The Tubes World Tour

This weekend was all run and no ride for me. Why? The weather outside was certainly acceptable, at least on Sunday. No, that's not the reason. For Saturday, I can plead busy-ness (business?), as after a quick 5 mile morning run in the cold, it was off to PVD to get KL on a plane to New Mexico. After that, I headed up to Harris Cyclery to pick up a replacement fork for the Yo Eddy. Sure, I wasted a little time checking out the numerous single speed mongrels they had on the showroom floor, but really I just had no time to ride. By the time I got back to the homefront, it was getting dark and cold again.

Sunday morning the long run was on tap. Packing a twenty oz bottle of Gatorade in the supply belt, off I went on a loop of a new design. After eight miles I tried to hook into Borderland for some trail mileage, but the mix of snowpack in the shade and muck in the sun chased me back to the road, where I completed my 15.5 mile jaunt in 2:05, an 8:05ish overall pace. My weight dropped about six elbows during this little adventure, and I was devastated. Last week after the 10 mile race at a much harder pace, I felt about 1000 times better. Maybe it was the back to back runs, or maybe that egg and cheese sandwich with mega salt did the trick last week, but regardless I was toast and there would be no post run ride.

Later at night I gave some thought to a spin on the trainer bike, but it had a flat! Doohhh! Too lazy to change it, that was that. This morning I was greeted by a resounding "thud" from out in the street, and I stirred from bed, peering out the window to find a late model Buick Lesabre nestled up against the telephone pole in front of the house. There was a thin coating of snow on the ground and apparently this guy found negotiating our arrow-straight street a bit too much in these conditions. I could see him moving in the car, so since it was cold and wet I simply summoned the local gendarmes and made myself some coffee.

Up early for a change, and with the snow and surely congestion-compromised travel conditions, I made an executive decision to move my telecommuting day to today. This left me enough time for a quick recovery spin on the trainer, perfect to sooth my run-beaten legs, but shit, the tire had not fixed itself and was still flat. You gotta do what you gotta do, so I pulled it off (huh-huh) and proceeded to patch the tube up. Coffee and glue, breakfast of champions. Now about this time, Material Meg is probably saying "Patch? What the hell is that?" I know Meg, if I were you I'd probably just summon a few of my loyal eunuch manslaves, dispatching them to the rain forests of Papua New Guinea to harvest some of the finest specimens of pre-pubescent rubber trees for conversion to All Natural-MegaDollar SuperLatex (tm), from which I could then have a herd of Sicilian peasants hand sew up a new back tire for my training bike. But this just ain't that kind of blog. Glue and patches it is, and a little dabble do yah.

Coffee in belly and tube back in the tire, I got in my thirty minutes spin and was happy with that. In other news, yeah, it's sad about Jan, he was entertaining, and despite what anyone says, he accomplished a lot. Since the so-called "authorities" can't do anything except raise doubt about their own competence, we'll probably never know who dopes and who doesn't. Maybe it's just because he doesn't speak English, but in the ammurrican press at least, Ullrich seemed to have more class than most. Thanks for reading.

More harshing the bloggers

A little contest. Match the image to the blog:











First one to correctly match all three wins a leadout at Wompatuck. Thanks for reading.

Almost too good.

The Foxboro Old Fashioned 10 Miler went very well Sunday. No matter what, this was going to be a PR, because I never had run a 10 mile race before. Originally I was just hoping to match my Raynham 15K pace of around 6:50/mile, which also happens to be my target pace for next month's New Bedford Half Marathon. On Saturday however, I drove around the Foxboro course and found quite a bit of ice and slush on the roads; at that point I decided anything under 7 minutes/mile (1:10:00 total) would be OK. By the way, speaking of New Bedford, I sent in my entry, so there is no turning back now.

On race day the temps were above freezing and the sun was shining. The finish had to be rerouted a bit because the parking lot where it normally is was still suitable for hockey. The already narrow start road was further marginalized by icing along each edge. My plan (again!) was to not start too hard, so this time I lined up well away from the front row. In fact, by the time the race went off, I was more than halfway back in the field of 430 runners. The first quarter mile over the ice ended up little faster than a jog, with the half mile point going by at a pedestrian 3:55. Once out on the main road, making my way up the yellow line, my HR got up to around 160 bpm and the first mile marker passed at 7:02. The second half of mile one may have still been a bit harder than I wanted to run, but there was a little downhill out of Foxboro center and I got it back under control.

