The Family Blog

Yesterday one of the Dynamic Trio asked what it would take for them to get a link from here. It's pretty simple really. Staying commercial free helps. Not that I'm anti commerce, and even though the underpinnings of blogging rely heavily on free and open software, I try not to get all righteous about it. The real reason to keep the marketing off your blog is that we are the real new media; blogging is a revolution that takes publishing out of the hands of the powerful and wealthy few and puts it into the capable and free thinking minds of the many. Stay free. When you start thinking like them, you become them. Don't do it.

I'm not that pure though, this is not religion to me, so if I find your content entertaining enough, I might let the occasional commercial blip slide. Of course, you still have to keep up the content, or your link will get pulled (huh-huh, he's pulling his link again).

Somehow this week I managed to incur The wrath of Meg. Evidently the Material Girl thought it was ok when I bashed her beloved Mid-Atlantic to smithereens, and she let that one go without comment. Like any blogging know it all though, any suggestion of missing a trick and the psycho-meter gets pinned in the red. It's OK Meg, missing the alleged humor is no big deal. Not everyone can be as cerebral as C Todd. I don't get "content" where everyone in the video is pushing 40 but still pretending to be an out of work messenger/wannabepro, standing around a cross race heating up falafel on a propane stove while combing their goatees and listening to Ministry, but maybe that's just me. Rock on Girl Wonder!

Training has been decent. Review of the past ten weeks revealed I was wrong about running only twice a week more often than not. Truth be told I've donned the sneaks 27 times in the past ten weeks. Saturday I went out in the cold on my cross bike, but the chill was worse than expected so I headed for the town forest to escape the biting winds (really, they bit). At first I was just going to head through to Borderland, but I decided to check out a few side trails. I know I've investigated these before and they went nowhere, you know the type, looks promising at the junction but quickly turn to grown over or terminate at some old campfire spot with a pile of broken bottles. Well, one of the trails looked much better than ever before, and in fact I was exploring this one the day my fork broke. It tried it again and found it was neat and rideable and went all the way out to the high school. I think the XC team has cleared some of it out over the past months.

Inspired by this success, I tried another trailhead a ways up. This one I knew would be grown over. However, since it's the dead of winter, the underbrush is totally bare anyway, and any muck is frozen as well. This trail turned out to be super fun. No rocks, just smooth, twisty frozen dirt. Some of it was pretty grown in and tight, and "rode through the bushes where a rabbit wouldn't go" popped into my head and stayed there (Wompatuck leadout for the first one to name the song/artist where that comes from). This trail was also not too long (the town forest is tiny) but it went in a big circle, no dead end, and formed a loop when it came back out into "the pines." Locals like Rightcoast will know what I'm talking about. So now I have a few new trails, and I stayed out of the wind for an hour and a half, bonus.

Sunday I was up at the KL north for the run you have already read about on her blog. Yeah, I got spanked, losing 8 minutes over the distance, which we think was closer to 13 miles than 12. I suffered most of the way, but in the end my pace was somewhere around 7:45/mile, and this makes ten Sundays in a row where I've completed a "long" run. Yesterday was more trainer time, both morning and evening sessions, and today I got out to run again, doing some hill repeats. It is supposed to snow tonight, so I figured it was best to get out there today. Massage tonight, and more trainer tomorrow, starting to ride a bit harder. Keeping my rpms up higher than Gewilli though...

The 3Bicoastals have got there link. You may have noticed I keep it clean around here though. This is a family blog. Hopefully we won't be finding any of Heywood's homoerotic fantasies in the comments. I have enough trouble sleeping without having to think of some dude in Auburn CA sitting in a puddle of hand lotion with a spindle up his butt watching the nodcasts over and over. Thanks for reading mofos!

The Plan

Reviewing my training logs, more often than not I've only run two times a week instead of three. I've done well getting my long run in every Sunday, usually not too much slower than target pace. My mid-week tempo runs have been a mixed bag. This week's was perfect, 7.3 miles at 7:36, 7:37, 7:24, 6:57, 7:00, 7:04, with a 9:10 pace cooldown. I even threw in some gentle grades on the nearby cul-de-sacs. Some of my other tempo runs have been a bit short or a bit slow, but I've managed to get out there. The speedwork session is what has been missing. I've needed more recovery from the long runs than I'm supposed to need. Some of the muscles in my lower leg just haven't adapted to the workload.

