JBlog

52 miles at 20 mph.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/12082075

This morning’s ride started with around 15 riders, including a few who are racing tomorrow and dropped at the turnoff from Mahomet to Fisher.  Climbed some tough hills and fought headwinds that were almost straight out of the North at 10-15 mph.  Did some decent work up front, but tried to keep it to 2:00 or less per pull.  I nearly got dropped as we went over Rt 150 on Lake of the Woods Road but was able to do some work to get back on to the last slot in the left pace line.  I spent most of the trip to Fisher in the left pace line.

Outside of Fisher, right when the sprint began, my extra water bottle went flying out of my jersey.  Second bottle incident in the past two rides for me.  epon suggested that a smoother pedal stroke may help avoid bottle slippage.  I tend to agree, but also the fact that I was in the aero bars may have had something to do with it.

Once in Fisher, we took an extended break at the Casey’s and when we were finally ready to depart there was one bike left sitting against the wall.  Hmm … dilemma … do I leave the bike sitting there unattended and risk not being able to catch up or do I wait for its owner to get back to it.  I can’t imagine how I’d feel if someone made off with my steed so I decided to wait and was unable to catch up with the rest of the group.  That turned out to be just fine as it gave me an opportunity to do some extended solo work with the aero bars.  I’m really starting to like riding with them – not only because of the increased aerodynamics, but because it’s a totally different position to get into.  Laying out flat, or relatively flat, across the bike takes a lot of stress off the wrists and shoulders, which are two areas that always seem to fatigue on me.

I worked on some intervals on the way back, too, and wound up with some mild chest pain about halfway home.  It’s still lingering a bit, but not nearly as bad as it was a few weeks ago.  It seems as if the reduction in the Coreg intake is helping some with that.  I also wonder if it might be possible to move away from it altogether.  There’s probably only one way to find out if it’s safe for me to be off of the medication, and that’s to stop taking it.  If I start having palpitations again I can always go back on it.  It took several years for the arrhythmia to take its toll on my heart.  I think a few weeks or less – if it comes back without the Coreg – would be worth the risk to see if it’s time to stop taking the stuff.  I really hope so.  Whenever I can get in to see the new electrophysiologist at Carle I’ll bring it up to see what he has to say.

Tags: aero bars, Coreg, Fisher, Wild Card

Hammerfest this week took a group of about 16 riders out to the east side of Homer, through Sidney and back in across the south side of Champaign.  Stuck with the group until shortly before Sidney when I got dropped after a very short turn at the front of the pack.  Had some slight chest pains toward the end of the ride but I eased up a bit and they went away.

It was the virgin voyage with the new Profile Design Aerolite aerobars installed.  I didn’t use them much, but I think they’ll help for extended solo rides, especially with the aero helmet.  I found that pulling back slightly on the end of the bars forces my elbows down into the pads a little and gives some extra leverage for pedaling.  It’s going to take some practice.

I broke off from a very small group of riders on the return home and went up Neil Street a couple miles before turning on Burwash.  About halfway between Old Church and Burwash, three kids in a brown pickup truck crept over onto the shoulder of Rt 45 right beside me and revved its engine, causing a loud engine yell and billowing black smoke.  I’m sure they were disappointed at my reaction – or lack thereof.

Tags: aero bars, engine yelling, Hammerfest, homer, sidney

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=3125743

Felt pretty good until about half way down Windsor Road, then it was a struggle the rest of the way home.  I did jog the whole way with the exception of a 5 minute walk to warm up and about a 100 yard cooldown walk.  Total distance was 5.9 and 5.5 miles of that was jogging.  Tried a couple of Fartlek intervals and found that I was able to recover just fine while still jogging.

I’d like to apologize to the dude on the bike path this morning that had to go on to the road briefly while he passed me.  Runners on the bike path are a huge pain in the neck, but running on asphalt is so much easier on the legs and the sidewalk in that section was concrete.  I tried to get out of his way and point to where I thought he had room to ride, but that only had the effect of making him go further out into the road.  I was wearing my headphones, but I couldn’t tell if he said “Good Morning” or if he reminded me that the word BIKE was written in large block letters on several locations on the path.  Sorry, dude.  My bad.

I think I’m going to do some more brick training tomorrow morning at ARC.  Will try to spend a little more time on the bike, though.

