Hill Repeats anyone?
Friday, July 26, 2013
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
TDBB Week 7
Week 7 in the bag. Another solid week, mileage jumped up from the prior week as my body adjusts the increase in volume of training and this week I broke through the 10 hour barrier again. This pales in comparison to Ironman volume from last year where I maxed out at around the 18 hour mark, that being said but I am happy with it. As usual the week was a muddle and I did miss one Sufferfest ride but I added in two commutes; it’s a 28 mile round trip and a 1000’ of gain each way so I wasn’t too worried and it allowed me to ease off a day before Sunday’s big ride.
Saturday night was another opportunity to catch IRL (In Real Life) with an online friend when TribeccaTo was extended an invite to see The 39 Steps by Louis, I have known Louis online for the last couple of years and although we live in the same town it was a chance to meet him in person and in fact watch him act in the plat. The play was awesome, a 4 man production that covered 150 characters! It was packed with laughs and was a romping good show, if you are local I recommend you catch it before the limited run ends! We stayed locally and that cut our drive on Sunday morning by half.
Sunday’s long ride was a change from the proposed Mt Baldy Road and instead TriBeccaTO and I opted for the Glendora Mountain Road to Mt Baldy Village, a longer in duration overall climbing with 16 miles of climbing in total but not quite so severe.
It’s by far the longest climb I have ever done with over 5000’ of gain, so I was a little worried about what to expect but it went really well, I paced myself pretty solidly and although I was tired at the end my fueling and nutrition went well with the standard issue Hawaiian Sweet rolls with PB&J doing the business! The weather certainly helped with low flat cloud for the entire ride. Suffice to say the scenery was amazing even with the low cloud and it’s somewhere I would love to go back and explore some more. I decided to switch out my cassette to an 11-28 and that helped although strangely the spacer between the new and old cassette was a different thickness and in addition to not giving me as clean a shift it also scratched the hell out of a brand new Ultegra cassette (argh!)
Here is the elevation profile and links to the data;
Garmin Connect and Strava
One problem I am having is a twitchy HR strap, it could be a weak battery but it is frustrating as I am able to get a clean set of data, it’s making me rethink going back to a power meter which of course digging deep into my pockets and when you’re remodeling a kitchen it’s a matter of priorities!
Reminded that you can’t take this too seriously!
So this week was a tad less than 150 miles but I broke through the 10,000’ of elevation mark, which is a first. This coming week is a rest week, followed by a week on vacation and then it’s race (ride) day, it’s not a race and people shouldn’t race a century ride IMHO!
Some photos from the ride, including the almost flying car!
Onwards!
Friday, July 19, 2013
Cleaning up!
So last month I upgraded to Strava Premium and stopped using Daily Mile, I am a bit of a training site whore, I originally used Nike+, that became Runner+ then Buckeye Outdoors, then Go Wagon, then Motionbased, SportsTrack, Garmin Connect, Training Peaks and now Strava!
So as you can see I have training data everywhere! I don’t mind so much as I rarely go back and look at it but at the end of the year it’s nice to review and it’s useful to track the mileage on various bits of kit’ wheels, shoes, chains and the like.
So I decided to go back to Strava to try and clean some things up as I was faced with a history page like this!
Fortunately I can reconcile it with other sites and as all my Trainer Rides are based on using TrainerRoad rides so it’s pretty easy to go back and clean things up.
Yep that’s 7 days spent on a Trainer!
Now one thing occurred to me as I was going through the Strava data that there is a pretty simple way to add a quick note to the ride, thanks to Social Media and in particular Instagram, take a photo and it is attached to the ride, in fact I noticed that I had done that a couple of times,
Onwards…
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
TBDD Week 5 & 6
Week 5 is in the rear view mirror, way behind me so I don’t have much to say about it now. I followed the plan and that was that really, miles were down as I cut out the commuting. I took one ride on the mountain bike and was humbled as I had to dismount and walk up “Heart Attack Hill” in front of a local girls HS Cross Country team!
Whatcha mean you have to walk up 21%?
Week 6 was a bigger and better week; more mile more elevation, it’s creeping back up slowly. My knee/hammy is just what it is it’s rolling along around 90%...that’s good enough for now, I had a massage yesterday and that helped.
Mostly a week on the trainer so the two rides that were on the road had to count! The first was an extended local loop with a couple of short Cat 4 climbs, no problems there and plenty of Strava PRs! And I even nabbed a Top10 overall! I was happy with the average speed of this too.
The second on Sunday was an all-out roller coaster in the Santa Monica Mountains. It ended up being not as long as I expected in distance which meant I missed my weekly mileage goal but I was happy with the elevation gain, lots of seated climbing.
My Honey was kicking butt too and she is riding a freaking Tri Bike!
