Cool Gear: The Stick

So this weekend I'm going to be running the San Francisco Marathon, and anyone whose put themselves through one know that the biggest thing about a marathon is recovery after it which can either put you in great shape the next day or that you can be absolutely screwed.  I've used a foam roller in the past to help roll out any sore spots but it's not particularly condusive for travel so there's things like mini travel rollers but even then it's still a relatively big cylinder.  Soooooo enter..... "The stick"

 Essentially the idea is you can kinda give yourslef a massage with this thing, it's actually a little bit better because you apply more pressure at certain areas comparatively, or less if you want.  It's literally a stick that you can throw in your travel suitcase and away you go.  So I'll let you guys know how it goes both the stick and the marathon. Have a great long weekend guys.

~Cheers

Rain Runs

This morning I went for a run in sopping rain, and both Lisa's and my mom thought we were absolutely nuts for still going in the rain.  There's a few things that I actually kinda like about the rain.  Especially during the summer that we've had in the past few weeks with it being stupendously hot, the rain actually cools it off quite a bit and that way you're not completely dehydrated.  As for complains about being soaked? you actually don't notice it all that much once you're in the rain because once you get wet than you don't really notice it.  You notice it when you get home and you're absolutely drenched and dripping water everywhere.  But things to make rain runs more enjoyable, wear a waterproof layer on top (yes I know it's obvious but everyone should have this in their closet).  Dress lightly underneath, but make sure you're going to say warm because as soon as your body temp drops you're going to start running into problems.  If possible, use an old pair of shoes becuase they're going to get wet, squishy and probably pretty dirty.  I hate it when I have dirty shoes (but that's probably just one of my OCD tendencies).  Do wear a cap, it'll help to keep the rain out of your eyes.  If you have a set of shades with a clear lens, even better (I still need to get something like that).

Now the first and most important thing when you're done your rain run is strip your clothes and hop into the shower, because if you don't warm yourself back up you're probably going to catch a cold which will horribly throw your training off.  Stretching eating and what not can wait till later in the case of rain runs because getting yoruself dry and warm is a little bit more important.  If you can avoid doing too long of runs in the rain it'll be good because when you're shoes get waterlogged, you'll likely get more rubbing which will lead to blisters which suck.

Now the best thing is if you can avoid rain runs then that's probably your best bet, like me right now.  If I went running now instead of first thing this morning, I'd even have sun, but if you must, dress light, don't go too long, and make sure you're nice and warm after.

~Cheers

Another episode in my life as a stationary snob

So today's post is going to be a nice little short one that highlights another one of my exciting findings in the life of a stationary snob.  Most of us have heard of a company called Uni, they make lots of different pens, but what you probably didn't know is that they're actually made by a subdivision of Mitsubishi.  I remember many years ago they had a pencil that was a multi function one, so you had 3 pens and a pencil.  The cool thing with selecting this was just as long as you had the label of the writing implement you wanted to use facing you and pressed down it would select it automagically.  So that was probably my first experience with cool Japanese stationary.  The other thing with the Japanese that is also really cool is that they will think up of a solution to a problem that you probably didn't even realize existed.  Enter the Kuro Toga

Look at all the pretty colors

 So what does this magical pencil do?  Well everytime you lift up the pencil it rotates the lead ever so slightly.  You may be asking what is the point of that?  Well first off I will show a picture that will probably make ZERO sense, then I'll give a blurb

Look at me spin ma

So if that made absolutely zero sense, don't worry I was thinking that when I first saw it too.  Essentially the "problem" with normal mechanical pencils is that as you keep on writing on a single angle, you will start to get a increasingly flattened edge.  The problem with this (more so in chinese or southeast asian writing) is that your characters get more difficult to write neatly.  Anybody whose had asian parents will know of the experienece of being told WOW your writing is messy.  Seriously we hear about it all the time.  So the question is does it work?

Yes it really does stay sharp the entire time, other cool thing is your lead is less likely to break because you don't have to manually change the angle to get that sharpness.  So I'll write with it a bit more and come back and let you guys know how it is.  Initial impressions, the pencil is SWEEEEETTTTTT

If you guys want to know where to get them, drop me a line, and I'll let you know where I got mine.  As far as I know you can't get them in Calgary yet.