Originally I planned to substitute hill runs for track work much of the time. This hasn't really happened either. With daylight still scarce, usually I am running from home, and it's just pretty flat. Last weekend at the KL North TC, the snow kept me off the hilly backroads up there. So this week I thought I'd better step up and try to do the third run for a change. My tempo run was Wednesday, and with a long run scheduled for this Sunday, that made today, Friday, the best day. The forecast was for "dangerous" cold and wind, but when I got up this morning, although it was only 2 degrees outside, it was sunny and didn't seem too windy. Taking the time to dress extra warm left me running a bit late, but I headed out and did about 6K or so (left the GPS out of it as I wasn't going to stand in the driveway freezing while waiting for it to synch up) in 28 minutes. This wasn't a structured speed session, but I was toasty warm inside my wind pants so I did a sort of fartlek run with some pieces of hard up tempo running on the few grades I traversed.

My off days have been spent on the trainer. Wednesday I did a double session with a 30 minute spin in the morning before the run, then in the evening I put the fixed gear on the (out of round) rollers I have and gave that a try. I only lasted 15 minutes. The 56x17 was a little much for what I wanted to do, even on 4.5 inch Kreittlers. They have this neat little chart that specs the wattage I would have been putting out at somewhere between 125 (at 80 rpm) and 175 (at 100 rpm) but it still seemed too hard to me. I'll try swapping out the 56 for a 53 and going to a 20 or 21 cog in the back. I think I can manage that without cutting any links out of the chain.

Yesterday I did the trainer twice, 24 minutes in the a.m. and 40 at night. Still not riding hard, but harder than at the beginning of the month. Has anyone tried the new Kurt Rock and Roll trainer? This one lets you rock the bike when climbing out of the saddle. It looks like the vacant other side of the duplex I live in has some new neighbors moving in this weekend, so I may need to upgrade to a quieter fluid trainer (still using my trusty Blackburn fan) soon, and the new Kurt looks like the way to go.

That's it for now, straight up and boring, but work beckons. I'm hoping for an outdoor ride tomorrow and 12 miles with hills on Sunday, but we'll see. Thanks for reading.

New longest run

Sunday I fled the Great White North and headed down to the patchy white south of the north, the jewel just over the border, the Tijuana of New England, Nashua! There was a dusting of snow and ice in most parts of Mine Falls Park, but in the sun along the canal the ground was melted bare. In the woods the wind had knocked down enough twigs and pine needles to dirty up the crystallized snow/ice coating, providing ample traction for trail shoes. I left from the Cronoman's house around noon, temps were in the high 20's at least, and it was not too windy. The Cronoman even came along on his mountain bike and handed me up water as needed.

The plan was to get in 14-15 miles, so I kept the pace reasonably slow, but high enough to keep warm. At first I think I was in the low 8's, but eventually the tip-toeing over some of the icy sections slowed me down, and later fatigue took a tool as well. Mines Falls is pretty flat, so I soldiered on. It was nice to be able to drink when I needed it. Thanks to the Cronoman. Near the end we looped back and forth along the canal road because that was the clearest dirt section. Wound it up with 15.0 miles in 2:06, and 8:25 average pace for my longest run ever to date. Not too bad, and I managed to dodge the snow and stay on plan for one more week. Thanks for reading.

nodcast 4 - cold and weak like late morning java

Not much

To report. I had some witty idea for a post, but the aging brain was seemingly unable to hang on to it long enough to get it into the keyboard. Rode the trainer a bit the past few days, even made it an hour on Monday. Seeing the riders on the latest Toddcast and reading about all the others doing two and three hour rides makes me wonder if I should be doing that shit. There are a lot of things I used to do that I don't do anymore: ride rollers, lift weights, three hour rides in January, win races... wonder if that is all related?

Battenkill Roubaix is now showing as all filled up, just three short months away from race day. That is pretty fucking bizarre. Norton's Palmer race has less than ten entries??? I liked Battenkill a lot, but part of the charm was the grassroots feel of the event. The huge fields are going to make that race a little too intense, I'm afraid. This will be like the real Roubaix, with mad scrambles before each dirt section. As if April races aren't already crashfest enough, now we're putting 125 riders out on a course that has a downhill dirt section in the first two miles? Hmmmmm.

The worst part about this situation is the race schedule shows eleven fields going off within a 1 hour and 45 minute period. At least half these fields will have over 100 riders. The course is hard, and 100% certain to break up every field. Therefore, after the first 30K or so, you are going to have somewhere between 30-50 grouppettos strewn all along the route. Obviously there won't be enough pace vehicles and officials, and field mixing is going to be off the charts. Last year the race was great and I wish the promoters all the success in the world, but for this year I see incredible growing pains and I'm not about to commit to this one 90 days in advance.

