Run To The Border

Perhaps I should have titled this post “Finding out that the SUV you bought two weeks ago from a private party needs a $2500 transmission, and having your bike stolen (your only other means of getting to/from work) in the same day.”

Now I’m going from 80 miles per week on the bike to zero.  I’ll have to figure out some other way to get in some extra exercise now.  Plus, with only one vehicle in the house, either my wife needs to spend an hour and a half per day driving me to/from the train station, or she is stuck at home all day without a vehicle.

No, I’m not bitter.  Just pissed.

Two locks, one on the bike lid, one on the bike itself.  Another guy had his bike jacked too.  So, no more bike commuting for me until I can get another bike.  Once I do get my hands on one, rest assured I won’t ever lock it up at the train station again.  I’ll just take it on the train with me and park it in my office.

And I’m almost out of scotch.  Can this day get any worse?

Well, the actual words I said might have been a little more harsh than that.  I was in the middle of a DVD workout with my wife, my first time tackling the Bob Harper “Pure Burn, Super Strength” DVD.  I’ve not exactly been feeling super self-confident lately, and this DVD workout did nothing to improve that.

I’m sure that part of the problem was simply that I wasn’t in the mood for it.  At least that’s what I’d like to believe.  But I found myself resting far more than I should, and swearing profusely at Bob, mostly using my “inside voice” but occasionally letting it slip out loud.  About 3/4 of the way through, I put down my weights and went outside to clean the pool.  I figured I should be doing something more productive than swearing.  Besides, the DVD was only making me feel worse about myself, knowing that I couldn’t complete these simple strength training exercises.

I’ve come to the realization that my “fitness” is very specific right now.  Yes, I purposefully put “fitness” in quotations, since it’s relative.  I bike 20 miles a day to/from work, and usually run 5 miles on my lunch break.  But take me outside of those parameters, and I’m out of shape.  I used to have an acceptable amount of upper body strength from my job (throwing bags around the belly of an airplane), but now that I’m sitting at a desk, that muscle has atrophied into oblivion.  What few exercises I did during the DVD workout, I did using ‘X’ pounds of dumbbells.  Only the next morning, I realized that I was actually using half of ‘X’ pounds, also known as the same weight as my wife was using, and she didn’t quit 3/4 of the way through.  Yeah, that did nothing for my self-confidence either!  (We only have one set of adjustable dumbbells, so I took some of the plates that she wasn’t using on the dumbbells, and zip-tied them together to make some weights for me.  I failed to realize when adding up the plates, that the incremental pound amounts labelled on the stand require TWO plates to get to that amount (one on each side of the dumbbell).  That’s where my adding mistake came in!)

So, while I swore profusely at Bob, I also swore that I would conquer that DVD workout sometime.  It will be good for me to get into better shape, and I’m sure that it will help my running some too.

Hopefully next time I’ll be using heavier weights than my wife.

Even though my first run in Austin was a little longer than I expected, I wanted to take full advantage of my limited time in that city and get in a bit of a longer run.  Wednesday morning I got up, and headed out the door with the plan to run at least 10 miles.

I had heard that there was a 10 mile loop around the lake, but I ended up going out-and-back in a couple of different directions.  I found myself getting a little disoriented again (surprise!), but since I wasn’t in a time crunch and was planning on more than 3.5 miles, it wasn’t a huge deal.

There were a couple of things I forgot to bring with me on the run though.  One, bandaids for my nipples.  After 6 miles, they were on fire.  I knew that if I wanted to finish the run without blood stains running down my shirt, I was going to have to go shirtless.  Austin isn’t exactly the best place for my self-esteem, when there are so many guys running without shirts, showing off their six-pack abs.  Made me self-conscious, but miraculously I survived.

The second thing I forgot was fuel.  I had nothing but my water bottle.  Well, that’s not true, I did pack along a couple of bucks in case I thought I was going to pass out from not eating.  Despite the heat, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  I’m getting much better at recognizing the symptoms of low blood sugar, and I didn’t really have any until the last half mile or so.  Probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done though.

My running mileage has been low, but consistent.  This was my longest run in quite some time, a far cry from training for the 100 miler last fall.  But it felt good to be able to go out there and unintentionally run a 1:45 half-marathon without thinking about it.  My legs were sore the next day, but I chalk a lot of that up to the faster 6+ mile run my first day in Austin.  I forgot how good it feels to have trouble walking down stairs.  Painful, but a reminder of a great run the day before.

Perhaps I should have titled this post “How to turn a 3.5 mile run into a 6.25 mile run and still make it to a business dinner on time.”

I spent the past two days in Austin on business. I travel a decent amount for work, but most of my trips are short day trips, and I never leave the airports (I work for an airline).  So, although I get to go to some cool cities (and some that I could live without *cough* Branson *cough*).  This trip was one of the rare times that I actually had the opportunity to experience the city that I was in.

I had a short window of time between my afternoon meetings and a business dinner.  By the time I checked into the hotel and changed into my running gear, I figured i’d have time for about 3.5 quick miles.

My hotel was right on Austin’s wonderful Town Lake (or Lady Bird Lake, depending who you talk to).  The city has a great trail running along the lake, and I was determined to take advantage of it.