Tags: 10K, brick, gmap

Made it to Meadowbrook Park with a few minutes to spare and we were off.  The group was huge today.  We had over 20 riders – maybe close to 30.  There’s something great about the sound of almost 60 23mm tires.  I’m sure it’s not a great sight to see for cars who are trying to pass, though.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/11695648

Our route went south to Old Church and east to Rising Road and then almost straight north to Fisher.  There was a pretty nasty headwind out of the NNW that was steady at 10-12 and gusted to almost 20.  Fortunately with so many riders, there wasn’t a lot of work for any one person to do on the front of the pack, so it was pretty easy getting to Fisher.  I did have to run off the road a little over half way there, though.  Guy in front of me got loose on some gravel in a corner and slowed leaving me with no other option but to make a straight line for a ditch, at the bottom of which was a sizable mudhole that added a good half pound of dirt to my tires.

We dropped 4-6 people on the way there, so the group that headed back to Champaign was a bit smaller.  We probably averaged 24 on the way back.  I seemed to be doing well until we hit a section where we headed east for a mile plus and were blasted by winds out of the north.  I was second in line then with a pull coming up shortly and I just ran out of steam and dropped.   That was OK as I wanted to do some interval training on the way back into town.

Ended up with 51.5 on the day with an average speed of 19.5 mph.  Felt a lot faster than that.  Overall it was a good ride and I really enjoyed the roads North of I-74.  Very hilly and lined with trees.

Chest pain showed up again about 5 miles from home on the return trip, though not as intense as a couple of weeks ago.  I still think it has something to do with the proximity in time to when I’ve most recently taken Coreg.

Tags: "group ride", Coreg, Fisher, Wild Card

Been listening to a lot of these guys lately, especially Shake It Off.

Tags: Shake It Off, Wilco

The goal was to run to my office building then across the campus quad and back home – about 5.7 miles.

The first 4 miles went relatively smoothly. Wasn’t trying to break any speed records or anything. Right at around 4 miles, though, the two slices of pan pizza and accompanying two beers began to try to free themselves my my digestive tract. The feeling is what I imagine Finch felt after eating the Exlax-laced brownies in American Pie. Afraid that I was going to dislodge my supper from its soon to be very temporary home, I slowed to a walk until it seemed like things had settled down a bit then started off on a jog again, but this only had the effect of getting the shit stirred up and ready for action again, so again I walked. I spent the last 1.7 miles jogging as much as I could, but mostly walking with butt cheeks clenched at maximum tightness trying to stave off the inevitable.

I did make it home and to the toilet with the remnants of dinner still safely tucked away, but it was close. The commode was utterly ruined.

Lesson: do not eat pan pizza and then engage in an activity that encourages the pizza to works its way through the digestive tract any faster than it needs to.

Saturday one of my cycling friends (also a triathlete) suggested that I combine my running with modal transportation for work (ie – run to work.) Seemed like a good idea. So this morning I packed my clothes for tomorrow in addition to my running shoes and clothes and set off for work. The plan was for me to ride to work today and run home, then run in tomorrow morning with my cycling friend.

I still had the problem of transporting stuff that I had to have at home – like my wallet, cell phone and keys – without having them hinder my run. A … umm … a lumbar pack (fanny pack, if you must, but I can’t bring myself to admit to wearing one of these things) seemed the most reasonable way of transporting a small assortment of easily portable items like wallets, phones and keys, but I’ve never been in possession of anything like that. So today I purchased one that also came with a flat bottle for hydration.

The storage compartment on the pack was barely big enough to hold my sets of keys and cell phone. The wallet had to be stored in a front pocket of the running shorts. Not a huge deal at all.

I watched the weather radar all afternoon and by 4:00 it looked like the rain that was headed our way would hold off long enough for me to get my run in and get home dry. Cool. So at 4:50 or so, I began to get ready to leave work and headed downstairs with the mp3 player on my arm and lumbar hydration pack loaded and ready to rock.

