My first race!

It's been a while since I posted anything.  Sorry about that.  I hope to start posting more regularly again.  But I'll use this post to get caught up.

Looks like I posted my Crested Butte report, then just one other post since we got back.  And that was just for some time on the trainer, which isn't that exciting.

You know what else isn't exciting?  Biking to work.  I've commuted to work quite a bit since I last posted, but it just doesn't seem worth it to write a whole post just to say I rode my bike to work.  That's not to say I don't enjoy it.  I love to ride to work when I get the chance, and it's a lot more enjoyable than driving.  I can typically ride to work in about 40-45 minutes, depending on how I'm feeling.  And driving usually takes about a half-hour.  So, riding takes a little longer, but when I get home in the evening, I feel like I actually did something, and don't feel the urge to get on the trainer that night.

So, I might use these posts to mention that I rode to work, but I don't think it's really worth it to post ride data or anything.  I mean, it's just the same ride day after day.  I'd rather post when I do something interesting, like today . . .

But before I get to that, I'll mention a couple other rides I did recently.  And before I do THAT, I'll mention that my office has sponsored a 10-person team for the Good Sam Bike Jam, a bike charity ride  that happens every year.  Last year, my office sponsored a 6-person team.  This year, we had enough interested that we are sponsoring 10 riders.  And it looks like we're actually going to have 11, which is cool.  Most of us are doing the very-difficult 100-mile route, and a few of us are doing one of the shorter routes.  The ride is on September 15, so stay tuned for a post about that.

Lookout Mountain
But on August 14, a group of Bike-Jammers decided to get in a training ride after work.  We rode from our office in Denver out west to climb Lookout Mountain.  The ride was a mix of busy Denver roads, country roads, and a big climb of Lookout Mountain at the end.  Then turn around and head back the same way.  I felt pretty good, except for riding on occasionally busy streets in the dark on the way back.

 

Pole Hill Road
The following weekend, I did a ride with Lifetime Fitness on Sunday.  We did a ride up to Carter Lake, near Loveland.  At first, I was a little disappointed at how short the route was.  Last time I road to Carter Lake, we started at Lifetime, for a nearly 90-mile ride.  This time, we were starting near the town of Hygiene, making for a 40-mile out-and-back.  After my initial disappointment, I took another look at the route and elevation profile and saw that we were tacking on a really big climb just past Carter Lake, before turning around.   That extra challenge made it worth it.  The ride to Carter Lake is pretty nice, and that climb up Pole Hill Road was brutal.  It was really hot out, with no breeze, which made it that much tougher.  All in all, a good ride.



Best on Hess Time Trial
Then, after another few days of riding to work, I just rode in my first race today.  A month or so ago, I thought I might want to try racing, instead of just solo or club rides.  I looked on the local racing calendar, but couldn't find much.  Most of the road races in the area take place in the spring, and currently the season is coming to a close, getting ready for mountain bike and cyclocross season.  But I did find a time trial that sounded like fun, called Best on Hess down in Castle Pines.  They had a separate category for folks like me that didn't have "aero" time trial gear.  And it seemed like a time trial would be a good way for me to race without endangering other riders due to my lack of experience.

Since this was my first race, I wasn't really sure what to expect.  I had one of the first starting times, so I had to get there pretty early.  The parking lot was pretty empty, so I got myself a good spot and started getting ready.  I kept an eye on everyone else, to see what they were doing.  First, I stopped up at the registration table to pick up my bib number.  Then, back to the car to get my shoes on.  Someone at work advised me to bring my trainer with me, so I pulled that out of the trunk at set it up.  I rode for about 15 minutes on the trainer, watching other riders slowly trickle in.  Then, I took a break, grabbed a Clif Bar and some water and walked around for a few minutes.  Then back on the trainer for about another 20 minutes.  Then it was time to head over to the starting ramp.  The start line was about a quarter mile down the road, so I rode over there and got in line.  We all got ourselves in order by our start time, then I just waited for my turn.  This race actually had a real start ramp, like I see on the pro time trials, which was cool.  I walked up the ramp, and someone held the back of my bike for me while I clipped into my pedals and waited for the countdown.  The timer counted down, the started said "go", and off I went.

It was a short but difficult course, about 9 miles with some tough hills.  If you look at the details of the ride below, you can see an elevation profile showing you what I was dealing with.  I was doing my best to use all my training from this year, and keep a close eye on my heart rate, to make sure I didn't overexert myself to the point where I collapsed before the finish.  I think I ended up doing ok, finishing pretty strong and leaving nothing left in the tank.  I didn't completely collapse at the finish, but I was pretty close.  I headed back to the parking lot and got off my bike, taking some time to walk around bit.  After checking out some of the bikes in the parking lot, and chatting with a few other riders, they posted the results.  I ended up getting 9th out of 26 riders in my "non-aero" category.  Top 10!  How about that!  I thought that was pretty good for my first race.  Not enough to win some beer, but I'm happy nonetheless.  Yay for me!

