Category Archives: Training

My New Therapist: Exercise

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Have been fairly consistent for the past three weeks or so. Really, for the last few months. But lately I’ve been stepping it up. And I’ve noticed that it’s keeping me a little saner. Things at work have been unpleasant. I’m burned out and disillusioned and bitter about the pettiest things.

But when I can take my anti-lunch, I feel a little better. And even more surprising is that when my morning goes poorly, I know I can always take it out at the gym or in the pool.

I can’t say it has made things better. I can’t say it has turned work around. But it has made it bearable.

I wish I knew how to snap out of the funk, but until I figure it out or find something else, exercise is a giant chasm into which I can discard my frustration.

Dread Man’s Party

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This has nothing to do with training, but I’ve realized that every morning for the past three workdays has been filled with tension and dread.

Sooner or later I’m going to give in to it, play hooky, and go ride my bike down in the Valley somewhere.

I think I man have figured out my back issues. I think it’s my hips and IT band. I stretched them out a little yesterday, twice, and I can already tell a difference.

But I took the bus in today, so we’ll test drive that theory tomorrow when I ride in.

So Sore

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Lifted twice this week with Lonnie. So sore. Took yesterday off, but plan to go back today even if work is hard. Especially if work is hard!

Did incline press and butterflies. That’s what really killed me. The weight I used for flies was hilariously light — 20 lbs. I didn’t struggle, but I sure felt it.

Incline press was better: 8 reps with 115 and I didn’t struggle too much there either. Nice!

Managing Exhaustion

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I’m not exhausted yet, but am definitely feeling more tired. I still plan to hit the gym today, however, because we’re doing a whole lotta nothing this weekend other than camping and drinkng.

Oh sure, there might be a little hiking too. But generally speaking, I expect rest. And naps.

And I think that’s the trick to staying motivated and energetic when re-starting a workout program: keep your eye on the rest periods. When you start to run out of energy, determine if you can push through to the rest period.

And then really rest. Do nothing. Put your feet up. Crash. Get intimate with your couch.

That’s one thing I’ll do wrong this weekend — in all likelihood, it will not be that restful. So I may need to take off the early part of next week to recharge. We’ll see.

Take care of swimming shoulders

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Did a short swim the other night. Not more than 1,700 yards I think. But it included a basically a 500, a 200 kick, and then a 1,000 free. Felt good to swim long like that. Really forced me to slow down, which enabled me to breathe every three strokes.

I also am trying to focus on staying on my sides longer, enabling a deeper pull. The trick is that I need to keep my shoulder blades pulled tighter when I do so. Otherwise, it kinda leaves the joint out there in a bad way.

I ended up icing the shoulder last night a little. Seemed like it helped, but it’s mostly preventative maintenance. No big problems to speak of.

Today, I lifted weights. Wow. My shoulder, neck and back muscles are not strong. Need to work on that. Gonna be sore tomorrow. Weight lifting is gonna make swimming hard for a bit, but I know it’ll pay off down the road.

Anyway. Good few days. If I take tomorrow off, it won’t be a bad thing. On the other hand, I won’t work out all weekend so I should push through Friday.

Migration and Another Attempt

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I migrated the old blog over to WordPress from Blogger. Nothing against Blogger, but I really like my WordPress iPhone app. And what I say about training is not terribly verbose, most of the time.

Amanda and I have been swimming for the past two months or so. Maybe even a little more. It’s been great to swim, and while I can’t say I’ve lost any weight, it’s made me feel a little better about things.

I’ve also been doing the occasional trip to the gym. Mostly I’ve been doing that to keep my shoulders from being injured from all the swimming. It seems to’ve worked thus far.

Today, I got back on my bike for the first time in a while. I may try to commute by bike a few times in the next few weeks. We’ll see.

Three things have been going really poorly lately. My food choices are attrocious. I’ve been tossing and turning at night way more than in the past. And work’s been stressful. Possibly more stressful than normal. I’m going to try to get the food thing on track this week too — little changes mostly — and hope that the work thing works itself out.

As for the sleep problems? I don’t know what I can do. Probably my first step should be to cut waaaay the hell back on caffeine. I’ll start there today and see how it goes. Maybe I’ll try the doctor at the end of the month if things don’t sort themselves out.

