Keep warm and see where you're going

So chances are you've probably run during the night/early morning or still do.  Chances are also likely it's not particularly warm during these times.  The solution? a cap that has lights built in.  New Balance have done exactly that, and this is good because it should keep your head warm as well as let you see just exactly where you're going. The Tri-Viz hat is going to be a little bit heavier than your typical hat, but it's got four LED's to light your way.  During the winter it's also nice because you'll be able to see the patches of ice that are going to make you slip which isn't fun.

That hat will probably set you back around 30 bucks, but hey I'd give that to see where I'm going and not eat it on an early morning late evening run.

~Cheers

You know how people say mind over matter?

Well there's probably a pretty good chance that that's true.  I know it sounds kinda funny because you think well if my body can't do this, there's no way to will it to do it.  Well it started when I was thinking about how on earth I was going to tackle a super long 3.8km swim within a couple hours.  So I set out a plan to add 50 meters onto the consecutive distance I could do. 

Then I was talking to Lisa who has inadvertantly become my swim coach (among others) and she said 150's? Don't do that, those are shit distances (her exact words, I kid you not).  She said do 200's.  The first thought that went through my mind.... 200's are double what I can do right now in one go without feeling like I'm going to die.  So next day hopped into the pool and was already dreading having to do 200's (6 of them to be exact).  But just got going and you know what the funny thing was?  I actually kinda enjoyed the 200's and it was definitely a huge breakthrough workout.  This week I started doing 400's and didn't die as much as I though I would.  So here we are, at the end of January and I've reached my goal, then exceeded by quite a bit.  So what's the moral of the story, well set the bar higher than you think you can do it, but just by a bit.  Chance are you can do it and it's a whole lot less hard than you thought it would be.

~Cheers

Want to get a decent discount on a Garmin Forerunner

So it's the new years, and you probably have some sort of new years resolution, get fit, go run, race or something like that.  You've probably seen at races if you've been in them that hoards of people have Garmin's and everytime you pass the start line you hear everyone starting their watches and then when you hit the mile marker, everybody's watch makes kind of a chorus of auto lap sounds.  Well here's your best chance to get a Garmin for a decent chunk of change off.  If you purchase a Forerunner 210, or 610 with or without the heart rate monitors you can save 50 bucks.  You can also purchase the Forerunner 70 which is not gps-enabled but is actually pretty scarily accurate.

So that means you can get a running watch for around 150 bucks for GPS enabled ones (the 210, w/o HRM) or you can get the FR70 for around 70 bucks to track all your running and heart rate metrics.

Hit up the link here to get the form and all the details

~Cheers

P5....simply faster?

Cervelo is releasing a new bike in a couple days, it looks kinda sexy and HELLA fast

 

That is such a small frontal area

That is enough bike oggling to satisfy me, so nowwwwww back to work

~Cheers

How you take a picture of a freestanding bike

I've always wondered how some photographs get taken of bikes, because there's no bikestand behind them, or anything like that, it's like there is literally a bike that is freestanding there, much like this.

And I wondered well that's actually really amusing, there is nothing, well makes for an amazing picture.  However then I stumbled on a really amusing picture.

So that's how it's done, well there's a little bit of a chuckle for you to get you over the mid week hump

~Cheers

A new and brilliant way to put on screen protectors

So if any of you guys have put screen protectors on anything you know it is a giant PITA (pain in the ass).  Thankfully some brilliant individual somewhere at PureGear has put these on and realized our frustrations, and has created this new application system.  It's called the Pure-Tek Roll-On Screen Shield Kit. 

If you've ever put one on you'll know that dust can magically appear on your screen you can have a nice clean screen and then a little hair of dust flips you the bird and slips under your screen.  Or you get this air bubble underneath and you think "oh yeah I can massage it out.... no problem".  In reality chances are you'll probably make an even bigger mess of it. Or lets say the screen applicator gods smile upon you and bless you with no dust, and no air bubbles. You'll probably have it slightly off line. It's one of those, there are three, you can pick two: Clean applicaiton, no air bubbles, perfectly aligned. 

So this is where this roller thing comes in, you clean your phone, put it in the tray of the packaging, follow instructions, roll on protector, perfectly aligned, no bubbles, no dust, VOILA.

So how much would this magical thing cost you? 20 bucks.  That's actually even cheaper than some other screen protectors that are much harder to install than this one, check out their website here.

~Cheers

Why sponsorship makes sense in cycling

So for any of you guys who follow some professional sports such as football over in Europe or cycling or the likes you often see that there is some kind of sponsorship going on.  In cycling, it is pretty much completely funded/run by sponsorship money and in the past few years there's been a little bit of a crisis in terms of sponsorship. I think a lot of companies think that sponsorship isn't worth it but I have a little bit of a story from my recent travels to Mexico.

There are two pretty big teams in cycling right now, one is at the world tour (essentially the first division) called Movistar.  There's also a second one that's at the professional continental level (kinda a devision 2) called Europcar.  Now both of these are title sponsors and if you watch cycling you hear about them or see them at the races. 

