Merry Christmas

Wishing you guys a Merry Christmas from both Jess and I

Twas the night before Christmas

Well another year, and it's Christmas Eve, hope you guys are all having a great time with family/friends/people/objects.

~Cheers

When to call it a season

So as you know how all sorts of professional sports have an off season of some sort,  and these occur at different times.  The cycling season more or less ends around late october ish, early november.  That is for those who don't race CX, which kinda just makes you keep on going year round if you do road/MTB/CX or some combination thereof.  Running is kinda something that you can just keep on doing year round as long as it's not insanely cold outside, I'm usually game for a run.  If you read about my awesome game of dodgeball you will know that I magically managed to cause myself excessive amounts of unneccessary hurt.  After that though everything just kinda hurt, quads, hammies, knee, hip flexors, arm, back pretty much EVERYTHING.  So then I thought maybe I should take a break. So it's kinda worked out that way, exam break means lots of time devoted to studying and as a result, not a whole lot of working out.

I can't believe it's already been a year since I plotted out my entire marathon training schedule.  So after doing two marathons, attempting to fit in a whole bunch of biking, and then starting to get reacquainted with the pool, it's honestly just left me drained.  Especially the pool part, I swim as awesome as a lead anvil, just saying.  The other thing is not only am I physically tired, I'm just tired (although that may be more so because of just not sleeping enough).  So if you've gone a decent chunk of time without actually taking serious time off, regardless of what sport you do, it's probably not a bad idea to rest up a bit, enjoy the festive season, eat lots be merry.  Did you know that there is healthier egg nog which has 50% less fat than normal eggnogg? I didn't but I will get some tommorow and let you know how it tastes.

So here's to taking a week (or two, or maybe even three) to rest up, let your body heal, and hit 2011 again and hey who knows you probably have lost less than you thought you would, but your body will be ready to start training again (I'm looking at you Lisa).

Good luck on exams for those of you in Uni, I can't wait to be done

~Cheers

A nonconvential way to workout (and cause injury)

I was invited to go play on the science team for faculty wars to celebrate the end of the semester along with Nog Fest.  We were playing dodgeball, and it kinda conjured up images of my old high school gym teacher telling us that Dodgeball is not an adequate form or exercise.  So on the night of we played our first game, we were using these rhino skin balls, which fly unbelievably fast but don't hurt when you get smoked with them.  The problem with having such light balls is they tend to catch a bit of wind when you throw them and veer off at an angle.  Makes for a sweet throw if you can replicate it.  So the cool thing with these things when you're older is certain rules change.  For examples, it goes from Head Shots are not allowed/valid/legal to headshots are ENCOURAGED.  I may or may not have been deliberately aiming for some people's heads (hey I'm sure they did the same thing).

I knew that my arm would for sure be sore just because I don't usually throw stuff that much, but who knew that there would be an entire list of injuries.  I pulled my hammy and glute on the left side, tweaked my knee, and then have a sweet battle wound from trying to catch a ball (more on that in a sec).  This wasn't even the next day and it already hurt lots, this isn't boding particularly well.  Unfortunately our team lost in the playoffs, but I mean hey it was a ton of fun.  In the last game we were losing pretty badly at which point I got the brilliant idea yes I can catch that ball, no problem right?  Well I dived for the ball, at which point I realized that I would be going down onto the ground.  The option at this point was to belly flop and slide or tuck and roll.  Channelling my inner starfox (do a barrel roll!) I did exactly that as that is what the sane/logical thing would be to do.  Unfortunately the role worked, but the ball came popping out after I was on my back again (Apparently muttering "come to papa" does not in fact make the ball come, shucks).  I was out, but at least the entire team got to see a wicked barrell roll and everyone knows about it, and it was a valiant effort.

It is now the 2nd day after, and I still feel like I have been run over by a truck, my back's sore, legs are sore, knee still hurts, arm's sore.  Who knew that dodgeball is so physically intense, both in terms of getting smoked with balls as well as taxing the body.  Annnnndddd back to studying

~Cheers

Common misconception with goggles

A commonly held misconception is that the rubber is what creates the seal to keep water out with goggles, I thought that too.

So if you've read this blog over the past 4 months or so, you will know that I've been floundering around in the pool,  Waving around my arms pretending that I'm swimming.  Well I had a pair of goggles that I liked quite a bit, but in my brilliance and probably morning sleepyness I left them somewhere.  So I had to get a new pair and Lisa had told me about these amazing things called swedish goggles.  In my ignorance, I asked who makes their goggles in Sweden, at which point she corrected me to say that they're called swedish goggles, originally made by Malmsten.  Then they got bought by Speedo, and now they make them.  So what do they look like?

