Hoops 7.30.07 and a Birthday Hangover

Basketball was good last night, everyone behaved and we successfully implemented a sign in board to manage the 17 guys that were there.

I felt pretty terrible yesterday and today after the bike ride even after a nice big Mexican breakfast and a 2.5 hour nap. I kinda zombie-walked through the day and I think I might have been de-hydrated. The 2 days before the ride were my birthday extravangzas where I ate WAY too much and drank more than normal.

Friday morning my wife and daughter wanted to take me out for breakfast so we had Bruegger's Bagels (my daughter's favorite place). If you have not had a jalapeno cheese bagel sandwich (I get sausage and cheese w/ no egg) you are missing out.

For lunch I met up with the guys at a place by the U of A called No Anchovies. They do gourmet slices where you pick from a prepped pie in a case and the rebelliously attired pizza man puts it in the oven so that its fresh and perfect. I've had the buffalo chicken wing several times before and its freaking awesome: blue cheese, wing sauce and tender strips of chicken. The other slice I had was a surprise and I think better than the wing slice. It was simple mozzerela, basil, crazily fresh tomatoes and a little cracked black pepper.

For dinner we had a great meal at Vin Tabla with my parents, kids, wife and sister. I'm lucky that my kids are behaved enough and willing to try things not necessarily on the normal 8 and 4 year old menu so that they can come out with us for a nice meal. Frankly nothing at Vin Tabla but I LOVE but the small plates concept is great and without exception everything we had was very good including a 2000 vintage bottle of sparkling wine from Roederer (?) and a great classic tasting French Burgundy that I didn't catch the name of but that the wine steward got all wound up about. I could eat the salume and cheese plates pretty much every day forever and the truffle fries are just silly with their goodness. The highlight for me was the red snapper ceviche. Just enough time in the citrus to give it a texture but not overdone/rubbery. Perfect summer food.

Saturday night my Mom made the old chicken fried steak standby including mashed potatoes, cream corn and gravy. I think I gained 12 pounds just from that meal.

Mt. Lemmon Ride 7.29.07 (10 Miles Up)

Felt really good going up today and didn't crash at all coming back down. I finally figured out how the watch stores data and so I made a quick table below to show the altitude changes. 10 was a good milestone and from the looks of it the next 2 or so will be relatively easy followed by a big climb up to Windy Point.


Garmin Data

Mt. Lemon Data

	Altitude	Altitude Change	Grade %
Start	2,888	0	0
Mile 1	3,132	244	4.63%
Mile 2	3,389	257	4.87%
Mile 3	3,659	270	5.11%
Mile 4	3,930	271	5.13%
Mile 5	4,220	290	5.50%
Mile 6	4,493	273	5.16%
Mile 7	4,736	243	4.60%
Mile 8	5,095	359	6.80%
Mile 9	5,316	221	4.18%
Mile 10	5,485	169	3.20%

Week	Bike Miles	Run Miles	Swim Miles	Basketball Hours
1 (7/16 - 7/22)	40	0	0	2
2 (7/23 - 7/29)	25	2.5	0	2
3 (7/30 - 8/5)
Total	65	2.5		4

Training Run #1

Running hurts and it sucks. I ran 2.5 miles today, the first time I have been running in months and it was painful the whole way. My cardio was fine, I never got over ~155 which is as the Mythbuster guys always say....the 'butter zone'. But my shins were killing me, specifically the inside part of my shin where it appears to be only bone and no muscle. I know it will pass once I go for a while but I just want to be on record as anti-running.

Marathon here I come.

Week	Bike Miles	Run Miles	Swim Miles	Basketball Hours
1 (7/16 - 7/22)	40	0	0	2
2 (7/23 - 7/29)		2.5		2
Total	40	2.5		4

Hoops 7/23

Not a whole lot to say here, it was a good run but with 21 guys at one point an awful long wait between games. Its a bunch of Raytheon and IBM guy plus a few strays and things run pretty well. We hit a tipping point though when we went over15 guys and a few others walked in late. They insisted that they should play in the next game because they had not played yet. They are idiots. We let them play even though I was forced to sit out 2 entire games and we then all agreed to institute the uber traditional write your name on the bottom of the board when you arrive system to avoid any drama.

A few notable moments included one skinny jumping guy who attempted the longest traveling jump stop I've ever seen. He literally picked up the ball around the hash mark and took 2 gigantic running strides and then a leap to land on 2 feet. He was cool about it when we called traveling but it was actually a pretty impressive athletic feat. I on the other hand am a shadow of my former self. I still finish pretty well and rebound but have alot of trouble getting my own shot from the post.

Week	Bike Miles	Run Miles	Swim Miles	Basketball Hours
1 (7/16 - 7/22)	40	0	0	2
2 (7/23 - 7/29)				2
Total	40			4

Mt. Lemmon Ride 7.22.07 - Blown Tire

Exciting ride today. We planned to go up 8 miles from the base which is 3 further than I have ever gone. We got off to a late start and 1 guy had a flat on the approach to the mountain and the 4 of us didn't actually start climbing until 6:25. We missed a guy we were going to hook up with at the base but apparently he did the same ride on his own.