Got is almost seven miles running this morning. It was too cold for any structure, and it ended up just a few ticks under an 8 minute/mile pace. The fields are lumpy and frozen, but I was reasonably warm while wearing an (for running) absurd amount of clothing. It was only 11 degrees outside at that time, but since it's only getting up to 20 or so today, I felt that I may as well get it over with before the wind picked up. Thanks for reading.

Race Report - Raynham 15K

They called this race the "7th Annual Frostbite 15K Mid-Winter Classic Invitational." I'm not sure where that comes from, as there were neither invitations nor frostbite at this year's event. This was my first time racing over 10K on foot. The 9:20 am start was sweet, especially since I live in the next town. There were over 400 entrants, mostly "real" runners, as in running club members. Plenty of cars in the lot sported bike racks and triathlon bumper stickers too. The casual weekend warriors don't come out to 15K races in January.

I still managed to get myself behind a bit while fussing over clothing choices. The start was over a half mile from the school where headquarters was too. The temps were in the high 30's, and the roads were puddled from overnight rain, but it was only foggy and drizzly at race time. After warming up for about a mile, I decided to ditch my jacket and wear my BOB vest (one more time for the clown suit) because I could put gel flasks in the back pocket. I had two, one with two gels in it, mixed with Gatorade to make it thinner and easier to put down. The other just had water in it to get some liquid on the fly, and wash the sugar out of my mouth. This worked out pretty well, and along with grabbing a few cups of plain water at the aid stations I felt OK for the entire race. I ended up having to sprint back to the start and then fumble my number onto the vest while waiting for the gun in the herd.

Even with just the vest over my base layer, I was overdressed. That is probably OK, because at least I'm acclimating to thermal stress. It could be warm by the time the New Bedford half rolls around. I know a lot of people around here train for the marathon by running all winter at 6 am. Most of the time, winter nights in Massachusetts are pretty fucking cold, so these folks end up doing almost all their training in temps well below freezing. Then on the big day, well, 50's and 60's are not unusual around here at noontime in April, especially once you get into the city itself. These people often have problems with the "heat" as a result. I race much better warm than I do cold, so I usually overdress and sweat it out.

For today, I lined up about five rows back from the front. I wanted to go out at a reserved pace for a change. Trying to follow a few runners in club singlets who looked to be my age or older, the first mile came up at 6:39. There seemed to be hundreds of people ahead of me, but I guess there weren't that many. My HRM battery is on its last legs, so I couldn't put it in record mode, but it would give me reading so long as I didn't try to save anything. I kept it around 156, three or four bpm below LT. The second mile was also a 6:39, and the third 6:42, for a three mile split of exactly twenty minutes. I felt OK, there was a bit of climbing in the fourth mile which drove my HR up over LT even though I finished it in 6:54, and so in the fifth mile I recovered a bit and it ended in 7:00. The sixth mile was pretty flat but I kept it to 6:56 in anticipation of the "steep hill" described on the flyer. I knew the area pretty well, but this section of the course looped through some pretty smelly pig farms and it's a road I generally skip when on the bike, so I didn't know the hill. The ascent started right at mile six, and it went up at maybe 3-5% for 500 meters or so before basically leveling off.

I must have accidentally stopped my watch while fumbling my flasks in and out of my back pockets, because I found it off during mile seven. At first I didn't realize this, and thought I was really flying. After a few more glances, it finally registered with my brain that it wasn't moving... I waited until the 8 mile marker and turned it back on. Later I was able to extrapolate
that the uphill mile seven must have taken around 7:20, and after turning on the jets at the marker, mile eight passed in around 6:38. Mile nine clocked 6:41, and the last three tenths took 2:02 for an official finish time of 1:03:31, 21/95 in my age group, and 84/413 overall. This all calcs out to a 6:50/mile pace, which coincidentally is one second per mile faster than the predicted half marathon pace from my FIRST training program. All I have to do is hold this pace for another 6K... The other good news is that my splits were, for me anyway, pretty even. After the first 3 miles at 20:00, the next were 20:49, and the last 20:40.

Afterwards I wasn't as wasted as after my last few long training runs. Even though this was on pavement, I wore my Grid Labyrinth trail runners, and my calves felt pretty good. So far these shoes seem to be working out the best of those I've tried. I'm left wondering if last week's sore calf episode was due to too much during the week, my first long run on pavement, or possibly too much padding in the previously untried Grid Triumph Pro IV's. I'll try them again soon, although the mild winter is supposed to end in another day or two, and my training fortitude will really be tested. I don't like to run when it is snowy, icy, or otherwise slippery. Cold I can deal with.

