JBlog

Wasn’t much of a fight for most of the ride. It was a pretty casual pace until somewhere between St. Joseph and Urbana on the return trip. Somewhere around Tipton, Luke decided to pull out and drag the pack of about 12 riders back to town. My relative inexperience caused me to fall off the back as I dealt with freshly mowed grass clippings on the road and tiring legs. I tried to get on the back of the pack but they were too far ahead.

Kelly, Dan and I were the first to be dropped. Kelly really didn’t stand a chance but Dan gave it a valiant effort and passed me once, getting probably 20 feet ahead, but then I dug down and dropped him in pursuit of the pack. I think the aerobars help quite a bit as it took the pack longer than usual to disappear over the horizon. Squirrelly Klein guy got dropped by the pack, too, and I blew by him about two miles after I got dropped, putting quite a bit of distance between us.

epon and another Wild Card rider were visible and it appeared I was making up some distance between us. Really threw down a lot of effort trying to catch up and I think I probably got to within 200 yards at one point, but they’re both pretty strong riders and eventually outlasted me. Any chance of catching up to them was gone after a good two minute wait to cross Rt. 130 coming back into Urbana. They never completely faded from my view and the big hill leading down toward Lincoln Ave helped me close the gap slightly, but I never did catch up to them. Got stopped at a traffic light as I crossed Rt. 45 and really let up after that, coasting back toward Burwash Park.

Apparently, Squirrelly Klein guy never gave up, because shortly after I got on to Regent Drive, he passed me in a tornado of last-ditch effort to get to the park before me. Well, I couldn’t have that, so I popped up a few gears, stood on the pedals and coasted by him with relatively little effort. epon was just emerging from the park for his ride home, so we rode together for a mile or so until I turned off on Galen Drive to head North.

All in all it was a nice, relatively relaxing ride, and the end of it gave me an opportunity to put in some strong solo efforts, so I was pleased even though my average speed was pretty disappointing.

No chest pains at all, which was a relief, because I did put in some pretty significant sustained efforts on the return trip.

Tags: "group ride", aero bars, chest pain, Hammerfest, St. Joseph, Wild Card

Olympic distance triathlon in Neoga, IL.  The swim was in Lake Mattoon and was my first real experience in an open water swim of any distance.  The biggest lesson learned in the swim was that I need clear, fog-free goggles for open water swims.  It was very difficult to spot the pylons, even though they were all traffic-cone orange and rose 10 feet out of the water.  I had to tread water once to clear them and swam a lot of breaststroke to make it easier to spot.  The poor vision really hurt my overall swim as I place 20th in the swim.

The cycling is getting better.  I think I placed 20th overall there.  Just about had a 21 mph average, which isn’t too bad for a solo effort of 25 miles.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/12646399

My goal for the run was to finish it without walking, and while I did do that, I was pretty disappointed in my average speed of over 9 minutes per mile.  I think my run ranked in the 40s.  There were, I think, over 80 triathletes competing in the Olympic distance.

It was great to see an old friend there, Jon Beck.  It’s been close to 20 years since the last time I saw him.  He did the half-Ironman aquabike event and did well there.  I think he was one of the first 10 swimmers out of the water.  He also told me about the Last Chance Triathlon in Rend Lake on October 4, a sprint, and I think I’m going to do that one.

I finished this one 25th overall and 3rd in my age group and was awarded another two foot tall trophy.  I’m not unhappy with my overall result but hope that my run will make some drastic improvements over the next year.

Had a bit of chest pain all through the run, but it went away pretty quickly after I stopped running.

Tags: Great Illini Challenge, Lake Mattoon, Neoga

I’m actually getting pretty good at this.  I’m not talking about the Michael Douglas Falling Down movie, by the way.  I’m talking about the literal act of falling down – or falling over in my case.

Apparently, I’m still somewhere south of the top of the learning curve when it comes to riding with clipless pedals.  I’ve never really wiped out.  Each time I’ve had a mishap I’ve just slowly fallen over.  For me, the amount of time that passes between realizing I’m falling to making contact with the ground takes an eternity.  Maybe it looks that way to passersby, too.  Or maybe it looks like it happens fast to a third party.

Today’s failure in mainting verticality came when I was attempting to negotiate a sharp turn.  I slowed and must have turned too sharply, because the bike lost all of its momentum and I began the slow process of losing my battle with gravity.  Down I went.  I would imagine the sight was something akin to a horse falling from a chair into a ditch – all angular and thrashing, flailing knees and elbows working desperately against the empty air to gain a hold of something in an attempt to stay upright.  Of course, after falling and landing on my left side, my right foot was still clipped in, and not wanting to be on my side for any longer than was necessary, I began to try to free my still-engaged right foot from its bindings.  After a seconds-long series of odd, jerky gyrations, I finally managed to free myself and picked up the bike.

Of course, this happened right in front of my office building – and between classes, no less – so no fewer than 582 people were treated to this visual display of failure.

My thigh has a minor scrape, as does my ankle, and one of the sides of my V-Brakes needed readjustment, but other than that and a bruised ego, your author is unharmed.

Tags: clipless pedals, falling over

Same ride as last Wednesday with a somewhat smaller group.  The whole group stayed together until well after we crossed Rt 130 heading back into Urbana, when the pace picked up and I decided to take it easy.  I think I could have kept up but didn’t want to push it with the Great Illini Challenge coming up this weekend in Neoga.

46.7 miles and a 20.8 mph avg. I could have been over 21 for the first time had I hammered with the rest of the pack, but I’ll have time to get that 21. Hopefully that can happen this weekend in the triathlon now that I’m set up to be a little more aerodynamic. Doubtful, but we’ll see. There’s a chance of rain this weekend in Mattoon. It’ll really suck if that happens.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/12461580

Had no chest pain tonight.

Tags: "group ride", chest pain, Hammerfest, homer, sidney, wednesday fight night

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.