Ernesto's group - CLOSED (Page 41)

Hello all,

I just got back from my long bike ride (71M), and I don't know what's in the air this week (or in the water bottles), but I also had my first crash on my 3 month old bike today.  

I was going at around 22mph, 20 miles into the ride, and suddenly I hit a small rut on the side of the freeway and next think I know, I'm flying over my handlebars while my feet are still clipped to my pedals.  I landed on my left side and ended up with some bruises and road rash on my shoulder, elbow, butt (torn shorts) hand and knee.  As the protocol goes with new bikes , I first checked to make sure that my bike was in one piece and still rideable and after fixing some things, then proceeded to assess the severity of my bruises/road rash.  Fortunately, nothing was broken so I decided to continue with the ride and was able to finish it 3 hours later.  

I was laughing right now thinking about the famous saying that Ernesto brought up a few days ago, There are two types of riders; those who have gone down, and those who will!  With my new bike, I'm now with the latter types!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Aki and Gabriel... sorry to hear about your adventures on the pavement.  And it looks like speed was not a contributing factor, neither were faulty brakes, on the contrary Aki, maybe you should rub some grease on those pads...

Gabriel... you ride on the freeway? At 22mph? Come on I think it is way too slow to be considered safe.

Sorry guys, I couldn't help myself.

Gab good to hear of your well-being. I wish, I was fortunate enough to get-up and finish my ride. 

Chris, I am the worlds biggest sports chicken. I read a 100's crash stories on bike forums and repeated it in my head that this would never happen to me. Playing chicken didn't help escape. Be careful, be alert and always be ready for an emergency. Its sports. 

Mark, I am wondering if my braking technique was wrong. I always used both brakes lightly to slow down.... as a kid and in recent few months of road cycling. Now this goes back to contradictory world of using front brakes or not. 

Anyways, this sucks. I hope, I don't get a psych-out after healing. 

Gang,

I'm really sorry to hear about all the accidents, if you have been watching the Tour de France you will see that this comes with the sport. It's somewhat dangerous in nature but there's a few things we can do to mitigate:

- Riding in groups, when doing so point out road hazards. Do not overlap wheels, when on flat sections, do not coast, this may cause the peson behind to hit the brakes and create a chain reaction. When climbing hills allow the person in front to open a small gap, the hills create sudden changes in pace and you may quickly find yourself hitting the wheel in front of you, subsequently going down.

- Riding alone, wear bright colors. If riding in the dark or twilight, get flashing strobe lights. Cateye brand is one of the best out there. Get a combination tail and headlight. Ride on the rightmost side of the road. Obey traffic rules, such as stop signs, largely ignored by cyclists (we can't expect cars to respect us if we don't do the same). Look for roads with broad shoulders, talk to roadies about this, they all know where the safest training spots are.

The way to stop is start with the rear brake and then the front, and try to "pump it". When selecting shaded glasses, look for the kind with no frame or a thin one to increase your peripheral vision. When riding in the dark, still wear glasses but the clear type. You can get cheap safety glasses (rated Z87) that are resistant to flying objects. Eye injury from debris, sand, pebbles is very frequent.

Ride alert, if you are extremely tired (such as bonking) call someone to pick you up. Always carry a cell phone and ID, some cash and medical information.

On a different note, today I raced the Disco! I had a good ole time, a bunch of teammates, my wife and daughters half asleep, but no Carol. I never saw her and I looked around. Were you in there?

Some of the teammates that did it completed Ironman Texas with me, and it was good to know that they are also struggling to get their speed back. I wasn't able to pick up the pace on the bike, but he run was not so bad considering the incredible heat (90 at sunrise).

Gang,

I'm really sorry to hear about all the accidents, if you have been watching the Tour de France you will see that this comes with the sport. It's somewhat dangerous in nature but there's a few things we can do to mitigate:

- Riding in groups, when doing so point out road hazards. Do not overlap wheels, when on flat sections, do not coast, this may cause the peson behind to hit the brakes and create a chain reaction. When climbing hills allow the person in front to open a small gap, the hills create sudden changes in pace and you may quickly find yourself hitting the wheel in front of you, subsequently going down.

- Riding alone, wear bright colors. If riding in the dark or twilight, get flashing strobe lights. Cateye brand is one of the best out there. Get a combination tail and headlight. Ride on the rightmost side of the road. Obey traffic rules, such as stop signs, largely ignored by cyclists (we can't expect cars to respect us if we don't do the same). Look for roads with broad shoulders, talk to roadies about this, they all know where the safest training spots are.

The way to stop is start with the rear brake and then the front, and try to "pump it". When selecting shaded glasses, look for the kind with no frame or a thin one to increase your peripheral vision. When riding in the dark, still wear glasses but the clear type. You can get cheap safety glasses (rated Z87) that are resistant to flying objects. Eye injury from debris, sand, pebbles is very frequent.

Ride alert, if you are extremely tired (such as bonking) call someone to pick you up. Always carry a cell phone and ID, some cash and medical information.

On a different note, today I raced the Disco! I had a good ole time, a bunch of teammates, my wife and daughters half asleep, but no Carol. I never saw her and I looked around. Were you in there?

Some of the teammates that did it completed Ironman Texas with me, and it was good to know that they are also struggling to get their speed back. I wasn't able to pick up the pace on the bike, but he run was not so bad considering the incredible heat (90 at sunrise).

One little observation. When you start your long run, let the first two miles be easy, you'll get a lot more benefit from it. I know you are shooting for a nice average pace (you will still get it if you do this, because your other miles will be faster) and always keep in mind that it is not about raking in miles, but gaining fitness in every workout. Every session has to have a defined purpose before it starts and a proper execution. In the long run, the challenge should be in the duration, not the speed.

