I could ride one of these

Almost fast enough.  We are getting very close to some cool transportation options, folks!

Read the review here!

Distance gives Perspective

So now that my bike commute to work is only 1/3rd the distance of my long weekend run, it doesn't seem like much at all anymore. I bike 7 miles on pavement each way and My long run is 21 miles on trails.

As an example of how not to train, I fell a little sick after pushing it too hard over the past few weeks. There's a great thread on Triscoop right now about how some of that works, so go ahead and put in your two cents. Essentially, you can overdo it in two ways: One is pushing too hard and injuring yourself, the other is increasing your volume too quickly. I pushed my volume of running too much, driving myself into the ground.

The rule of thumb is to not increase your volume of running by more than 10 percent in one week. A quick check of my Google calender to your right will show that I ran 5.92 hours for 30.96 miles one week and then jumped up to 8.23 hours for 42.23 miles the very next week. That's an increase of volume or distance just shy of 40%. No wonder I cratered.

Back to the bamboo front, I've got some pictures of what my bamboo work is looking like. Check these pix out. It is taking a long time, but I am having fun. I am VERY interested in building a bike after I learn more while building a bike rack.

Redesigned Suunto Foot Pod Review

I just took the newly redesigned Suunto Foot Pod for a spin. I'm digging it!

We all go crazy over GPS, but GPS has some issues.

• It doesn't work indoors and can be extremely inaccurate under dense tree cover.


• GPS isn't very accurate at the consumer grade and small size athletes like to use.


• Battery life is short.


• Sometimes signal can take a long time to aquire, or there is no signal at all. What then?

Suunto has done a great job of developing their products around a system of "pods" that allows the athlete to easily pick and choose how he/she wants to measure distance. I was let in on a little secret about GPS vs. Foot Pod by a Suunto rep. "Use the Foot Pod. It's more accurate and the battery lasts much, much longer." Now don't get me wrong. I love GPS, and there's definitely times for it, (sailing, anyone?) but a foot sensor works for 99.9% of running situations.

I have only owned one tiny Apple product in my life, the Shuffle, but I constantly rave about how Apple designed the user interface. Tiny LEDs only activate right when you turn it on, saving battery life. The thing is slim and functions as a clip, making you search for it before you realize you are even wearing it. iTunes talks with it easily, allowing you to manage it from your PC.

The new Foot Pod reminds me of the Shuffle. Being a guy, I went right past the instructions and tried to turn it on. No on switch? What gives? I started reading through the documentation and realized what was going on. Suunto had done some smart designing not only to reduce weight, but also improve battery life and make it more usable across shoe platforms. Here's the list of what I found:

• It now uses a clip instead of a rubber shoe-lace-threaded holder. You used to have to unlace your shoes to mount the holder, not anymore. Just unclip and place it on another shoe. I like that A LOT.


• You pair it with your watch for its first ever use by turning it upside down. What? I quickly realized that the engineers were using the internal sensors instead of a switch. Another weight saving idea.  From then on out, just move the sensor and it turns on so your watch can sense it.


• It turns on after sensing movement. The light either blinks 3 times or 6. 3 = good to go, 6 = 5 hours or less of battery life. That's it, no more lights. Just like the Shuffle, no blinking lights during use saves battery.


• Speaking of battery, they switched out the AAA for a watch battery. The reduction in LED use and probably some other onboard stuff gets you 3 times the hours of use as well. 200 hours on one battery is great. Make sure you dispose of that old battery correctly!


• Then there is the reduction in size. I never thought the old model was huge, but hey, I'll take a smaller size. Less weight = more efficiency!

So there you have it. Suunto pulled an Apple and came out with an innovative reinvention of their old product. I love seeing this trend in the industry. Keep finding ways to make the technology disappear so we can focus on running instead of fiddling with hardware.

Crash and Burn like Bamboo

I wondered if something was going to go wrong when I started running Friday afternoon and I felt sore and just a tad bit tired. Nothing big in itself, but I had my third epic run in just as many Saturdays the very next day. It crossed my mind that I should take the day off before I try to run 28 miles, but I ran anyway.

I got up at 5 am on Saturday, got my crap together, and drove to Lake Bryan to run on the trails. It had rained all day Friday. I got there about 15 minutes before dawn and had an overwhelming feeling to sleep. Yet another bad sign.

I was too tired to run.

But I'm no sissy, so I did it anyway. I had full intention of completing 4 of the 7 mile loops for a total of 28 miles. I also had show notes and a mic to record a podcast on the last loop.

The first loop hurt. That was another bad sign. The second loop, well, that's when I started thinking about possibly not doing a fourth. The course was very runnable, but 2 sections had that sticky mud that made your feet resemble 20 lb. snowshoes.

The third loop made me realize that doing a fourth would cause me more harm than good. My upward curve of improvement had hit a brick wall. There was no more improvement to make with running, only rest.

It was still a great time. 21 miles in the butt-ass cold and mud was very primal and fun. I went home, then went to a birthday party of Kai's friend. Then the crash and burn occured.

I couldn't warm up. Hell, I'm still cold two days later. We were supposed to go to a punk rock concert and I felt too chilled and sick and tired to go. I was supposed to go on a recovery ride today, but pushed it back until Monday.

Never one to have a shortage of crazy projects to work on, I started collecting bamboo to make a bike rack. Why bamboo? It's a grass and grows like crazy, so it is considered a much more renewable resource than trees. It also has incredible strength, commonly called nature's carbon fiber. The trick is curing it so it doesn't get brittle and crack with time. Here is a cool link to Calfee building bikes out of bamboo.

I stumbled across a website that showed a great way to cure bamboo quickly. The magic occurs with the use of a torch, which freaks me out and excites me at the same time. Armed with information that only the Internet could provide (that ain't saying much), I chopped down some THICK sections of bamboo that was growing near my house. I then bought a torch and went to work. I had a ton of fun, but this is going to take some time. I'll post some pix soon. After working on computers 5 days a week, I love working on a project with my bare hands.

I gotta say, I was surprised at how impressive a 2 inch thick piece of bamboo can be. If the curing method works, I've got a little side business making some cool stuff going on.

Why HR is Good, but not Great

One important thing I learned last year is that HR is not an ideal method for measuring performance. Many things can mess up your HR. Here's a short list of the usual suspects:

• Dehydration - usually lowers it


• Caffeine - raises it


• Lack of sleep


• Food


• Anxiety


• Time of day


• Weather


• Unexplained

I decided to write this post specifically because of today's run. Instead of starting at 5:30 AM, I started at 3:45 PM in the freezing rain and after drinking a 16 oz diet Coke. Check this craziness out. (You can click on it to get the full size image)

After running for 15 minutes with my HR more than 30 BPM higher than it should be, I said "F-this!" and walked for about 30 seconds and adjusted my shoes. Look what happened afterwards. The short break dropped my HR by a massive amount and let me settle into my run.

I've got an email into Suunto to try to figure out how view just the data after I took a split at 30 minutes. It was in the low 120s again, but I can't figure out how to calculate exactly how much. My watch seems to be taking splits at random intervals along with the one I did by hand. Weird.

Just for kicks, I thought I'd include a picture I found of my bike at mile 56 when I did my second self-supported Ironman in 2005. Look for the MP3 player stuck to the Bento box along with heavy gloves resting on the handlebars. I recall that the temperature was between 33 and 42 degrees that whole day. That was living life on the edge!

For an extra special treat, BIKE PORN! Check out this photo stream in flickr of a guy that takes pix of women riding around in everyday clothes in Amsterdam.  I suggest checking it out in Slideshow Mode.