~Cheers

Feeling computer illiterate in OSX

Well finally updated to Lion today, and had heard a few friends gripe about how scrolling is funny and this and that.  So here are my thoughts so far.  I liked having a three finger swipe left and right changing my pages, I mean it's not a huge deal that it's now two finger swipe, the only problem now is that software needs to reprogram itself to take advantage of this.  So I mean that will come with time. In addition to that I need to learn like all of my gestures again, grrrrrrrrrr.  Just when you've gotten to a point when you know how to use everything it changes.  I guess this is a relatively significant OS update as compared to Leopard vs Snow Leopard.  There's cool things like mission control which is essentially a souped up version of expose which I do like.  Not sure how I feel about launchpad though, that may have something more to do with the fact I have more apps that I actually use on a regular basis.  I'm also trying to figure out why my iTunes has died on me right now. So as a whole yeah it's kinda cool, I like things like the new lock screen, but there are also some other things that I'm not quite sure about

Why it's called a rest day and not rest days

So the other day, well more like last Thursday I decided that i valued my sleep a little bit more than wanting to drag my lazy ass out of bed to go running and put in the training that I should.  So that day I decided that I was just not going to run because I wasn't feeling like it.  The only upside was I got to go look at lots of super nice, expensive and fast bikes that evening at Calgary Cycle.  But Friday was when I had an actual scheduled rest day, and I've been trying hard to take those after realizing that rest day doesn't mean pick up your bike and go do 100k or more with some pro cyclist friends of yours.  Somewhat defeats the purpose of having a rest day in the first place. 

Fast forward a little bit to saturday's run, now at this point I actually kinda like my 6 mile runs, I consider them my alright rights, not particularly long, and I feel comfortable doing them day in day out, it's become that new comfort distance (which is SCHWEEEET).  The thing with these so called comfort distances is that you become pretty comfortable running them and you know just how hard you can push your body, what kind of pace you run without needing to look at a watch etc.  However as I hit about 3 miles and started turning around I just felt like the legs were not feeling it, in the sense that you get when you're just tired, or exhauhsted.  Weird thing was that I wasn't really feeling either, just the legs weren't in it.  So I was thinking well this isn't good, I've got my race in a couple weeks and I feel bad after doing 3 miles, crikey I need to race for 26. 

That night when I was planning well what do I do now, do I continue with my 16 miler tommorow, do I shorten it, what should I do.  I also dabble from time to time in cycling (but really I'm rubbish at it) and decided that I was going to do a long ride on the bike around the time that I would spend racing (slash training mileage).  You can swap these things back and forth as long as it's the same kind of effort for about the same duration.  This would let me know if it was just muscle fatigue, bad day or what not.  So Sunday morning, woke up bright and early and headed out to Bragg Creek with Brian and Jeff.  Going out there wasn't bad we went at a pretty decent pace and I realized that I can bike with only one hand on the hoods (WIN) still working on doing it with the other hand and then no hands at all.  On the way back there were some tri cyclists that were also heading back and it was kind of a matter of pride thing that I couldn't get passed by them, so I went to the front and just kept on pulling at a decent pace around 37 km/h.  When I finally swung off the front Brian informs me the "bridge" group is about to catch us.  (I'm thinking seriously? I thought I was setting a decent pace, apparently not.  So they pass us, and we sit on them for a bit and Brian asks if we're going to go for it, I say sure.  So Brian begins the work of shutting them back down, we hit the roundabout, thinking we've catched them and they turn right (dang).  Around this time we see another tri cyclist a bit of a ways up front, and I'm determined to catch back up and pass them, and absolutely bury myself to catch up, taking a huge pull but at the end of the day MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.  The legs were definitely there, even while pacing them up a hill at a very quick pace, although I did blow up.

So now if you're still reading which you're probably not you're asking, where is this going and what does this have to do with the post's title.  Well I realized that the legs were indeed there,
 granted I probably shouldn't have pushed that hard, but the thing that I realized was that yesterday's run didn't go poorly because I had too much mileage or anything, it's just that they were a little bit sleepy and needed an opening up.  It's the same thing I talked about last week about running two a days where the morning run is meant to open up your legs. 