I never saw mile marker two, but the third came up at 20:11. This was on a shaded road along the edge of the state forest where Saturday's ice had all but disappeared. The uphill fourth mile passed in 6:57, causing me to pick it up a bit, with the slightly downhill fifth taking just 6:19 for a halfway split of 33:28. In the shadows of Gillette Stadium, the sixth mile went by in 6:36. To this point, and through the finish, only one person had passed me, and I think he was someone I'd passed earlier. This guy was really tall and pulling away, but I focused ahead on him and tried to draw myself down the road. My running form is much better than it used to be, and even though I fell apart a bit here and there, for the most part I kept it together and stayed in a good rhythm with proper posture and stride.

The seventh mile had some uphill in it and took me 6:52. Post race the other runners I talked with agreed that mile marker eight may have been misplaced. Mile eight took me 7:21, and with a cumulative 54:18 on the watch I panicked a bit and started to really crank. Passing a runner or two, this effort brought me to mile marker nine in just 5:48. I know I picked it up, but that just ain't right, so I'm guessing mile 8 was long and mile 9 was short. The last mile was flat and fast, and I really suffered as I didn't want to give up any spots, but there was nobody within reach ahead of me either. Finishing it off in 6:11 wrapped up the race with an official finish time of 1:06:14, a 6:38/mile average pace. Needless to say, I am stoked by this result. My HR was almost a flat line throughout, just a slight ramping from 160 up to 170 by race end. Now, dare I say it, 1:30 has to be my New Bedford goal. I don't want to jinx it, and I'll be satisfied with anything under 1:31:30 (6:59 pace).

The rest of the weekend I got a lot done. Right after Foxboro I headed in to Harvard to shoot some video of KL at the track meet. We're still working on that... Sold the Toyota on Monday, sad to see it go, especially for just $340. That car took me to a lot of races, but after 204,000 miles of neglect, the time and effort required to keep it going just wasn't worth it anymore. Did an hour on the trainer Monday too; it was much too cold and windy to ride outside (for me anyway). I did order up a cheap replacement fork for the Yo Eddy though, as well as straighten out the dropout on the cross bike, so hopefully I'll have them both back in service for morning rides before we prematurely set the clocks ahead next month. That's all folks, thanks for reading.

My blog sucks less than your blog.

I've been reading a lot of blogs about blogs that suck lately. This blog sucks, that blog sucks. My blog sucks. Your blog sucks. Everybody's blog sucks. One blogger I read had written about how he'd read another blog that really sucked, but, realizing it reminded him of his own sucky blog, thought it might be time to stop sucky blogging and delete the whole sucky thing. That sucks. All this blog bashing makes me think about starting a blogging training service. After all, people spend a lot of time blogging, so they want to do it well, right? We'll call it, hmmmm, let's see, how about Nega-blogger? Because your blog sucks. For a nominal fee, I'll read your blog, and tell you how much it sucks. Why take free feedback when you can pay for it? Free stuff is worthless, right? I could even write "blogging programs" for people. You know, simple exercises, stuff I see other bloggers doing, but I could spell it all out in a matrix and send it to you by email, your very own personalized "Monthly Blogging Plan." Then instead of mindlessly enjoying writing your blog every day, you could look up your scheduled blogging activity on your plan, and then just do that-- no need for thinking or creativity!

The best part for you is that blogging will no longer be free. Since it's costing you hard earned dollars every month, you'll be sure to do more of it. Nothing is going to make you stick to your blogging plan and improve month over month like writing out that check. Having a paid blogging coach shows the world that you are serious. No more making up excuses for the friends and family about why you have to blog. It's not that you want to blow off your kid's recital, your coach says you just gotta stay home and blog.

