Double Lake

Today was a great ride out at Double Lake.  I have no idea how far or anything I went as my GPS didn't work very well out there... I'm still learning how to make that sucker go.

But the weather was perfect and the trails were happy!

The only problem is I'm still sore and tired from the Boot Camp and rock climbing that I did Monday and Tuesday.  So I decided to only do one lap and call it quits since I do have a lot of things to do this weekend and want to make sure I get it all done.

Rock Climbing!

So, I'm still in all kinds of pain from last nights boot camp.  So that kind of made rock climbing interesting tonight.

I lacked flexibility, strength and movement so making some climbs I've done previously fairly easily, I struggled hard tonight.  But it's good, muscle fatigue. I will take tomorrow mostly off and recover and recoup and get ready for some biking on Thursday.

It was great to be climbing and my friend I was with was quite helpful in pushing me (I'm blaming you for the extra pain I feel tomorrow!) And it was great to see some people at the TRG that I've not seen in a long time.

Great night indeed!

Boot Camp

Last week while running with a friend we ran into the instructor of a boot camp session at Memorial Park.  We got to talking and he invited us to come join one night, so we decided to do it the next Monday (last night.)

We got there early to do a nice easy warm up run before hand.  That went well, we ran the purple loop nice and easy got warmed up.  When we got back, the instructor was there setting up.  Noticed right off the bat, tires to run with.  Sweet! It's gonna be painful!

We meet the other participants of the session and then we start off with some stretches.  After a couple minutes of that, we head straight for the tires, we had to pull the tires about 35-40 years, and swap out with the next person in line at the end.  We did that about 5-6 times.  Then we moved to carrying a bag of sand, doing the same thing, run the 35-40 yards and pass it off to the next person in line.  This is great I thought, good speed work and muscular endurance building.  I can handle this quite well.

After that we did sprints to each of the cones he had lined up alone the route, and he would holler out something we had to do.  Jumping jacks, planks, knee highs, gorilla jumps, and something else I can't remember, we would then shuffle back side ways to the beginning and do it all over again, two more times.  It was during this that I realized that my shoulder still need work.  I couldn't hold the plank on my left side because it was bothering my shoulder.  I need to work on it, rehab the muscle structure and get it strong again.

Next was arm work outs.  The instructor handed out pieces of PVC pipe that was filled with something to us all.  Then we started doing various exercises like military presses, front and back, 45 degree presses, bench press, tricep raises.  All kinds of misery after the first minute of them.  Talk about working to muscle fatigue!  My shoulder also didn't like too many of these, but I struggled through them.

Then we moved to push ups which I could not do at all.  Between the trashing the arms just took and my bum shoulder, I couldn't support myself to do pushups, so I did planks instead.  Then all kinds of ab crunches, bicycles, scissors, etc.  I was totally feeling it before we were done!

And this morning, I have a huge knot in my back from the work out and all my limbs and core are extremely sore.  P90X has nothing on this boot camp stuff. 

If I can rehab my shoulder up, I may think about doing boot camp over P90X! And if I can muster up the money to do it. It was a great workout and the instructor was awesome.  Very military like, but also very attentive to make sure everyone was OK and not doing something that would do more harm than good.

And for now, I sit on the heating pad trying to fix my back and get ready for tonight's workout...

Memorial to Addicks Dam and Back

So I was in need of a long bike ride, and someone made mention on Friday about starting at Memorial Park and going West to Addicks dam.  And I thought that was a grand idea, so I made it happen.

I had a vague idea of what I was doing.  And at 7am Sunday I decided I should probably get a more than vague idea... So I Google mapped the route.  Looks nice and simple.  The plan was to meet at 8am at Memorial Park.  It ended up being just me and one other person.  We get going, and head West.  Following fairly busy streets (I hate riding on the roads!)  for the majority of this part of the leg of our journey.

So we ended up doing about 35 miles in around 4 hours.  That may seem slow... OK, it is slow, but the Ant Hills were pretty miserable and there was quite a bit of walking around and through stuff that wasn't very ridable.  So we killed a lot of time here.  Thanks to Ant Hills it seems our average speed was 8.6 mph. 

