As part of CMC Multisport newsletter yesterday, a new event piqued my interest:
1000 meter (pool) swim, plus a 5K run. The 2 events are separate events on the same day, e.g. its not out of the pool and then hit the road; rather, you swim your swim, get your time, and then meet back later for the run: total time = swim time + run time. Sounds like fun. Being on my birthday weekend, I dangled it as a birthday present alternative. It's shaping up to be a busy summer.

April 28, 2007
Cornwall Run to EndMS
Half-Marathon
Status: Go

May 5, 2007
Cornwall Sea Lions Masters Swim Meet & Duathlon
1000m Swim + 5K Run
Status: Go

May 12, 2007
Children's Treatment Centre Run + Bike
5 or 10 KM + Bike
Status: Pending Spousal Credit Approval and/or scheduling

June 30, 2007
Tupper Lake Tinman
1/2 Iron Triathlon
Status: Go

August ??, 2007
Cornwall Transit Triathlon
Participant at some level (Sprint, Relay or Oly)
Status: Pending

With my new Tacx Toy, I have a learned appreciation for the Power-Heart Rate-Cadence-Speed conspiracy.

Reporting distance and speed is now meaningless, without Power.

Tonight I was fooling around, and went full out power 240+ Watts for a speed of about 30km/hr @ 100 RPM, and then no-resistance for speeds of 40+km/hr at 170 Watts with 80 RPM.

I will continue to log speed and distance, if only to satisfy my own ego.

Swim - 0 hrs
Bike - 0 hrs
Run - 0 hrs
Painting - 25 hrs

This made me laugh today. I just found this on Dave Zabriskie's Blog:

A group of french protesters decided to stand in the middle of the road and block the race in what I can only assume was an attempt to get on TV to promote their cause. Naturally, we headed straight for the protesters; it was every man for himself. In all the craziness, a T-Mobile guy next to me got a cigarette butt put out on his leg so he punched the protester and ended up with a broken nose. Nonetheless, most of us managed through safely.

Dave Zabriskie's Blog: http://www.davezabriskie.com/blog/

The Man, my boss, has just bought himself a couple years supply of spousal credits.

No, it's not the classic P3C featured so pominently on my Windows Wallpaper, but his wife will soon be the owner of a 2007 Cervélo Soloist Team.

Oh, the lucky lady.

Labels: The Man

I have a confession.

I lie awake at night worrying about getting a flat tire.

I can change the tire on a car - no problem.

On a bike. I've had varying degrees of success.

Fortunatley / unfortunately, I blew my back tire this morning on the trainer. A rather non-dramatic event. No bang. No high-speed wobble. Just a massive decrease in resistance, leading to wicked "virtual" power output.

This happened at approxmately 40:00 out of a planned 60:00 ride. So I quickly hopped on the treadmill for an impromptu brick.

That left the tire still to be fixed.

Later in the day, I brought the bike down to the garage, and tried my best to simulate a race-day "pit-stop". The key to this exercise, was, as I told myself: Slow and steady. If I were to rush it - I'm sure I would screw it up, and end up taking much more time.

So, methodically, I unhooked the wheel, undid the tire, removed the bad tube, swapped in the new one, replaced the tire on the rim, pumped like hell and put the wheel back on the bike: 9 minutes and 30 seconds.

Not terribly fast, but at least I know, if it happens in a race, it can be done in under 10 minutes. I will repeat this exercise in a couple of weeks, when (hopefully), I'll be putting on my outdoor tires for real outdoor biking.

3 things:

Thing 1: Putting the tire back on the rim; the last 5% of rubber, for my tires anyways, is a real how can I say it politely... B##ch. You gotta really work that thing.

Thing 2: I have a manual on-the-bike-pump. I pumped like hell, and only managed to get about 55 psi in the back tire. I will have to either consider CO2 or practice pumping.

Thing 3: If a tires gotta blow. Please don't let it be the back one. Rehooking the chain in the gears is not fun.

Tupper Lake Tinman Triathlon Bike Course.

I'm not obsessing .. I was just doing some work late at night, and I thought 'what the heck', let's re-look at this thing.

The map of the bike course, from event site:
http://www.tupperlakeinfo.com/tinman/bikecourse.htm
(I'm hoping that the quality of the event is inversely proportional to their website skills)

Mapped using GMAP Pedomoter:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=776436

Elevation and Distance of Bike Course:
Excel file

Resulting Groovy Graphic: (click-it to McSupersize)


I am able to rationalize it this way: 4 climbs up Blair Road, one each @ 3.5km, 19km, 68km, and 85km.

The old Blair Road hill (mile 2 to 3):

4 degrees and sunny on Sunday, time for the first outdoor bike of the season. 1.92 Km: 3 laps around the block. Two laps at Zone 0.1 pace with daughter. One at Zone 4 pace - kicked my son's butt. A little retribution for last week's chess defeat.

60 minutes of 160+ Watts was preempted last night with a marathon session of T4s, Schedule 7s and various other Worksheets.

I have a love-hate relationship with taxes. I actually enjoy filling out the forms, and doing the calculations - as 'techie' as I am, I still like to do it all manually - but I always fall into those pitfalls of false hope on certain tax credits - "Take this amount, multiply it by 20%, add this to it, multiply by 3, (oooh, getting good); now take the amount from line 220 and subtract it from that, if negative, enter 0 (argh)".

Anyhow, long story short - getting a juicy refund. Happy with that - but the economist in me is screaming mad at the "opportunity cost".