Knowing this was going to be further than past rides I went more slowly on the first couple of miles and I felt pretty comfortable throughout. This was the first time I've taken my new bike up the mountain and I loved it. The last bike only had 2 gear choices in the front and it was great having a whole new range on the 3rd (smallest) ring. I tried hard to stay off the easiest gear to keep that for 'the hard parts' but that ended up frankly being most of the way. I wound up stopping a little short of mile 8 at the Bug Trail parking lot. Like a donkey I missed getting out of my pedals and fell and got a booboo on my elbow. I am a dork.

Coming down was alot of fun until it wasn't. I started last and quickly caught up to the gang finally getting onto the big gear and really cranking along. The views descending were truly incredible and for some reason I had my first real 'oh sh**' moment coming around a curve and staring into an abyss of a canyon. It felt like I was a million miles up.

Chill and I set a pretty good pace and according to the little GPS machine we peaked at 40.7 mph until I hit a rock. Apparently going about 36 mph I hit something with my back tire and knocked a chunk out as you can see below.


click the tire for a blow up of the blow up



Having never blown a tire at speed before I instinctively grabbed both breaks too hard and then my front tube popped. I fishtailed a little but managed to get it under control and amazingly my heart rate barely moved. Once I got stopped all the adrenaline kinda left me with the shakes but luckily in the moment I basically stayed cool. One of the guys was kind enough to ride down and get a truck to come get me because there was no way to repair the tire. I was annoyed I didn't get to finish the ride, all that climbing and then to miss out on the run down the mountain sucks.

MotionBased GPS Data:

7/22/07 Mt. Lemon Ride (Climb)
7/22/07 Mt. Lemon Ride (Descent - Blown Tire)

Week	Bike Miles	Run Miles	Swim Miles	Basketball Hours
1 (7/16 - 7/22)	40	0	0	2
2 (7/23 - 7/29)
Total	40			2

Bike Gear

Let me start by saying I know close to nothing about bicycles. I just like riding. Recently some jerk broke into our workshop and stole my old bike along with a ton of tools. It was a fine bike, but now I don't miss it. With the insurance replacement money I bought a slightly used bike and alot of replacement kit.

First, I got the really very yellow KHS Flite 500. I have Northwind Hornet shoes for giant men which attach me to the bike via Speedplay Zero Pedals. I have a little bag that sits under the seat in which I carry 2 spare tubes, tire levers and 3 CO2 quick refill cartridges. There are 2 water bottles that I usually keep 50-50 with water and Gatorade. For data collection I am just about to get the Garmin 305 (link) w/ Cadence (link) and Bike Mount (link). For music I used to take our 30 GB Ipod and soft of velcro it to the handlebars but have lately been using the much smaller and easier to mount 1 GB Ipod shuffle. Laundry cycle notwithstanding I usually go in my school colors AZ Wildcats jersey. I carry my phone in the back jersey pocket and a wallet in the underseat bag. The blue Bell Helmet is a must and when recnetly shaved I wear an UnderArmor skull cap to keep the helmet from chafing my head. I don't have racing sunglasses per se but the blue Oakley Minute shades I have work pretty well.

It's alot of gear but I don't think it's too, too much.

Training Ride 7/17

Rode the Colossal Cave out and back (link) today with Chill and Big D. Great weather and a really nice ride. I didn't know the exact distance we were riding and set an arbitrary 1 hour goal for myself on the outbound leg. Finished in 1:01:01 so not bad considering we went about .6 miles past where we should have. I didn't keep track on the way back but its much faster being mostly downhill, we averaged 30 mph for a big chunk of it between Camino Loma Alta and where the road turns north out of Rincon Creek. Feeling like a tough guy I passed an old guy who got on Old Spanish Trail at Camino Loma Alta and pretended to be polite saying 'Good Morning' as I blew past him on the big downhill. Apperantly Chill did and said the exact same thing right behind me and it was all wonderful until he passed and totally dropped me on the hill coming out of Rincon Creek. I'm a total noob on the bike and days like this help me remember that.

The new Garmin 305 (link) w/ Cadence (link) and Bike Mount (link) arrives today so I'll be able to post some detailed maps with all the good data along for future rides along with a review of the 305.

Week	Bike Miles	Run Miles	Swim Miles	Basketball Hours
1 (7/16 - 7/22)	28			2
Total	28			2

The Over Ambitious Plan for 2nd Half of 2007

To celebrate my 33rd year I am going to go for an athletic triple of things I've always wanted to do. I definitely see myself continuing on the bike but after the El Tour I don't see running as part of my long term exercise plans. Running kind of sucks.

9/16 /2007 Climb Mount Lemon (26.5 miles and 6,500' climb)

11/17/2007 El Tour de Tucson (66, 81 or 109 mile bike)

12/2/2007 Las Vegas Marathon (26.2 miles)

There are a couple of sub goals I hope to accomplish along the way.


10/21/2007 Get Moving Tucson 10 Miler
10/28/2007 Tinfoilman Triathlon (825 yard swim, 12 mile bike and 3 mile run)

This is of course way, way too much. Right now I am playing ball 2 hours on Monday and riding the bike 2x per week, hardly in good enough shape to make this work but I'm working on a plan to get there. I'm going to use this space to makes notes on my progress.