Distance of pain

Wow! I went nutso today and road like a nut. In fact what may be a new distance record for me, admittedly it wasn't that far, but for me it was longer in terms of distance than any ride before. I road 40 miles on the Canal path today, 20 from a nearby neighborhood out and back. Damn a bit of wind on the way out but it was really rough on the way back. Plus I was hosed after the 30 mile mark. My legs and lower quads are dead. Good ridee though, probably 7 miles longer than my other longest previous ride. Took about 3 and a half hours with brakes. I had to do a bit of walking to loosen up my legs in the last 10 miles.

Gotta dump the data from the gps. My legs are damn tired.

Watched the latest Die hard movie and it was pretty damn cool, some crazy stunts.
The Tenacious D movie was so so, I don't care for a lot of the music but the duo is very funny. Oh well.
Dinner time. Fried eggs ho!!!!!!!

Of Brakes and Kings

Watching dune after a busy evening. Waiting for the wife to get in from being out and about. My heat still doesn't work all the time, I had to fight with it for almost half an hour to get it to come on correctly. The house got down to 56 degrees. Brrrr!!!! It was working when I first got home.

After getting home I went directly to the bike cave and tried out my new tools I picked up at Sears, to try and remove the stubborn torx bolts holding it. The screwdriver version wasn't enough but the 1/4 inch drive socket version did the trick! Nice! So I swapped the disk. Swapped the QR and popped it in. Uh..Hu? It was tight going in? So I played with it, checked it vs the old wheel. Damn, disk is rubbing very hard on the fixed/adjustable inner pad. I adjust it out....all the way out. Nope. I realize that this is gonna require an easier brake setup to adjust as the Hayes sole require sucky spacers, and it is gonna take a few!! Might as well wait for the new Juicy 7 for the front to come in. Much easier to adjust. Hoped it would come in today but no luck, probably tommorow or friday. So back went the damn disc to the old wheel, and such. Re-adjusted the innerpad and back it went. Lubed the chain, but it needs a full cleaning probably after this next ride.

Worked out today with a warmup jog, box jumping, pull ups, chin ups, push ups, a bike ride for 30 mins, planking, and a few quick single sets of chest, shoulders, and leg press. Actually showered at the gym. Not bad. Gotta do that more to make use of the damn $60 a month I pay, at least I'm using it 2 times a week. Minimum cheap drop in at any gym is probably at least $5 so when I hit 12 a month I really do make it fully worth while. Towel service rocks, the large towels are just to darn small!

Tommorow I'm hopefully off to Rosary afterwork hopefully for a ride.

Fitness Disease, Beer Cure

oy....Busy week here in the natty capital. Ice storms and elections played hell with the town yesterday. 2 Hour commute and icing roads kept me from the gym last night. It was rather nice to have a calm night.

Today I was determined to hit the gym and put in a solid workout A. After interminable shopping hell for tomorrow's festivities, I hit the gym a bit after 8. I warmed up for 7 minutes on the treadmill then kicked off with lunges, trying to optimize my lunges especially to improve my weaker left leg. Another few of those workouts and I hope to step up to a 30lb lunge from 25. I feel like I'm getting closer to being solid there. My right leg is to the point I can thrust up off of it out of the lunge pretty strongly. Step ups at 40lbs were a bit harder than last time. NOt sure if i struggled more with legs or arms....ugh. Pull ups weren't gonna happen but I did managed 6 chinups. Pushups were good I started out with 25, then did 12 then 15. Explosions sucked, especially doing them after so much other arms. The 25 was very challenging. Ugh.

The real disease is upon getting I home I picked a bit of chicken off a roast chicken then while toasting a english muffin I decided to try some Whey Protein supplement. Straight up in cold water. UGH. That was gross. A new low, but still not a bad way to make sure I got in plenty of good protein quick to help muscle building.

To make up for it I will drink an extra beer tommorow :) To remind myself being health is good, but living and enjoying is better.

