13 December 2009

Guess what, you've been doing it all wrong.

Son of a bitch…

I saw my PT last Friday and was made to realize that every single core exercise I have been doing recently is being done incorrectly. I felt so deflated.

Turns out what I was calling 'core' is really 'abdominal so great for the six-pack but not very helpful for the spine. Nice.

I hosed my back about six(?) years ago and after ignoring/resting it did not help and after re-injuring it about three years ago I finally saw my doctor, had an MRI scan, discovered I had a bulging/herniated disk and sought the help of a PT.

As is probably the case all too often, patients are not meticulous enough and after time they start to get sloppy with their form and soon they are not doing themselves any good or even doing themselves some harm. I was no different. Not only was I no longer doing the good exercise incorrectly, I was also inadvertently doing 'bad' exercises meaning I was doing stuff that was aggravating my injury. F'ing hell.

So I went and found a new PT as my original one had moved on and we started from scratch. He looked at my scan and discovered that I had TWO bulging disks. Nice. He also made me acutely aware how weak the muscles were that I thought I was exercising these past two years.

Time to re-find the resolve to deal with the back and hopefully realize some improvement.

06 December 2009

Zappos.com Las Vegas Half Marathon

Wow, I'm actually writing this post on 11 November 2014 but I was surfing and found this result. Nice.

I had no idea I had run this fast back then...! And of course I didn't have a GPS watch back in the day so no route.

Sleep  
Waking HR  
Body Weight  
Body Fat  
Breakfast  
Lunch  
Dinner  
Workout Food water, sports drink, gel
Injuries  
Therapy  
Time of Day  
Workout Type  
Weather  
Course  
Results official results
Time 1:34:47
Distance 13.1 miles
Pace 7:14 min/mile
Equipment some Brooks running shoes
Clothing  
Technorati Tags: ,,

25 June 2009

Martin learns a new word–TSS

I've been following Joe Friel on Twitter for a few days now and every damn day he says pretty much the same thing.

"Montrose to Crested Butte, CO. Long day in saddle. TSS 292."

At first it did not even realize he was using an acronym and them I'm like, what the hell does TSS mean? So I looked it up:

Training Stress Score (TSS) - The TSS represents a calculated number that takes into account the duration and intensity of a workout to arrive at a single score of the overall training load and physiological stress created by that session. One hour of functional threshold (as hard as you can go for one hour) = 100 Training Stress Score points.

Welcome to the new world. At one point you could just sort of rely on your breathing and how labored it was. Then came heart rate which was quickly eclipsed by power. And now there is TSS.

Shit. Soon you won't be able to exercise without toting along a CPU. Oh wait, that's already happening…

"How was your ride honey?"

"Well, my TSS was 255…"

Nice.

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23 May 2009

100 Miles of Nowhere

Hours
Sleeping
6 Body
Weight
  Body
Fat
 
Pulse
(waking)
  Pulse
(rising)
  Difference  
Time
of Day
9:00 AM Distance 100.18 miles Power  
Time
(total)
2:54 Time
(moving)
2:48:29 Time
(stopped)
 
Speed
(overall)
34.54 mph Speed
(moving)
35.67 mph Speed
(max)
43.33 mph
Total
Ascent
At least a couple of feet based on everyone else with a GPS. I know, I know, not sure how that is possible unless we're all so not smooth on the rollers that the bouncing accounts for this. Max
Elevation
  Gradient  
Breakfast 6:30 AM - cereal
Lunch 3 beers, veggie bratwurst, bun, pasta salad, Tabouli salad, beets, garbanzo beans, nuts
Dinner pizza
Workout Food 2 large bottles each with 2 scoops HEED, Fig Newtons, 1 beer at 50 miles
Injuries  
Therapy  
Workout Type Rollers, what else would you ride on a gorgeous day…?
Weather upper 60s to low 70s, dry, sunny, light breeze
Course  
Results I finished, 'nuff said.
Equipment Road Bike
Clothing bib shorts

"OMG, did I really sign up for this…?!" is what I'm thinking as I wake up. A good friend Tom W talked me into doing 100 Miles of Nowhere today and I think I'm having buyer's remorse before we even get started.

We (Chance R, Aaron L, Brent C and I) all arrived at Tom's place a bit before 9 and proceeded to lug all our crap up to what seemed like the 9th floor of his house. Yes, he has a deck outside of the kitchen but no, we had to go to the roof deck. Truth be told, the view from up here is pretty freaking incredible and on a day like today you could see Mt Rainier, the Olympics, all the drunks on Alki Beach, you name it.

We filled out bottles, applied liberal amounts of chamois cream, positioned our rollers and trainers, turned on the music and started riding. To nowhere.

The banter was super lively as we made our way to the first 10 miles. People were cracking jokes, teasing each other and doing all the usual guy stuff that seems to spontaneously occur when a bunch of dudes do things in the absence of members of the opposite sex. Good times basically.

Then I rode off of rollers. Shit. I almost flipped over the chair I was using to start myself but brushed it off and tried to act all casual. Not. Within 10 more miles I bailed in the other direction and almost took out Tom. Thank goodness he was next to a solid railing and was able to fend me off.

The bonus of having someone with such mad skillz along is that it gives everyone in the group lots to talk about… Consider it my contribution guys. That's right, all totally intentional.

Around 40 miles in I had been off the bike four times, twice intentionally, just to give my crotch a break. At 50 miles I had to have a beer. Damn, it really hit the spot. The only problem was it made me pine for the finish and it was a tiny mental challenge to get back on and ramp it up after the break.

By the time we had covered 70 miles I had ridden off my rollers two more times (crushing my supply of Fig Newtons in the process) and the lively, sarcastic banter had almost totally died out.

Tom had said that the last 20 miles would be rough because all we would  be able to think about was the finish. I got that way with 25 to go. With 10 to go I climbed off one more time, did some stretches, had a long drink and then got back on for the final push home.

Brent, Chance and Tom kept asking each other how far they had ridden. I was keeping my towel over my cyclometer on purpose and trying hard not to check the odometer too often. With about 10 miles to go that strategy stopped working and I ended up checking almost every mile. With five to go I had to wind it down for a bit and pedal really slowly for a few seconds to give my knees a break; the tendons behind my right one were starting to feel kind of tight. I thought that would do it but with two to go I had to slow down one more time. But then it was over.

I quit at exactly 100 miles. The extra tenth was just me coasting to a stop. :) YES. It was such a relief to not need to climb back on. I grabbed a beer from the cooler and hit a chair.

I had taken off my jersey within the first 10 miles as it was a warm day and I wanted to get some sun. As usual, the first few times Martin 'get's some sun' he overdoes it in dramatic fashion. I checked out my back and it looked pretty red and you know that if it looks red right after you get out of the sun, it's going to be flaming in a few hours. :( So I just made sure to turn 180 degrees and keep the sun on my chest. :)
ASIDE - salt stain city! Man, I am not usually the guy that has big, white, crusty lines on his helmet strap or shorts but after this ride I had BIG salt crystals on my back, thighs and shins. Impressive stuff.

After dividing all the swag, toweling off a bit and moving the bikes and trainers downstairs, Tom fired up the grill and cooked up some brats. Then Brent's girlfriend came by with some pasta salad and Shelley and Kari showed up with more food and beer. Nice.

I finally made it home and took the progressively colder and colder shower followed by the full body dip in aloe gel.

Good times. Will I do this again? Don't ask me for a while.

Here are some pictures.

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