Side Note: Reason 43 why I dislike Real Estate Agents
Part of the "juicy" refund is due to the fact that we moved last year, so I could take a new job. We sold our house, and incurred legit moving expenses that effectively lowered taxable income.

We sold our house privately, and avoided over $18,000 in (highly unnecessary) real estate commissions.

There's an expression, "Sh-t attracts flies", how about "Blood attracts Sharks", there's also "Ambulances attract Lawyers" - from our experience "For Sale By Owner sign attracts Real Estate Agents". We were bombarded by no less than 200 Real Estate Sharks begging us to list with them, or "co-operate" etc. ad nausium. A real estate agent can do this for you... la.la.la. Top 10 reasons to list with an agent... bla.bla.bla... 0.2% of my commissions go to charity... yip.yip.yip.

Do your homework agents: Not one of the 200 sharks pointed out to us, that in fact, because we were moving out of town to be closer to a job, that their commission would effectively be tax deductible. Depending on your tax bracket - one could re-coup 30-35% of Real Estate commissions.

It wouldn't have swayed us. But, if we were sitting on the fence, it could have. Oh don't get me started with Real Estate agents... I could write a whole blog on that. (Sorry Jo).

There comes a time, in every man's life, when eventually it will happen: to be beaten at chess by their own son.

I just never expected it to happen when the friggen kid was 8. To make things worse, I think he was toying with me near the end.

Taken from Runner's and Triathlete's Web Digest - March 2, 2007.
Posted for the benefit of my wife. A sufferer.

18. Plantar Fasciitis:
I often get patients walking in my office with a complain of heel pain. There are multiple causes of heel pain one of them being plantar fasciitis (plant-er-fa-she-eye-tes).

What is plantar fasciitis?
The name plantar fasciitis is somewhat misleading. The suffix “itis” means inflammation. And the plantar fascia is a band of fibrous tissue that extends along the bottom of the foot from the heel to the toes. Therefore plantar fasciitis should mean inflammation of the plantar fascia. However, in recent years it has been found that there is usually no inflammation present. What has been found is degeneration in the plantar fascia (scar tissue).

What is scar tissue?
With overuse of the plantar fascia, tiny tears form in the tissue. In the healing process our body attempts to repair that fascia with scar tissue, much like that scar that forms on the skin when you have scrapped or banged your elbow. As you can imagine, scar tissue is not as strong and flexible as normal, healthy undamaged tissue. Over time we can have a build up of this fibrous scar tissue if too much stress is put on the plantar fascia. This can lead to pain and dysfunction because this replacement tissue lacks the strength and flexibility of healthy tissue.

What are the symptoms of plantar fasciitis?
The classic symptoms of plantar fasciitis is pain under the heel that is worse in the morning or prolonged period of rest. The first few steps are really painful and that pain decreases with walking. When more advance there is also pain during normal activities.

How is plantar fasciitis treated?
Rest, ice and anti-inflammatory have traditionally been advised for plantar fasciitis with limited results. Some people may have this pain for months and even for more then 2 years with improper treatment. Since there is usually no inflammation but a scar tissue build up it important to break down the scar tissue. One soft tissue treatment technique that I use in my office is Graston technique. Patients usually notice an improvement of there symptoms on the first treatment. For more information on Graston technique visit my website at www.drstevepelletier.ca Other deep soft tissue technique can also work well to treat this condition. Orthotics might also be beneficial in some people to help support and relieve pressure on the plantar fascia. Extracorporal shock wave therapy can also be beneficial in patient in which other conservative therapies have failed.

Dr. Steve Pelletier, Centrum Chiropractic Clinic, (613) 830-4080, mailto:steve@drstevepelletier.ca

Two years ago, in Ottawa, I upped the swimming volume and included a weekly long swim. Usually on the order of 3,500 meters plus. All the swims were nicely structured such that it wasn't 3500 meters straight swimming, it was broken down into manageable sets, various strokes, included various drills to improve strength and lung-capacity.

I enjoyed these swims, and have endeavoured to re-create them, with success over the last couple of months. Although, I'm generally a good swimmer - these 'over-distance' sessions give me much needed confidence to tackle the swim portion of the triathlon.

Shortly after I first started these large evening swims, 2 years ago, I noticed significant changes in muscle tone around my back and shoulders. In fact, I was convinced I starting to get stretch marks close to my collar bones. My skin was often irritated: sore, red, and itchy.

Sadly, I wasn't getting 'huge' in the shoulders. My stretch marks were just scars from swimming incorrectly: Over a long distance, I would get lazy with my stroke, and instead of my arms properly entering the water at 10 o-clock and 2-o'clock, they were crossing over somewhere near midnight. This resulted in my collar bone area rubbing against my chin when I breathed. Being the manly man that I am, my 8 o'clock shadow was acting as sandpaper on my sensitive skin.

I remedied this by shaving before these sessions. And then it dawned on me (or donned on me - I never remember this one??) that I should just probably swim properly instead. So, I re-learned how to swim properly.

Last nights swim:
400 Warm Up
3 x (100 Pull, 50 Fr. Kick)
2 x 200 Free (Medium Pace)
3 x 100 IM
50 Easy
4 x 100 Fr, Bk, Fr, Bk
50 Easy
4 x 100 (25 Easy- 25 Med- 25 Easy- 25 Hard)
50 Easy
4 x 25 sprints on 00:30 *
400 Cool Down
---------------
3,000 m total


*4 sprints isn't enough. I should have done 8. I was dead-tired after 4, so 8 would have been a really good test. I would have done 8 - but the lane-conditions weren't conducive to this.