Cool thing with them is you can really customize them however you want, different lenses, coatings, nose pieces, strap, string, and they're fully customizable (more on that later).  So I walked into Swimco and asked about them, the sales lady kindly told me these are like the worlds most uncomfortable goggles.  Inside I'm thinking great.  As you'll see there is no rubber gasket on these goggles which is usually what helps to keep the water out, so more doubt on my part, but hey don't judge a book by it's cover. 

So I got Speed Theory, my team shop to order a pair for me, they're not too too expensive, it's 18 bucks for two pairs.  Now the only catch is that you have to assemble them yourselves.  This is both a blessing and a curse.  That nose piece is the worlds most finicky thing ever, I actually messed it up on my of my pairs (I tied it too short, and already cut the string).  But this allows you to customize the fit so it's perfect on your face, so long as you don't do anything stupid like cut the strings too short.  Second problem I ran into was I attempted to rub off the anti fog coating on one of the lenses, not only did this scratch the hell out of that lens, but it's also not anti fog which is mildly annoying.  So in terms of building it, just go meticulously, slow is smooth, smooth is good.

So how do they stand in the water? Well they are indeed waterproof, no problems on that.

These goggles really are minimalist design, but that's actually what makes them so amazing. They don't feel like they're there after the first little bit, you have pretty much unobstructed view under water, and lets be honest, they actually look pretty sweet, and they're not bulky.  So even though I screwed up with all the troubl of assembling mine, I think as long as you assemble them properly, these goggles are amazing, and you never really do want to go back to a regular pair.

~Cheers

Pretty Lights.... oooo.

So I'm going to be the first to admit, I like shiny things, be it metal, lights or whatever.  I also happen to think that the lights on the bikes in Tron were pretty cool, turns out I wasn't the only one who thought this.  There's a trio of guys in California,  Kent Jim and Adam that have developed what I admit is actually a pretty cool lighting system.  I however though it was just pretty lights but turns out it's actually meant to be funcitonal.  When you're driving, it's always easy to see someone who is well light from behind, all it takes is a little red blinky, but handlebar lights leave a little bit to be desired either because they're not bright enough, and if they are bright enough, there's probably a good chance you'll blind any oncoming traffic.  So the solution?

Well enter the revo lights, which makes your bike look kinda like those in Tron, but also lights you up pretty well.  This is what it looks like, but I'll let the video do the talking

But here is a nice video which brings you on a journey through their development and shows you what it looks like in motion, pretty cool stuff.

 

So ya i'm super excited, don't know if I'd put this on my bike but man it looks really cool.

~Cheers

Training Updates

So this week was a little bit of a throw away in terms of training, and it's actually all my fault.  I(we) procrastinated on a couple papers we had due this week.  So note to self, if you have a 20 page research paper that you've been given all semester to do, it's probably a good idea to not do all of the work for that in all of a week.  And then when you've been given a term paper for english, also a good idea to get it started more than a couple weeks before it's due.

Soooo with that out of the way what did I get up to? Well I swam on Monday, wasnt anything huge, just a bunch of 100m repeats because I really need to make sure I'm keeping on track for pace.  The next thing I've been told to do is 200m ones, just the very thought of them brings bad thoughts to my head, if 100m sucks already, and there's a non-linear increase in pain with distance increase, you should find me somewhere near the bottom of the pool motionless.   
Tuesday was supposed to be a run/weights day with a friend, but he forgot his card and it just ended up being a solo run/weights day.   
Wednesday was a bike day, and I thought well I've been using trainer road(still need to write about this) for a little bit now, well 3 weeks to be exact, I wonder how much improvmenet I've been able to eek out of a few relatively focused workouts.  So I did some power tests and I'm up a whole 7 watts.  Now I'm really making this out to be a lot more than it is, because that only translated to something like a .1 or .2 increase in overall speed.  But he I'll take whatever I can get.  I am however still a good 60 70 some watts from a friend who can ride circles around me, up and down hills, on flats..... pretty much she is in a completely different class.
Thursday/Friday ended up being giant work days on the essays so I actually just did a lot of finger moving on my keyboard, and ass planting on chairs, so not much to report there.

I am however hoping to head out for a run later today, even though it's kinda cold, kinda icy, and probably quite dangerous, I'll let you know how it goes.

~Cheers