JBlog

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

Some time in early 2008 I decided to finally do something about my irregular heartbeat. An appointment with Carle’s cardiology department revealed that I had a worsening condition called cardiomyopathy, which is basically and enlarging and weakening of the heart wall. This was caused, it was surmised, by another condition called atrial fibrilation, which is:

a lack of coordination between the patches of muscle, which means that the whole chamber doesn’t contract at the same time. As a result, less blood is squeezed into the ventricle from the atrium. Because of this, blood can get backed up in the atrium, then into the blood vessel that leads into it, and, with time, even farther back throughout the rest of the body.

So I was prescribed two different medications, Coreg, a drug that helps to keep your heart from beating too rapidly and Lisinopril, a blood pressure medication. At the time the medicine was prescribed I was also pretty heavy, at around 250 pounds, so my cardiologist prescribed a fairly high dosage of 75 mg per day.

Even though my heart condition had nothing to do with my weight, I decided that it was enough of a wakeup call that I should consider doing something about it, so I began to exercise. I began with swimming, then added some cycling and a few months ago when I decided to sign up for the triathlon, I added running, too. So far I’ve been fine when swimming and running, but when cycling I’m typically out for 2-3 hours under sustained efforts, which causes my heart to work for long periods of time. I’ve been getting some chest pains as a result of this. I suspect that it may have something to do with the fact that I’m now, at 195 pounds, over 50 pounds lighter than I was when I began taking the high dosage of Coreg and I probably just don’t need as much to keep my heart in check. A call to my cardiologist’s nurse has helped to confirm this suspicion, and she made an appointment for me to see the department’s nurse practitioner who specializes in electrophysiology.

I have another group ride scheduled tonight. We’ll see how I hold up. I’ll go as long as I can and hopefully will not experience any chest pains. I have noticed that I tend to get them more on Saturday morning, which makes sense since my exercise takes place closer to the time I’ve last taken my Coreg. If I don’t get chest pains tonight, or at least as bad tonight, then I think it might make sense for me to back off the dosage. I really hope so, because I’d love to eventually be free of any prescription meds.

Tags: Coreg, Cycling, heart health

42 miles @ 18.4 mph avg. Should have been a much higher average but my chest started to hurt about 5 miles into the return trip so I back it off quite a bit. John on the Linksey tore the group up at around the same time and was doing about 30 mph on some pretty rough roads which was another reason I backed off. Still not real comfortable going that fast on roads that are less than desirable. Today’s Ride

Tags: Cycling

Not sure how I did overall, but I placed 4th out of 16 in my age group. Time was 41 minutes and change, which isn’t horrible. Winning time last year was 32 minutes. Learned several ways to decrease the amount of time in transition and I’m sure I can shave off several minutes from both the biking and running portions. All in all pleased with the results.

Tags: Cycling, Running, Triathlon

Well, tomorrow is the big day.  It’s the reason I started running and I’ve been looking forward to it for several months now.  I went this past Wednesday to an open practice session for the lazy river, which is where the first part of the swim event takes place.  I had heard that it was easier to run through it that swim, but I was sure whoever had told me that was full of it.  Sure enough, when I jumped in and started swimming, two younger women ran right past me like it was nothing.  So … I developed a jump-dive technique that seems to work pretty well.  We’ll see how well it works tomorrow.  The flip turns are opposite of the way I’m used to doing them, so that will throw me off a little.  I’m hoping to be able to throw down about a 24 mph avg on the bike and finish the run in 15 minutes.  Hard target is top half of the age group.  Pipe dream is a top 20 overall win, which I know isn’t going to happen … but who knows.    Then it’s off to Wisconsin to watch Ben ski and spend some time with family.

The front hub on my commuter bike felt pretty loose yesterday morning before taking off for work. It seemed to have gotten worse by the time I got into the building. I met a fellow bike commuter on the elevator on the way upstairs and he took a look at it and was also convinced that my hub was loose and in need of some tightening. He cautioned me to stop riding it until it was fixed.

I had my wife come get me and the bike at around 11 or so and we went straight to Champaign Cycle to have my hub looked at. The mechanic took a look at it, wobbled the front wheel and proceed to tighten my loose quick release.

Ahhh … lessons in humility.

Tags: "bike repair", "quick release"