My 21 Day Challenge!

So the thing with being an athlete is that it's almost always a lot easier to go out for a run than it is to admit it's probably a day to take it easy. Having a training plan helps a lot with that, but lately I've been battling the IT band issues that cropped up about a month ago, and while I've been training, my running still is lame because that's the one sport that the IT band really matters in for me. So since this week is finally a recovery week for me, my goal is to start having a consistent yoga practice to help prevent injuries. I don't have any real injuries other than tight muscles, really. Tight muscles with trigger points in them. That then pull and rub on something else and irritate it. It's annoying and fairly elusive to treat. I've basically given up on finding a massage therapist that can help out because 1) it's expensive and 2) a really REALLY helpful and good and amazing massage therapist is about one in a million. Which means it will take awhile to find one anyways, and by then I'd be out of money. Sigh.

So, along with my magic muscle zapper, which I have completely worn the electrode pads down on - I need to get new ones of those - I've decided that it's in my best interest to pick up yoga again. In years past I've signed up for a class at school to add another credit hour to my load, and lo and behold, I've ended up not injured for the time that I'd been taking the class. It was basically a result of being forced to keep a consistent practice. A consistent practice helps keep muscles loose, and amongst other benefits, that's probably the one that I'd notice the most. I even remember someone saying (who told me not to reveal this information to a certain other person, hence the anonymity) that the only thing that ever helped (and cured) his plantar fasciitis was a 6 week long beginner's yoga class.

Which brings me to my 21 Day Challenge, as created by Yoga Journal. I'm totally starting it late, but it's better late than never, right? The idea is to basically have a way to help to cultivate a DAILY home practice in order to truly get the benefits of yoga, which, surprise surprise are only really achieved by regular practice. Which takes me back to the trigger points. Trigger points are most likely to show up in chronically tight muscles such as those that are overworked - like mine. How do you keep muscles from getting tight? Well I would say stretching, but in reality, it doesn't really help me that much. Yoga is different. It's not stretching. Not in the traditional sense, anyways. Isometric stretching, maybe. But more well rounded than that. It's a warmup, workout, and cooldown.

So, in an effort to help prevent my own injuries and hopefully push others to do the same, I am starting my 21 days as of this morning, and through training and working, I will keep a consistent practice.

Meet Priscilla

And yes, I understand what the name implies. For those not familiar, Priscilla Queen of the Desert is a film/musical/show about drag queens. Which is why I like the name. Priscilla is a very girlie name.

Well, here's the background on Priscilla: I've been looking for years now for a frame/bike that I could refurbish and turn into a fixie/commuter bike. It had to be oldish, but in decent condition, with horizontal dropouts (if you don't know what dropouts are: Go here), and with wide enough fork/brakes to be able to accommodate fenders. Because I like Fenders. They're kinda dorky but cute at the same time. And totally practical. Now the thing with the name is that I generally don't name my inanimate objects that transport me. I don't name bikes, cars, etc. Dogs I name. Things that aren't alive I don't. Descriptors go something like this: "I'm going to drive the insert model name here to the store." or "I'm riding my road/TT/mtb today." Straightforward, right? I have also long had a problem with calling inanimate objects "she." I guess I'm a quirky feminist, but I think all my bikes should be called "he" or "it." Because if guys ride bikes called "she" then shouldn't girls ride bikes called "he"? Which is how it came to Priscilla: still can be a "he" but since Priscilla is a girl's Schwinn Varsity, the name must be girlie. Which is why Priscilla is a perfect name.I stripped the parts off of Priscilla yesterday expecting to find more rust than was worth the $35 to take...ahem....him....home. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the muck was greasy dried up dirt, and not rust. A good soak in ammonia removed most of it, and what was on the frame just sanded right off. This is going to be a fabulous bike. I had a few stern words and help with whacking the stem out of the fork, which has some rust on it, but not too bad, and got to taking the derailleur housing guides off.
The bike was obviously a cheaply made bike without the finishing touches probably afforded to better models, so there are a few burrs and catches that I am working on filing off before I get to sanding the whole frame down.
I got my work buddy here with me the whole time; she's just there making sure that I'm doing things up to her standards.
Once the frame is all sanded and primed, it's going to get a bright apple red color and a clear lacquer. Then he gets fenders, a rack, one brake, the wheels on the current fixie/commuter - the Fiori - and the bottom bracket adapter for the English bottom bracket I want to use.

Yay for getting to projects I've talked about for ages :P

Happy Friday!

