Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Monday, July 20, 2020

Changes since these photos were taken:
Crank from 170mm to 160mm to open hip angle at the top of pedal stroke
Saddle raised 10mm to make up for the crank length change (I might bring it down slightly cuz it felt high)
Pads moved out 10mm to get the body to arm angle closer to 90°




Working on fit


Monday, July 13, 2020

With original stem

I'm going to try this for a while. It's a little higher than i normally have been but I may have been too low for the last few years. 

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Thursday, June 18, 2020

I just signed up for my first off-road race of 2020

Xterra Dino North on July 25th

I've done this race twice and it's a good time.

Sunday, June 14, 2020

Week ending 6/14/20

A solid training week but I didn't swim at all, mainly cuz I was working afternoons and it wasn't convenient.

Bike:
Tuesday 21 miles in 1:06 on Hines drive
Wednesday 40 miles in 2:07 on Hines drive
Thursday 40 miles in 2:09 AA Trail to AA Road to Curtis to 7 mile to Hines and home
Saturday 35 miles in 3:22 on Mountain bike at Murray Lake and Torn Shirt trails

Run:
Tuesday 8.8 miles in 1:15 with 4X7(3) Threshold intervals
Thursday 4.5 miles around work
Friday 4.5 miles around work again
Sunday 12.3 miles Island Lake - around Kensington and back plus a little more

A pretty solid week of training.  I hit all of my goals with all workouts.  I substituted mountain biking for the interval workout on Saturday.

8:47 on bike (from TP)
4:15 on run (from TP)

13:03 total time (from TP) 

Thursday, June 11, 2020

My end of season race Cancelled

Xterra USA in Utah on Sept 20th has been cancelled.

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Garmin 830


Compared to my 820

Monday, June 08, 2020

Week ending 6/7/20

An easier week overall but mostly from cycling

I was able to swim twice in Trout Lake again for about 30 min at a time.  I'll try to swim 3 times next week.

Swim:
Trout Lake across and back on one day then across and around the second day.

Bike:
Tuesday 60 min easy
Thursday 60 min including 24 min threshold
Saturday Mountain bike Island Lake to Brighton Rec Murray Lake trail then back to finish IL.

Run:
Tuesday 49 minutes including 4X2.5(5) in Zone 4 (Target 6:30)
Thursday and Friday 4 miles Run around work
Sunday 1:33 run with 20 min of Threshold pace

I had a difficult time getting to 6:30 on Tuesday, I need some more practice running fast.
Running around work was subjectively easy but was faster than expected.
Sunday took some concentration to hold the Threshold pace but afterwards I felt really good.

10:34 total time with 6.5 hours on the bike, 3.5 hours on the run and 1 hour in the water.
I

Sunday, May 31, 2020

A note about Spinergy Rev-X wheels from a Slowtwitch post a long time ago

To the person(s) or bot that keeps hitting my blog from the Spinergy post from Slowtwitch a billion years ago.  I don't condone the use of the Spinergy Rev-X wheel.  The youngest wheel is probably 20 years old and well past it's prime (if there really was one).

I made a comment on them based on my use of a set and of some friends.  The set I was using at the time was only a few years old and in good shape.  I was about 150 lbs then and I could sway the 650C rear wheel enough to hit my brake pads while climbing but they were fast when riding in a straight line.

Please don't use my experience from 17-18 years ago while deciding to use those wheels or not.  Just don't use them at all.

Week ending 5/31/2020

Second week back into training and I did pretty well this week.

With the addition of a longer bike ride on Monday I didn't plan to push the run volume and originally kept to the 25.5 miles of the run plan but I really felt good today.

Swim:
2 easy swims in Trout Lake.  It's been a while since I've been in the pool so I took it easy and kept the volume down to about 1500 per swim.  Next week I'll try 3 times and up to around 2000 yds.

Bike:
5 rides for 203 miles in 10:50
Since I had the day off I rode 3 hours on Monday.
Tuesday and Wednesday were a little more than an hour each of easy riding.
Thursday I had 4X7(3) at threshold in the 90 min ride.
Saturday was 59 miles in a little over 3 hours.  It included 10X1(2) in Zone 5.  Started about 230 watts and worked up to 300 watts.