**Update:  The results were just posted online, where I could see more info.  Looks like other than one person, everyone who beat me was a Cat 2 or Cat 4, so that's pretty cool.  Online results HERE.


This week was the USA Pro Challenge.  Unfortunately, I haven't been able to go watch any of the race in person yet, but I've watched on TV every night after work.  Tomorrow is the final stage, and it's in Denver.  I'm going to go for a ride first thing in the morning, then the whole family is heading downtown to watch.  We've had a great time the last two years when we've gone to see the race, so I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's race.

This is my longest post in a while, and that seems like enough for tonight.  Stay tuned for more!

Back home, and back on the trainer

Fun's over.  After a fun few days in Crested Butte, we're back in the real world and getting ready for work in the morning.  I enjoyed hitting the trails in Crested Butte, but today I took the morning off so we could head back to Denver.  We packed up our stuff and stopped for breakfast in CB, at the Paradise Cafe.  Then, a long drive back to Denver.

After a haircut, laundry and a very small grocery shopping trip, we heated up a few tamales for dinner.  Then, since I didn't get in a ride this morning, I decided I needed to get back on the trainer this evening.  I opted for a hard workout, Spinervals 32.0 - Extreme Threshold Training.  I just did this workout a couple weeks ago, too.  It is a really hard ride, good for power and anaerobic threshold training.  I didn't feel that good during the ride (if you're doing it right, you should definitely not be feeling good during this one), but after uploading my data, I actually improved on my previous rides with this workout.  Comparison of three workouts is HERE.  As you can see, my average speed was up and my average pace was down.  And I managed to burn fewer calories, too.  But that probably means I wasn't working hard enough.  And those results don't even account for the minute I had to jump off the bike when my chain fell off for some reason.  I quickly got it re-seated and was back moving again shortly.

Looking forward to a nice week of riding the bike to work.  I'll need to drive on Wednesday because of a meeting, but should be able to ride every other day.  And the kids are out of town this week, so we don't need to be carting them around after work, which makes things a lot less hectic.

Well, that was a tough workout, and I need to get to bed.

Crested Butte!

My wife and I shipped the kiddos off to visit the grandparents back in Ohio, and we decided to spend a few days in Crested Butte.  While we took the whole week off from work, the first few days were spent flying with the kids back to Ohio.  I managed to get in a ride with the Lifetime on the Sunday morning before I left.



While in Ohio, I wasn't able to ride my bike, so I decided  to do a little running instead.  On Monday, I did a run with my sister-in-law.  She's been doing the Couch-to-5k program, and the timing worked out perfectly that she was ready for her first 5k when I was visiting.  So, we ran a 5k together, and she did great!  After looping back to her house, I decided to keep going, and ran about another 4 miles.  On Tuesday, I did another morning run near my parents' house.


After a couple days back in Ohio, I flew back home on Tuesday evening, and packed up to go.  We left home on Wednesday morning, and drove to Crested Butte.  The weather wasn't exactly what we were planning on.  It rained most of the drive there, and it was really cold.  Way colder than it should have been at the beginning of August, even in the mountains.  The rain stopped as we arrived in town, but it was still pretty chilly.

We checked into the hotel, and locked our bikes in the hotel's bike storage room, then headed down into town for dinner.  We were staying up on Mt. Crested Butte, a couple miles from the town.  Fortunately, there is a great shuttle service in the area.  There is a shuttle loop from town to the mountain, and it departs every 20 minutes.  And there are bike racks on the buses, which is really convenient.  Wednesday night's dinner was at the Brick Oven, a pretty good pizza joint with a great beer selection.

Thursday morning, I got up early for a bike ride.  One of the people at the front desk of the hotel recommended a few local trails.  I decided to try the Snodgrass Trail, which started and ended a short distance from our hotel.

I am typically a road rider, and my mountain bike usually has some road-type tires on it.  I haven't done any actual mountain biking for years, so this was definitely a new experience for me.  I like to think I have pretty good legs and lungs right now, but I'm really lacking in the bike-handling skills.  The Snodgrass Trail seemed to fit my skill level pretty well.  The trail finished up on Washington Gulch Road, and rather than heading back to the hotel, I stretched the ride a bit by riding up Washington Gulch for a while.  Then, back to the hotel.  A nice way to start the day.

