Humid Hot HR

Rainy, warm and very humid to Very Very hot and the humidity just makes things worse.

I mention the weather because since I’ve been wearing my HR monitor/ GPS I got a very good look at just how crazy my HR gets when it’s hot and/or humid. Tuesday I decide I’m going to run 4 miles and push the pace. I feel like I’ve been running slow forever and that isn’t ever going to make me faster. So I went out with quick in mind.  Which went fairly well until about mile 3. At that point I decided I’d better slow it down and not do too much too fast. Looking at my HR it was hanging out in the 170s even as I dropped the pace to the 8:30s. When I got back to the house, it looked like it was going to rain big. So I took out the ladder real quick to clear out the gutters on the house. 10 minutes later, my HR is still over 100. Alright, I get it. I need to get into the air conditioning and get some cold water in me. Once I was inside, my HR dropped fairly quickly.

We biked on the 4^th for about 27 miles or so. Fun ride. Nice to get out in the morning and have it done and over so we could spend the rest of the day visiting friends.

Saturday early wake up call to try and beat the heat. Didn’t really work. It was hot but it got much hotter so I suppose it worked but it still wasn’t pleasant. Ran 12.5 miles with Todd from his house. Again towards the end, the HR was up in the 170s and wasn’t going to go down easily if I was “running” at all. Fortunately, at the end of the run there was a nice cold swimming pool. It still took several minutes to get below 100. Crazy.

I suppose this could be hydration as well as cooling. I’ve got a lot of running planned this summer. So I’ll have time to work on this. My first attempt is buying a Camelbak Marathoner vest. Todd has been using a pack and one key thing is that even 90 minutes in his water is still cold. That is not the case with my palm bottle or belt. Not to mention it carries a lot more water. I figure it’s worth a shot.

Sunday: up early again to try to knock out a 50 mile bike with just over 4000ft of climbing. I was going to take my road bike out but it was so hot yesterday, I never got around to moving the power cranks to my road bike. I’m interested to see the numbers from this, so I took the tri bike instead. (I was also concerned about not having aero position to “rest” on, I know, weak).

Well for whatever reason, on one of our stops. I stopped the timer… and then didn’t turn it back on for awhile. So that kind of defeated the purpose of riding the tri bike with power today. Ah well. The good news is that even on a really hot day. (where we stopped and asked a woman watering her flowers if she would fill our bike bottles from the hose). We got nearly 50 miles in. Hopefully we can continue to find time to ride long and keep challenging ourselves. Hopefully results will follow!

Still haven’t been to the pool. Genine went and did a mile Ocean Swim with Ed on Saturday morning. And while waiting to start turned around to find that Bob was there as well! (of course). Genine found it challenging to deal with the waves at first but got it figured out and got it done. I should have gone as well but decided that having someone to run with for 12+ miles was the better plan for me.

Now to register for the Tango before the prices go up!

Back to work.

Following the Mont Tremblant 70.3 last weekend. My calves were my biggest problem. I was being very careful to make sure not to do a workout that could possibly injure them. My range of motion was awful. By Tuesday, I was really wanting to do some sort of workout, so I decided doing some core work should be alright. Dropped Ab Ripper into the DVD player and did that to the best of my ability. (wasn’t great, wasn’t awful). Then I did some planks after that. Good enough for now, leave it at that.

The next day my hip flexors were feeling the Ab Ripper. Makes sense, I haven’t been doing that on a regular basis. My calves were getting better but were still sore. I got on the bike trainer and did about 30 minutes of very easy spinning. Got the legs moving and the blood pumping through them to get the junk out. After that some stretching of the legs and core.

Thursday oddly enough my core felt even worse than the day before. Again, mostly hip flexors. The calves were feeling alright tho’ so taking some of my numbers from my power meter, I decided to hop on the trainer. I decided to try a spinervals workout with intervals where I was trying to hold a certain power value no matter what the gearing and interval. I think I may have picked something a bit too high but I managed to get through about 50 minutes. Not bad for a first attempt, I have a long way to go in learning how to properly train with power.

Friday: I keep thinking I’ll actually wake up early and swim and I continue to fail at this. I haven’t been able to figure out what’s going to motivate me to get to the pool on a regular basis. It doesn’t help that I feel that the pool is the cause of many of my illnesses, sinus or otherwise. Whether or not that is true, I can’t say. I can say I wish the water in the pool was more inspiring and didn’t make me feel this way.