Going Places, New Faces

I guess my working out is starting to show the beginnings of dividends. Today I went and rode two laps at Rosaryville SP. The first lap was done in 1h:9m and the 2nd was 1h:11 min according to my cyclecomp. The GPS is a bit off as my first lap I didn't start it till almost a mile in. IN distance I got a measurement of 18.8 or so. I finished the entire ride in less than 2:30 which is pretty impressive to me as stops used to take me much longer. Basically I stopped once on each lap to eat a GU and then had to walk across 2 log sets. The final lap i did end up pushing the last hill but much better than my first ride where thats what I did that final hill on 1 lap. Once I got going and warmed up I felt decent only after mile 15 or so did the tiredness catch up a bit. Gotta continue to push myself for more endurance I guess. Met a guy in the lot there for his first ride, Mark. I let him lead off, caught him on the bastard climb before mile 4. I lead up till about 5 or so and let him pass. And he was gone...heheh. I coulda tried to keep up more but oh well, he said he only beat me to the lot by about 3 minutes. He ended after 1 loop. Cool guy.

At the gym, I am pushing myself more. Doing my A circuit a lot but working in bits of C also. B sucks, as often when I'm there the main room is in use and I can't use it. Oh well. I'm doing much better on push ups, my pull ups are up to 6. I did some box jumps yesterdya and they didn't seem to leave me in bad shape for today. Saturday I rode for an hour. Sunday I walked for half an hour, hoping to ride today.

Tommorow, I will probably try and do a full circuit of A again. We'll see.

Too Much Rest???

Feast or famine in all things it seems. Last week I was definitely famine on sleep, moderate on cycling/working out and such. This week I am determined to turn that around and have a good week of sleep and activity. Weather wise though I don't think there are going to be many rides, so it's probably the gym. I caught up on sleep majorly on sunday with almost 11 hours of beautiful sleep, monday I got another 9 I think.

At the gym yesterday I upped my A program weights on many of my exercises, where I am now doing

4x8 Step ups at 40#
3x10 Squat Explosions at 25#
Pushups I did 17 first set, then I did 14 and 12 respectively, thats a huge jump.
Pull ups 5 chin ups 4
3x10 Lunges at 25# (didn't increase this one..lefty is still too weak).
3 30Second Planks
Then i did 20 minutes of intervals on the stationary bike.

Today, its been feasting on Chili. My 2nd Tier boss brought in some great chili, spagetti, fixins, cornbread and brownies. I pigged down on 1 bowl of spagetti and chili then a bowl of just spagetti. UGH. Damnit.

I need a nap. :)

Rest?

Wednesday I met with the trainer for my final PT session at the gym for now. Unfortunetely one of the classes was using half the gear the trainer wanted me to, but he did show me what he wanted to do. So I only ended up doing 3 new exercises. The first was a push up on one of those big inflated rubber balls, next he had me hold myself stable as he would slap the ball and I had to use abs to stabilize myself. UGH! HARD!! The final exercise was the lateral box jump. 2 sets of 8 on the 18, and 4 on the 24. Do each side with at least a minute break between each half set.

Thursday I was originally hoping to ride Rosaryville but the rain left all trails way to muddy, so I went to Wakefield and rode the CCT, I did a 6 mile warm up then did 14.5 miles with the group ride towards rt 50. By the end my fingers were freezing and so were my poor big toes! There is a huge difference in wind chill between 7mph and 12-15 and open trail and hills/valley riding.

Rain Friday has unfortunately made it very unlikely that I will be able to ride much of anywhere fun by Sunday and maybe even Monday. We'll see. I'd love to go ride Rosary again.

Gonna try and spruce this thing up with some video/photo's and such over the next few days.

Grrr gotta go deal with a Heat problem @ home.

