Category: Uncategorized

Middle summer night’s dreams

Great summer so far. I’ve worked a total of 7 days since June. Mostly vacation, part sequester, part taking care of teeth and checkups. (No cavities, good cholesterol, 10 pounds overweight)

Back from Scout Camp this evening. A whole week without beer. Somehow, I survived. Solid work through the end of the year, though. Not sure how I’m going to handle it.

Sad I missed D and Dianna at the Kelley race at Ocean Beach this weekend, but hope I can catch some folks at New Haven or the Hartford Marathon.

April Fool

Brilliant run today.

We’re in the funny time of year where there are three phases of weather.

  • Cold and grey, which is fine, ’cause as we all know, April showers bring roads free of sand and salt.
  • Or it’s brilliant blue skies and freaking freezing, ’cause the folks up in Canadia are still trying to pawn off their excess of winter onto us good, hard working Americans, forcing us to burn more fossil fuels
  • Or, it’s just brilliant. Warm, verdant and green, and a beautiful respite from winter before humidity and tourists set in for the summer.

    • Not enough April showers

    Great run today at lunch. 5 miles on the long, hilly standby from the office. Waved at a former colleague running the other way, enjoyed the sun on my face when it was shining and the shade when it went behind the clouds. Legs felt good.

    Lungs were working free from almost two weeks of mucus, so apologies to anyone following behind – boy did it feel like sheets were breaking free. The good news is that I think I’m done with the spring 2013 edition of the Vulcan Death Flu.

    The bad news is that I missed about 8 days of running due to a head full of snot. Which is a shame, ’cause this was one of my best Aprils on record, following a decent February and great March.

    So, not enough post-workout April showers, for sure.

    Not enough rain, either. Spent some time yesterday working in the yard, and it’s dry like August. Wah.

    All in all, good start to the week.

    Lame Excuses and Lazy Long Runs

    Hi. I’m Jank, and I’m lazy.

    One of the biggest challenges that faces most of us is just getting our butts out the door. I know that I’ve got a terrible habit, especially on Saturdays and Sundays of saying “Well, I get up for work every other day of the week, don’t I deserve to sleep in one day?” And I probably do, and there’s always an opportunity to run later in the day, so I roll over and wait for #2 son to fly in the door and do the flying leap onto the bed when he’s ready for me to make him breakfast.

    Then we have breakfast, and I can’t run right after I eat. So we go to the hardware store, and by the time we get home, it’s time for lunch, and I can’t run right after I eat. So we have lunch, and I start into a project in the house or in the yard, and have a couple beers, and then I can’t run on a full stomach, so what the heck, I’ll just run tomorrow morning. 12 hours later, the cycle repeats, except Sunday School and church replace the trip to the hardware store. (Melissa, my long-suffering wife, usually avoids my fate, since she was born with a double ambition gene).

    Today was on track to be another typical Saturday on which I’ve blown off my Saturday run, until the lovely and talented Annalisa tweeted:

    I replied:

    And thought about trying to sit on the same lame couch.

    But, I’ve had some awful hangove.. uh, headaches, Mom. And I know folks who have migraines, and know that a headache is to a migraine like a Tonka truck is to an open pit mine dump truck – orders of magnitude different. So then the guilt kicks in at trying for a cheap laugh at someone else’s pain, and of sitting on a couch when there’s beautiful (if slightly damp) roads waiting for me out my door, and then my beautiful (and long-suffering) wife, who’s already banged out five miles while the boys and I were at pancake breakfast for the church mission trip, and …

    Enough already – I had to get out the door.

    So, I suited up, walked out, and the cool day had turned damp. Light sleet coming out of the sky. Enough to where I might be able to justify going back to the couch. ‘Cept – no.

    An hour later, I stroll back in the door. The run wasn’t a particularly special one – 6 miles at slug pace, and about a quarter mile cooldown walk with a gratifying cloud of steam coming off of me like in a superhero comic after a battle. And a lightness in my step for turning an ordinary weekend into good base miles.

    Short Socks and Spray

    Two days into the week, and there have been three zeros busted for the first time in I don’t know when. (Four, when I think that this is the first week in a long while with two posts on the old blog…)

    Anyway, this morning was another awesome ride into the office (Haven’t had a day I’ve regretted riding in yet).
    January Bike Commute

    Post script: After the great start to last week, I choked until running on Saturday. Awesome. Lesson learned is not to brag.

    Racing Weight – Someday.

    Hey, y’all. Still alive; don’t add me to your list of Dead Blogs yet. I’m still plugging away, but work, moonlighting, kids’ sports (Drop me a line if you want to buy a raffle ticket), and Cub Scouts (Ditto if you want some scout popcorn), have kept me from posting. That, and catching up on 30 Rock and Dr. Who.

    Survived Snowmageddon 2012 V1.0, manage to work out pretty frequently, and completed the first week of the Racing Weight Quick Start guide. I’m pretty pleased with the program after a week. It’s a do-able chunk of work tied to a pretty workable diet plan. Nothing earth-shattering on the diet side, but good advice about how to score what you eat by quality. (Full disclosure – my quality for yesterday and today is terrible). I’m pairing it with calorie tracking at MyFitnessPal, mostly because they’ve got a GREAT and free iPhone app.

    I miss posting here. I miss the early days of Web 2.0 – everything’s getting all monetized and crap.

    Sigh.