It was a good long slow ride, great for building up the base again.  I felt good most of the way through, towards the end my neck and back were starting to bother me a bit, but that was because I've not been on the bike that long in a while and also haven't worn a CamelBak in a long time either. Today my neck and shoulders are tight from this. 

And according to my T6c, I seemed to have burned off 1600 calories during this ride, which is another good thing.  Lots of weight left to lose after gaining it since my crash.  I'm on the right track here!

Wednesday Night's Run.

So tonight I was suppose to run with one friend, but something came up and she had to bail... So I managed to find someone else to run with tonight.  And it was all good.

It was just the three mile loop at Memorial Park, plus about another quarter-half mile getting too and from there.  We ran it in about 30 minutes.  I don't have the exact details on the run, still have to upload it to the computer, but it's drying out after washing it to make sure it doesn't cake up and such.

But yeah, it was a good run and I felt good after and during it.  So running is getting easier again... Must mean time to kick it up a bit! (6 miles on Saturday should cover that nicely!)

Falling Behind on Posting!

Yes, I've fallen behind here a bit.  I've not been slacking off! Honest!

Saturday, I ran 3ish miles at Memorial Park, and it was good, a bit faster than I'm use to, but was running with someone who is much faster than me so her speeding me up was a good thing... But it was yet to be determined how good since I was racing on Sunday...

Then Sunday, up early for a donut ride with some more friends.  The biking was about 10.5 miles and I decided shortly after starting that it was probably not a good idea to have taken my single speed out for this bike, as I needed to keep quasi fresh legs for the run I was doing later in the afternoon!  Yikes!  Legs were pretty tired after this.

2pm was the start time of the Jingle Bell Run.  5 miles. 2 miles more than I have run in over a year.  I was running with a couple of friends and they kind of pushed me a bit.  And it was also a bit hilly, and I like the hills.  I naturally speed up on hills for some reason, and it's good.  We were going through at a pretty good pace, slowly speeding up as the race went on.  At about mile 4.25 or so, my brain told me I was done.  I listened... Until I saw how strong my friends were going still.  And so I unlistened to my brain, and started running again.  I'm glad I did, I started to feel not too bad, still in lots of pain since I hadn't run that far in a loooong time.  But yeah. It was good.  And ended up with a 9:02 min/mile pace average for the 5 miles! Yay!  That's faster than I normally run my 3 miles (about 9:15-9:30.)

Sunday night I paid for it, and Monday as well. I was in all kinds of pain from the weekends activity!  But a hot bath Sunday and again Monday helped things out, and I was feeling good on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, I went for a walk/run with another friend at Memorial Park and it was good, fun, just what I needed to get my legs moving again.

So yeah, I've not been slacking off on the working out, just on the writing!

Silly GPS!

So, I cleaned up my T6c, and got it all ready for my run today.  Everything was ready to work right off the bat.  I changed the screen to the display I wanted, it started looking for the HRM, found... I turn on the GPS pod, it finds it no problem! Sweet! Everything is synced and ready to go!

I start running, I planned on doing my three mile loop around my neighborhood, and I felt good starting off.  Then after about five minutes I look down at my watch and... GPS isn't synced to the satellites!! WTF?!  I have no speed or distance!  Well screw it.  I'm not going to play with it, I know my distance and I can figure out my average pace (9:15) for that three miles.  After about two miles though, the GPS finally found the satellites and started giving me read outs.  Blah.  I decided to ignore it the rest of the run, and just go based on my time.

I have yet to look at what is up with the GPS pod and why it took so long to sync or anything.  But it was a good over all run and I was happy with it.  I thought I was moving a lot slower than I apparently went.  I figured I was going mid 10s... But I will take the 9:15s!   Even though my calves are starting to seize up already, and now my shins are feeling a bit tight.  I did spend a good amount of time stretching everything out, and will continue to do so over the next day or so, until the next run on Thursday.