Moral of the story? if your schedule says take a single rest day? take a single rest day and not too, if you don't want to go do the full run and least go run a little bit because then at least your legs aren't just resting for two solid days.

~Cheers

The appeal of a run/walk strategy at a marathon

So anybody that's run a marathon before will undoubtedly have seen pace bunnies that will have their designated pace time filtering throughout the start area and then if you run with them in the race you'll have noticed that they don't do a strict running at the pace that they'll need to hit the goal time.  Now there's been a lot some rumblings from both camps on either side putting forth some good evidence on why you should(n't) do it.  I tried it the other day on one of my longer runs and definitely I can see the appeal of doing it but I've come to some conclusions about this run walk strategy.

Doing a run walk is slow
Well straight forward logic would dictate to be likely true because if you're running at the same pace for 10 minutes and then suddenly plop in an extra 1 minute break of course you're going to be slower.  But the cool thing is you're actually probably going to be running a little bit quicker than your target pace and then when you take your one minute break and finish it you're not all that much slower.  You can also modify the amount of time spent running/walking to help change this a bit.  The other thing is that you will likely be a bit fresher in the end because you've give yourself 18 or more 1 minute breaks throughout your race which could be a huge deal.

You need to follow it if you're doing it
For example if you say I'm going to do 10 on 1 off, you need to follow it because it can be very easy to say hey I'll take another 30 seconds here, and then you're bit by bit not taking 1 minute but 1.5 or 2 so you need to follow it in order for it to work

Your body is not meant to run 3 hours plus straight
The reason for doing a run walk is to give your a rest in between because it's not built to do that, sure the winners will run the entire time, but the amount of time that they've dedicated in order to do that is absolutely unbelievable.

It requires some calculation
If you are going to succesfully pull this off (which you can, people have run sub 3:30's on a run walk strategy) you need to calculate roughtly if I go for 10 minutes, and walk for 1, how fast am I running, how fast am I walking, what kind of distance do you cover in that time so it is completely doable you just need to plan it out a wee bit.

~Cheers

Why water may not be the best thing to rehydrate with?

So it's the summer months now, even if mother nature is being a little bit of a pain and gracing us once again with cloudy gloomy weather.  I blame Julie for taking the sun with her when she left on Saturday.  So last wednesday I was running and probably about after 4 miles I felt absolutely parched (or pooched, but more likely both).  Now people will always say the best way to rehydrate is with water, but I've talked about that in the past how maybe it's not the best, but there's more now, and now that it's summer and with lots of fruits there's better way to rehydrated (Tastier too).  No rehydrating usually has some target in addition to just drinking more water be it something like electrolytes (gatorade) or something like vitamins etc....

So the cool thing is I mean I knew that watermelon is full of water, or something like oranges etc.  But there's some fruits that are good for water AND something.

Electrolytes
Things like cantaloupe peaches and strawberries are great for giving you both water as well as electrolytes, and the best thing is that you can eat them whole, make a dessert or even a cold soup....mmmmm cold soup.  (Peaches, cantaloupe, peach nectar, lime juice and sea salt)

Vitamin C
Watermelon, kiwi and citrus fruits are great for getting vitamin c, I mean people know about oranges but what it is good for is that Vitamin c helps with your immune system, UV rays, and countering the effect of pollution and sweating.

Recovery
Pineapple and Cherries are great for recovery after a run because it helps with reducing inflammation as well as speeding up muscle repair.

Immune System
Yogurt and Kefir are good for ensuring your gut is full of good bacteria which is good for helping prevent bad stuff colonizing your gut. 

Other good things to drink instead of recovery is chocolate milk (which is great for recovery due to the perfect ratio of carbs to protein.  Coconut water (which is awfully tasty, and is good for electrolytes because it's got less sugar than gatorade).  Green tea is also good for anti-inflammatory properties.

And with that, time to go eat some cantaloupe.....mmmmmm cantaloupe.

