leg extended in front of me.

After one of my walk breaks today, I concentrated on smoothing out my stride. Rather than waiting for my foot to strike earth, I kept each stride consistent, pulling my foot back at the same point in each step regardless of the ground condition. I would then count on the earth reaching up to catch my foot and allow me to extend behind me and push off, at the same time I was beginning my stride, sure that the earth would catch my stride.

The other observation I had today came from watching a rabbit I’d scared (tell me you wouldn’t run, too, if you had a red-faced, puffing, semi-overweight white boy bearing down on you) take off into the bushes. Once she’d come up to speed, her “cruising” pace looked completely relaxed. Sure, there was extreme effort and power when her furry feet contacted the ground, but while she was airborne mid-stride, she was relaxed. Confident, I’m sure, that the ground would rise up to meet her feet.

By the last mile, I’d gotten closer to that spot at which running approximates flying. Like I said, I didn’t quite get there, but I was close.

There’s always next time.

Well Enough Alone

Pool’s closed today, so it looks like I’m running on the way home. But that’s not why I’m here. THis is:

The folks who sponsor Milan – San Remo are a bit disturbed that it ended, again, with a group sprint. So they’re looking to change the route, to add a couple more mountains so the sprinters, most of whom are notoriously bad climbers, can’t drive the race at the end.

They’ve done this before, apparently. The Poggio and the Cipressa are two pretty decent hills near the end that were added in the 60’s to shuffle up the results a bit. And it’s not unheard of to re-route races just to keep them interesting.

But in this case, I’m a bit upset. Petacci yesterday had to make a heck of a ride for a sprinter to be in position to make his final push. Yes, there’s positioning and strategy involved to box out some more pure climbers, but there are classics that they can dominate. Granted, most of them are up in the rain in Belgium, but whaddya want?

Milan – San Remo

I’ve mentioned it before, but I completely dig pro cycling. It’s the combination of history, guts, beauty and bright colors really sucks me in. Today’s Milan-San Remo race had absolutely everything necessary to make one for the history books – a potentially successful breakaway, epic climbs with cool names, breathtaking scenery, and a passing of the guard (kind of).

I’ll leave the real wrap up to folks who know a bunch more than I do, but if you want to see pure, unadulterated expression of determination and power, take a look at the face of Alessandro Petacci, the race winner, as he’s approaching the finish line. He’s leading a group of about 20 of the fastest non-motorized men in the world (and I think that’s not hyperbole – the cyclists are nothing but human powered) and he’s opening a gap as he approaches the end.

The passing of the guard really happened a year or two ago, but today rocked. Mario Cippolini, the coolest man on earth, was in the bunch for the finishing sprint, but didn’t really figure at the end. But the dude’s 38 and still figuring in a race after over 6 hours in the saddle.

Sound of Silence

Thanks for all the great wishes for the boy’s birthday, and good words on training. Bouncing back seems to be kind of a trend; all well and good, but it’d be nicer to to just keep meeting goals.

Deciding to take a mulligan for this week was good for the psyche. Probably should have scheduled last week as a recovery week in any case; kind of funny how things work out that way. Next week is going to be busy, but I think I’ve got most things worked out.

My Cannondale, my 19 lbs of aluminum and carbon sweetness, got put back together on Friday. All degreased, all re-greased (very, very thin), new tubes and a new tire on my backup wheels, and the primary set of wheels at the bike shop for a little bit of truing. I’m comfortable working on pretty much anything on the bike (the secret is good grease, and not much of it) except for the spokes. I ran into my pastor while dropping them off – he’s in great shape, though, and his riding brings him closer to God in pretty much opposite the way that mine does. Though at the end of this season, hopefully I’ll be feeling God’s presence on the bike in the good way. Shaping the temple and all that.

Saturday was, quite possibly, the best day I’ve had in a long while. Woke up, just plain woke up not tired, not due to an alarm, not due to a screaming kid, not due to my wife kicking me since I was snoring, but just plain woke up at 6 AM. Kind of pinched myself. Luckily, I’d stashed my cycling gear in the kitchen the night before. Tiptoed out, dressed, carried the bike down the back stairs, and clipped in.

Darn it was cold.

And I’d forgotten my hat.

Screw it, I’m out for a while anyway.

Headed down the hill towards River Road. Darn, it’s cold. And now I can’t feel my ears. Hmm. Scratch the easy/fast ride along Route 1.

So, I climbed. Turned around and headed up the hill down which I’d came. Climbed up to the top, realized I could feel my cheeks and ears again, then gritted my teeth heading downhill. Turned around as soon as the ground leveled out and started up a different hill. Kept it up for an hour (computer magnet’s on the spokes of the wheels in the shop).

Man, I love the bike.

The sound of silence came in about halfway up the second hill – I clicked into a bigger cog, and suddenly realized that it was the first sound I’d heard from the bike in about a mile. Was a moment of serenity, as all the time and skinned knuckles of the last week or so paid off in a finely tuned machine.