Now I just need to figure out this silly GPS pod and get it working more reliably! ARG!

Beating Addictions

Those of you that know me, know I'm not into drugs, cigarettes and don't drink much.  And yet I still have an addiction I'm constantly fighting.  I thought I had won the fight several times over.  I went for months, even a year or more with out touching my addiction.  But slowly, I started making excuses.  Started to allow it back into my life.

It starts off simple enough, oh, this isn't really it.  It's OK if I have this just this one time, it won't do much other than make me sick.  Then I will remember why I quit it.  But even though it makes me sick, I continue to use it more and more.  To the point where I stop thinking about it, or what it is doing to me.  How it changes my body in a bad way.  Nausea, cramps, too much sleep, too little sleep, weight gain, head aches, body aches, bad recovery from work outs, unable to work out because of just all around feeling like crap.

Then there is also the monetary side of things.  Sure it starts off cheap.  "Oh, I will just get this small one."  And that would be good for a couple of days.  But as the addiction takes a hold, it requires more constant feeding.  And as you get use to it, you need to not only get it more frequently, but you need to find more pure forms of it.  So you start buying more and more, and not only are you buying it more frequently, you start buying more expensive stuff just to get a fix.

I use to ask myself.  "How can a drug addict do that to themselves?" Or "What is wrong with that alcoholic? Just stop drinking, it's easy."

Why does one do that to themselves?  Why do they do something that causes misery in their life? When I realized I was an addict, then the answers to those kinds of questions became quite clear.  Some times they do it because they have this state of mind, where the just NEED to do it.  Doesn't much matter how it happens, it just needs to happen.  Other times, they do it, but they don't know they are doing it until after it's done.  They go about getting their fix and after the deed is done, they think "What the hell?  Why did I do that? How did I do that? I didn't even realize I was doing it!"

When I realized that I was doing things with out even knowing it, that is when I knew I had a problem.  I had to get clean.  I didn't want my body to feel like crap any more.  I wanted my body to work well and feel good.   I was tired of being a slave to the addiction.  I was ... Just tired in general.  The path is a long one since it's continuous.

The first time I tried to break it, it took three weeks.  Those three weeks were pure hell.  I was just in a bad mood all the time, everything on my body hurt and was rebelling against not getting what it wanted.  I've heard of other people going through similar issues as they detoxed from narcotics, heroin, coke, meth... How miserable it was.

That fourth week... That was bliss.  No more head aches.  No more feeling tired. No more body aches, cramps, moodiness, nausea.  I was feeling good, energized, work outs felt real good and strong.  Recovery times from the hard workouts were quick and less painful.  Muscles weren't as tight or cramping as much.  Life was good.  Seeing better, thinking more clearly, I was like... Super Human it felt!  Foods started to taste better... Things that I thought use to be good food (taste wise not health wise) tasted... Gross.  Good, well prepared foods tasted amazing!

I was clean! And I felt clean! It was good!  I stayed that way for a long time too.  At least a year, if not year and a half.  Then slowly the addiction started to poke it's head up again and quietly suggested things that would be OK.  Wouldn't hurt where you are now.  Come on, it's OK! It's still clean, just a bit ... Different.  I started to agree.  I started to follow that path backwards.  First it was just small things, once or twice a week... Then it grew and needed more frequent feedings... Addictions are a hungry beast. They can be dormant for a while... But when they awaken, they are hard to beat, and can't easily be satisfied.

It's been several years since that first attempt at breaking my addiction.  I still fight it, and frequently lose the battle.  But as I write this, this marks my new beginning.  My new attempt at cracking the addiction once and for all.  I will tame this beast this time.  I will gather up all my resolve and will power and force it out of my system.

So this holiday season, please forgive me if I'm moody, temperamental, irritable, cranky and just plain ole not fun to be around.  It's just because I'm trying to re-break my addiction, pretty much at the worse possible time of the year...

But my addiction to sugar, stops now.

