cardano Training Blog

Yesterday I participated in the incredibly fun MACSAC Bike the Barns Tour de CSA. This is the first time I’ve ever ridden more than 50 miles! I enjoyed it a lot, and I’m glad my girlfriend invited me along. There’s no way I would have done it if she hadn’t wanted someone to ride with.
So here’s how it worked: we started at Troy Gardens on the north side of town, eating a breakfast of croissants, whole-grain buns, and apples, all made locally. It was delicious, but it only got better from there.
We then biked 15-20 miles to Dream Farm, where we tasted goat cheese on crispy crackers, and saw some really cool goats (two sets of horns). A very few of us got to use the 1 porta-potty, but for those who didn’t want to wait in line for atleast 30 minutes, the only option was to hold it (or find a secluded patch of road, and…). After leaving Dream Farm, we biked another 10 or 12 miles to Vermont Valley Farm, where we ate a wonderful lunch (coming at just the right time, too) of all-local produce and breads.
After leaving Vermont Valley Farm, we biked another 20 miles through really monstrous hills (I think I might have been the only person who liked this stretch) to Primrose farm, for iced juices and artisan chocolate. At this point, my girlfriend and I jumped ship and biked straight home (about 10-12) miles instead of going all the way back out to Troy Gardens and having to come all the way back from there to get home. But still, it was great! I was surprised to find a bunch of people I knew were also doing the ride, and had a good chat with all of them.
My only regret: my pinkies have been numb for the last day and a half- I think I pinched a nerve from leaning on the handlebars for so long.

Now that I’ve biked 55 miles, and enjoyed it, I’ll start thinking about a 1/2 Ironman next summer.

Workout:

• Type: Run
• Date: 09/30/2007
• Time: 07:50:00
• Total Time: 1:04:00.00
• Average Heart rate: 153
• Distance: 8.01 miles
• Average Pace: 7:59.36/mile

Wow. What a tiring day. It began at 8, with a 60-mile bike tour of local farms, and finished with a dinner with relatives. More on the ride later after I’ve gotten some rest.

Workout:

• Type: Cycle
• Date: 09/29/2007
• Total Time: 4:30:00.00
• Distance: 55 miles
• Average Speed: 12.22 mph

I’ve been noticing something curious recently during hard intervals now that I’m using my “new” heart rate monitor (actually, it was given to me used. I’ll take what I can get, while I save for a new bike).
My HR does not get very high! Even while working very hard, I haven’t seen it above 180 or so! This is surprising to me, for some reason, and is on the extreme low end of the range for my age.
My resting HR is also quite low. Hmmm. I need to gather some more data.

This morning I ran the first hill workout of the 10K training program I’ve worked out. I had some trouble finding a hill that was long enought to take 2:30 to run up (there are lots of steep hill around here, but not a lot that are both of a moderate grade and very long). However, eventually I was able to work out a route that ended up being pretty good, though I had to tweak it a little bit over the first two repeats, so I didn’t quite get the full intended effect of the workout. Still, it was hard.

Workout:

• Type: Run
• Date: 09/26/2007
• Time: 07:00:00
• Total Time: 1:00:10.00
• Max Heart rate: 185
• Distance: 7 miles
• Average Pace: 8:35.76/mile

2 x 25 minutes at race pace today in the 8 at crew. We made it something like 6-7 miles around Lake Mendota.

Workout:

• Type: Other
• Date: 09/26/2007
• Time: 05:00:00
• Total Time: 1:20:00.00

The wind was from the northwest today, and it was raining, which means we were stuck on land at crew practice today. We “took advantage of it” by doing lots of hard erging and circuit work. Circuit work I don’t mind, it’s actually lots of fun, but erging…yuck.
At the end of practice we had a whip kick competition: two rowers and a girl coxswain competing (for those who don’t know, a whip kick is performed as follows: lie on your back, holding onto the ankles of someone standing above you, with your legs straight out. Swing your legs upwards until the person standing over you can grab your feet and throw them back down to the ground. It’s hard), seeing how many whip kicks we could do in 30 seconds. Final standings as follows:
Coxswain: 28
Other rower and I: 26 or 27, not certain.
How did this happen?! Them coxswains. Feisty!

I just realized I left out all the local flavor present at the race in my dry, statistically oriented description. Well, now I’m going to remedy that.
First off, the race was sponsored by a zoo, as you might guess from the name, so they invited runners to dress as their favorite zoo animals. For some reason, there were about 10 honey bees (not a zoo animal last time I checked). Aside from the honey bees, there was a guy in a full polar-fleece zebra suit, a tiger, and a woman in a full-body costume that created the illusion that she was riding an emu. There was also a large, costumed lion congratulating children, but I don’t think he ran the race.
To aid in the costuming, the race goodie bags each contained a pair of small fluffy spotted ears, which at least half the field wore during the race.
However, the highlight of my morning was the old man with the beard so long he had it tucked into his belt.

Yesterday evening I biked back down to the 5K run course to check where exactly we had gone. I discovered two things:
1. the leading pack didn’t run the route that was listed on the website. I have no idea why this happened.
2. Even though we didn’t run the originally intended route, we did run a 5K.

I’ll be looking for a race with a well-marked course next time. Forget about scenary!