Tonight's run profile

7 miles

average cadence 83

pace 9:42/mi

climb/decend 660 ft (including one 1/3 mile climb at 10%)

Nothing earth shattering in the above, except that for me 9:40 is a great pace on a hilly trail and my max heart rate on this run was 170. Most of it was in the 160s. Percieved effort was very low. Legs felt like they had good spring in them and were nice and loose. It was definitely cooler out than it has been lately.

Very interesting comparing to other runs of this route in my log book. There were a few other examples I could find of similar (good, for me) times, but they were usually when I was deep into training for a marathon. Even then, although perceived effort was also low then, the measured effort (heart rate) was usually a bit higher on average, and peak was noticeably higher (5-10 bpm).

Panic is bad

Why is it that the more short of breath I get in the pool, the faster I turn over? Thereby working harder and needing to breathe more. Gah. I really need to practice that out of me.

At least I can successfully get my goggles to seal and stay sealed within the first few laps now. Never could do that as a kid and that was a big part of a lifelong aversion to sticking my face in the water.

I may have to head out to the lake at the Shadow Cliffs park this week and swim in it to see what it is like. The pool is extremely chlorinated and the chlorine burn in the nose is definitely one thing that triggers irrational reactions. Maybe the lake will be nicer and an easier place to relax. It'll also be good to not have to turn at a wall every 25 yards.

Worst blog ever, maybe, but not the worst swimmer ever apparently.

Got asked to move out of the slow lane at the Y yesterday and trade places with someone going too slow in the medium lane. I LOLed.

Running lately has been enjoyable in a way that I probably haven't felt in about a year. That's how long it has been since I was deep into the cycle of long run workouts leading up to the 2008 SF Marathon and my knees started to hurt all the time. The reduction in pain was gradual from then until a few months ago. Once I started taking glucosamine and chondroitin supplements the reduction sped up noticeably. Now I can still feel a bit of something in my right knee once in a while. Even discomfort is too strong a word for it. It is so nice to be able to bend my knees any way I want, any time I want, and not wince in pain anymore. Yee haw.

A good descent can do a lot for your average speed on a ride.

Did the same ride today from the Wheels of Justice shop that we did on May 31. Except for a small detour where I got lost. But the overall speed tonight was just over 1mph faster than that ride. So much for riding a "recovery" pace today after the effort yesterday.

Empiricism, I'm for it.

Went out with my friend John today to pre-ride the bike course that is part of the Tri for Fun in Pleasanton, CA. He can usually destroy me on flat terrain, so the plan was for me to lead one lap of the course and push my own air and see how fast I could go. Then he'd go out front and go faster, and I'd try and hang in his draft and see how much effort that would take compared to doing all the work myself. The results were pretty interesting.

Conclusions:

John is much faster than me on flat stuff (but I knew that already).
Drafting is less useful when you have a strong tail wind.
Drafting is immensely useful when you have a strong headwind.
If your Tri allows drafting you are giving up a lot by not doing it.
Pre-riding the course was a very good idea. Vineyard towards Bernal was very challenging. It is slightly uphill into the prevailing wind for a long way then has a short steep hill just long enough to run you down into granny gear.

One thing I would not have guessed after both loops without looking at the data is that my average heart rate would be only 1BPM lower when I was following versus when I was leading. But when you look at the data you can see that for part of the lap I was working harder to hang with him because he was going a lot faster than I could on my own, and the draft was weak. But once we got to where the draft was strong, my effort level dropped substantially. Plus the second lap was about 10% faster with John leading, so going faster but having a slightly lower heart rate at the same time is saying something.

Here's the course. It is mostly flat, with a quick climb where Old Vineyard meets Vineyard just below the park, with a long downhill from there to Bernal. The wind was coming from the top left of the image to the bottom right and was pretty strong. Forecast said 10-20mph.



Here it is in map form, so the point to point timings are more clear.



