The First 100-Miler of 2010

Last Saturday, I decided that it was time to suck it up and grind out my first century of the year. I was a little worried about the weather. It started out kind of cool and whatever I took with me, I was going to be stuck with for the duration of the ride.

I rode my first 4 miles to the club ride at Elite Fitness where we started the 43 miles loop. To begin the ride, I had my jacket and full-fingered gloves on, but I had them off after about 20 miles. Again, I was stuck with them so the gloves were stuffed in a back pocket with the jacket wound up and tied around my waist. I was kind of riding with three other guys, but I was struggling a bit as I have been dealing with some sort of minor bug that's been congesting my lungs.

Thw worst part of the ride was the head wind coming from the east. We had a seven mile stretch in flat farm land area with nothing around to block any wind. I think it was blowing about 10-20 mph and every inch of the ride home sucked.

We get back to the starting point (47 miles in) and being the idiot that I am, I head right back out for another loop. No one is with me this time....just me and the mp3 player. After about 55 miles, I got to a gas station with a Subway and I was starving. Inhaled my lunch and got back on the road.

What I didn'tmention about the first part of the loop are the three inclines that kick off the back half of the loop. It was worse the second time around and the head wind was playing a factor as well. Basically, the entire ride home was in the wind and there was no one with me to share my misery.

The only redeeeming part of he loop is the hill you get to cruise down at the very end. What a relief to sit back and hit 30 mph and coast to the end.

So another 43 miles should have put me at 90 miles with 10 miles to go. With the 4 mile commute all I needed to do was find somehow to pick up an extra six miles and I'm done...except my odomoeter was showing me as being an additional 3 miles short.

So I turned into a subdivision and did a weird loop through the neighborhood and then I got onto a straight stretch of road right next to my subdivision and rode back and forth until I hit my mark. Pretty boring, but I was not in the mood to explore any of the heavily travelled roads.

As always, the first century of the year is the hardest. My butt is not used to sitting that long and my legs aren't used to working that long. Last year, a group of us did our first century together so we bitched and complained for the last 25 miles altogether. This year was a solo act...and hopefully it will finally lead me to my goal of 10 centuries. The one redeeming factor was that I took less breaks than I would with my group so the amount of time it took me to complete it was about the same, even though my saddle time was longer.

Anyways...one down, nine to go. Want to keep me company?

Three Years, 12,000 Miles Later

Sometime in late March/early April, I will be kicking off my three year anniverary of riding my bike. In that time, I have accumulated over 12,200 miles on one bike or about 4,066 miles per year.

I decided to compile some very generalized statistics to show how much of a difference has been made from bike riding. There are some assumptions and very general concepts put into play here for sake of simplicity. I'm also rounding down to 12,000 miles.

12,000 miles
Let's assume the following:

1. All mileage was gained for commuting purposes (even though many were for joy riding).
2. Because a bike is used in the city, gas mileage would be decreased.
3. I am using our old secondary car (which has died and gone to heaven) because Leandra is using our main vehicle.

With the '94 Chevy Cavalier wagon, I think we got about 21 mpg in the city. To do that same mileage in that car, I would have need to use 571.4 gallons of gas. To pay for all of that gasoline in that three years, I would have spent:

• $1,657.06 (avg. gas cost of $2.90)
• $1,714.20 (avg. gas cost of $3.00)

For the sake of pollution, the EPA website provided some very general statistics based on passenger cars and light trucks. Oddly enough, they are based on yearly averages on 12,500 miles driven in a year, so this is a pretty close comparison. Should I have driven that mileage, I would have created the following emissions:

• 77.1 lbs. of hydrocarbons
• 575 lbs. of carbon monoxide
• 38.2 oxides of nitrogen
• 11,450 lb.s or carbon dioxide
  

From an exercise standpoint, I can safely say that my average speed is about 15.5 mph. It may be a little higher than that, but I think that is a safe number. With that in mind, I have spent 774 hours on my bike. In three years, there is a total of 26,280 hours, which means I have spent almost 3% of my time riding a bicycle.