Am I qualified to do this? Well, let's see, I have a blog. I've been blogging for a year. Heck, I even know how to use the new Blogger. Hell's yeah, I'm qualified. Blogging training could be big business though. There are a lot of bloggers out there. We can't have just anybody running around pretending to be a blogging coach. Maybe instead of actually reviewing blogs myself, I'll start "The United States Blogging Society," or USBS for short. Then as USBS president, I can develop a test for would be blogging coaches, then charge them a few bucks to take an open book exam. Upon passing, I'll give them a fancy title like "USBS Level 1 Blogging Adviser." For even more money, if they can prove they speak English (does any other language really matter?) and spell "internet," we'll teach them CPR and give them an even fancier title, you know, to show they're qualified to coach advanced bloggers.

This is the best idea I've had all year. I can't believe that no one has thought of this before. Thanks for reading.

We made it a year.

One year of solobreak, 221 posts. Same bat font, same bat template. Sorry it's been a slow week, but I'm pretty busy. I was hoping for an anniversary nodcast, but no such luck. Maybe I'll follow the lead of the big studios and post a teaser trailer tonight. Quick update, the Paddy Kelly 5 mile Road Race went very well with a PR of 30:44, so I guess the training hasn't been such a wreck after all. This weekend we have the Foxboro Old-Fashioned 10 Miler on tap, hopefully sans ice. Will try to update later. Thanks for reading.

How not to build up a single speed.

Yesterday it was pretty cold out, but I bundled up and headed outside on the cross bike. I hadn't ridden outdoors in a few weeks. Originally I planned to just hit the woods to stay out of the wind, but since I wanted to ride for two hours, when I got outside and realized how warmly I was dressed, I rode the road. There just aren't too many trails on my local network that are suitable for the cross bike, and I didn't feel like looping over the same ones repeatedly.

The cross bike isn't too bad on the road. It has no cages, so I have to carry a bottle in my back pocket, but with 38C knobbies (suitably worn down) I don't have to worry so much about flatting either, which is good, as changing flats with frozen hands sucks. I did, however, bring my spare and tools, just in case...

Looping around my usual haunts, I avoided the roads near the lake, as the winds were pretty strong. I hit one road that was closed for construction, but I got through, and it was nice to have the road to myself. At about 1:15 I found myself at the front entrance to Borderland, and as it was late in the day and getting cold, I figured cutting through and looping around the town forest would get me out of the wind and still finish close enough to my two hour goal. Borderland's trails were all frozen, and deserted, but still warmer than the road, and safer than riding it with the blinding setting sun.

I came out the other side of the park and headed into the town forest to re-explore the "bushes where a rabbit wouldn't go" trail. Big mistake. I was cruising through, picking my line and having fun, when suddenly the bike went into a gargantuan messenger skid. Uh-oh. My long-cage 105 derailleur was now entangled in the spokes and pointed toward the sky. The dropout was, shall we say, mangled. Luckily, I had a multi tool with me.

Removing the derailleur revealed the dropout was not hitting the cogs. So far so good. I was only about two miles from home (and less then a quarter mile from where I as when the mountain bike fork broke), but I didn't feel like walking. In the waning daylight, I fumbled with my chain tool almost blindly, as I need glasses to see things up close, and I don't carry them. Going by feel, I broke the chain (I think this is a low mileage DA 9 speeder too, doh, there goes $30, at least I didn't *see* a Power Link, not that I could have...) and took out several links. I got it back together with a reassuring "click," threading it over the middle ring and finding a cog in the middle where the chain was both straight and under reasonable tension.

Getting back on, I gingerly pedaled for a bit, and all worked out OK. Not wanting to put too much pressure on the chain, just in case, I tip toed out of the woods and rode home on the street. This worked out well too, as originally I thought I might hop on the trainer for some good spinning post ride, but the downhill run home in the 38x21 accomplished the same thing. So now both my off road bikes are broken. This will give me something to do other than make nodcasts if we get snowed in tonight (which I'm still betting won't happen. Thanks for reading.

They can't all be good

Yesterday's run was indeed a train wreck. Right off the bat I sensed the feeling I've been dreading all winter, but until now had not felt: my quads were par-boiled from cycling. Running is such a breeze in the winter when the bike miles are low and easy. All along I knew it would be much different when the cycling workouts started to get real. I didn't think a little 40 minute dig on the trainer would do it though; I figured I'd be getting rubber legs later on in the year after three hours in the hills.

