Mountain Biking

I went mountain biking for the first time on Wednesday.  Jeremy and I rented full suspension bikes from Bike Connection for $35 for the day.  It was very convenient.

We woke up early so we could do our ride before work.  We drove to the top of Page Mill Road and started our ride from the Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve.  It threatened to rain on us as as we were driving, but the sun came out as we started our ride.  The trails were wet and slippery, and we were covered with mud by the time we finished.  I haven't been that dirty in a long time.  :)

We didn't have a plan for where we were going when we started out, so you can see on the map that we had to turn around a couple of times.  Here are the full ride details.

View Larger Map

We had incredible views of both the coast and the bay.  I'm looking forward to more open space preserve mountain bike rides in the future!

The Wildflower Course

Some of you have asked for more information about the triathlon I'm doing. Here's what I've gathered from the web since I haven't done it before.

The Wildflower Triathlon is a whole weekend of events May 1-3, 2009. Some people describe it as the Woodstock of triathlons. People camp out for the weekend and watch the triathlons going on. Wildflower takes place in and around Lake San Antonio which is about a three hour drive South of Palo Alto on Hwy 101.

There are three triathlons going on that weekend. They are all in the same general area but vary in length. From shortest to longest, they are: Sprint, Olympic, and Long Course. I'm doing the Olympic distance. You can see the map on the right. The distances are: swim 1.5 km (1 mile), bike 40 km (25 miles), run 10 km (6 miles). The map has elevation profiles, so you can see that the bike is pretty hilly- compare it to the elevation of the Sand Hill Road ride I did last weekend.

The swim is in the lake, but I guess it is on the cold side as we will be wearing full wetsuits.

Last year there were about 1400 participants in the Olympic event. This year, there will be more than 20 waves starting at 5 minute intervals! That's a lot of people swimming on top of each other. Reminds me of this training video:


If you know any other details about the event, please add a comment!

Swimming with Paddles

I swam with paddles on my hands for the first time the other day. The paddles are just larger than my hand and hook onto my fingers with surgical tubing. They provide extra resistance in the water and make it easier to tell when your hand is in the right position to pull more water. Like fins, paddles made me feel like I was zooming through the water.

Until I took them off.

My arms, tired from the extra resistance, felt like chopsticks as they cut through the water. A similar situation you might be familiar with is jumping on a trampoline for 15 minutes and then jumping up and down on concrete. "Where have my superpowers gone?"

Cramps

Getting leg cramps in the pool is no fun. I've had minor cramps before, but nothing like this.

I went to our usual coached workout this morning. They split us into two groups: half went biking first, half went swimming first. I was in the biking group. We rode at a brisk pace (17 mph on the flats) from Burgess Pool in Menlo Park, up Sand Hill Road, and turned around at the base of Old La Honda. It was a great ride and took us about an hour.

We headed to the pool when we got back from the ride. We did a little bit of stretching before jumping in, and the coaches warned us about getting cramps when swimming after biking. Note that in a triathlon, the order of events is swim, bike, run-- it hadn't occurred to me that cramps would be so common if you do them in reverse order.

My calves started cramping soon after I got in the pool. Each time I pushed off a wall, one or both would spasm. I stretched against the wall, and the cramps went away for most of the workout. At the end of the workout, our coach told us to swim a 200 yard cool down (8 laps). I swam the first lap, pushed off the far wall, and both calves and one hamstring cramped simultaneously. I turned around and got out of the pool. I didn't feel like drowning today.

One of my teammates suggested using a foam roller when I got home. I don't have one, so I had Tina use a rolling pin on my calves and hamstrings. Tina said, "This isn't pizza dough, but maybe one day it will be!" It felt pretty good, but my legs have still been tight for the rest of the day. I need to start bringing my water bottle to the pool with me.

Tour of California: First Place!

Today, I found myself in first place in the Tour of California, a pro cycling event.  Here's how it happened.

Tina and I spent Valentine's Day in Napa.  We stayed at the Wine Country Inn which is a homey bed and breakfast in St. Helena.  We ate our Valentine's dinner at Meadowood, and it was fabulous.  One of the courses was poached beef tenderloin with an onion and mustard sauce.  Sounds pretty ordinary, right?  It turns out that "poached" means sous vide which is a cooking style that makes the meat extremely tender and juicy.  I literally cried it was so good.  I've eaten a lot of good things before, but this was easily the best.

Anyway, we were in Napa for the weekend, and I needed to get a workout in.  I set off for a run in the rain.  I stumbled upon a few spectators as I turned onto Silverado Trail from Lodi Lane.  I knew that the Tour was going on, but I didn't know that it was going through Napa.  A section of Silverado Trail was closed for the event, so I was happy to run along it and try to see the riders.  I turned a corner and found a couple hundred spectators massed together, waiting for the riders to show up.   I felt a little awkward running in front of that may people, but there wasn't any room to run behind them.  I picked up my pace a bit and ran down the middle of the lane.

"You're in first place!" yelled someone from the crowd.

I ran faster.

Marker Set

At our two coached practices this week, we did a marker set.  A marker set measures our time and exhertion level so we can track our progress over the season.

On Thursday, we did a two mile run.  The coach told us not to push oursevles too hard this early in the season, so I paced myself for an 8-minute mile.  I did the first mile in exactly 8 minutes.  I felt good, so I did the second mile in 7.5 minutes for a total of 15.5 minutes.  We then noted our self-perceived intensity level:

INTENSITY LEVELS

Level 1: warm-up, talking easy

Level 2: short conversations comfortable

Level 3: 1-2 word sentences possible

Level 4: can’t talk, only cuss

Level 5: max effort, need all breath for sprint

I gave myself a 4 for the run.  Given that I want to do the run portion of my tri at a 7 minute/mile pace, I have quite a bit of work to do.

Today, we did a marker set in the pool.  We swam for 10 minutes, trying to do as many laps as possible.  I did 25 laps (625 yards) with an intensity level of 3.  Level 3 may sound like I was taking it easy, but my form gets much worse if I stay above level 3 for more than a minute or two.  In any case, my goal is to do the swim portion of the tri in under 30 minutes, so this pace should get me there.

After the swim, we went for a ride up Alpine Road.  Check out the route.

Age Group - Elite - Pro

There are more than 100 people on the Silicon Valley Team, and everyone has their own pace. The coaches split us up in to three categories:

1. Age group: beginning level to establish aerobic base and develop skills
2. Elite Group: intermediate level for those who already have some aerobic base
   
3. Pro Group: a challenging level for those with race experience and a solid base
   

Not quite sure what to expect, I slotted myself as "Elite". It turns out that I am comfortably in the Pro group for swimming and biking and just barely in the Pro group for running.

This got me thinking about my goals for Wildflower. I looked at the race results for 2008 and 2007, and I think I can finish in the top 15% overall if I train really hard. In 2007, I would have needed to finish in under 2 hours 40 minutes. The hardest part will be getting my running pace down to about 7 min/mile.