Stronger, Fitter, Faster

Stronger

Twelve years behind a desk does things to your body. For the first time in ten years I've started hitting a gym 3x a week but that doesn't mean I can muster too many pushups just yet.

Fitter

Lose a serious amount of weight. This is definitely key to making everything else work, so I'll be focusing on dropping pounds to get not only into a healthy range of BMI, but to also increase my endurance and fitness.

3 posts categorized "training"

Punxsutawney Phil lives in my derailleur

Today was only the third day of sun I've seen on my bike since the new year, but looking at the forecast, it's the first time I've seen multiple sunny days in the forecast so I decided to hang up the rain bike. It's officially spring, as I transferred the 9-speed cluster off my Powertap hub and replaced it with my 10-speed SRAM road cassette. I don't have a chain breaker and freewheel tool, so this was done at my local shop which means I'm not going back to the rain bike until next winter. It's been a long winter to me since I've put so much mileage down over the past few months. I've ridden on snow, I've ridden in sleet, but I prefer sun.

As the great ELO once said, hey there Mr. Blue Sky, welcome back, it's finally Spring.

Posted on March 18, 2009 in training | Permalink | Comments (0)

Winter setbacks, Spring forward

The first couple months of this year went really well. I started to hit a groove and got a ton of riding in (compared to usual January/February riding in the past). By mid-Feb, I was feeling as strong as I usually feel in the summer during prime riding season, and looking forward to some spring races. I was riding six days a week and working out three times a week and feeling great. Then I hurt my back.

I don't know if it was from overly tight hamstrings, poor sleep, or just generally getting older, but for the first time in my life, near the end of February I experienced severe back pain. I was working for a few hours in a weird hunched over position putting some shelves together, and when I was done I was quite sore. This is all normal, but after a day or two it kept getting worse, which never happens to me. Several days passed and everything worsened, to the point where walking became a painful ordeal. This was all new territory.

On the bright side, some quick checks by Seth revealed it wasn't a disc problem and some physical therapy got me on the mend. I spent the past two weeks traveling to see family and attend a technology conference, with my back feeling close to 100% now. I did an hour long ride on Friday and felt great.

Taking 2 weeks off my bike at this part of the year isn't ideal and I definitely feel like my fitness is back where it was in early January, but I'm glad to be recovered and looking forward to getting back into the swing of things.

Now if only this rain and wind would stop...

Posted on March 15, 2009 in training | Permalink | Comments (0)

Acheiving a milestone

Thanks to the short nature of the racing I'll be doing later this year (every race is less than an hour) I thankfully won't be expected to do the Lance Armstrong style 6-8 hour daily training rides all Spring. But early on my coach said I would have to eventually work up to a regular midweek 3 hour training ride.

It sounds pretty tame as I've done 6-8 hour rides on Cycle Oregon and in the Portland Century, but it's actually pretty hard to do a 45-50 mile ride by yourself near your home with regularity. It requires the following things to go right:

• Safe: off major highways, with as little traffic as possible
• Nearby: I could ride to Portland and halfway back, but if something went wrong, it'd take an hour to get a ride home at least
• Not boring: Doing a ten mile loop near your home five times is ridiculously boring
• Refuelling spot: ideally, a small store to get water/snacks would be handy

Yesterday I rode into town to run an errand, headed back out on my normal ~32 mile loop, but I added a 10 mile hillclimb loop. By the end, it was 47 miles and took three hours to complete, but I was never more than 10-15 miles from my house if anything went wrong. Additionally, I forgot to grab my tube/CO₂/lever repair bag and I didn't take any food with me after eating a big breakfast. I dressed warmly since it was about 42F and my two bottles (one water, one tea) lasted for the full trip. It was the longest solo ride I've done and I (luckily) made it back with zero tools, food, or support (the refueling spot I use in the summer is closed for winter).

Overall, I'm happy to have conquered this milestone in just the first two weeks of the year -- it's something I was worried about planning and wondering if I could do it week after week by myself, but now that I've done it, it'll be mentally much easier to do in the future.

Posted on January 15, 2009 in training | Permalink | Comments (7)