Not that this was real bad, but combined with the cold, and the unexpected icing in the woods, a good rhythm proved elusive. After a mile I tried to pick it up and rattled off two more at an acceptable 7:36 pace, before fleeing to the walkways of the local institution of higher learning in search of ice-free passage. I just got slower from there and eventually headed back at what turned out to be an 8:00 pace, wrapping it up at 7.2 miles total in 57 minutes. It was bound to happen sooner or later. That's it for now, still no warm weather in the forecast, but at least it's bright and sunny with the daylight coming earlier every day. Thanks for reading.

On target

Somehow yesterday's post was interpreted by many as being filled with gloom and doom. Wrong! Those who know me personally will vouch that I am a delightful and uplifting mofo. Don't let the tales of old age get you down. If anything, I was celebrating my ability to humble younger riders, crushing their pathetically weak souls at will. Not only that, but of course there is a certain relief that comes from knowing my rat race days are more than half over. Hell, it's the figurative Thursday morning of my working life! The issue is that I haven't accomplished a good week's work yet, so Thursday and Friday (so to speak) are going to be a bit hectic.

Now that we've cleared that up, not much else to write. Rode the trainer twice yesterday. The fan noise is starting to get to me, so I must be going faster. Last Saturday I went up to see Jamie Sarkisian to get my Polar products some TLC and new batteries, picking up some additional sensors too. I put one on the back of the trainer bike, but I have to mount the watch (huh-huh) under the seat for it to be close enough to pick up the speed. Of course I can't read it from there, but no worries, I can't see it all that well on the handlebars anyway. I can download numbers though!

Last but not least today I installed a neat little Firefox extension called TargetKiller which prevents site custodians like Gewilli and KL, who are paranoid that you will leave their site and never come back, from forcing links to open in a new tab with the target="_blank" tag (doesn't do anything to nuke excessively long run on sentences though). It can be used universally, or in conjunction with a whitelist or blacklist. So far so good, very cool. That's all today, a nice tempo run in the 19 degree sunshine awaits, thanks for reading.

On the downside

February 5, 1979. The day I gave up the good life of a self-employed herbal products retailer, sleeping until 4 pm and listening to Led Zeppelin all evening, for a full-time job, complete with steel-toed shoes, poker cup vending coffee, and time clock. Of course, it was second shift, so I still got to sleep past noon. I was only 17 and it wasn't legal for a punk my age to operate heavy machinery, so I lied about it and signed up for the $3.30/hour gig at Solar-X Corporation in Newton, MA, right next to where International Bike is today. I moved with the company to Woburn when Solar-X was sold, and eventually outlasted four owners at the new location before taking the severance package and bailing out in 2002. That led to the only 12 months in the last 28 years when I was not working full-time. Of course, I managed to finish 30 credits at UMass Lowell during my year on unenjoyment, so it wasn't exactly a vacation.

Somehow along the way I managed to take up bike racing. It went OK, even though I was never consistent enough to make it to Cat 2. When you're 25 starting out, with no athletic background, you can't expect the world. The 30-34 Masters group years were the kindest to me, in no small part due to the best riders in that age group foregoing the easy money for the challenge of staying in the elite field. Even though it was hard, expensive, and in many ways a waste of time, racing was the best thing I ever did. I'm not a people person, and cycling sure as hell has more than its fair share of psychos and assholes, but the number of great people in the sport makes up for it. I've received a tremendous amount of help from a large number of people. One of these days I'm going to do a post where I try to list them all. Don't worry, I'll include you mofos.

So where the fuck am I going with this? Nowhere really, but the thing that hit me the other day is that, according to the custodian of my IRA, I am due to retire from work in just over 21 years. You math majors will know that if I've been working for 28 years and have 21 to go, I am more than halfway there. Fuck. The retirement fund looks like it will have trouble supporting a diet of Kibbles n Bits, and Fancy Feast is completely out of the question. I might have to do something about that. It's good to be able to kick the young guys asses out on the bike, but it's suddenly hit me why the keep us old guys segregated. We really are old, even if we don't feel it. Thanks for reading.

Feel like a number

If you haven't been keeping up to date with the antics of MoveitFred and his two cohorts, then you might not understand this reference. It's two references, actually. Seems Freddy and company would like some real entertainment for their blog reading pleasures rather than the boring training drivel they've been getting lately. I must agree, sometimes the numbers suck. Take today's temperature as an example. More cold on the way. Bad numbers.

