Mid-week humpday!

Per the plan tonight’s run was a simple six miler. Unlike 90% of the country the forecasted weather for today was perfect; high 60’s with a slight breeze, so I decided last night to get an early start at work which allows me an early finish. So my day rudely began at 4:45am, the good news was I was out the door by 3:00pm and on the trails by just after 4:00pm. I was also using this as an opportunity to try my new Go Lite shoes picked up earlier this month. I had recce’d a short up and down route in Red Rock Canyon which is just off Topanga Canyon and takes you, via a fireroad, up to Calabasas Peak and has about a 1000’ of climbing over 2 miles, so I knew I would need to go up and over some ways further and back again to get the mileage in. I set off, camera in hand, as, while it’s small it looked like is was going to be pretty dense photowise. I was pretty much alone other than some folks walking their dogs and a couple of mountain bikers doing their thing.

As expected I reached the summit after two miles and about 25 minutes so I pushed on for another mile and turned around, of course in the spirit of what goes up must come down I opened up the throttle and just let myself fall down the hill, I did take some pictures and some video most of which was blown out by the wind but these two seem to work...I think?

The view from the top...or why I run trails!

Thoughts on downhill running

Anyway here’s the MotionBased data and as you can see it was my midweek humpday and the photos are here.

Use it or lose it!

Yesterday I had the first of my ‘long’ rides; my plan has me alternating long runs and long rides over the next 6 weeks as well as two rides during the week. The rational on alternating is that running focuses your efforts on you hamstrings (and calves) ignoring your quads, cycling addresses the imbalance this creates by using your quads (and calves) and ignores your hamstrings, this is particularly important to me as I am prone to ITB issues, (see below), and from experience cross training like this has helped me avoid any serious overuse injuries like I had in 2007.

That being said it has been 3 months since I have had any serious saddle time and the plan called for 50 miles. The route I choose is a pretty standard loop through to the coast and back again, I hesitate to say that the roads are mountain passes but I did end up with 5750’ of climbing so they are clearly bigger than hills but in my mind they are smaller that mountains, so maybe just calling them big hills will do. It's been raining here for the last three days and it was going to be a bit chilly, at least by SoCal standards, and there was a lot of low cloud in the canyons and I was grateful for full fingered gloves and shoe covers.

The second canyon has the much more steeper and longer climb and I was reasonably pleased with the way I was riding especially when I managed to throw off someone who I had been on my back wheel for the last two or three miles before the top. My legs started to feel it around mile 45 and I really suffered on the final 100' of climbing back to my front door. Once again reinforcing how quickly you can loose any advantage that you spent weeks or months building up. I also find that it takes me a few good rides before I stop being "twitchy" on the descents and can get on the drops, off the brakes and really push through the corners.

On the ITB front diligent stretching and foam rollering twice a day is keeping the problems at bay so far following it’s unexpected appearance last weekend and I managed Wednesday’s 6 and Friday’s 9 milers without any issues, although I am wearing my strap.

And so Friday's run concluded last week’s training and Sunday's ride started this week’s; pretty uneventful but I’ll take that over drama any day of the week.

MotionBased Data is here and a few photos here.

Oh Nuts!

Not me, but just in case…

“January 19, 2009: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is conducting a very active and dynamic investigation into the source of the Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak. At this time, the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and state partners have traced sources of Salmonella Typhimurium contamination to a plant owned by Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), which manufactures peanut butter and peanut paste—a concentrated product consisting of ground, roasted peanuts—that are both distributed to food manufacturers to be used as an ingredient in many commercially produced products including cakes, cookies, crackers, candies, cereal and ice cream. In addition, PCA peanut butter is distributed to and institutionally served in such settings as long-term care facilities and cafeterias.”

So what does this really mean, well some brands you may be familiar with have announced recalls:

* Clif Bar
* Luna
* Natures Path
* Zone Perfect

The recall has been going on for 10 day and the list is growing longer by the day, you can read more about it here, just be on the look out!