After changing to dry clothes, I jogged three laps of the track at the school to cool down. Then I went inside to check results, and found they had a free breakfast with pork and beans, eggs, homefries, and muffins. Yowza. Beats bananas and bagels anytime. So that's it. Straight up boring running race report. I've been barely touching the bike, but maybe I'll get on the trainer for an extended session tomorrow. It sucks having a broken MTB. I'll have to do something about that soon. If the weather really starts to suck, there will be plenty of trainer time, and maybe I'll even get a chance to flop around the field on my nordic skies. Thanks for reading mofos!

CTodd needs your help!

CTodd needs your help before this Sunday. This is related to the production of his next mind-blowing Todcast. (sorry about the missing umlaut or whatever the fuck it is). Click on over and help a brother in need. Details are sparse, but I'm thinking he wants to avoid having it come out like this. Thanks for reading/helping/watching.

Race Tactics 101

A big part of bike racing is attacking. Successful attacks help you avoid crappy race results like these. The key element of a successful attack is timing. You have to wait until the correct moment. The problem is, sometimes a shrewd opponent will sense your impending attack, and launch a "defensive attack" of his (or her???) own. Once this is done, you are basically fucked. Sure, you can launch a counterattack/chase, but what fun is that? Besides, it would have to be A LOT better than your opponents attack for it to work at that time. Your best bet in this case is to sit back and wait for a better time to launch your own attack. Patience. Thanks for reading.

Note: I shrunk the size of the image because today, after playing the todcast on conventional proprietary commercial software (i.e. Quicktime), I found that Ctodd is yet another one who has gone commercial and is trying to make money off the fans of his blog. I feel so dirty, so used... life was better yesterday when I just yanked his video off the server and watched it (commercial free) with mplayer.

Why no nodcast

Yes, it has been over a week. I never promised one every week; I just said once a week or so. The truth is that indoor lighting produces only the crappy video that you got with nodcast 1 and 2, so I need to wait for a day the sun is shining through the window. Not that the nodcast is about production values, it is about the content. The very same content that CTodd claims I don't have. The all flash and no substance Cat 4ever even went so far as to dub them "no_casts" as in no music, no style, no content. Well, if your idea of content is gnawing on a bottle of Advil like a bad Shemp episode of the Three Stooges (come to think about it, CTodd without his glasses kind of looks like Shemp), well then yeah, we have no content. At least we know CTodd is all for recycling, as his last masterpiece featured only 5% virgin material. If I were 33 pretending to be 22, I'd probably need music too, just like the image-cultivating boy wonder. I'm not - this is more Jim Lehrer than Carson Daly, so get over it. Cutting edge footwear reviews and reinforcing counseling outdoes slapstick anytime IMHO. Maybe the next one will be in black and white. Mofo. Thanks for reading.

Weak week

It's been a week with not much to say, but I suppose I can come up with a few words for a Monday morning. Most important, we finally turned the daylight corner; as of Saturday we started picking up minutes in the morning to compliment the lengthening of daylight we've been getting in afternoons. This phenomenon starts out slowly, with less than twenty morning minutes gained in January, but by next month the process really starts to speed up. All good news, although this year the geniuses in congress extended daylight savings time, so we'll lose an hour of the dawn's early light late in March.

Of course, with the lengthening of daylight we eventually get warm weather. What a concept, eh? Here in the northeast, we are already experiencing record warmth, and the ground is not only free from snow cover, but absent of frost as well. This is a pretty big deal, as now the earth is free to absorb the rays of brilliant January sunshine, making the nights less frigid and further reducing the chances of snow. We are far from out of the woods, but with only seven weeks until March, things are looking pretty decent. We will almost certainly see some snow, but the odds of persistent cover and weeks of freezing our asses off get lower every day.

So yeah, it's come to writing about the weather, which is what we do when we have nothing else to say. Last week I did a good tempo run on Wednesday, and then even got out on the road bike for an hour in the afternoon. I've been having some wierd tingling in my left calf on some of my runs, and even when just sitting around or walking. Thursday and Friday it was troubling me. The symptoms mirrored chronic compartmental syndrome, but this still seemed unlikely, and I suspected plain old overuse. I skipped the Friday run, and instead went to an appointment with my massage therapist. She found an extremely tight peroneus (aka fibularis) and proceeded to torture out the tension, as well as give me some tips on how to stretch and pamper this for a while.