I've been giving you running splits because that's all I've got. Personally I think they're more meaningful than stupid power numbers (racing is, after all, about speed, not power). They're not as sad as some of the cadence numbers I've been reading lately either. The mega-low cadences of some of our cohorts are an offshoot of the power revolution. You will put out more power when turning the cranks slowly, because torque is high. You won't win many races that way though. There are secrets that your power meter won't tell you. I'm keeping them to myself too, because I'm a greedy mofo. Just continue to plod along at 75 rpm with your eyes and focus glued to the power reading; it will be all you need, trust me, really.

Watched Lemond winning the 89 Worlds on youtube courtesy of a link from Flatman. The contrast with races we've been seeing lately is remarkable. Maybe it's because they had no radios, or maybe it's just because those guys were hard core racers with a lot of heart. Either way, take the time to watch it carefully. The race is a good old-fashioned slugfest and the guy who wanted it the most wins. Awesome.

Congrats to Funai for ringing up the first placing of the year within my blogging circle. The SoCal flyweight scored a podium in a tough 67 mile road race out near San Diego in just his third appearance as a master. Fat and slow my ass. Good job.

Now for the numbers. Rode the trainer Saturday. Not bad, over an hour, actually put a bit of effort into it for part of the ride. Sunday morning it was 16 degrees up at the KL North, more snow than we've seen all year (around 5 inches) but the main road was clear so we went out and ran. KL left me in the dust as usual, but this time we turned around 8.5k out. I announced I would add more after we went back past the KLNTC, but she declined. I was suffering and there was a biting headwind coming off the pond on the way back, but I soldiered on and did an extra 5k loop before finishing by trudging halfway up Gordon Hill. This ended my excursion at 13.5 miles and 1:47. I think my running LT must be higher than my bike LT. I used to think they were the same, but I was able to maintain 157-158 bpm for most of this run, and my bike LT is only 160. I run 10k's at 166 average, so maybe while running I get a few more tics out. That's the scoop, time for work. Sorry 'bout the numbers Freddy; I promise next week will be better. Thanks for reading.

Another lame entry

My legs felt good this morning. I'm glad I went out to run on Tuesday, even though my calves were still very tight from Sunday's long run. Tuesday night I had my monthly massage (gee, that's a good word for the nodcast). Sometimes I go right back to a hard workout the next day, but since I'd done my "speed" session on Tuesday, on Wednesday I just did a double session on the trainer, mostly really easy stuff, because that's what I do. Along with some stretching, the extra rest did my legs some good. Thursday I did not work out at all. The morning was hectic and then I got stuck late at work. Since I'd skimmed an interesting article linked from one of Michelle's blogs I made it a point to work as many varieties of leaves as possible from the salad bar during lunch. Going a step further, I added spinach to my dinner of fish and corn. Woo-hoo! BTW, if you are sick of sites like the Times and Boston.com always trying to get you to register, just block their cookie and you can read all the articles without registering. But you already knew that, right?

Today the ground was mostly clear and the temps sort of mild, so I headed out for a tempo run. My plan calls for some of these to be 2 miles on, 1 mile off, 2 miles on, etc, so that is what I tried to do today. On both of my two mile tempo pieces I faded in mile two. Some of this may have been due to the terrain, which consisted of frozen tractor ruts in a few places, with quick mid-run squall providing a sprinkling of snow for camouflage. The fast parts were on better surfaces, like roads in the cemetery and smoother carriage paths. Here are the splits:

7:52, 7:43, 7:01, 7:21, 8:01, 7:06, 7:23, 8:54

How much time do you think you lose running on dirt compared to hard surface? I have trouble running under 7 on the soft stuff, but usually seem to be able to pull it off (huh-huh) in races.

More bone-chilling cold on the way for next week. I'll probably stay off my feet to get ready for the Paddy Kelly 5 miler in beautiful Brockton next Sunday. The week after that we have the Old Fashioned 10 miler in Foxboro. It's time to start ramping up the bike hours anyway, so maybe I'll get more serious on the trainer. Thanks for reading.

Enough of that

Got dumped into new blogger today, no choice, now the whole thing seems hosed.

23 hours total in January, about 50/50 running and riding. Thanks for reading (if this ugly font shit ever gets posted).