Here's the point to point comparison. It was hard to pull these from the logbook so there are some obvious rounding errors if you look at the data. Err on the side of John being faster.

start point to right turn at Stanley/Isabel

me 7:04 -- 20.6 mph
john 5:41 -- 24.6 mph


Stanley/Isabel to Isabel/Vineyard

me 4:55 -- 20.7 mph
john 4:46 -- 21.2 mph


Isabel/Vineyard to turnaround

me 3:13 -- 20.4 mph
john 3:04 -- 20.1 mph


turnaround to Isabel/Vineyard

me 3:23 -- 18.5 mph
john 3:13 -- 20.0 mph


Isabel/Vineyard to top of hill on Vineyard

me 7:31 -- 17.5 mph
john 6:25 -- 20.6 mph


top of hill on Vineyard to Vineyard/Bernal

me 2:37 -- 19.5 mph
john 2:40 -- 19.8 mph


Vineyard/Bernal to Bernal/Stanley

me 1:14 -- 19.3 mph
john 1:06 -- 20.7 mph


Bernal/Stanley to finish

me 2:27 -- 20.1 mph
john 2:30 -- 20.9 mph

Total

me 32:44 -- 19.4 mph
john 29.06 -- 21.4 mph




Here's the heart rate chart twice, with my lap highlighted on the first image, John's on the second.





You can clearly see from these that my heart rate was highest (for a while) while trying to stay in John's draft as he hammered it to start his loop. At the end of the loop when we had turned back into a strong headwind it was a lot easier for me and you can see my heart rate is much lower than the same part of the loop where I lead.

Pool success

No more "the goggles, they do nothing!" The new goggles actually worked pretty well. Didn't leak once. Swam about 25 minutes working on my breathing. Still having the occasional problem where I don't start taking a given breath early enough and wind up crossing over with my mouth still open, pulling my head out of the water to avoid inhaling a face full of water, and losing my rhythm for a moment.

Hopefully there will be no more snorkeling in the pool though. I thought swimming at lunch on a weekday would be less crowded than after work (it has been in the past) but it was 3 to a lane for a bit.

So the new goal is to sign up for the August sprint tri, and swim workouts will have the goal of using goggles only and swimming the 400 meter distance with (hopefully) fewer stops each time until I can do it comfortably and continuously.

How long does it take to grow back a big toe nail?

December 13, 2008 (http://fastheartslowfeet.blogspot.com/2008/12/runners-toe.html) to now. The thing is finally full length again. Almost 7 months. Let's see how long I can manage to keep a full set.

If my knees return to normal I may sign up for the Oakland marathon, which is scheduled to be reborn in March 2010.

Another good Wheels of Justice shop ride

Distance: 29.37 miles
Moving time: 2:06:22 (Stopped 03:26)
Average speed: 13.9 mph



Featuring plenty of hills.

Here's a breakdown of where the climbs required some effort, in increasing order.

Zone 2



Zone 3



Zone 4



Here's the heartrate vs cadence vs elevation bit:

Compare then to now.

The ride yesterday included a climb I knew I'd done a few times before. It felt like I was getting good pace for the effort, and I knew I'd given everything I had to get to the top on one of the previous ascents.

That's all it takes to motivate a bit of geeking out with sporttracks. Two previous runs up the same hill were found. Drilling in to the Pinehurst/Moraga intersection as the start and the stop sign limit line where Pinehurst meets Skyline as the finish allowed a direct comparison.

October 5, 2008 - 21:45
November 18, 2008 - 23:32
June 21, 2009 - 21:58

On the October ride I followed my friend John up and then sprinted to the top at the end for King of the Mountain honors. You can see from the graph that I spiked my heartrate up into Zone 5. That ride was the one time I've ever fallen over on this bike -- because I couldn't get my foot clicked out of the pedal while I was sucking wind at the top having just crossed the finish line.

Yesterday I hit the beginning of the climb and decided to keep spinning it up because I could hear the crunch of gravel from someone right behind me. If they were going, I was going. That turned out to be John again, and he dropped back near the end and I spun it in without any finish line kick.

The two graphs are both highlighting the same start/finish section from the two rides. Most noteworthy difference is the cadence. First time I tried to grind it up in as high a gear as I could hang onto. This time I spun lower gears trying to keep at 85-90 cadence, but eventually ran out of gears near the top where it gets steepest.

Before:



After:



And there would be less empirical fail if I a) remembered my heart rate strap on Sunday and b) had both graphs be over time, or distance, and not a mix of both.

WOJ shop ride again

Did the Wheels of Justice Sunday night ride again. Great night for it. Clear and warm. Not hot in the open, not cold in the shade.

Forgot my heartrate strap. Could tell from the breathing that it was mostly 160-170 when I was making power. Worked on keeping the cadence up above 85. Seemed to work pretty well. It is tempting to blame struggles on the last few rides with the seat slipping back out of adjustment before it got loose enough for me to notice and put it back where it belongs.