I think I had a smile on my face the first few miles – I’ve never seen so many runners outside of a race.  The trail was packed, but it was great to be surrounded by other active people.  The energy caused me to run faster than I probably should have been.

How to turn a 3.5 mile run into a 6.25 mile run. In the top left, you'll see where I was wandering around confused, looking for my hotel. The section in the middle of the run is where I got turned around, and since I had crossed over some water there, I thought that the second bridge I crossed would put me back on the same side of the lake as the hotel. Ooops!

I ran three miles at about 7min/mile pace.  Somewhere along the way, I got myself turn around, because when I crossed the bridge and headed up the street to my hotel, it was no where to be found. I wandered around for a few minutes, confused, until I decided to use the map feature of my Garmin Forerunner to see where the hotel (my starting point) was.  I may or may not have sworn out loud when I realized that I was three miles away from the hotel, and no where close to where I thought I was.

Time was ticking away for me to get to my dinner event, and I tried to keep up a good pace on the way back to the hotel.  Since I had started out so strong though, I didn’t have a lot of energy left.  I started to fade pretty quick, but did my best to push through.  I got back to the hotel a couple of minutes after I had planned to be leaving for the dinner.  I don’t think I’ve ever showered, shaved, and ironed my clothes faster before.  I didn’t have enough time to cool down after my run, so I may have still been a little sweaty by the time I got to the dinner, but at least I wasn’t late.  Ok, that’s not true.  But at least I wasn’t more than 15 minutes late.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that my big toe pokes through my Vibram Five Fingers.  I didn’t think it was a big deal, until today when I was on my lunch break run, and had a little mishap with some uneven asphalt.

I didn’t fall. I didn’t even really break my stride. But I did scrape the front of my toe along the asphalt.  I may or may not have let out a few choice words.

I could have cut my run short, since this happened in a spot where I could have gotten back to the locker room in less than a half mile.  But, like any good runner, I continued running until I finished my planned mileage for the day.

I know that my Garmin Forerunner 305 isn’t the most accurate when it comes to counting calories. Like many devices, it uses some mathematical calculation of my age, weight, and the speed I’m traveling at for either running or biking.  Even if I’m wearing the heart rate monitor, which I always do since I’m a heart rate junkie, it doesn’t factor my heart rate (effort) into the calculation.

Take yesterday, for instance.  My morning commute has a few hills, but the starting & ending elevation are about the same.  In the morning, I was battling a headwind and had the tailwind on the way home.  I knew I was working harder with the headwind, but the garmin said I burned more calories on the way home. 

This morning, I decided to wear my timex heart rate monitor.  Since it has no idea what sport I’m doing, how fast I’m moving, or anything else like that, it counts calories purely based on my heart rate – my effort, if you will. 

I battled another headwind this morning.  The garmin said I burned 411 calories (about average for what it normally says for the commute).  The Timex monitor said I burned 582 calories. 

I think I like the Timex better.

Edited to add: I used both the Garmin and the Timex on my lunch run, and the calories were much closer – less than 10% difference between the two. The Timex was higher again, so I still like the Timex better.

Since moving to Texas, my wife and I have become a one-car family. I normally take thetrain into work, but the train station is 10 miles from our house, and so I still need to get myself there every morning. We talked about getting a little Vespa or similar scooter for me to take to the train station, but since we have some other projects needing our financial attention right now, I decided to try commuting to the train station by bike.

In Kansas City, I frequently rode my bike to the university, which was about 13 miles from home. KC was a less than desirable city to be on a bicycle, mostly because of the drivers and lack of shoulders on the roads. And while Dallas itself is ranked in the top 3 worst cities in the country for bicyclists, the suburbs that I ride through are surprisingly biker-friendly.

Sure, there are no bike lanes, and no real shoulder either. But, every rode that I ride on has at least two lanes in each direction, giving drivers an easy way to get around me. I have yet to be honked at, or have trash thrown at me from a moving vehicle (which is a relatively common practice in KC).

The train has a great set up for bicyclists. At the train station, the bike racks have plasticlids on them, allowing me to lock my bike to the rack and lock the lid down. With this set up, I don’t worry about having to remove my seat, remove my lights, and make sure that I lock both of my wheels to the rack. I feel better leaving my bike in a location where someone has to cut through my padlock to even be able to see my bike, let alone start jacking with it.

You know your morning bike commute is a fail when you arrive at your destination with one of your cranks in your hand, and not on your bike.  Oh well, at least I still made it!

Might be old news, but even my wife was laughing at the video:

There’s a fridge in our department’s breakroom stocked with a seemingly unlimited supply of cans of Coke, Dr Pepper, juice, and water.  Yes, the water is in cans and not bottles.

At the end of the typical workday, if I look in my recycle bin it is not uncommon for me to see three or four cans.  Some days it’s mostly juice, other days it’s mostly Coke and Dr Pepper.

While the juice is 100 percent fruit juice (let’s not talk about the healthiness of the others), it’s the calories that I’m worried about.  At 170 per can, it adds up real quick.  For someone trying to lose a couple of pounds (like me), it’s a real easy way to sabatoge my efforts to be speedo-ready by summer.