Sunday wrap up

Well, I fell a bit off the pace after hitting Wakefield on Thursday Night, I did 8 miles in just under an hour there. Not bad considering I was feeling pretty wimpy and wiped out by the end on a whole 400ft of climbing. Egads. Thats like 1 climb at greenbriar. With J getting back in late Friday night I had cleanup duty at home waiting Friday afternoon, and saturday became a wash for the gym as I went home with the intention of a 15 minute power nap before working out only to zonk out for an hour or more. It was quite nice though. Today I intended to hit the gym early but errands, lunch, and other things kept me in till 4:30. I did get in a pretty solid set for not having been in since the painful monday session, though I did skip 1 set of lunges, my shoes were killing me. I wore the complete wrong shoes and consider myself lucky I did as well as I did.

For a change I also included 5-6 minutes of jumping rope. Holy cow, I get way to easily out sync on that, back as a kid I used to be able to go forever. When I was 11-12 I used to regularly go to a boxing gym/school in Phoenix and that was one of the regular activities. Though ultimately I'm glad I didn't get into really boxing. I'm already addle brained enough as it is.

My plan tommorow is to get up and go out early when J leaves and either hit Rosaryville again or maybe go check out Fairland. Not sure, fairland sounds a bit easier to hit but I'd like to hit Rosary and actually get a chance to REALLY improve my riding there on the outer Loop. I'd love to try for 2 laps, but who knows.

Off to cleanup the bike from Wed/Thursdays rides. Yucky!

Working for the Weekend

Busy weekend, even with J away. Man, where did the weekend go?

Friday before she left we went to Benihana for dinner, it was pretty entertaining but not as good as the one we liked in Tallahassee, no fire, and some rude customers. Almost everytable was having a birthday party, very noisy with the way they do it. No noodles either and the soup was an onion based one, but pretty good, I still like miso. J was packing after we got home till midnight. Ugh

Dropped J at the airport early and went to work. After work I had a new friends new year party to hit, and it was a good time, too bad I had to split at midnight. met a ton of cool people.

Sunday I got up at 7'sh for a 10:15 meetup and 10:30 ride up at Patapsco Park, my first ride up there. Very cool place, though I was hike-a-biking way more than i wanted to, plus I didn't keep up very well. I was suffering at like 6mph average. Some real mix of nice terrain and some hard climbs with some technical descents be it rocky or some drops. I think I rode a bit over 7 miles.

Today (err Monday), I rode out at Roseryville Park for the first time. Good group of guys also at this ride, the 4 of us made a bit stronger pace, I paced out at 7.6 as its a much faster feeling loop, even though the interior advanced loop took me forever as I had some bad mistakes in there on some simple stuff. I did take a few nice logs that I was actually happy with my attempts. Definitely gonna make that at least a monthly trip if I can. A bit far but not bad. Fun Fun loop. I hope to get J out there this spring. Only one hike a bike near the end do to being outa gas so to speak, and then slipped in the mud. Oh well.

Also did my new workout today, very simple but surprisingly hard. !0 Minutes of boxing on the heavy bag, 3 minutes of both fists, 3 of left only, 3 of right only, 1 final minute of both. The other exercise is 5 to 10 sets of 12 reps on each arm of kettle ball swing. You grab it one hand squat down and as you explode up out of the squat, you swing the ball up in the air. Also the trainer suggested that switching out the boxxing for jumprope for 10 minutes. All i know is I am pooped!!!

Time for shower and bed.

Is pain your friend???

This was my thought last night as I crawled under my covers before falling asleep last night. I was pondering this due to the fact I did my 2nd workout of my new type yesterday. I felt pretty good doing it after the 2 rest days (well I ran and cycled on Wednesday). Doing the step ups I only felt a bit weak near the very end of the last set. The explosion squats were fine. Did better on push ups and pullups also. Where I felt the pain was the lunges. My left leg was having problems when being the support leg. My quad there is simply weaker I guess. But by the end I was hurting. I cycled for 25 mins afterwards to break up the muscles a bit more. I was quite sore when stair climbing at home last night. DAmn laundry. This morning though I noticed my recovery was MUCH better. I'm hoping for hitting it again Saturday maybe. Though maybe not as I may try and ride Sunday.

But back to my point originally, what is that point when working out when you say enough. That when do you say, okay time to modify the workout? I felt not just lactic acid build up but some real soreness in my leg. We'll see how it goes today.

