What the F…

arenheit was going on with the weather; 98f on the beach at 4pm! Still reeling from the weekend I skipped yesterday’s run and had a double header spinning 13 miles on the trainer at 4:30am this morning and then running off yesterday’s 7 miles this afternoon.

Not the best of runs, head wasn’t in it and my body was in shock but I plugged through the heat and slalomed around the weirdoes of Venice beach to finish with a surprisingly decent time of 58:01, that’s only 30 seconds off my 10k race pace (which I feel is my worst PR) but even so not bad all things considered. I managed to pull it together for the last mile at least!


So some foam roller action tonight and a quick repack of the bag ready for tomorrow’s 8 miler. Hey it’s nearly Wednesday!

There and back and there again.

That’s a fair description of today’s ride, a 25 mile northbound there and back and ditto for 6 miles southbound. I knew I was going to be pushed for time and ultimately that was reflected in the shortage of miles 62 vs. the required 70. Had I not forgotten my headphones and spent 10 minutes waiting for Pavilions’ to open at 7am so I could buy another pair I could have squeezed in another 3 miles. However that being said and despite the shortage I am pleased with my
overall time and speed; I averaged 16.8 mph, it was 17.2 right until the last hill which pushed it down and covered the distance in a moving time of 3:41 and a total time of 3:57 (10 minutes or so for Pavilions’, a couple of sets of traffic lights and crossing the road to turnaround), that’s the quickest I have ridden this route and while I have not gone this far I am ahead, pace-wise, than my previous best ride, so there is a measurable improvement. Despite that though I still managed to get overtaken, and in spite of my efforts to at least keep the other riders in sight they seemingly effortlessly passed me and pulled away. I am amazed at the speed that these riders maintain and I wonder what I need to do to keep up a average speed in excess of 20mph, stop being a runner and become a cyclist would probably be the first step so let’s put that on the back burner for now.

For this ride I fitted a Profile Design Aqua Rack twin bottle holder behind my saddle and with some jigging about I managed to get it to fit my rear light (I have a light for those early morning starts) and saddle bag with spares (inner tubes CO2, tire levers etc) and while it’s not the prettiest set up it works, report to follow in the future. These are my Polar bottles that I fill and freeze the night before so they are cold when I come to drink them later, I use the same principle with a half filled bottle for long runs and that works well keeping the fluid cold/cool for up to two hours.

And so this afternoon we faced 15 over sugared children, a faux swimming pool that kept collapsing and spilling its contents, the worlds largest outdoor GeoTrax trainset; at least it felt like that while I was crawling around on my knees on the concrete yesterday assembling it and the rantings of a Mad Scientist children’s entertainer, all in all a priceless afternoon; the sugar crash has happened and I think I can just manage one more slice of homemade ice cream cake before packing my running bag and heading to bed.

No real photo action it was mostly foggy and cool which was just fine by me, but here's the Motion Based info:

Full on week!

Sorry for my absence as both a reader and writer. Work is pretty full on and the project (in case you’re wondering I am an IT/IS Project Manager) I was recently given at work to get back on track was in a pretty poor state, well actually a very poor state. Anyone who ever worked with software development/implementation will know that the importance of maintaining the scope, we’re about to change phase into implementation and yet there is plenty of desire for feature creep and a ton of backfill admin work to complete which puts us behind schedule, but I digress.

On the running front it has been a week of just getting it done; I rounded out the week last night with a 9 miler giving me a total of just over 40 miles for the week and 27 on the bike. I am working on improving my cadence while running in an attempt to just be a faster runner and assisted with my Garmin Footpod and setting the cadence alert my 305 it’s having some positive effects. The best run was surprisingly my recovery run on Monday, six miles at an average pace of 8:03 (about 5 mins slower in total than my 10k race pace) the worst not surprising was last night, I was pretty worn out come the week’s end and it crossed my mind to nix it but then the Feet-to-the-Fireomerter shame was too much so I headed out late and averaged 8:41. Here’s the GTC data for both.

Monday night 6 miles

Friday night 9 miles

Today’s a rest day; tomorrow is our eldest’s fourth birthday, I am scheduled for a 70 miler on the bike and have to get back in time for the set up and festivities; so it’s an early start, although my wife has things planned out with military precision.

Talking of my wife she’s signed up for her first Tri and is as I write she is attending a women’s Tri clinic learning the finer points of wetsuit escape and how to avoid transition trauma! Rather her than me is all I can say!

Finally everybody except Laura and Swimfan have had their Worth the Weight swag dispatched; email me you address’ and I get the remaining packages out next week otherwise they will be added into the next competition which will start soon. Watch this space.