A Bike Wreck Deconsructed

I had a sweet wipeout this weekend, essentially hitting a bump, going
airborne, and then using the left side of my body as a skid pad and
ending up in the middle of the street.

Every wreck is different, but I thought I'd post the events that led
up to mine so maybe you can avoid what happened to me.

1. Increase in volume. Whenever you do more biking than usual, you
drop your guard because you are trying to fit more in. Be vigilant
for accidents when pushing your limits. I was trying to get in 20
hours of training that week; a personal record.

2. Repairing bar tape with too much electrical tape. A quick fix for
repairing bar tape that is coming loose is to wrap it with electrical
tape. Problem is, electrical tape is very smooth, even slick when it
gets wet.

3. Humidity and sweat. Summer training leads to sweat-soaked hands,
making it impossible to hold on to slick handlebars. When I hit that
bump, the bars literally flew out of my hands. I had no chance of
holding on.

4. Obstructed vision. I was wearing sunglasses I hadn't worn in a long
time. Now I remember why: that model gets caked in sweat and it's like
wearing double cataracts. I never saw that bump coming. I'm throwing
them out.

5. Don't forget to get the heck out of the road. I've seen countless
bike wrecks where the individual just sits there and picks his/her
butt while cars keep coming. Get out of the road! Save yourself
first, then drag your bike and gear to the shoulder as soon as it is
safe.

I'm taking my bike to the shop for them to wrap my handlebars properly
to minimize the chance of this happening again. If you can't do
something right, find somebody who can! I also busted a bunch of
spokes and building wheels is way out of my league.

Don't Swim During Lightning Storms

And stay away from guys in full deep-diving getup in a creek.

The Bike Commute as Your Recovery Ride

You should have hard days and easy days. The easy days act as recovery
so you can attack your hard days even better. There is nothing
better to help flush the crud out of your legs from a hard bike or run
like a nice, gentle bike ride.

Bike commuting to work or to run errands does a great job of this. The
average commuter only rides about 12 mph because of all the traffic.
You also slow your pace down so you don't arrive drenched in sweat.

If you go easy and enjoy yourself, you'll find that much of the
soreness you previously had is gone. Coach Mike Ricci (and myself)
recommended an easy bike ride for an hour at the end of hard training
weeks to aid recovery. I did it and it works.

Most of us are hard-pressed for time and should always look for ways
to improve time management. A great idea is to treat your commute as
recovery, bike harder on your other rides, and spend your saved gas
money on the stuff that matters - more tri gear!

The benefit of the weekly HARD bike ride and using HR.

We have a weekly time trial here in my hometown during the summers.

The course is 20k, which equates to 12.4 miles. These
races are fast, all-out efforts for half an hour or more. Riders are
fired off one at a time at one minute intervals. You want to catch the
guy in front of you and you don't want to be caught be the guy behind
you. A proper effort has you nearly collapsing after the finish line.

I've noticed that doing the race weekly leads to dramatic improvements
in performance. Speed can vary due to wind and sometimes I'm pulling
my 4 year-old on a trail-a-bike, so speed isn't a good indicator;
Heartrate is.

Week after week, the max heart rate you can acheive keeps climbing.
The muscle memory for fast and powerful turnover improves and allows
you acheive a higher RPM. Miss the race for just a few weeks and the
highest HR you can get is a good 5 to 10 BPM less than before.

The results also show up in your other workouts. Because you have a
higher max HR, everything else seems easier. MUCH easier. Because it
is.

If you're looking to increase your performance, give the weekly sprint
a try, just for about 30 to 35 minutes. As the saying goes, "Start of
going as fast as you can. Gradually increase speed."

SwiMP3 First Impressions

I should write a book on how much listening to music you like improves
your workout effort. Ever since I started listening to Pandora on my
iPhone while biking and running, my whole world has changed for the
better. I go harder and faster and enjoy the heck out of it.

Time to take it to the pool!

The SwiMP3 couldn't be easier to set up. I just plugged it into the
USB port on my PC and it started charging and also shows up as an
external drive. I made a playlist in iTunes and then just dragged and
dropped the files onto the device. Done.

At the pool, I told my coach I was swimming on the other side without
the swim team so I could try out this new device. The earphones clip
to the goggles and they went on easily. Raised buttons on the side do
all of the typical player functions, including shuffling.

Above the water, they sound pretty bad. But that's not the point. Go
under and the transformation begins. They sound pretty good! Swim
slow and deep and the sound is excellent. Go fast on the surface and
the quality diminishes just a little with the water splashing in and
out of your ears. But that's one of the cool things... You can still
hear what's going on around you, which is vital in a pool. I'm a
former lifeguard and you need swimmers to be able to hear you for
their own safety.

I asked another swimmer that was in the lane next to me if my music
was bothering him and he said he never heard it.

Now for the good stuff. Listening to music I liked made the workout
fly by! I swam hard for over an hour and never looked at the time
until I was almost done. I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS FOR YEARS! I've
been swimming competively since I was nine years old. I do math, plan
out my day, sing to myself, whatever it takes to make lap time go by.
Honestly, it's almost maddening. Music? Music makes it fun!

I finished my swim and told the head coach I was leaving.  He asked how much I had done.  I said, "500 warmup, 20x100s on a 1:30 interval, 500 cooldown."  He looked at me and smiled.  "20x100s on a 1:30, huh?  Good job!"  Heck yeah, it was!

So, first impression is a big thumbs up. The device works, is SIMPLE,
and makes swimming hard so much more enjoyable than before. More
details later as I keep using it.