Riding with Roadies on a SS Mountain Bike

My regular bike, Specialized Stumpjumper Marathon 29er, is in the shop because of my lacking a front brake, but I still wanted to get my Wednesday ride in with my buddy who happens to ride with me, so there he is, on his C'Dale road bike, kind of setup racing style.  And me on my Specialized Hardrock Comp from 2002, which I converted to a single speed.

Let's just say riding an SS mountain bike with a roadie, is not the most easy thing todo!  We went 10 miles, averaging around 10.5 mph (still working on figuring out my T6c! Too complicated!) in a temperature of around 50F if not below that.

The gearing on my bike is 32:16 for those who knows what that means.  So my cadence is hillarious when it comes time to pick up some speed, which I did manage to max out at 23 mph on that bike, but I think my cadence was around 50,000 rpm to reach that though! 

The SS needs some TLC, the chain is rusty, the brakes, are ... Yeah not so much there, the tires probably need new tubes (I think those tubes in there are 2-3 years old.)  But she's a good bike that is always ready for action.  So this weekend I think I will give her the once over and make her shiny and proud again!

As for the Marathon, she's coming home from the shop tomorrow.  I asked about getting bigger chain rings, and it's possible.  But that is something that I will wait on doing until after I get my road bike, as I will need to make sure I have that covered first, before upgrading it.  Looks like I will be going from 22/32/44 to 22/38or40?/48.  A friend also gave me the suggestion of swapping out the cassette to change up some gearing which might be cheaper.  We shall see!

Splashing Cars in the Rain

So I went out for a run today.  It was around 50F and raining.  Wet and miserable as a lot of people would think about it.  But, like that true whack job that I am, I rather enjoyed it.  Scary I know! I enjoyed my run.

I noticed that once and a while the cars passing me on the street would slow down and avoid the puddles to avoid me.  How nice of them.  I thought to myself, wouldn't it be funny that as they did that, I jumped into the puddle splashing the car?  So... From then on I did!   If the car slowed down to avoid splashing me... I would gather a bit of speed and jump full force into the puddle splashing the car as best as I could!  And I got to see three WTF?! faces while I did it.  It was great fun! Made the run enjoyable... Running around splashing the puddles around and such!  Great Fun!

I don't really know my times for the splits or anything, I did run 3.05 miles, and it was around 30 minutes.  But it was about just getting out there and trying to be out there and get some kind of run in, and I accomplished that.  So it was a success.  I don't know the times and splits because I'm still trying to figure out the GPS on my T6c, and well it apparently didn't start when I thought it did.  I had to map my run to figure out the new distance I ran.

But I think I have it more figured out now, so hopefully next time it will work out!

Over Night at La Grange Hospital Followed by Electric Fence Fun!

I spent last night in Austin, watching a musical.  So rather than driving all the way back to Houston, I decided to find a place in La Grange, since at 8am I was going to be going to Warda to mountain bike.

It was about 2 am and I decided to just crash at the La Grange Hospital.  So, I parked, pulled out my beach towel and tried to sleep for the next 7 hours.  It wasn't pleasant, but it was free and I got some sleep so I wasn't completely trashed when it came to ride.

So, that was the stay at the La Grange Hospital (;

I waited on Helena and Mike to show up, they got there shortly after I did, so not much waiting around.  We geared up and headed on out!

This will be my first time on trails since I had my bike crash where I fractured my collar bone and separated my shoulder.  I was very much tentative out there.  So between that and having no fitness, I was slow.  I've lost my stamina to ride, and my technical abilities.  It was a bit ... Scary I guess.  Oh yeah, and I had no front brake either.  So I was down a bit on the braking power for some of those back hills out there.

But, since when would any of that stop me, right?  So out we went!  I struggled to keep up with Mike and Helena.  But it was good to be pushed like that, helped me get over some of the tentativeness I had around some of the stuff I should have zero problems, but still thought about too much.