I also went by GNC and grabbed a bottle of whats now my favorite post workout protein drink, muscle milk. I also find there carmel peanut bars to be my favorite of several high protein bars I've tried.

Rocking the Scales, Week 2.

Alright at the start of my 2nd week of fitness I can look back on last week and see some real positives, and a few negatives.

Positives - Hit the gym 3 times last week. Ate better in general, subway on the 2nd day for the 2nd half of a foot long is rough. I can loose weight (218 as of yesterday). I also managed to not pig out and eat a whole box of lowfat cheeze-its in 1 sitting, I ate maybe 2 servings, at a time. Not great, but better.

Improvement Areas - I binge, therefore I am. Its tough for me to eat according to any normal meal plans, being as alergic as I am to most fruits and veg. Find supplements to that is more important than ever. Tomato juice and V8 are new ideas for this week. I eat WAY To much Peanut Butter. It's my general snack food of choice. I need to get some pickles also. 2% Cheddar cheese snacks are also on my shopping list. I need more snack options. I need to hit the gym consistently through out the week, not just early, I crapped out after thursday. I need to hit 4-5 times minus for each real ride.

REAL NEGATIVE - My bike is still in the FRICKIN SHOP! I'm pissed. Friday it might get done, more likely Saturday. If the part was ordered. Moron wasn't sure. No more city bikes, they are over priced on labor and kinda slack. I suspect their overhead is just too high.

2nd Week of Program and I am at 218.

I started a new weight training setup with my personal trainer at the gym. He gave me a first workout of
4x8 Step Ups @ 35 Lbs - 30 seconds rest
3x8 Explosion Squats @ 22.5 Lbs -45 Seconds
Push ups to exhaustion - 45 Seconds
Pull ups/chin ups (Goal 10) of either/then both. 30-45
2 Sets of Pushups for 20 seconds.30 seconds rest
3x10 Lunges @ ?? (20?) 45 seconds.

My shoulders are killing me today, my arms are a little sore. My legs are a bit sore. Gotta push it today when I hit the gym. Not hard but I need to loosen up as I plan to hit the same workout tommorow....I hope.

Fitness Drive

My wife and I are starting a new drive to improve our fitness here in 2008. Not really new year resolutions, but just in general. She wants to work towards her new goal weight and drop at least 20 more pounds. For me its a mixture of dropping 10-15 lbs ideally and improving my endurance for Mountain Biking. I want to think about racing Wakefield this summer. I want to strangely ponder the idea of racing Greenbriar this spring like I wanted to last year. My goal is to be able to go out on some of the Sunday epics this year and ride the whole damn 30-50 miles and keep up with the faster group. So really its 2 part. Up my endurance and increase my average ride speed by 1.5 to 2 mph.

Hu? 2mph...thats nothing. NOT. For me going out and running 7.5 last week at wakefield was hard as hell. I couldn't have done a 2nd lap at that pace. Though thats more about endurance. Being able to ride a solid 8-8.5 at wake would put me in good shape to do well at the wake races in the summer at least in terms for me.

The endurance is really the issue for me. I can go out and do 2 hour rides, where I cover 14 or more miles, no problem but I'm shot the next day. I want to go out and do 20's and be good for a lighter 10-15 the next day or go out and push 30-40 and only need a day recovery.

The other issue I want to work on is what I call spin up. It takes me sometimes upto 45 minutes to get REALLY warmed up sometimes on the bike where my legs no longer care about what is asked of them, they just do it to the best of their ability. Maybe its my first wall of "tired", I dunno. It just sucks, eventually I am able to just keep spinning, and basically ignore my legs complaints. Maybe its just mental toughness. Have to consider that part further.

So on 1-7-08 starting the program I was at 221. I've got a ways to go, then to hold it off forever, but I want this now more than ever. This is the right time. My fitness is going to have to carry on really for the rest of my life. I don't want to end up diabetic, or wearing size 38 pants or whatever.