Yay for Fridays off! Ok, it actually doesn't make much difference to me because I could just as easily be working on a weekend, and it feels more like Saturday today because everybody's home. And I still have to train, of course. On my days off, I'm putting a lot of training in just because it's hard to work a full day and then do a full day's worth of training. Since I'm allowed to work just 3-4 days per week, I can get some sleep and get some more training in on the days off. Though yesterday was a long day: 2 hours of training plus 9 hours of working. One or the other, not bad, but you put them two together and it makes for a long day. Especially since I'm on my feet 99% of the day now. You know you're on your feet a lot when you get on your bike to ride home and you're grateful just to sit on the bike. The coolest thing though: I can ride my bike to work everyday and 1) bring it inside the shop without getting odd looks and 2) ride every day that I've worked so far and not be labeled "hardcore." Because commuting an easy 30 minutes one way (or so, depending on the bike and the wind) isn't hard core. It's just cheaper than driving. And nicer to my car. And just that much more training I can get in. Other than driving to Chicago, I haven't driven more than 1 mile (to the grocery store, because we still don't have a bike that can handle a real grocery trip) in several weeks.

I am so looking forward to real spring to get here. I'm tired of having to wear a bunch of clothes to train. I miss the dry heat of the desert. If I was in NM now, I'd already have a good bike shorts line going. Not here, I'm still pasty white all around. Booo to that.

Learning Learning Learning...

I don't know how much more my brain can absorb. I'm learning all kinds of new stuff about stuff that I could possibly sell, use, etc....Kinda cool, though somehow my brain doesn't feel much worked like it did in school. I keep going back and fourth on the whole Grad School thing. I guess what I've more or less decided is to see how this year goes in racing and decide towards the end of the season. Which gives me less prep time for the GRE, but I can't see myself doing grad school and racing full time as a pro, either.

...on that note, it's a pretty nice day, I have the day off of work, I'm gonna go bike :P

Day 1, Week 2

Ok so last week was pretty crazy/cool. Started the new job, survived, then FINALLY made it to Chicago. Though getting to Chicago didn't get me around as many team members as I wanted, it's a start, I suppose. I guess a number of people are still inside because it's too cold, so I didn't meet them on the ride I went on. The cold wasn't that bad, I mean c'mon! I rode all through the winter! I did get beat up good though. It's good for me, a good time for it, but wow boys can be hard to bike with sometimes. They were nice and didn't let me get lost a.k.a. dropped and miss a turn, so that was good. But I was hurting for the entire ride just trying to keep up. AND we got passed by huge groups of REAL cyclists. If you ever want to feel slow on a bike...

AND I'm finally running again. I musta picked, twisted, rubbed, iced, stretched, you name it most of the problems out of my left IT band enough that I could run for an hour yesterday (and 45 on Friday otherwise I probably wouldn't have tried an hour). I'll probably keep stepping it back up slowly and decide soon if I can run the 1/2 marathon at the end of April here. Otherwise I'm back in business. And I have time off of work during the week so that I can train. Double bonus!

Out with the old, in with the new...

I'm in transition today between jobs. Well, I finished the chem lab job on Friday. Tomorrow I start at the bike shop. So today I'm using my easy day as a cleaning and organizing day to kinda get ready for not knowing my schedule for this week. I am going to push for a couple days off in a row (it's a part-time gig anyways) for this week so that I can try to get up to Chicago finally. I was going to go up before I got sick, then I had to go to ABQ, then I had to put in my two weeks so I kinda needed to stick around and get stuff done. Now I'm hoping that it's going to settle down a bit and I can make it up to Chicago and really meet and make friends with my team. So I feel REALLY behind in what I've been meaning to do.

I did a Tri Time Trial with the FIT team this weekend. It was crazy because I wasn't expecting almost thirty people to come out to do an impromptu triathlon, but they were there. Some people did sprint distance, some did olympic, some did a bit of each, and some did two of three. I did two of the three. I'm still laying off the running for now. I'm betting it's doing better, but to be honest I can't tell until I run. It just doesn't hurt until I run on it. And I haven't run since last Tuesday, accept for in the water. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised with my swim/bike splits. My swim (for this early in the season) was low 21 minutes, which is pretty up there for me. I also wasn't far behind the real swimmer on the team - a UIUC collegiate swimmer. So that's a good start for me. Then there was the bike. It was SO FRIGGIN WINDY!!! I still did ok, my average wattage was close to my FTP wattage (which is over a 30 minute test, so for almost 1.5 hours at that high of wattage is pretty good!), however it also included stoplights and stopsigns and everything so that dropped both the average wattage and the average speed. Of course, I wasn't saving anything for the run because I wasn't doing it. But I put over ten minutes over the fastest girl on the team, and she's nothing to shake a stick at. To be fair, though I've been biking a pretty good amount all winter and she's just been just swimming, so it's not a truly fair assessment. But it feels like commuting 45 minutes one way on a heavy-as-all-getout mountain bike is doing me good. I have a stronger bike base. I haven't done anything for real power yet, but base is always good.

