De Fenestra

One of the things I loathe about living in Iowa is the extended (compared to what I'm used to from Kentucky) winters. My last couple of years in Lexington, I was able to start bike commuting - about seven miles each way, with a great shower facility and secure bike storage at the office. The equivalent facilities here are much less satisfactory, and honestly, living less than two miles from work means it's not actually good exercise to ride in. Counting the time to prep riding gear and change clothes after arriving, it's actually more of a time suck than driving - whereas in Lexington, I was actually seeing no time loss compared to driving in.

In months that don't suck, and on weekends when the prairie wind isn't howling, my partial substitute has been to ride downtown to pick up mail. That's about an eight-mile round trip, but I usually screw around for a couple of hours and extend it to 20 or so by doing laps around downtown and campus. However, that's only viable on good-weather weekends about May through October.

This is one of several reasons that my general fitness level has been slowly but steadily deteriorating since the move.

I've been eyeing indoor bike trainers for a while, thanks to DC Rainmaker's site (which I originally started following just for reviews on Garmin watches, but dude knows his shit). Over winter break, I broke down and wandered into the FLBS. I came away with their entry-level option, a Saris Fluid2.

I've gotten in about a dozen "rides" since then, which is pretty good considering I hadn't been on my bike since last August. The mind-numbing boredom of pedaling for an hour and going nowhere is alleviated by my excellent foresight and planning fortunate but completely-unrelated random action of wall-mounting our smaller television in the basement on an oversized VESA arm. I have to crank the volume up to hear it more-or-less-clearly over the hum of the trainer, but I can quite readily watch an hour-long show while maintaining a simulated pace of about 10-12mph. It's helping me chew through my various streaming queues, which I otherwise kind of forget are there.

The Sunday routine, absent other imperatives, starts with an early-morning bike ride into downtown Ames to pick up mail from the PO box. The shortest path is about a 7-mile round trip, slightly more than half my 13-mile round-trip commute in Lexington. I've been gradually adding more mileage each week - indirect routes, detours through parks, a tour of the best landscaping and architecture on campus. Last week was a single-trip mileage record, just barely more than a Lexington commute. I pushed to another record today, 17 miles. Average speed was 9.4 mph, which is not bad for me for all-urban riding.

I usually get at least one interesting wildlife encounter. Today's was a fawn in a neighbor's front yard. Cool, but nothing yet has beat the red fox I caught hunting in April.

Interesting trifecta of data points today. These aren't lifetime personal records by any means, but they're all low points since I started gathering data with my Garmin two years ago.

I'm still not back to an uninterrupted 5k run capability, but today's run was encouraging. Ran a mile, walked a quarter, ran a mile, walked a quarter, and then finished with a 0.65-mile run. Per the ForeRunner, the second mile was a new PR for my time with it - 8:35.8. Also a new best 5k at 31:31 (average pace 10:09/mile). I know my previous PR with the Suunto was a 9:05 mile average and I think breaking that is within reach by the end of the summer if I don't fuck up.

Better yet, the scales this morning advised me I'm down to 181.2, which is the lowest I've been since last year's minor surgery.

Went back to the gym last night for only the second time since the vasectomy.

Ow.

Everything is connected and it all hurts in different ways.

Really regretting spending 20 years on the couch with no regular exercise.

Last bike commute of the year today. Campus dining services shut down this evening, so no breakfast options are available at the office until students return. And I really don't want to eat first and ride in on a full stomach.

Gear checklist for not freezing my balls off in 25º morning commute: padded liner shorts under Smartwool base layer under Novara bike commuting pants. Arc'teryx Naga hoodie under Arc'teryx Trino jacket under Sugoi Evo Zap jacket. Arc'teryx liner gloves under Giro Ambient winter bike gloves. Smartwool beanie under helmet. Smartwool hiking socks under street shoes. Oakley Jawbreaker sunglasses with clear lens inserts for eye protection.

I was wearing more in performance athletic gear than my damn bike costs, probably including the bike computer that my lovely wife gave me as an early Christmas present. OTOH, I was actually comfortable and even a bit sweaty at the end of both rides. And I have proven that 25º weather is not an excuse for not riding in.

For a great many years, I was snidely skeptical about Arc'teryx apparel because of the price. Then I got a pair of their fleece gloves on REI clearance and found they were the best (dry-weather) winter gloves I'd ever owned. Then a medical instructor recommended their Bastion pants as a lighter-weight and professional-looking alternative to jeans and I found the first pants ever that made me look good less bad. Then I realized I had a problem. I keep buying the Dead Bird, though, because I have yet to purchase anything that isn't actually worth the money. The Naga and Trino, for instance, are both made of some sort of finely-woven black magic. With those over a silk base layer shirt, I've gone for runs on 20º mornings and never been more than mildly chilled.

Same applies to Oakley eyewear. Yes, there are cheaper brands. Yes, I'm paying for the label to a certain extent. But I've put a lot of money into my eyes and I'd like to keep random tree branches and road debris out of them. ANSI Z87 impact certification makes me feel a little better about that. Also, when it's this cold and I'm seeing 20+mph on downhills, having something to block the wind is a genuine safety need. And the ventilation cuts in the Jawbreakers are amazing for keeping the lenses from fogging up, which has been a problem with every single non-Oakley set of eye protection I've owned.

Buy once, cry once.

So I ran this morning. 3.15 miles, just spitting distance beyond 5k. Crappy pace by the standards I try to hold myself to, 12:25 mile average, but I got it done without stopping and I didn't curl up in pain afterward. Little sore from the bouncing but I'm mostly functional after three weeks off and don't seem to have lost too much cardio.