Yeah. That should work out REALLY well. I’ll make three major lifestyle changes in one week. I feel EXTREMELY confident that they’ll all stick. Ha!

Check-in with Mike

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Mike, my cycling coach, dropped me a line last night, asking how things were going. Here’s my reply:

1. Yep, I registered for the Harvest Century last night. I’m in.

2. I didn’t know a few of the exercises, even after looking them up. Are they in the training videos on your site? Specifically the

  • Medicine Ball Extension/Flexion
  • Floor / Physioball T
  • The Triangle
  • Active standing Psoas Stretch

I think the reason I was so sore after the demo workout was because I didn’t get myself well warmed up. Since then, I’ve been doing a better warm-up and I have not been (very) sore from the exercises.

3. I am feeling OK. I had a great, long ride Saturday and follwed it up Sunday with… almost nothing. I let myself get so overcommtted to other things Sunday that I only got an hour in on the trainer last night. I am one of those unfortunate people who only seems to learn by making mistakes, so I guess I learned that I need to do a better job of scheduling myself and my social commitments.

4. Energy and recovery both seem to be doing OK. We’ll see how this week goes leading up to the Century. I felt AMAZING on Saturday, but if you look at the workouts I did last week, it was likely because I didn’t do any hard efforts other than off-the-bike work.

5. Diet. Ugh. I have been eating OK, but not really keeping track. Too many bad lunches, though. Most breakfasts and dinners are fairly healthy, if the portions are maybe out of whack. I’ll try to start tracking that better this week, again.

-Thom

Finding a Cycling Team: Location, Location, Location

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Rode with my cycling coach Mike Manning yesterday at lunch from downtown Portland. At one point, he asked if I’d gone to any of the Meet the Team rides through OBRA. Being unattached or without a team in cycling is fine if you’re Lance. I’m clearly not, so Mike’s been gently pushing to get me with some people.

The “Meet the Team” rides start mostly downtown. But none of the regular team rides start remotely near our house in deep SE. And with just one car, I can’t monopolize it on the weekends to drive to Hillsboro or Beavertron or whereever. And unless I want to add 20 miles to every group ride I go on (I don’t), I’m out of luck.

A while back, I shot an email to the OBRA list. I got one semi-legit reply, which was for a vegan, organic triathlon team. Which is somewhat ironic because I’ve been considering getting back into the pool and focusing on triathlon to help strip off some upper-body weight.

Finding a team in cycling has been one of the most frustrating aspects of the sport. In swimming, which is my native sport, teams fall all over themselves to make new swimmers welcome. They encourage them to come out, try to be social, organize car pools, the whole shebang.

In cycling, the indifference to new members is shocking to me. You ask, and you get shrugs. You volunteer, and you get blown-off.

I had one outstanding experience when I first started with Veloshop, in that the Calver brothers (now with GSC United way the hell out in Beaverton) were some of the most welcoming, nice, encouraging people I’d ever met. They have a passion for the sport that completely infects new riders. But then, a few months later, the damn team kicked them off. I couldn’t even tell you why, because it was so bizarre.

Anyway, Mike off-handedly mentioned that he might put together a CycleOne kit to promote his cycling coach biz around the Portland area. I told him I’d wear it. And though it might not be a “team” in the strictest sense, I would certainly use it as an excuse to organize rides out here in SE.

Fitting training into a grown-up life

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It is funny how something like work and life can really kick your ass around. I had another great week of riding last week, but this week has been filled with one crazy surprise after another at work.Enough so that I’ve been distracted, and irritated. Worse, I have been off the bike except yesterday when Amanda and I toodled over to watch the Vaux swifts.

Ultimately, I came to some (hopefully) healthy resolutions about work. With at least a plan, it should make work-life more stable, or at least easier to not get whipped around and knocked off the bike.

One thing that gives me confidence is that I have a good cycling coach. I know that he is pulling for me, and that he will help me find a way to use cycling as a positive force in my life.

I sent him a whiny email, and he said replied along the lines of “Don’t beat yourself up. Get out there when you can and enjoy every pedal stroke and breath of fresh air.”

Great guy, that Mike Manning.

Sent from my iPhone