Swim, Bike, Run – Yes, Nearly, No!

Five weeks no running; yep cabin fever is setting in and I just ordered me a pair of these sweet rides! But having said that the swimming is going well, well as well as two sessions can go. Nearly 2000 yards this week, I could have gone further but as usual I was pushed for time. After tweaking my knee Tuesday I took it easier on Friday. I also invested in some larger hand fins to take the pressure off my legs otherwise I am bit like a log in the water! Using a pull buoy helps as well for the buoyancy and a swim cap helped with the cold, so now I at least look the part.

I tried my benchmark pedal rotation on the bike and there’s further improvement; forwards I am up to around 2:00am and backwards around 11:00pm, it’s a little sore to go this far but not to the point of doing any damage. Finally I have made in dent in my weight gain so that’s a move in the right direction.

I hosted this week's Runners Round Table podcast, the topic was "Going Long; Ultra-marathons and IronMan", it was a great show and well worth a listen, check it out on iTunes and take it for a run.

All in all everything is good news, but I would really like to go for a run!

Review; Black Diamond Spot

I have been running with a headtorch for the last couple of years now, early starts and late finishes often bookend my day with running, but 95% of those runs were on the road, mostly with street lights and mostly with cars. My go-to headtorch has been a Petzl TacTikka Plus which is great for a "be seen with" rather than a "to see with" torch. For the ‘Hood I was going to be running through the night…in the woods…with a half moon; dark with a capital D!

Headtorchs span the gamut of price range if you really want to go mad you can easily blow $100 and have a set up which is bright enough to light up a Hollywood sound stage but these typically come with large battery packs sometimes which need a “sold separately” recharging unit and the additional weight that you would expect. So my criterion was bright, light and cheap!

I looked around a bit but ultimately went for the path of least resistance; Zombie or WRC, Zombie’s were either not as good as my Petzl or in the $50+ range; too little or too much, so armed with my discount coupon code for 10% 'QUAD10' I picked up a Black Diamond Spot from Wilderness Running Company for $36.00.

So here are the technical specs, The Spot has eight light-output settings—three brightness settings and strobe illumination in either SuperBright LED or one-watt LED mode. It comprises One-watt HyperBright LED, Three SuperBright LEDs and comes with a Three-year guarantee. It weighs 85 grams (3.0 ounces) with batteries and 50 grams (1.8 ounces) without batteries, (not sure why you would carry without batteries?)

It comes with the standard elastic band and is comfy enough, it requires three AAA batteries. The interesting stuff is brightness and durations, this is a screen shot from the instructions:

Still confused, well basically my usage was either the Hyperbright LED (1W) or the three Superbright (3 LEDs). I didn’t realize that there were half settings until I researched this post. Under the heading that a picture is worth a thousand words, it’s Friday and spent most of the week at a pc here’s a picture. Petzl on the left, SuperBright center and Hyperbright on the right. (Bigger picture to follow).


As you can see there is a significant difference in brightness this translates into distance as well, although experience has taught me that looking just in front of me rather than off into the woods is the best place to look. With Fall upon us, yes it’s finally arrived here in Califonia, and shorter days if you’re running in the dark anywhere you need a decent light system, do yourself a favor and consider this one.

See previous gear reviews in the sidebar on the right. If you have a product you’d like reviewed, contact me at quadrathon@gmail.com.

Going off at the deep end!

So today I went swimming, told you I was going to! Of course I happened to have picked one of the coldest, windiest days we’ve had in months; outdoor pool! That worked in my favor as I actually had a lane all to myself and once I was in it was pretty much ok as long as I kept going. I got a bit over excited at one point and overbent my knee so now I am sat here with an Ace tube on it, it’s swollen a bit…another lesson learned the hard way!

I checked out some YouTube Videos last night, this one I thought was pretty good and helped me visualize what I need to be doing; remembering the ‘rotation’ helped today. I didn’t go mad, and swam about 800 meters, to be honest I lost count but I was at it for about 40 minutes, easing myself into it until getting all over cocky and bending my leg too far!

On the suggestion of JD and few other people I ordered this book and DVD from Amazon, thank goodness for used, much as I like kit $40.00 for a 30 minute DVD seemed a little steep so a used ‘new; unopened’ one for $12.00 was a bargain along with a ‘used; like new’ book for $5.00.

I am thinking about a swimcap…everyone seemed to have one, maybe for warmth? I think my wife has one from her tri kicking about somewhere, maybe I’ll snag that and see.

I have to say all in all I enjoyed it and so other than the knee thing so far so good, I am aiming to go again on Friday...yeah the next thing'll be webbed feet!