So about half way through the trails, we get out of the trees onto the fields.  There is a pond that you ride around, and you go between the pond and a fence.  The fence also has an electric line on it, to help keep the cows away from each other.  So we come around the pond, and there is a big puddle in the way, looking deep we decide to dismount and walk around it.  Helena walked around the left side which was pond side.  I decided to go around the right side, which was fence side.  I knew the fence was electric. I have touched them before, and been zapped.  So I (thought I) knew what to expect on the fence should I accidentally touch it.  But I wasn't going to.  I grab ahold of the barb wired fence to steady myself, and start walking around the puddle.  And then my foot slipped and **ZAP** my hip touched the fence, and it felt like a wasp bite.  And there was also a popping/cracking/straightening in my spine as well when it happened.  WOW that was ... Shocking!  I couldn't do much but start laughing at it.  My life, the comic strip!

So my right leg feeling a little wonky from the zap, we get back on the bikes and head to the back forty! This is where I started to walk more than ride.  Because my front brake doesn't work, I couldn't go down the steep hills, so I walked them.   We finish up that lap, and take a breather, refuel, etc.  Then we head on out for a second lap.

This time I'm feeling a bit better on the trails, and have a bit of a warm up in my legs, so I go out and do some harder riding on the fun bit at the start... And proceed to wear myself out! HA!  So I'm slowing down but building up confidence at the same time.  Kind of a dangerous combination, especially with no front brake.  So we get through the first half of the trails... up to where we come back out on the fields and I decide I'm done.  I don't want to do anything stupid.  So, I let the gang know I'm done but will wait  for them at the vehicles.

All in all it was a good ride today!  Very happy with it... Even with the zapping of the electric fence! Which, by the way I now have burn marks on hip where I touched the live wire.  Ouch!

Wednesday Night's Bike Ride

It was a nice easy night out with a buddy today.  Just went and did around 15 miles around the picnic loop at Memorial Park.  We did do a couple of pick ups during the ride, only because there was a guy on inline skates and we didn't want to get passed by him.  But as we were doing around 23mph he passed us pretty quickly.  So much for that plan!

Then we hammered out one last lap, where I got half way through and started to choke out due to mucus problems.  I must have had something with cinnamon earlier in the day, I'm still not sure what though.  I have to pay very special close attention to that now that I'm back to training.  Being allergic to something as yummy as cinnamon really sucks.  But luckily on low intensity weeks I can eat some to cover those cravings!

So all in all it was a good day on the bike!

Run vs T6c

My new toy showed up! The Suunto T6c Multi Sport Pack.  Basically, it's the T6c and the GPS pod.  And of course I gave it a try tonight for my run.  But let's go with the basic parts first, I did my normal 2.46 mile run around my house.  I did it in 23:26.9  First lap was 12:03.3 and the second one was 12:05.2.  It was slower than what I have been running it, but because I was trying to figure out what I was doing with the T6c.

So, other than slowing down my run, since I don't know what I'm doing with it, it confused me.  At first I thought it was wrong. I was running along, and it was showing 7minutes... I was thinking, there is no way I'm running seven minute miles.. Then I thought maybe it was mph. But when I was sprinting across a street I noticed it went down to 3... So no way that could be mph!  I got home and it dawned on me!  It's a Finnish device... It's defaulted to metric! 7 minutes per km!  Now that makes a lot more sense! I still haven't figured out how to figure out how to get the various stats from the watch. I played with the software a bit, but it's slightly confusing as well.  Much more playing around required to fully understand it.  But no more time left tonight...

Time for bed... Night All!

We Have Failure.

Keeping myself honest here. 

I failed to go swim this morning.  I went to bed 2 hours later than I wanted to, and then I didn't sleep well at all (because I actually slept in bed for a change, long story there.) 

So between not enough sleep and then getting bad sleep, my body just didn't feel like it was up to get out there and swim.  And since I'm still dealing with the whole body rebelling against being active again, I'm listening to it while it gets use to my abusing it.  But this won't last for much longer as I don't have enough time to be missing out on workouts that are needed.  Especially to build up a base this early on.

So, I missed my morning swim, but won't miss my afternoon run! 

Biking Fun!