I'm slowly developing my own philosophy for training in endurance sports. Part of my ideas come from what I did as a swimmer for years. Swim training, from what I've experienced, is a lot - and I really mean a LOT - of intervals. Fast, hard, dying in the water intervals. I remember as a 13 year old swimming my butt off. I would get to a point, though that I would just have to back off. So I would, and would basically just keep moving. At a pace that I now realize was base. Coaches hated it when I did that. I wouldn't listen though because I know my body and I will listen to it before I'd listen to anyone else (and that's still the case). Training that way didn't hurt me at all, though. I still placed among the top swimmers in the state doing much less fast training than my high-placing counterparts. Swimming just wasn't for me, though. Too monotonous. I love it, but not 10X a week. I think that for most people having a lot of base is essential, and having too much speed is detrimental. And that breakdown is pretty similar between most people. In a number of tri-training books (and coaches I've talked to) I'm finding that there's a lack of emphasis on base, with more emphasis on speed/tempo. I don't understand, though, how XC skiers will train 25 hours a week, but triathletes will train only around 16. When the XC races are generally shorter than triathlons. Why the discrepancy? The difference between the two, it seems, is mostly base-pace hours. But I find that I do best when I have a LOT of base hours under my belt. When it comes down to it though, it's hard to train a whole ton and work and sleep and recover from it all. Maybe when I'm a full time pro, right? :P

Lots of changes

It has been a crazy couple of weeks. Being sick for a week sucked, and then I got news that my grandfather passed away so I had to start planning a trip back home to say goodbye. It made me glad that I made the trip for his 80th birthday in January, but I'm still really going to miss him. When I saw him he was very sick but still full of the attitude I'll always remember him for. It was not a trip I wanted to make, but it was nice, even under the circumstances, to get to see my family again. My baby niece is getting bigger, stronger and is still the cutest baby ever. She was standing (with help) while I was there! She's only 8 weeks old! She's an athlete in the making!

While I was in New Mexico I got a call from the bike shop I applied for - I'm hired! I'm super excited to work there partly because I've wanted to work in a bike shop for awhile (for a number of reasons, one being I can work part time, another because I love bikes) but I'm also excited because I can get out of the sketchy chem lab I'm currently working in. It may be just that I'm paranoid, but I did take chem 101/102 and other lab classes and you know those safety rules they give you? Ummmmmm yeah. Those aren't exactly followed very closely. That's why I wear a lab coat, old worn out running shoes (that will get thrown out when I'm done there) and gloves, gloves, gloves! I've learned that some solvents (Toluene) are MEAN. Do not touch, smell, look sideways at, etc or else...kinda scary. Though I'm appreciative of the days when I work with Cineol a.k.a. Eucalyptol a.k.a. the main component of Eucalyptus essential oil. At least that part of it isn't toxic. Though what we mix it with might be. Again, I'm not a chemist and therefore I don't like working with it and therefore I'm super strict on the safety stuff that doesn't really get followed by anyone but me. Four days and counting. Then I start at the bike shop next Tuesday. Yippee!! I'm not sure exactly what to expect in terms of how busy it is or how busy it can be, so we'll see.

I'm currently not allowed (by my leg, not by my choice) to run. I'm having bad IT band issues probably from sitting for a week while sick. Sitting for me has always aggravated it badly, as does running as many miles as I have this winter in prep for 70.3 Kansas and the Illinois Half Marathon. I feel like I'm running strong when I'm running at all. What compounds the problem is the serious LACK of dirt to run on around here. Even when you get out of town you can't hit the dirt because then you're trespassing on farmers land and that probably won't end well either from the dogs or the shotguns they probably have. So the options are largely concrete or asphalt. Can you say IMPACT???? And I'm not even a heel-striker! So I'm sitting here on my day off and zapping the crud outta my leg, ice rolling it, zapping, rolling, zapping, rolling, etc etc etc. I'm probably going to hit the pool tomorrow for an aquajog instead of a run. Maybe I'll have to make that my recovery run on a routine basis....hmmmm....the problem is the lack of pool space in this town, though. The UIUC pool is crowded with people who don't have any concept of swim etiquette, and once the outdoor pool opens it's only going to get worse. I'll have to come up with something better for the summer, maybe a couple of memberships to different pools depending on the hours...ouch that would get expensive fast though! Here I am totally spoiled from the pools in Albuquerque that I could go to almost whenever I wanted...oh well. I'll have to bike it up all that much more then!