Additionally, I believe that I burn an average of 500 calories per hour. This equals 38,700 calories that I have burned from bicycle riding. Because it takes 3,500 calories to either gain or lose a pound, the amount of calories that I have burned equal about to about an 11 lb. difference in weight (either loss or maintaining).

A Mother at the Gym

Monday night is Boot Camp night. Every week I head to Bob's Gym after work for 75 minutes of punishment. Today was no worse, but I realized how much I hate getting my ass kicked even though I know in the long run, I'll be better off.

Cue the entrace music for Tamara Grier...or my "Mom at Gym." This isn't some sort of weird "Who's your daddy" reference or title for some poorly produced B-movie. I thought of all the times my mom made me do thing as a child, whether it be clean my room, eat some funky looking vegetable or do my homework.

In some of these cases, I did what I needed to do, but every now and then, I was just mad about it and I didn't want to talk to anyone. Mom didn't care. She knew I would get back to normal in a couple of hours. Of course, I didn't know better. If I was miserable, I may as well do the same for her...at least I thought it would work.

So what soes this have to do with Boot Camp? Simply put?
1 lap run outside
100 push ups
1 more lap outside
100 more push ups
...and then some more stuff.

I'll be the first to admit. My weakness is my upper body. It's never been good. I've always biked and I would put my strength there. So 100 push ups was tough. 200...MURDER. It took me forever and everyone finished WAY before I did, but I toughed it out and did what I had to do.

I recognize that it is a weakness and I also know that I will never fix it until I bite the bullet and do something about it. So "Mom" made me do something I hate doing even though I know...and she knows...it will make me better in the long term.

Still, I'm not talking to her...until Thursday at spinning class and it will all be OK by then.

Making a Run For It

I woke up Saturday morning geared up to do the St. Patrick's Day Run of Luck 7K Run in Evansville. I needed to get there a little early to do my late registration and so Leandra could get her volunteer assignment.

Being that I am not a runner and it was a little chilly, I wasn't really sure what to wear. Most of my clothing is very the gym or bking so I had to figure out what I could use. I ended up wearing my long legged biking bibs, which aren't padded and a pair of short over those. On the top half, I have a long sleeved t-shirt with a short sleeved shirt on top. I tied on my bandana, slipped on my shoes and a pair of light gloves and I was ready to go.

We had to make an emergency run to Target to get a pair of sunglasses. I couldn't find mine anywhere. It wasn't sunny (saw no sun the entire day), but I like having them on. It helps me to focus forward and mask any pain.

The Evansville Bicycle Club had a booth in the exhibit hall so Leandra and I met up with the volunteers once I was registered. I didn' get a t-shirt, but they knocked $5 off my late registration fee so it all evened out. I put up my tracking chip and was ready to go. Leandra headed off to her intersection with Di Holland, one of my EBC buds.

I was running with Jeremy, a guy that I work with, who originally brought up the idea to run. I met up with him in the exhibit hall before we headed outside. It hadn't really warmed up much. The sky was overcast and it felt like it would rain at any minute. It's amazing how the sun can raise the temperature about 10 degrees...but no luck with that today.

We found a good spot to sit and wait for the start. I had been contemplating whether or not I should bring some music to play while I was running. Jeremy had done so, but I opted not to for two reasons:

1. No Pockets
2. Ironman competitors can't use headphones/music, so I wouldn't either.

The gun sounded and we were off...but not really. We had to wait for everyone in front of us to cross over the sensor to activate their chip. We probably were in a slow walk for about 30 seconds until we got to the sensor and could run. From that point on, it was a mob of people zig zagging around the slower folk trying to fight for some space. Eventually, a lane for the walkers was started they turned off from our route.

The route started out downtown and then went out along the river front. Eventually it turned back in and went down some of neighborhood streets back towards downtown and the end of the run.

Leandra and Di had a pretty prime spot. They were at the intersection where the runners turned out to hit the meat of the route, but it was also the point where everytone turned back in to hit the finish line. Basically, I got to see them twice.