Snodgrass Trail

Self-portrait.  Mt. Crested Butte in the background.

Singletrack through the aspens.

After cleaning up, we headed down into town for lunch.  There is a nice recreational trail that heads from the mountain down into down, so we decided to ride bikes to lunch.  Lunch was more pizza - this time at The Secret Stash.  Oh man, it was good.  I think we got one called The Hampton or something.  Prosciutto, arugula and shaved parmesan on a lemon-pepper crust.  Holy cow, it was fantastic.  After that, we walked around town a bit before throwing our bikes on the bus for a ride back up the mountain to the hotel.  We relaxed a bit before grabbing a bus back to town for dinner at The Last Steep.

On Friday, I got up for another bike ride.  This time, I opted for a pretty easy ride called the Lupine Trail.  It sounds like this is a fairly new trail, and I really liked it.  Definitely matched my ability level.  After riding the trail, I headed back downtown and caught the rec path for the climb back up the mountain.

Lupine Trail wildflowers.

Lupine Trail

After my ride, we headed over to the ski area to take a lift up to the top.  A free lift ride was included with our hotel reservation.  The view was great from the top, but unfortunately, Lisa was feeling pretty miserable all week, and this morning was no exception.  We started a hike to the summit, but she felt terrible, so we turned around and head back down.  After getting back to the hotel, I showered up and we hopped on the bikes for the ride to town for lunch.  We both got gyros at Pitas in Paradise, then wandered around town again before catching a bus back to the hotel.  After relaxing a bit, I decided to go for a little run around the ski area.  For dinner, we went to town and got some Mexican food at a place called Donita's Cantina.  We heard a lot of people talking about how crowded it was, and hard to get a table, but we had no problems.

Lisa is not thrilled we're on a ski lift.

On Saturday, I decided to try one of the signature mountain bike rides in Crested Butte, Trail 401.  This involved driving a couple miles up Gothic Road to a trailhead, and parking the car.  From there, it was a long climb up Gothic Road to Schofield Pass.  At Schofield Pass, you take a right onto Trail 401, then keep on climbing up through the forest.  Once you break out of the forest, you are treated to some really spectacular 360-degree views.  It is seriously impressive.  I don't do a lot of mountain biking, so this isn't saying much, but it was definitely the most stunning bike trail I'd ever ridden.  After some easy riding through fields of wildflowers, the trail descended back into the forest.  From here, the trail got pretty difficult.  As I've said, I have pretty limited bike-handling skills.  I'm not gonna lie - it was a little rough going.  I managed to get a good gash in my leg from my chainring, and a flat tire.  There were some sketchy uphills, and some sketchy downhills.  Overall, I'm glad I did it.  The views were worth it.  But I was in a little over my head.

At Schofield Pass.

The spectacular view from the 401.

Another self-portrait.

Wildflowers along the 401.

Ouch.

After getting cleaned up after my ride, it was back to town for lunch again.  We decided to go to the Brick Oven again for some more pizza.  Dinner was at the Wooden Nickel.

Now, we're back at the hotel, thinking about trying to find something to watch on Netflix.  Getting up in the morning and packing up to head home.  Looking forward to hitting the road.  This has been a good vacation.  It was nice to get out of town for a bit.

Threshold training

Quick update tonight.  Just finished a workout.  I want to get to bed, so I can get up and ride to work in the morning.

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days.  I haven't really done much interesting, so there really wasn't anything to say.  I did a couple rides this weekend, but haven't ridden this week, until this evening.

Last week was great.  I rode to work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  Then on Saturday, I did a fun ride with the kiddos.  I pulled Connor on the trail-a-bike, and Caitlin rode her own bike.  We did about 12 miles, with a playground stop in the middle.  Then on Saturday, I got in a good 40-mile ride with the Lifetime Fitness cycle club.  Technically, it's a club ride, but the last few times, it's basically been me and one other guy jumping ahead and riding by ourselves the whole time.  We don't talk much, but he seems to be right at about my level of riding, and we push each other pretty well.  This weekend, we did a 40 mile route with an average speed of a little over 20 mph, which is pretty good for me.  Looks like the rest of the group averaged about 17 mph.

Planning to ride to work tomorrow, but will have to drive again on Friday.  Not sure what I'm going to be able to do this weekend.  We have a lot of stuff planned, between swimming lessons, football equipment pickup, and a gymnastics show, plus getting ready to send the kids on vacation back to Ohio.  Hoping I can squeeze in some riding.