Saturday: It’s bike day. It’s humid. And it’s time to climb. We took our Tri Bikes out today. 40 miles, 2,375 ft of climbing over 40 miles and we hit one of the Fondo Hills “The Doggone Hard Hill Climb” http://ridewithgps.com/routes/868633

Part of me feels that I should be doing this climb at least once every weekend until September just to get ready. We will see if that really happens.

Sunday: Up at 5AM to meet up with Todd, drive into the city. Run 6-7 miles pre race. Then “run” the 5 mile NYRR Achilles race. We decided to run the extra miles before the race to avoid the heat. Well avoiding the heat was only a small part of the problem. The humidity must have been 100%. We did one loop, 6 miles and then took a break as we lined up for the race. I probably should have found more fluid, COLD fluid. I was very warm and my HR just standing in the corral at the start was 100-105. I just made a point of stopping at the first aid station and taking a couple cups of water at that point.

The most “exciting” part of the race was on a down hill when one of the hand cyclists started to get some serious momentum going and there were people in front of him with headphones on that couldn’t hear the people yelling for them to get out of the way. I started to clap and wave wildly in their line of view to get their attention. The one person managed to step just out of the way. The 2^nd person I think was grazed as they went by, I couldn’t tell and since they had headphones on, I wasn’t able to ask. I’ll admit that I’m in the “no headphones” camp for any race, but obviously this is one where it REALLY should be a rule. That could have ended badly.

After the race, back to NJ. It seems to rain daily now days, so mowing the lawn has been impossible. I was hoping to bike before the rains came but decided I had better use that window on getting caught up with the lawn. After which we loaded the road bikes onto the car and went over to one of Genine’s friend’s house to wait out the rain. It looked like it might not be dangerous within the hour. Sure enough, it was.

Genine doesn’t think she’s been on her road bike since getting her tri bike a couple years ago. I honestly can’t remember the last time I’ve been on mine. Both bikes had clip on aero bars on them for sure when we last used them. Those are removed now. I threw on a profile design saddle we had laying around to see how that would feel. Genine is still on the stock saddle. I’m sure that is going to have to change very soon. We weren’t more than a few miles down the road before both of us realized just how smooth these bikes feel compared to our tri bikes. The tri bikes only have a carbon fork. Our road bikes have carbon fork, seat stays and seat post. The difference was amazing.

Of course our pedal stroke felt completely different as well. Genine said she felt much more powerful on the road bike compared to the tri bike. I being pretty beat from the morning run felt slow, I didn’t have a cadence meter on the bike but I’m fairly certain 90 rpm wasn’t happening. Even in an easy gear I just didn’t have the energy. So I think I was mashing a bit and I just got slower and slower over the 30 miles. (I also think I ran out of calories).

We were both very glad to have put the time in on the road bikes tho’. We both realized that we have to build up our hand and arm strength to deal with riding on them again. I was changing positions like crazy at the end because I was so tired/uncomfortable.

Fortunately immediately after, Genine’s friend made me a recovery shake and we all got to hop into her pool for a bit. That was great. It definitely brought my core temperature down and then I was able to sit around and feel comfortable the rest of the evening.

I grilled up some dinner when we got home. Then I promptly fell asleep on the couch just after 9. Genine was on the phone. She woke me up at 3AM. It seems she fell asleep in the chair right after she was done talking. Ugh! Unglued my contacts from my eyes then went back to sleep for a few hours in bed.

As a side note, I saw some results for Syracuse 70.3 on Monday morning. Ed’s brother in law took 2^nd in the 45-49 Age group with a time of 4:47:56 which is amazing to me. Then I look to see who beat him and it’s Doug Clark also from NJ. Doug finished in 4:28:21!!! Absolutely incredible. Sometimes I see this and it’s truly inspiring. Other times it feels absolutely demoralizing.

Yes I see that the pro finished 1^st in 4:02:58  and the first female pro came in at 04:24:37. Even more amazing of course but the other guys are in their mid 40s and have a full time job!

Anyhow, there you have it.  Have a great 4^th everyone.

Matt