Number two: swim! don't neglect this, I know that nobody wins races in the water, but you still need to come out of it fairly fresh and ready for the work ahead.

You are becoming a fast triathlete, keep working smart like you've been doing. Shoot, now you even have battle scars! hehe...

Aki, hard to tell what you did wrong... I think most of us use 2 brakes at the same time. It seems that maybe you leaned too much forward at the time,  I noticed I tend to push myself back when braking, but I'm guessing.

I remember few years back riding with a bag of groceries in my hand... the bag swung into the front wheel and the next thing I remember was the pavement...

Hope you heal fast!

Wow, sorry to hear about so many becoming "experienced" cyclists!  Hope you heal quickly and completely.  I can imagine it would be tough to go for that next ride after a crash. 

Ernesto, I'm so sorry I missed you at the race!  I really did try to find you, but since I don't actually know what you look like it was not easy.  I listened at the awards hoping maybe they would call your name.  Is there a tent where your team congregates?  I hung out some at the Knobbies & Slicks tent since that's were I've gone for help w/ my bike, shoes, and a few group rides.  Should have swapped race #'s w/ you in advance, but I was so focused on getting ready to go, I didn't think to do it.  I had a good day, and saw improvements in swim/bike.  Even got my first kick in the face in the swim, so gained some confidence in knowing I can deal with that.  And yes, it was HOT!!  We camped there for the weekend and it was 106 when we arrived on Saturday afternoon.  Felt sorry for the X-50 folks, and was very happy to be doing the sprint!  Glad you had a fun day too.  I really enjoyed the atmosphere of this race, and can see why it's so popular! 

Given my slow speed, it was probably bunch of things tht went wrong.... can't remember now. Probably braking, shifting forward, too grippy brakes.... I just don't want to be breaking my spine/neck again. If it went bad, it would have gone very bad. 

I'm doing the Waco Triathlon this weekend (Oly). This race used to be an American classic race for a long time (Lance Armstrong used to dominate this one 20 years ago), but then it got discontinued for a long time (15 years). Well, the race resumed two years ago and I want to try it. It is going to be HOT, I usually run in the same area (Waco Riverside) when I'm working in the area and it is a furnace so it will make for a challenging race.

The bike course is fast though, and I'm trying my new disc in the back so I have no excuses, gotta hammer this one.

After Waco I'm only signed up for Toyota (Oly) but I may do the Oilman Half Iron distance or Ironman 70.3 Austin (which kicked my butt last year).

I'll tell you what though, a couple of years ago I was in (February) coming back from some training I did in the Pine Bend refinery and I met this guy in St. Paul that was a member of the 50 States Club (people that has done one marathon at least in every State of the Union). The guy told me that his cutoff for running was -20F (any colder than that he said he risked frostbite on his hands, feet and penis). I'm still laughing about it! 20 degrees is MY cutoff, any colder is a treadmill run...

Do you feel fitter?

About fitness, it is noticeable how you're improving. Don't feel bad about one workout that went south, today I had to walk the last mile of four because the heat was just unbearable. I was carrying powerade with me. Be proud of your changes, you have incorporated a lot of variety to your training and that my friend is how muscles adapt to harder work.

Different workouts lead to different gains, or putting in other terms, you can't expect different results by trying the same thing over and over. I know people stuck in the same pace for decades, they think the only way to get faster is by putting more miles, resulting in overtraining or injury.

Sorry Ernesto I didnt see the post, yes, I shoulf have them, let me pull them and I will update them in the blog

Ernesto, me again.  So I've been doing the 'slow run' for two months now.  Hard to believe how time flies!  You checked over my training routine to make sure it was reasonable, and gave me the green light.  You also reviewed a run of mine for execution, and advised me to try a slower pace so I didn't have to walk, which I did.  While I've had some inconsistency, I'm doing what I can, and in the past week I've increased my frequency for running.

In reviewing the book I looked for some definitions of the MAF test.  He talks a great deal about it, but doesn't give specifics on what exactly to do other than run at maximum heart rate and measure it by some consistent measure (distance, pace, etc).  Since almost every run I do has that goal (keeping HR at max), I figure the group of runs over this time should indicate my progress.

Most of the time my runs are about 45 minutes, but there were three that I've had over this time span that were at least an hour, so I figure these might be good benchmarks for progress.  Here are the dates and paces that I got, keeping my HR at max:

5/21 - 14.55 minutes/mile

7/2 - 15.3 minutes/mile

7/12 - 18.86 minutes/mile

These are not the results I was hoping for.  If you graph my average pace, you will see a steady deterioration over the past two months, especially in the past 10 days.  It seems the further away I get from actually running, the worse my pace is to maintain max.

I have to conclude that either I'm doing something wrong, or this just ain't working for me.  I absolutely hate running now, because I can't run.  I shuffle along waiting for something to improve, and it's not.  I can think of half a dozen things I might try to change, but at this point I'd just be shooting in the dark, and quite frankly, I'd rather just go back to running like most people.  Then, some years from now when I can put up a decent pace and solid numbers, then I can fine tune my heart rate.  So, before I ditch this training technique, do you see anything that I am missing that can yet turn this around?  I know that not every training technique is for everybody, and perhaps this one just isn't for me at this point.

I appreciate your insight.

Mike

Ernesto,

Time for a check up.  My first two days of work were 9-hr days.  I love Austin though. 

I'm ready to get serious again with my training.  If you get a chance, could you please look at my logs and point me in the right direction AGAIN?  I did locate a swim coach and we are going to get together sometime this week.

Thanks!

here are the links Ernesto, only one problem there are some that probably didnt get save and some that were divided in to multisport, I tried my best to edit but you let me know.

Thanks

???http://connect.garmin.com/activity/100615937

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/100615946

I think that its better if I PM my user name and password,

?