Went out biking over at George Bush Park today.  It was pretty good, nice and easy out there with a friend.  The 20 miles we did in about an hour and forty minutes.  So pretty slow going, but still working on building up the miles in the legs.  So the slow is not a problem, and I could have probably gone for about another 10 miles with out too much trouble at that speed.

But it was a good place to stop to make sure my legs aren't toast for tomorrow's run after work.  And I also am suppose to start swimming tomorrow morning, so we shall see how that goes!  Hopefully I remember how to and don't drown in the 3' pool! (=

Bloody Brilliant Day out there today though! Glad I got to enjoy it a bit before I deal with all those nagging indoor chores!

Motivation and Sore Calves

So today, I started my day off helping out the Team in Training folks with a water stop.  The full marathoners were doing 18 miles, and the halfers were doing 10 miles.  It was good to see them out there, and a couple of surprise friends as well!

Seeing them out there definitely motivated me for my planned 3-4 mile run today.  So after I was done with helping them out, I went back to Memorial Park and ran the loop, 3 miles.  It was a bit painful because my calves weren't fully recovered from Thursdays run (I knew that was going to much me up!) but it was still not a bad run.  I did the 3 miles (Yes, I added a bit extra to make it really 3 for your pedantics out there) in 27:33.09 or an average pace of 9:11 minute miles.  Which tells me, I was running way too fast at one point because I did stop to walk and massage my calves a bit.  But it also tells me, I'm getting back into the swing of things.

When I got back to my truck, I got my recovery bottle and while I was drinking that I actually did some proper stretching.  I need to get more of that in so I don't seize up like I use to.

So the running continues... And it continues to not completely and utterly suck.

Running When I Shouldn't.

So I wasn't suppose to run today, because my calves were very tight.  But after a rough drive home, in bad traffic and lots of other stuff going on in my head, I needed to get some relief.  So, I ran.

For those who don't know me, I hate running. Loathe. Detest. Abhor. etc. Yeah, I kind of don't like it generally.  And normally when I am feeling bad, down, upset, disconcerted, disconsolate, and wordy, I just want to curl up and gorge on bad food.  So, this going for a run thing instead of eating... MAJOR breakthrough for me.

Of course since my calves were so tight I really shouldn't have gone out.  It may have been more detrimental to my legs and ability to run again soon.  But the ability to go out and run the demons out was way worth it.  It was a slower run than my last one because of the sore legs.  But, it was a good mental run.

I do not think I hate running as much anymore because of this.  I still don't like it.  But, I can't say I hate it anymore.

I just did my 2.46 mile route.  1.23 miles out at a pace of 9:34, and then 9:14 on the way back.  Still doing negative splits, with huge gaps, so I could totally be running faster that first bit, but I'm still relearning that I can run.  And so I'm happy with these numbers.  And happy with the over all results of todays run.......

Even if I can't walk tomorrow.

Running Again...

Last night I ran again.  Third time in three weeks!  I'm starting to get pretty consistent there.  Although I do realize I need much more running than once a week for this.

So I did a short 2.46 mile run, averaging 9:01 min/mile.  I'm apparently regaining my running form faster than I figured.  Now if I can get back into distance at these slowly faster times then things will be good!  My first "lap" of 1.23 miles was 9:13 pace, and the second one was at 8:49 pace.  So I am doing negative splits with out trying too hard for it. I just go out and run and pick it up as it feels good.  Now to start making the run a bit longer I think!

My legs aren't feeling too bad today either.  So they are adjusting to the pounding again.  Should make Thursdays run alright.  And then Saturday I will plan on bumping up to 3 miles to see what I can do there.

Here we go...

I use to blog about my training when I first got into adventure racing.  I was excited about AR and just wanted to write my experience down about it.  I was pretty good at keeping that blog up to date for a couple years.  Then I slowly let it slide.

Now that I'm doing this small race up in Canada next August, I am thinking about blogging it and hoping who ever looks at this can help keep me honest and accountable.  If you don't see a post here... Call me out and find out what I'm doing instead of training!

That said... Let the journey begin....