I had been hoping to finish the route in 45 minutes. About halfway through, my shins started tightening up. It wasn't bad, but the constant pounding onthe asphalt was taking its toll. I knew that I would have issues. Most of my running is on a treadmill which has some give to it. My pace was slowing down it deal with it...I was hoping that I would still make my goal.

I saw Leandra and Di at the turn back point and I knew I was close to done. I was hoping to finish in front of Jeremy, but he ended up catching up towards the end and passing me with about three blocks to go. I crossed the finish line relieved that I could finally slow down, but I wasn't expecting to have to come to a full stop so my chip could be cut off of my shoe. I was worried about cramping, but was able to get moving quickly and walk it off. My final time was 43 minutes, 40 seconds. Goal accomplished!

I'm happy I finished the run, but it was a bit of a reality check. If I have any aspirations of doing the half-marathon in April...much less an Ironman sometime in the future, running on a treadmill isn't going to cut it.

Oh yeah, that afternoon, I met up with Di and a few other people to go for a bike ride. Thankfully, the weather was poopy enough that we opted out of the 43 mile route and only pulled together 22 miles. Man...my legs were shot. Climbing hills...any hill...was miserably tough.

All in all...it was a good time and I enjoyed the run. I just have to keep truckin.

Taking Advantage of the Warming Weather

It's been awhile since I've posted anything. With the weather being so miserable, I've been at the whim of other people's schedule to get around. Considering we have only one car, I've not had the ability to drive where I need to go with the crappy weather. But I think that is about the change.

This weekend was finally nice enough to start doing something. I kicked it off with 54 miles on the bike in Henderson, Kentucky. I've only done this club route once before...as did the group I was riding with...and we got lost. We somehow found our way back on the route, but we were 7 miles short at the end. So I rode laps around a high school parking lot until my mileage was completed.

That was my longest ride so far this year and it is actually pretty hilly. My legs were shot from being at the gym the night before (not the best idea) and I ended up crashing in the living room once I got home. I didn't really accomplish much the rest of the day so I had to cram it on Sunday.

Woke up early on Sunday morning to make an unplanned trip back to Henderson (the back of my cell phone came off when it fell) and did our weekly grocery shopping. Once I got home, the work began.We have a huge oak tree in our front yar d that dumps a ton of leaves every fall. For the first couple of years, all I did was rake and bag them. As I've been more enviromentally aware, I've actually kept them to mulch in our garden. Last fall, I did my fair share of raking, but I didn't get all of it. I would guess to say that 1/4 of what was left was sitting in pockets around my house (the picture to the right may not seem like alot, but it was). I spent about an hour raking everything in our garden and using the lawnmower to chop it all up. This is the second year I've mulched our leaves. Our soil is pretty bad (almost like clay) and I'm hoping that this will help to loosen it up.

Second task was to start setting up the rain barrels. Last fall, I purchased some drainage tubes to connect my downspouts with some buried drainage lines that lead to the street. When I added the barrels, I cut the downspouts but never made plans for what to do in the winter (I have to take them down so the water won't freeze and burst the barrels). Three of my four downspouts were cut out and I was lucky that the buried lines were in place. Everything worked out...luckily.

We had just planted some lettuce, spinach and broccoli. We were told they like cooler temps so we thought we would give it a shot. Which means we will need to start watering them and now was a good time to start prepping for the possible rain on Tuesday.

Two barrels were installed. I decided to wait in the third so I can get a few extra bricks. I cut one downspout a little high and I need to lift the barrel to compensate. Still 100 gallons of water (at capacity) should be OK for this time of the season.

This is the thrd barrel I installed and it turned out pretty well in comparison to my first two. I took me three shots to get it right. I still have one more downspout to go and I will tackle that sometime soon.

By the way, if you are interested and live in Wisconsin, you can pick these up at a relatively low cost (in comparison to custom designs). Just go to the following link: http://v3.mmsd.com/RainBarrels.aspx

I wrapped up the weekend with an additional 43 miles that afternoon. My wife and a friend went to the IMAX to see Alice in Wonderland...altough I just wanted to see the new Tron: Legacy trailer. Yep. I'm a geek.