So when we got down there lo and behold what did I see? A Europcar storefront for renting cars.  And I mean I didn't rent a car there but because of the brand recognition, if I had to I'd probably go with them if I didn't see anyone else I knew like Hertz or Budget. I kinda knew that Europcar was pretty big on car rentals down in the Carribean, South America, Mexico region so it wasn't a huge surprise. 

Movistar on the other hand, I knew nothing about, what they were, where they were based, what were big markets.  But when I saw hey they do cellphones, it'd probably be the first one I go for.  Once again because I recognize it, and if they're sponsoring a pro level cycling team, they're probably at the very least a little bit dependable.  

Now I'm not a fan of either of these teams, but I see them when I watch races.  And chances are you'll probably see them too if you watch, so the thing that companies have to realize is that your sponsorship goes a lot farther than just your own fans, it goes to pretty much anyone who follows cycling so the rate of return ends up being quite high, and you reach a global audience. Because I see them, and even though I may know nothing about them, just the fact that you've seen it before can be a motivation enough to go with that company. 

Hopefully companies will understand this and see the value in it, and maybe we'll stop having problems with teams folding (like the Women's teams) or even pro teams that just suddenly have sponsors disappear. 

~Cheers

What's in store for 2012?

So now that the new year is almost a week old, what is in the cards for Jess and I in the new year?

Well I think this year I'm not going to be running any marathons, mostly because I think it'll put other training too far back, so I'm probably going to be just running 10k's and maybe a half marathon, but I think I'll just work on some speed work, because I'll need that for 2013, where I have another target coming up

Jess and I should start our training in earnest next week, I've just been running lots this week and I'll be honest I really do enjoy running, and I haven't noticed how much I miss it since I stopped.  While I was down in Mexico I went to go do beach intervals, which are surprising if you think about it. I ran for .1 mile, but I could be totally gassed doing such short intervals, you just have to push harder.  As for people who are always wanting that little bit extra speed, intervals are a great way to add extra speed for what is essentially a little bit of work.  Just make sure you give yourself enough rest.

Running on ice/hard packed snow is actually surprisingly fun because you have enough traction on your feet, but if you push off a wee bit harder your feet will slide a little bit, it's a lot of fun.

I will definitely need to start swimming lots more because that is definitely my week point, but it's super hard because I always feel like I'm going to die any minute if I don't get a little bit more air.  So I'll keep you posted on my flounderings in the water

Cycling is going to need a lot more work than it did last year, and so far it's not looking good mostly because I've been bikeless for the past month now, and it doesn't look like my bike will be coming anytime soon, so here's to praying that my bike will come soon so I can start getting in the base miles, otherwise the first few months are going to suck....MAJORLY.  Speaking of which I have a team camp in May which should be interesting because it's going to be the most mileage I'll have ever done.

That's about it, we might do some shorter races, a tune up race before IMC but it looks like it's going to be a lot of training this year.

~Cheers

Another Year.....so what?

So another year has come and gone, and 2012 should bring some pretty sweet happenings for Jess and I.  Mostly because we're going to be going to Penticton at the end of August for a pretty big race and I'm not going to lie, I'm a hundred percent scared. But lets do a look back at the year past first and what happened.

At the beginning of the year, the plan was for Jess to run the Calgary Marathon with me.  Unfortunately injuries hit and that plan got derailed for her, but no matter I would push through.  It would turn out to be a faster time than last year (by 30 minutes) but I'm always going to wonder what could've been on that day had I not been feeling crappy and sick.  You're always left with what ifs, could haves if a performance doesn't have everything come together like it should.  I'm happy that I shaved a certain amount of time off and I felt fresh, so I would go and target San Francisco 8 weeks later.

During the summer I managed to put in some consistent training and you really do feel the difference when you put in solid consistent training.  I think I'll try to do consistent two a days when I get back to strict running, and none of this swimming biking running malarky.  But then I went down to San Francisco to run the marathon there.  I have to say there are very few things that I can think of that I dislike more than having to drag my ass out of bed to go race........at 4 in the morning. It was still pitch black when I walked out the door, and probably for the first hour of the race, cool thing was that I got to run across the entire golden gate bridge on the road (although I probably got a little bit too excited here and this is where the marathon goals started falling apart.  I had a lot of fun on possibly the worlds hilliest course, but honestly at the end I was just done I had nothing left in me.

After that I put in some decent time on the bike, I wish I could've done more but you have to juggle everything.  Hopefully I'll be able to build on what I did last year, and put forward a good solid 4 months before I head off to team camp which should be kinda interesting.

In the last four months of the year, I picked up floundering, and honestly I was just hoping to build up as much of a base as possible so that when I start swimming again I won't have to go through that process again.  I'll be quite honest I'm poor at swimming (at best) so that's going to be the biggest obstacle between me and a successful finish at ironman.

So that's pretty much all I did athletically this year, I'll post one later on this week about goals/targets for this year.  Thanks for reading again.

~Cheers