Still not gonna get back on the bike for at least another week, though. Only seems prudent.

Afterward, the girl and I got breakfast from our favorite local bakery and had a picnic in a park before hitting the farmers' market. Then I persuaded her to come with me to the range and work the spotting scope while I put a hundred-yard zero on a rifle. Afterward, we drove around the farm roads looking for birds, but they were mostly off work, save for the usual vultures and a couple of hawks. Got lunch at a local barbecue place that is far better than its squeaky-clean appearance suggests. Came home, cleaned said rifle, and took care of some paperwork management that I'd been putting off for a while.

Not a bad day.

The new job has a few benefits that aren't immediately evident on the total value of compensation sheet. Among these are a location and commute route that are somewhat conducive to biking and an employee gym with $7/month membership and free personal trainer sessions.

So my exercise log for July looks a little something like this:



R = run (Couch to 5k ongoing, with yesterday being my first unbroken 5k since last October).
G = gym.
B = bike commute (7 miles each way).

I'm not going to be able to maintain that consistent of a tempo once the kids move in again and our operational tempo ramps up, but I think it's a pretty good first month.

Spent most of the week on the road for work. It was a good trip - a conference on emergency management in my current focus area - but I had to be socially on constantly. Got back around dinnertime Thursday night and was basically useless all day Friday, even with a half-day off (we put in some extra hours during the conference for various reasons). I did get in one run Thursday morning but otherwise it was a week of too much restaurant food and not enough exercise.

After a week of not being here, I resumed the bike experiment today. This morning's ride was 8.5 miles at just over 9 miles per hour. That includes a couple of stops to talk to E, who was out walking (and conducting digital gladiatorial battles with Japanese pocket monsters), but it's still not the sort of speed I need to sustain if I'm going to commute this way.

The bike shop warned me that bike tires lose air faster than car tires, and they weren't kidding. The tires on the new ride are spec'd for 65-100 psi and they were sitting around 50. Found out that the floor pump they sold me didn't come with an adapter for my valve stems, which pissed me off, but the compressor from my car kit took care of the job quite nicely. I still have some adjustment issues with the front brakes and the front derailleur, but I'll let the professionals handle those next weekend.

Wildlife seen on today's ride: the resident snapping turtle in the creek in the park. Two yard ducks. Most interestingly, a Cooper's hawk soaring across a residential street in front of me and pulling up (and through tree branches) to parallel me for a few seconds. I heard a lot of bird-squabbling around that time but didn't see anyone pursuing or being pursued.

Also tested today: bike shorts, which look just as ridiculous as you'd expect but do significantly increase comfort thanks to the built-in nad pad (a term which I am now trademarking). As they do not include pockets, I also rode with the chest harness I use to hold my phone and ID and keys while I'm running. It, too, looks mildly ridiculous, but it's far more secure than the pockets of any normal shorts I own. So two successful gear checks there.

I may have blogged before (I'm too lazy to go back and check right now) about my Garmin ForeRunner 235. It's a GPS running watch with some other functions. One of those is an accelerometer-based activity tracker.

One of the problems with a wrist-based tracker (as opposed to, say, a waist-clipped FitBit) is that it only picks up steps when you're swinging your arm. So activities like pushing a grocery cart - or, mowing, which is worth about 4,500 steps in my yard - don't get tracked accurately.

However.

I've discovered that my ankle is just slim enough that I can put the watch on it at the very last notch in the band. This is enough to get an accurate accelerometer trigger on each step.

Downside? Black electronic device strapped to my ankle while I'm out mowing. I'm pretty sure some of my neighbors think I'm under home incarceration.

I hates it so.

I've gotten bad about posting here since I started running. Part of that is the dwindling LJ audience and the commensurately reduced social rewards for posting. I think I have two or three readers left. Everyone else seems to have fucked off for the chaotic ubiquity of Facebook (or social media platforms that aren't even on my radar). But I've also fallen into the trap of thinking my private run log posts are sufficient activity, even though no one but me sees them.

This has been a bad year for running. 2014 was... not good, by the standards I set for myself, but encouraging. I went from nothing in summer 2013 to being technically capable of a 5k by April 2014 (Couch to 5k worked, holy shit). In high school, my PR for a 5k was 21:55 - thoroughly uncompetitive but at least I was doing it. I've accepted that I'm never going to see times like that again. But last fall, as the humidity sloped off and morning temperatures dropped into the fifties, I was regularly posting sub-9:15 mile averages. On October 16th, I set an adult PR of 3.17 miles in 28:48 - a 9:04 average. We were regularly hitting the road three days a week.

Everything went to hell over the winter and really didn't improve during spring. Illness, holiday overcommitment, shitty weather, losing Dad, and elalyr's miserable tax season beat us down so badly that between mid-December and the beginning of May, we averaged less than one run a week. There were a couple of stretches in which we didn't get in a single run for over two weeks.

The winter of 2013-14, we maintained some conditioning. Last winter, we went completely to shit. When we restarted in May, it took me a full month to get back to the point of doing 5k without a walk break.

Then... summer. And it really is the humidity, not the heat. It's not enough that the thin, hot air carries less oxygen. Oh, no. In top of that, it's been so humid that sweat won't evaporate. I weighed myself on Saturday before and after running and I lost 1.8 pounds of water over 3.28 miles. I think all of that quart was still in my clothes or dripping off my skin when I finished. Which means no evaporative cooling. Heat management should be an issue for overclocked computer processors, not me.