~Cheers

The dreaded doubles and how to do them

So with most things training, if it's good for you it's usually a love hate relationship.  Hate to do them but love the results that comes from it.  Things like early morning runs, intervals, maximal efforts and the likes.  The same goes for doing two a days.  Usually two a days are great because you can get in more mileage and since it's usually spread out over two runs it doesn't put quite as much fatigue on your muscles at one time (it's almost the same premise behind a run/walk strategy at a marathon)


So why would you want to do two a days? You're essentially doing twice as much at least that's what your body feels like so you do need to build up to it, but once you do it's absolutely fantastic.  You get better economy and cardiovascular fitness just by sheer volume.  That benefit is really just a measure of scales.... run more means you're probably fitter.  If you're doing 40 minutes or more 5 times a week, you're probably ready to try and start tackling doubles. So how do you do it?

There's actually a pretty methodical way of going about this. You take your normal run, and divide it by 2.  So for me that'd be doing something like a 5k run (3 miles) in the morning, and then doing about a 6.5 km (4 miles) in the afternoon.  So you're probably thinking HOLY CRAP instead of doing 6 miles, you're now doing 8 miles, and depending on how your run that day is it might end up adding a ton of mileage on.  So the key with this is that you should build up slowly by taking your two easiest easiest runs and turning them into doubles.  This way you'll be able to adapt your body to the load, increasing your mileage and conditioning (that never seems to be where it should be).

So now that you've managed to do it on your easy runs you can start doing it on your longer so called quality runs so like pace runs or just the long distance ones.  This is less so to build up more mileage but to make sure your legs are nice and loose and make sure you feel awesome (the cycling equivalent of opening up your legs with a warmup before a tt and near race level).  Usually you don't want to do it on your super long distance one unless you need more mileage.  The other thing that is almost great but nobody does it going for a walk/run in the afternoon after a morning race (or you can go for an easy spin on your bike.....VERY EASY) which helps to get the blood flowing again so you don't get any awesome swelling and you'll recover faster. 

The thing to always remember with this is if you're running doubles, don't do everything at 100% effort, back it off to 60-70 as you're trying to do doubles, not every day but as many as you can without burning yoruself out.  The other thing is if you're going to do doubles do it consistently, so if that means once a week, twice a week, but keep it consistent.  You'll see results come through, just give it a bit of time and don't kill yourself.  Happy running

~Cheers

THHHHHHHOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRR

MAILLOT JAUNE

So Le Tour started a couple days ago (On saturday to be exact) and it's actually been pretty sweet to see my favorite rider and team crush it so far.  On Sunday they took part in the team trial, managing to put 4 seconds between them and BMC which put Thor in the yellow jersey (leader of the race, Maillot Jaune) and they were also leading the team classification.  Also helps that they've been riding the new Cervelo Yoda...... (no it's not actually called that, but I think thats what Millar or Zabriskie nicknamed it)

Yesterday's team trial always presents a spectacle, partially because I think when you have a train of riders just streaking down looks WICKED.  See below

Today was a sprint stage which resulted in a second win in as many days for Garmin Cervelo.

Some people say you shouldn't celebrate if you're not the first over the line, I disagree though man, especially when they helped get you there.  I also love how Thor is just popping his head out there, and has a giant grin on his face, props to the world champ and tour leader for pulling out a phenomenal lead out to get Farrar get there in a hurry.

Although I do have to say the best comment and picture of the day comes from Thor being in the polka dot jersey.  Even the commentator was like I see you're sporting the mountains classification jersey.  He's a sprinter and sure he can go deep in the hill but he's not that good.  Thor responded with that this was the first and probably last time he will wear the jersey

I guess the other thing that has always drawn me to Thor is that he's actually quite comical in whatever he does, and he's unbelievably humble.  Like when he won a stage at AToC it was all because of his team, so and so on the team did this.  I mean common who doesn't love a humble, hillarious norsk.

After he was relegated in today's sprint at the intermediary, he responded with the fact that he was trying to rub some sunscreen off on Cav.....BRILLIANT

So there we go, another day, another yellow jersey, and another stuffed lion, Chapeau Boys

Happy Canada Day

It's great weather outside today guys, what are you getting up to.