Four flights of stairs later, I arrive at the ground floor landing and … it’s raining like the skies opened under a lake. Pouring down rain. So I waited 3 or 4 minutes, the skies cleared a bit and off I went. A half mile into my run, however, the rain came again … and hard. I waited under one of the campus dorms for 3 or 4 minutes and when it seemed apparent that the rain wasn’t going to let up, I decided to go ahead an run in the rain. It really wasn’t that bad, I suppose, although I was wearing my sunglasses and with as humid as it was out, plus the water droplets on the lenses and the fact that they’re SUNGLASSES and it was raining really hard – it was kind of hard to see. And my shoes were pretty heavy.

At some point along the way I lost the fancy little hydration bottle. Just popped right out of the pack belt. I’m taking the belt back. Hopefully they’ll take it back even without the bottle.

I don’t think I would have minded running in the rain, but it was really raining pretty hard. I prefer to run in the street and there were several points along the way where there was standing water in the road and there was traffic that was very impatient. Could have been smooshed a couple of times I think. The car drivers apparently didn’t understand that I didn’t want to run through three feet of water at in intersection and thought that sitting there honking at me would accomplish something.

I did make it home in one piece.

I’ll run to work tomorrow morning. I’m not 100% sure yet which route I’ll take. I’m either going to do a loop around Centennial Park and then jog to work or jog toward campus and then run around campus for awhile. The latter sounds slightly more palatable. Campus is a very nice area to run.

Got the results for the Lytle Park Sprint Triathlon

Overal Results

Age Group Results

And a photo of myself, Martin and Chris. They finished 4th and 5th, respectively. Martin was the fastest cyclist and Chris was the second fastest runner. I also ran into a woman at ARC today who turned in the third fastest swim time at 4:24. She’s pretty fast.

Tags: Lytle Park, Triathlon

Much more competitive, but still managed 21st overall and 2nd in my age group. Should have finished top 20 but I got confused about where I was supposed to exit the pool and ended up swimming about 20 yards past where I needed to go then had to backtrack to the actual pool exit. Placed an embarrassing 19th in the swim. The cycling was slightly better and I turned in the 16th fastest overall bike time. The overall grade out of Mattoon was slightly downhill but I had a tailwind and was able to maintain a 24-25 mph average. Of course this meant that coming back was a mostly uphill grade into a headwind and I slowed to a 17-18 mph average. The run was awful. I need work. Finished 60th in the run. Obviously if I can work on that leg I’ll improve my overall performance immensely. When I first started I thought I’d have to walk part of it but I somehow found some strength about halfway through the 3 mile run and finished stronger than I thought I could.

Got an enormous trophy for finishing 2nd in the 35-39 age group. Totall time was 1 hour, 11 minutes. Next bike purchase == aero bars.

Bought a belt for my running number so I wouldn’t have to wear a shirt. Pretty sure I’ll go shirtless from now on unless I’m swimming in cold water in which case I’ll probably want to look into a wetsuit of some kind. All in all pleased with the result.

I think some slight chest pain crept up on me toward the end of my run, but nothing like I had last Saturday. Also, today is the first day on my lower dosage of Coreg. Hopefully my heart rhythms stay as they’ve been since I began Coreg theraphy.

Tags: Coreg, Lytle Park, Triathlon

47 (actually 52 but I forgot to turn my Edge on until 5 miles into the ride) @ 20.6 mph.

Flatville

Did OK, I suppose. Somehow I was pulling again when the spring began and gassed myself right out of the gates, so I was probably third from last to pass the town sign. I have to figure out a way to get in the middle of the pack when the sprints begin. epon finished in the top few, I think. He rode strong tonight. I think he was trying to get me on his wheel when the attacks began about 5 miles out from Flatville but I was out of steam at that point and rode back with Dave and the dude on the Klein. Can’t remember Klein-rider’s name, but when I first started riding with Wild Card he was about as squirrelly as me on the bike. His bike handling skills seemed much better tonight.

The chest pain came back for a visit about 5 miles from home, but I also rode a lot harder tonight and haven’t taken the Coreg since around 6:00 this morning. It seems like the chest pain has some correlation to the last time I took the Coreg. Hopefully a reduction in dosage is just what I need to be able to put down sustained efforts without heart discomfort.

Martin suggested that I do the Lytle Park Sprint Triathlon this Saturday in Neoga. It’s a 300 meter pool swim, 12 mile bike and 5K run, so it should be pretty doable for me. I think I’m going to sign up for it as long as Cindy’s OK with it.

Tags: Coreg, Cycling, Flatville, Hammerfest, Lytle Park