Run
4 Runs for 29.5 miles in 4:11
Tuesday for about an hour including 6X2.5(5) at threshold
Thursday for about 40 min including 6X1(2) in Zone 5.  Started intervals in the high 6 min/mile and dropped them down to mid 6 min/mile by the 5th interval.
Friday half hour easy.
Sunday 2 hours easy to moderate.  I felt really good so I pushed the 90 min run to 2 hours and run the last 3.5 strong.

Another good week with about 16 hours of training.  Since I added a 3 hour run in on Monday I had to keep the rides easy on Tuesday and Wednesday to complete all the other workouts as scheduled.  Next week is supposed to be lower volume.  I will probably add a few easy runs to keep myself busy.

Monday, May 25, 2020

Week ending 5/24/20

I wanted to get ready for something so I chose the Xterra Pan American Championships in September because I think it has the greatest chance of taking place. 

I picked the 80/20 HIM plan because the race will take a little less than 4 hours, much longer than an Olympic distance race but about an hour less than a good HIM for me.  In 2017 I was 30 min on the swim, 2:07 on the bike and 1 hour on the run.  Since the bike time is similar to a HIM bike (about 20 min lower) I choose that plan.  I'll make sure I mix mountain biking and trail running into the plan, maybe in July or August I can make a trip to Utah or somewhere that has similar terrain to practice race execution.

Swimming - 0

Bike:
4 rides in 7:35
Tuesday easy 1 hour ride around the flooded parts of Hines drive.
Wednesday easy 1:45 down to DG's house via I275 trail.
Thursday 2:30 ride including 5X6(3) Zone 4 (was supposed to be 4X6(3) Zone 3 but I felt really strong that day.
Saturday I rode all four loops around DTE (with Erik) for the third time in as many weeks.  I remembered to pay attention to my training partner this time.

Run:
5 runs in 4:36 and 31.1 miles
Tuesday nearly 8 miles including 4X8(3) zone 3.  I felt good.
Thursday easy 4.2 mile run around work.
Friday easy 6.7 miles run around work.
Saturday easy 1.15 mile trail run after riding.
Sunday easy to moderate 11.2 mile run on Hines drive.  I started out easy, built up and ran strong but I was tired.  I gave myself an option to run 13 miles but didn't take it.

A pretty good week of training at 12 hours.  I ran strong and easy when I needed to, same on the bike.
I have some friends doing open water swimming at Island lake, I'm going to try and get out there this week.  They claim the water temp is in the low 60's right now (16°C) so I should be able to do that.

Sunday, May 17, 2020

Week ending 5/17/20

This should have been race week, the weather in New Jersey looked OK but it wasn't meant to be.

Instead I rested early in the week and then rode pretty hard on Friday and Saturday.

Swim...

Bike:
3 rides
Tuesday 2 laps of Island Lake on the mountain bike in near record times.  Both laps in 58:35 and 57:45, so pretty quick.
Friday 56 miles on the road bike, rode the 275 trail to Willow Metropark and back.  The trail had some water covered spots between Eureka and Sibley roads but other than that it was pretty good.  The last 10 miles was in light rain but it was warm.
Saturday I road all loops of DTE again with friends.  I rode well but need to pay attention to my riding partners and make sure they are OK on mountain bike rides.  I didn't realize I let a friend bonk when I should have stayed with him.  He's an experienced rider but that's no excuse for me letting him down.

So a decent week of riding, probably a little harder than I should have but still OK.

Run:
3 runs of 3+ miles each.
Tuesday 3.3 miles at work
Thursday 3.5 miles at work
Sunday 3 miles on Hines drive, cut down from 7 miles cuz I was tired.

So next week I'm going to start another plan to get ready for Xterra Utah.  I don't know if that's going to happen but it's something to keep me going.
I'll be doing the 80/20 HIM Plan that I'll introduce Mountain Biking and Trail Running into.

Sunday, May 10, 2020

Week ending 5/10/20

An easier week for me (as planned)  9:35 total time.
Overall, I feel better with Thursday and Friday off.  Because of those days off I ran really well today (Sunday).

I'm probably going to go 1 more week easy, I was planning to race next weekend and would have rested anyway.  After this week I'm going to get back into regular training for an event happening on 9/19/20.  As of now, I'm not sure what I'll do if that race doesn't happen.

This will end my 20 week training cycle.  With the 2 weeks easy I'll get the rest I need to be ready for the next cycle.