I am running a 12-25 in the back and thinking a 12-27 or 11-28 might be a better choice, not sure about that yet and I think this coming weekends ride will help make up my mind, we’ll see! The plan is to head to Mt Baldy where you can see the Tour of California most years…I think this is going to hurt…
Ok that’s enough graphs, here’s a video!
Onwards and upwards, not in that order!
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Mission Care Enduracool Arm sleeves winner
Without further ado…
1st Place OCDTRIGUY
2nd Place VeganRunningMom
3rd Place Louis
While there was only one pair of sleeves to give away I got some extra goodies from Mission Care and I am always happy to share the wealth!
Email me quadrathon@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter your mailing addresses and I will get the the goodies out to you.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
TDBB; Week 4 (Rest week)
Week 4 was a rest or step back week, so I took full advantage of that, in fact I probably took too much advantage and missed one Sufferfest ride but managed to swap it out for a commute so it wasn’t all bad. The digits and gain are pretty low and I was tracking to a target of only 100 miles when I managed to tweak my knee/quad, it feels more like a tweak than overuse as one minute it was fine and the next it hurt. So in addition to the missed ‘fest I cut short my Sunday long ride and then have babied it for the last couple of days, so we will see how it feels by the end of the week. Just short of 500 miles in four weeks is a good start and actually for June its more mileage than I did in my biggest month when I was training for IMAZ…of course I was running and swimming at the same time then too!
Beyond that nothing much to report, I dropped my Cervelo off for a service at a LBS; new bar tape and a new chain, the old one had over 3600 miles on it and with the increase in miles it would have needed replacing in a months’ time! So for this week I am on the TT bike and I’ll be hopefully taking a stab at commuting on trails using the mountain bike, I have ridden most of it…well maybe about 80% and I can guess the rest of it. It looks like this from Google Maps;
Wicked good cartography skills (and no, I do not work in a Mortuary!)
I have made it to the arrow in about 50 minutes before so I am thinking it will probably take 2-2.5 hours one way so let’s see how that all plays out with my knee!
Other than that the wheels keep turning!
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Back to Tempe!
No I am not racing in 2014, but TribeccaTO is and volunteering is best way to get your slot! This race sold out in 3 minutes online in 2012 when I did it!
I case you’re wondering the Speed Pass is a get to the front of the line on sign up day in return for being out on the course till midnight in a hard to fill volunteer spot…sounds like a plan to me!
Monday, July 1, 2013
Review; Mission Care Enduracool Arm Sleeves
I reviewed the Mission Care Enduracool Towel last August I was keen to try the new range of clothing that Mission Care launched this year and they kindly sent me a pair of arm sleeves to try out.
Arms sleeves provide multiple uses throughout the year, warm in the winter, coverage in the summer and I have even used them to isolate a painful ITB flare up! But basically in the summer they provide some cover from the sun when you don’t want to even think about a long sleeve shirt. Mission Care have taken this even further with protection from the sun with a built in UPF45 block. The main feature of these is when wet they active the CoolCore which is what makes the feel cool on the skin…voodoo you cry! For sure I reply but you know it works. With summer warming up in Southern California (yesterday locally topped out at 102f) anything that can keep you cool is a bonus.
Once on they feel soft and comfortable, they are not overly compressive, the tops are elastic but do not have the tight rubber grippers that you may have seen on other sleeves. The construction is of two fabrics with three quarters of the sleeve being solid and the remaining quarter being of a mesh which allows for some “venting”.
The CoolCore works really well and like the Enduracool towel you have to wet it and snap it to activate it, this is easily achieved by just pinching it off your skin and letting it ping back. At the end of each sleeve there is a little pocket which at first I thought would be useful for a gel but the added weight made them a bit uncomfortable. What actually worked really well was to carry a small sponge in them which I could dampen and wet the sleeves with, this is a much more conservative use of water than just squirting water and soaking an area rather than get them wet all over. Also it sits on your Ulnar Artery which is very close to the skin so if you can keep that cool it will actually cool your blood and you down…look at me getting all scientific!
So in conclusion with the heat of summer coming fast and furious this is a great piece of kit to keep in mind when you are you are heading out for a run or ride, it weighs next to nothing and is actually proactive in keeping you cool.
With the help of Mission I have a giveaway and discount code for my readers.
For the giveaway I am working on the honor system
Liking them on Facebook gets you one entry
Follow them on Twitter gets you one entry
Tweet “I entered to win the @missionathlete EnduraCool Arm Sleeves from @quadrathon you can too, enter here http://bit.ly/11Yvwgz” at least once a day between now and Friday will get you five more entries;
Leave a blog comment on Friday telling me what you did and that’s another entry for a total of eight, I will draw a winner on Saturday!
If you can’t wait till then, just hit up their website and use this “quadrathon25”code to get yourself some goodies with a 25% discount valid today through July 15th.
These Arm Sleeves were provided free of charge by the good folks at Mission. See previous gear reviews under the Product Reviews tab above. If you have a product you’d like reviewed, contact me at quadrathon@gmail.com.
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