Here is some stuff I've done since my last post:

• Thursday - ride to work.  27 mile round trip.
• Friday - ride to work.  27 mile round trip
• Friday - quick run around the school.  I was going to have Connor with me for the first lap, Caitlin for the first couple laps, and keep running by myself for a while, while they played on the playground.  But Connor saw one of his friends at baseball practice, and only did about 1/2-lap.  And Caitlin ended up doing about 1 lap.  Then I just did one more by myself, and we all went home.

• Saturday - 1,400 meters in the lap pool at Lifetime Fitness.
• Saturday - 12 mile ride with the kids

• Sunday - 40 mile ride with Lifetime Fitness

• Today - Ride on the trainer after dinner.  Spinervals 32.0 - Extreme Threshold Training.  Looks like I've only done this workout once before, back in February.  My results were about the same today as they were then.  I could have done better, but my left calf started cramping up pretty bad about 3/4 of the way through the workout, so I had to take it easy for about the last 10-15 minutes.  I need to read up on what causes that kind of cramping, and see what I can do to prevent it in the future.  This is a seriously hard workout.  Really high heart rate, and lot of power.  A really good workout for raising your anaerobic threshold, and to prepare for something like a time trial.

And finally, a big congratulations to local pro Taylor Phinney, for rocking Stage 4 of the Tour of Poland!  A time trial specialist, this was his first road race win as a professional.  And he did it in stunning fashion.  That was pretty awesome.

Another ride to work, and more P90X

Rode to work again today.  Nice day for it.  I was worried about rain tonight, but it never came.  And the ride home was really fast.  I'd like to think I just had a lot of power and energy today, but I think I just had a good tailwind.

Also decided to do another P90X workout tonight.  Opted for Cardio X.  I'd never done this workout before, because it's not part of the regular P90X regimen that I did last year.  It was ok.  It's basically a bunch of exercises from other P90X workouts, like some Kenpo stuff, some Plyometrics stuff, and some core stuff, with a long yoga warm-up and a quick cool-down.  I didn't wear a heart-rate monitor, so I don't really know how hard I was working, but I was definitely sweating.

Exercise:

• Ride to work
• 30-minute walk at lunch
• Ride home from work
• P90X - Cardio X

Today's weigh-in:  173.2, again.

Ride to work, and a little P90X

Not much to say today.  I rode my bike to work, which was nice.  But after last night's hill-climbing Spinervals workout, my legs were pretty dead today.  I just didn't have any kick in my ride.

Since I rode my bike to and from work today, about 40-45 minutes each way, I didn't think I really needed to be on the trainer tonight.  But I didn't really feel like sitting around and watching TV after dinner, so I decided to burn some more calories by cranking through a P90X workout.  I chose Kenpo X.  It's not the greatest workout, but it's really a pure cardio routine, which I really wanted.  I wasn't in the mood for a weight workout tonight, so some cardio did the trick.  It burns calories, and that's what really counts.  I make it a little more difficult by doing the entire routine while holding some light weights.  I used a couple 2-pound weights today.  I feel like adding weights adds an extra element to the workout.

Exercise:

• Ride to work, and . . . 
• . . . ride home from work
• 1-hour P90X workout - Kenpo X

Today's weigh-in:  173.2.  That's more like it!

Took a little break, now I'm back

After the Triple Bypass last weekend, I took most of the week off.  I was able to ride to work one day last week, did one ride on the trainer, and swam some laps one evening, but that was really it.  It was just a pretty hectic week, and difficult to find the time.  I really wanted to do some riding over the weekend, but ended up with too much going on.

Most of this weekend was taken over by stupid stuff, like changing the headlight in my car.  Incidentally, I'd love to speak with the engineer at Chevy who decided that in order to change a headlight in a 2009 Malibu, you needed to remove the bumper.  That's just bonkers.

But one fun thing I did this weekend was watch my almost-9-year-old daughter compete in her first triathlon!  She did great for her first time.  Her bike and run times were pretty much right there with the other kids in her age group, but she needs to work on her swimming a bit.  She just recently got to the point where she can swim a full lap in the pool, so she's still learning.  And her transitions were a little slow, but that's to be expected with her first time.

 

 

She did an awesome job and we're really proud of her.  Unfortunately, it looks like this is pretty much the end of triathlon season, so we may have to wait until next year to try another one.

It looks like I'll be riding the bike to work for the rest of the week, and maybe get in some trainer sessions in the evening.  Another thing I might try in the evenings, instead of getting on the trainer, is getting back into P90X.  I don't necessarily plan on doing the full 12-week session, but might try to figure out a way to get in some weight workouts on days when I ride to work.  Kind of make up my own workout schedule.  We'll see.

Today's workouts:




Today's weigh-in:  175.4.  I took some time off, so that's understandable.  But I'm still working toward my goal of 165.