    Tour de Jank Stage 2 – Old Mystic-Noank-Mystic-Old Mystic

    The Ride

    Since the TDF stage 1 included a couple of bumps, I rolled up route 184 to Flanders Road, and headed down to Noank. Man, this is one of my favorite roads around – it’s a pretty good climb up to the top of Flanders hill, and then nothing but flying down to Noank, all while looking out over Fisher’s Island Sound.

    I think this whole idea might work – I’m absolutely loving riding the bike again. I’m going to try to squeeze in a run this evening – love running in the hot.

    The Race

    Stage 1 didn’t dissapoint at all. I cannot get enough of watching the run-in to the finish. Favorite moment of the day was watching Cavendish shrug and wave at the camera after his crash. Dunno if it’s just me, but it seems like the peleton has been getting into a better mood between last year and this year. The optimist in me wants to think that this is a result of a cleaner pack – less cases of road rage.

    I’m digging Bob Roll’s rider interviews – here’s yesterday’s with Tyler Farrar, who’s going to be one to watch in the next few years

    Today’s stage, Stage 2, doesn’t look to have much potential to shake stuff up. Bunch of climbs, but nothing terrible that can really shake up the general classification

    Billy-off 2009, Thursday

    I did wake up sore this morning, but not in my core. it was my quads, which I suppose are related.

    instead of spinning, I went to swim at lunch. The 2 minute drill was good, and doing a really easy 1000 meters felt good.

    I am starving, though. The diet, as always, appears to be key. (and I’ve been having trouble). Friday, I’ll start counting calories based on the menu plans, and try to tweak my food input that way.

    Four days down. I’m taking Missy’s advice, and am only going to do weights on Saturdays. Last was 180; did I make ANY progress?

    Billy-Off 2009, Week 1, Day 2

    First, a bit of admin – there’s 4 days of Belly-Off each week: M-W-F and a Saturday challenge. So, saying “Day 2” doesn’t mean Tuesday, it means Wednesday.

    Anyway. Day 2. Holy crap, I woke up hurting today. Seriously considered taking a pass on the workout. But, then I jiggled my belly and figured out how to make it work.

    The Wednesday workout was considerably tougher than the Monday workout – four “SuperSets” instead of three, and the introduction of a couple of stability ball exercises that I pretty much tanked. I managed about 75% of the reps for each set before the form fell apart. I decided to declare success on the manly part of the workout and head outside for intervals.

    The run was good – I was tasting lunch again by the beginning of the 4th interval (5 minute warm-up, 6×30 second max effort with 30 seconds recovery, 5 minute cooldown), but managed to keep everything in my tummy through the end. Running intervals is kind of a new experience for me – it’s difficult for me to gauge the effort at which I need to go into the first couple to be recovered by the end of the recovery period. Which I suppose is partly the point.

    But, MAN, could I feel every part of my body by the end. I’m feeling better tonight, but am kind of worried about waking up sore tomorrow. Especially my ab (as there’s currently only one mound of lard there. A pony keg instead of a six pack, if you will). BellyOff seems to be very, very core intensive. Ibuprofen would probably be a good prophylactic; however, I’m gonna see if I can muscle this out.

    Tomorrow’s just the 2 minute drill in the AM. Though I’ll probably try to spin on one of the bikes at the office gym during lunch.

    Billy-Off 2009 Week 1, Day 1

    Pshew.

    Thanksgiving was good; however, when I hit the scales on Saturday, there was an ugly number staring me in the face:

    180

    Wow. 180 pounds. The last time I was there was probably 3 years ago. 180 was a number I didn’t think I’d see again. But there it was, and the fact of the matter is that it’s been almost as long (2 years) since I’ve seen 160, which is about where I ought to be. So, the focus this month is going to be trying the Men’s Health “Belly-Off” plan.

    It’s not that I’m not running. Mostly, I think that the problem is diet – Too easy to go grab junk from the geedunk machine or a drive through, and even though I’m more conscious than most, not thinking packs on the pounds. It’s really just the focus part.

    The plan’s pretty simple – a “2 minute drill” every morning (15 seconds each of jumping jacks, skips, pushups – basically some plyometrics first thing in the morning). Then there’s about 15 minutes of exercises, and 15 minutes of interval training on M/W/F, and a longer workout on Saturdays.

    I did the first workout yesterday – the “No-Gym classic” workout A. I was pretty pleased I was able to finish it, but BOY did I feel it this morning. It wasn’t until I was going through the weekly plan last night that I realized I was supposed to do intervals yesterday, too, so I did those this morning. I hate to say it, but I’ve been focusing on just endurance for SO long, that my legs were jelly by the end of the 6th interval and I wanted to puke. That’s how you know you’re doing them right, right?

    So, we’ll see how this goes. If I can stick with the eating, I think I’ll drop weight. If not, I think I’m hozed. I’m planning on working in a long run on the weekend so that I can maintain mileage to start working up to VT the first week in January. But I think that getting some “old-school exercise” might be a good thing, at least for a month.

    Longer-term, I think that I’m going to shoot for the Vermont City Marathon – Missy doesn’t want to run it three years in a row

    PS – I’m going to spare the before picture. Save for linking to this picture of a scary guy with a moustache during Mo-Vember. (It’s December now, so the ‘stache is gone. It’s also never too late to donate, and most of you guys still have a chance to go talk to your doctors. Take care, fellas)

    Lantern Hill Hike, November 2009