What movies do you run to?

For whatever reason, it seems to rain nearly every day here in Houston this year, but I still train by running on my treadmill and riding in my bike trainer. One of the things I've found out is that my free time is so compressed I now have a rule that I don't watch TV unless I'm working out, or done working out.

A lot of people have told me that they couldn't do that (ride three or four hours on a trainer or run hours on a treadmill), so I guess it's just something about the way I'm wired.

One of the things I do is get rental movies and watch them while I train. I've found some movies are better than others - especially for hard and long workouts. Anything with running in it is good -- The Amazing Race (any season), the LOTR (2nd one, especially). Battle scenes are good - like most of the Star Wars and Matrix movies, although sometimes there can be some irritating quiet spots. I also enjoy comedies.

One huge hit - I usually watch the Tour de France every year. At this rate, I'll have to get a DVD and watch it over my Christmas holiday.

Bike fit = 20%+ more watts!

I know it's been a while since my last post. Work has been busy. Today I went for a bike fitting at the local bike shop. The fitter takes a look at your form and then mucks around with your seat, handlebars, stem, etc to get you more "aero" and more powerful.

To make a long story short, I went through the process and even in the store I noticed I had more power. So I went home and put the bike in the computrainer and did my ride. My heart wasn't working any harder, but I was putting out more watts - over 20% more power. I knew my fit was bad, but I didn't think it was that bad. I'm a believer. I think I'll make my next goal to put out more watts than my weight in pounds for an hour aerobic ride.

In other fun news, my back tire is showing the tread, which means I've finally worn out a tire before I ruined/punctured the tire.

Also - the other day I used a CO2 cartridge to repair a flat, and I thought my tire had reflatted, but the guys at the shop told me that CO2 just leaks out like that. Who knew? You're just supposed to empty the tire when you get home and refill it. Hmm. Learn something new every day.

Trip to the bike shop in my future...

I hadn't been on my trainer for more than 15 minutes when a I heard an awful sound coming from my rear gear changer. I quickly stopped pedaling, because the voice of wisdom told me there was big trouble down there. I'd previous ruined a mountain bike (and the subsequent race, riding my bike as a one-speed) hearing that exact noise.

Luckily, I caught the culprit in time - I'd managed to pop a pin halfway out of the chain.

So -- I get all the credit for trying to do the workout at 9:30 p.m., but none of the exhaustion. Yeah!

Back on Track

I did the Tejas Triathlon on Sunday, and I had pretty low expectations coming up to the event because of lack of sleep and missed training. It just goes to show you that you should make the most you have on the day of the race. For the first time in "I can't remember how long" I had a tri race where I didn't "screw up, blow up or throw up." Despite the heat, I put in 1:10:32, which was good for 49th place in my age group - the top half! (It's been almost two decades since that's happened).

I felt good and managed to a 173 average heart rate with a max recorded HR of 187. So what does that mean? I was at 92% of my max HR for over an hour. No wonder I'm happy. The actual data from a race also puts the lie on MaxHR = 220- your age, because that would make me 33. My recovery still took 5 minutes or so to drop below 130.

The moment that made the difference for me was my "smart swim." Let's just say it involved cutting the tangents to the buoys and a clever application of rule 4.2 and leave it at that. So I raced smart and hard and had a great day.

Packet Pickup

I dropped by packet pickup today, and I had a discussion with another athlete. He said, "Well, maybe you'll be lucky and your toenail will fall off during the swim..." I think I'm just going to have to tough it out. I did a little math on the shoe tradeoff. I figure I can go 1 mph faster for the 10 miles, which roughly works out to about 2 minutes. It won't take me two minutes to swap shoes. In fact, I'll be surprised if it takes me two minutes for the whole transition area. So I'm sticking with using both bicycle shoes and running shoes. On top of all this, I think I caught a stomach bug my son had, which won't take me out of the race but will probably annoy me.


I also did some figuring on how fast I will be able to leave - and it's all about the slowest bicyclist from the last wave. I figure the earliest I will be able to lay my hands on my bicycle is 8:30, so that makes making the first service a pretty tight connection. We'll see. What drama.

The Blog lives!

Now that the superbusy-ness of the race has died down, I'm back to my workout. Tonight was an hour on the bicycle. I have to say that my toenail and riding don't mix well, and it's making me think about my options for the triathlon I'm doing this Sunday. It's short enough so that I'm thinking about biking in my running shoes. You see, I've cut half the toebox off one of my old painting shoes - and it works pretty good. Does anyone have any thoughts on the bicycle/running shoe tradeoff (improves transition time, but you are slower on the bike?)

First workout since the race

Having successfully directed my first race, I can now say with confidence that practically everything does happen in the last two weeks. As a consequence, all of my free time, including that for exercising, went to the Celiac Awareness Race (so it was for a good cause). I finally squeezed out 30 minutes for a run today. Ahhhhhh.

The only thing that really marred the weekend for me was that I dropped a picnic table on my big toe, which has been turning some rather unlovely shades of blue, black and purple. It's my first black toe from a running event, and somehow I always thought it would be a marathon and not this. Oh well. It didn't hurt too bad for the run, but it sure does bleed everywhere. Maybe I'll stick to cycling and swimming.

Any bets on if it will fall off?