Saturday I felt quite a bit better, and as most of you know, we were basking in 70 degree temperatures around here. I was feeling pretty cooked from work though, so rather than get out for a ridiculously long ride like many of you did, I lay about in a vegetative state for much of the morning. I finally dragged myself out on the cross bike in the late afternoon, but since it had rained a bit the night before, I confined my route to the roads around town. I must have seen a dozen other riders, a few of whom even passed my on the road. I'm old, but that still doesn't happen too often, but hey, I was just cruising around on my cross bike. I rode for an hour and a half, and probably would have done more if it weren't for the darkness.

Sunday I rode the rollers for a few minutes to warm up before stretching. I have an old pair of PVC Kreitlers, and they are significantly warped. I rumbled along for a few minutes until I couldn't take the vibration anymore. Made me feel all funny in the chamois... After an especially long stretch, I tried on my new Saucony Grid Triumph Pro IV road shoes and went out to run. This time I stuck to the pavement to keep the stabilizing load on the fibularis light. After a 2.5 mile warm up, I did one piece of tempo for two miles, the first of which was uphill, at a 7:20 pace. Following these two was an easy mile at 8:30. I was on the NRT 5 miler course, so I knew where all the splits were. When I got to the finish I decided to go around again, and I blitzed the flat first two miles at 6:40. This time I went slow on the uphill mile, then finished the last two again at 7:20. My pacing leaves a bit to be desired, but after running home slowly, the final product was 11.4 miles in 1:28, and average of 7:43 or so. My calf was fine, although both ankles are pretty tight from the new shoes and running on pavement. I expected this, and one of the reasons I ran the roads was to get ready for next weekend's Raynham 15K. The weather is supposed to start turning colder, so here is hoping the precipitation expected next weekend isn't the frozen kind. Thanks for reading.

Very cool.

Photo by Calum Davidson

I want one of these

This one for my winter bike.

This one just because it looks cool.

If I believed I could really get the touring bike made to measure for $895, I think I would go for it. Looks like they would do it with long reach sidepulls for no extra charge. Not sure if I'd want 44 cm chainstays though, but maybe they'd do 42 cm if this is really a custom deal. Price list is from 2005 though... Much cooler than a Surly.

Another year...

... of commercial-free blogging here at solobreak.blogspot.com. That's right - I think putting advertisements on your blog is bad. It may seem harmless enough, but for most of you reading this circle of blogs, blogging is a social activity. Ads on a social blog are kind of like your neighbor the car salesman dropping in on your barbeque. Annoying. It's bad enough that we have to pimp ourselves out by wearing corporate logos on our racing kit. That's actually not that bad, because generic cycling clothes look so friggin' dorky. At least with a team kit, you may be fat (seriously, compare any photo of a master's race with a pro race), but at least you are dressed like a racer. If your blog is blinking like a porn site, it may as well be one. Just don't do it.

The 2006 training year wrapped up with just 354 hours on the bike, and another 56 hours running. This tallied up to just over 3 million heartbeats, and 180,000 calories burned. In total, I was up about 10% over 2005, but the cycling came in short of plan and just 10 hours more than the prior year. I had 79 "white days" meaning no training at all, but for full disclosure many of the so called training days were only 10-20 minutes spin on the trainer.

The running has been going OK. Sunday we did 13 miles in 1:46. I started out right on 8 minute miles, and held this pace like clockwork until mile 11, when the wheels came off the wagon and I fell apart. I think I'm going to need a hydration strategy for these long runs. This morning I did a longer than usual tempo run, covering 6 miles in 44 flat. This was a little slow, so I think I'm going to make an adjustment in my plan and skip the speedwork this week. This program was a big step up for me and I need a little recovery. I'll do a long run on the weekend, then next week just speedwork, skipping the tempo. Winter is supposed to finally make an appearance, but if the snows hold off, on Sunday the 14th my first running test will come up with the Raynham 15K race. This will serve as a long, hard tempo session.

Following the FIRST plan has been OK, but now I'm going to start treating it more like I would a cycling plan. By that I mean not following it so strictly, and instead viewing it as a "workout menu." Most plans and coaching programs you find are very specific. After all, if you're paying a coach a c-note or so every month, they feel obligated to do a little hand holding. The problem is that you and you only are living your life, and adjusting your entire existence to fit some training plan is a little ridiculous. Most plans come with a disclaimer or footnote about flexibility, but some people get carried away and try to live the thing like a blueprint. I may have been falling into that trap with the FIRST plan. In cycling, I know better. That is why I like Friel's books. He just lays out a menu of workouts and you make the choices. This is a far better way to go. Coaches should not try to tell a working person what to do in a week. A better approach would be to say "this is how much you should get done in the next two months. Here are some guidelines for how to go about it. Now go do it." Lecture over, thanks for reading.