Swim - 0

Bike
4 rides all on the Mountain Bike Total 80.6 miles 6:54
Monday - Easy at DTE Energy Trail.  Green and Blue loops clockwise.
Tuesday - I rode the Poto by myself hoping to ride well and set a PR.  I rode moderately in the beginning and faster after I got past the sand pit.  I think it was my second fastest loop I've done 1:33:09 (1:35:01 ride time, I had to straighten my bars after I bumped something :( )
Wednesday - I rode 2 loops by myself with my 4th and 1st fastest times (33:09, 32:35) then 1 more loop with a friend.
Saturday - I rode all 4 loops of the DTE Energy Trail counter-clockwise.  I've said in the past that the trail was boring and predictable but now that I've ridden the Winn and Sugar loops I like it a lot better.

Run 18.5 2:42
Tuesday I ran for 2.2 miles after riding the Poto.
Wednesday I ran 3 miles after riding the first 2 loops at Maybury
Sunday I ran 13.2 miles, started easy and then built up to 8:25's for the second half.
I blew off the short run on Thursday cuz I didn't feel like running and it was windy and snowing.

Brick
I decided not to do the brick this week, I moved Thursday's long run to Sunday cuz it was cold on Thursday (and I blew off the short run on Thursday anyway).

Sunday, May 03, 2020

Week ending 5/3/20

Another good week 14.5 hours of Bike/Run

Last of 3 harder weeks.  I was supposed to do USAT Cross Nationals in two weeks and I trained as if I was racing but it was moved to September 13th, now I'm not sure of what I'm going to do for racing.

In the next few weeks I'll probably know if later season races are going to happen and I'll make a decision then.  For now, I'm approaching 20 weeks of training and I need to plan a break.  From what I wrote back on January 3rd I'm near my limit on absorbing training and will need 2 weeks of easy/unstructured training and will then get back to a regular schedule.  That schedule will either be a HIM or another Olympic plan with Mountain biking built into it.

Swim
Nothing again and probably won't until the end of May.

Bike
4 rides plus the multi segment brick again.  157 miles for 10 hours 20 minutes.
Tuesday Mountain bike at Maybury 3 loops, 2 moderate and 1 easy.
Wednesday short zone 3 intervals on Hines drive
Friday easy ride on Hines drive
Saturday Mountain bike Island Lake 3 loops 2 quick and 1 easy.
Sunday Zone 3 riding on Hines drive as a multi segment brick.

Run
5 days of running plus the multi segment brick. 30 miles for 4 hours 13 minutes.
Monday 30' easy
Tuesday 50' easy
Wednesday 40' easy
Thursday 1:35 easy
Sunday Zone 3 running on Hines drive as a multi segment brick.

Brick
Nearly the same as last week, just a little longer cool down.

Bike 30 minute warm up
4X
     Run 7 min Zone 3 / 3 min Zone 1
     Bike 10 min Zone 3 / 3 min Zone 1

Bike 20 min cool down

Observations:
I rode on Hines drive, starting at Nankin Mills and turning around at Middlebelt Rd instead of on Zwift.  The sections were slightly longer than 13 min.
I kept the bike warm up at 30 min.
I rode a bit harder this week, I targeted just below 200 watts (3.1 W/Kg) which is the very top of Zone 3
I ran from Nankin Mills east 5 min out and 5 min back.  I ran hard for the first mile then backed it down.
I ran a little quicker than last week, something I wasn't sure would go well.

Overall I'm pretty happy since I rode and ran faster than last week.

Losing the extra weight has really helped my run, I'm under 143 lbs now

Thursday, April 30, 2020

Good run day

I haven't been putting out mid-week posts but since I did one this morning, I figure I'd do another one.

I had a really good longer run today.  My long runs have been ~90 min and have been generally easy.  I used to do 120 min runs, hold back on the first half and then run as I felt.  Most of the times I'd be down in the 8:20's and it was on the fast side of easy but not Zone 3 yet.

I felt like that today.  I started off in the high 8's and brought it down consistently until the last 2 miles were under 8:20.  All miles after the 3rd were in the 8:20's  I probably should have stayed there but I wanted to get my average under 8:30 and had to put in some quicker miles at the end to do so.

Anywho, a quicker but not too taxing of a run today and I felt good :)