Week One: My Biscuits are Burnin'!!!

I'm a huge Bugs Bunny fan. I used to make sure to get up early enough on Saturday mornings to watch the full hour. It saddens me to think my kids don't have the same opportunity that I had. Every kid should learn how to properly drop an anvil on yourself whilst aiming at a speeding bird, or learn how to run off a cliff fast enough to hang in midair long enough to wave sheepishly to your audience. I get the pleasure of delivering to Acme Tools here in Duluth (I'm a UPS driver) from time to time and I always half expect to see Bugs and the boys in the store stocking up for the next show. There is a point to this, by the way.

You see every year the same thing happens. I tell myself, "I'm going to start training early this year, maybe I'll hit it in November!" Well, November rolls around and I think "I just need one more month off. Then December comes and its "After Christmas when work slows down..." Then January and February roll through and next thing I know I'm watching the snow melt and I've been on the bike only a handful of times. Luckily, I have a job that keeps me from ballooning up in the winter, so I stay in decent shape. However, the whole point to starting your training plan early is to keep your body in performance shape. Then, by this time, when you start getting into the meat of your training you won't have to deal with the soreness that comes with getting back to that point. Cycling is a beautiful sport for more reasons than one, but my favorite is the lack of pounding your body gets while running. Don't get me wrong, it has it's painful moments, especially at the beginning if you haven't ridden for a couple months. You see, most of your weight, while on a bike, is concentrated right in a very tender area. It takes some time to get that area readjusted to riding. The first ride is good, it's that second one that invokes images of Yosemite Sam running around with his tookus on fire yellin' "Ma biscuits are burnin', ma buscuits are burnin'!!"

A little Anatomy lesson for ya here. A lot of people wonder why my bike seat is so small, I can tell you it has nothing to do with any sort of weird fetish. It has everything to do with the way your pelvis is built. Cruiser bikes have those nice big poofy seats that look more like a computer chair than a bicycle seat. This is because the bike is built in a way that keeps your body upright, like sitting in a chair. It rotates your pelvis (pictured to the right, yeah that butterfly looking thing) into a more natural sitting position. Most of your weight, when riding a cruiser, is carried on your Ischium bones. They're number 3 in the picture. Those are the heinous little weapons you feel gouge into your legs when your kids (or someone else's) bounce around on your lap like their on a pogo stick. "Man, you got a bony butt", yup that's good ol' number 3. Now, riding a road bike, or a time trial bike is a little different. It's all about going fast. Riding upright is great if you just wanna cruise. But to go fast you need to avoid the wind, so your in a more aggressive position on the bike. Cyclists call it getting "aero". The Pro's spend hours in wind tunnels to try and find extra little ways of avoiding wind. Anyway, when you ride a road bike your pelvis tilts forward a bit so the weight is no longer carried by our friend, number 3. The job now falls to its neighbor number 4, or the Pubis or Pubic bone. Number 4 is not quite as well equipped to handle this job so it kind of revolts a bit until it gets used to it. The seat has to be smaller because there's less room for it in that area, well, I suppose you could use a bigger seat but the result would be A LOT more friction to your inner thighs. Let me tell you from marathon experience, the inner thigh is NOT a fun place to have friction burn. Also, there are a lot of nerves and vessels that run through that area so extra padding will put pressure on those and you can lose feeling in places like your toes or.... ahem... other areas that are close to that region of the pelvis. Some people call it "the junk". Too much pressure on those nerves over many years can also impair the functionality of the area, and we'd all like to avoid that, right? Let's try a little experiment to help you all visualize what I'm talking about. Ir your not already, go ahead and sit down in a chair with good posture. If you put your hands under your hind parts at the side you'll be able to feel your Ischium, where most of your weight is concentrated. Now bend over like your going to tie your shoes. Did your feel number 3 lift off your chair a bit? Now, if your not at work or in a public place, you can slide your hand just inside your thigh and feel the bone that your weight is now centered on. That's your pubic bone, or number 4. Now take your hand out, before someone thinks you're doing something gross. Now, depending on what you have on, you may want to go wash your hands....

Now for the technical stuff... My first week of training didn't go quite as I would have liked it to. Again, it's technically base, so time on the bike and on the road running are crucial. It's time to get your body accustomed to exercise and start building that aerobic engine. My schedule calls for 6 workouts during the week with a rest on Wednesday. This section will get a little more detailed as the training goes on and I get more into the HR based workouts.

Monday - 3.5 mile run, easy. Just getting the legs used to the idea of running again. I went with my wife, Tina. She's a stud when it comes to running so I always end up running a little faster than I'd generally like because I need to keep up. Luckily, I made it through without puling something, which is a little victory in itself.

Tuesday - 30 minutes cycling on the trainer. I really have no way of knowing how far I go when I'm on the trainer. I just guesstimate that it's about 16 mph avg. Again it's just to get the legs moving. No adverse effects from the previous days run. I fully expected to be limping around whining all day, but I felt better than expected.

Wednesday - rest day. Still no soreness after my Monday run. Good thing!

Thursday - should have been a 2-3 mile run, but I worked until about 7pm and I really wasn't feeling like running afterward. Rough day in the Big Brown.

Friday - Should have been 30 minutes riding on the trainer with form work included, but another rough day compliments of Mother Brown, so I opted to sleep instead.

Saturday - 40 minutes riding on the trainer. I figured 8 miles, since I really was not feeling it that day. The legs were a bit on the dead side, so I just rode nice and easy. The worst thing you can do is overdo it early and end up taking more time off because your so freakin' sore.

Sunday - 35 minutes riding on the trainer. In the coming weeks I'll be adding a run in on this day as well. I felt a little better this day. Unlike Saturday, I was actually able to work up a bit of a sweat. Not a bad little end to the week. I'm looking forward to next week and bumping up the load a stitch.


Well that's it for this week. Thanks for the perusal. By the way, the frame pictured below is the weapon of choice for the triathlon. I won't be riding it like that, since that would be really slow and a bit painful. I'll post pictures every week so you can see the progress. Hopefully, in a couple weeks she'll be ready for the road. It's going to be super fast!!! Oh and the picture of the pelvis is from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Skeletpelvis-pubis.jpg Just in case you were wondering... Thanks again and keep the rubber side down!

The Purpose

I'm going to do a triathlon for the first time in my life. In August. That's only 5 months from now. That's really not much time. I have a training plan of sorts, and if I'm going to complete it up to my somewhat lofty standards I need to stick to the plan. That's not as easy as it sounds. You may know this if you've ever tried to accomplish anything that takes an extended period of time. In high school I used to put off research papers until the night before and then pull an all nighter to try and get it done. This works for research papers, not very effectively mind you, but 3 times out of 10 you can usually pull off a passing grade. Not so with endurance training. You wait until the night before the race and you can pretty much kiss the next 6 to 10 days good bye because you can barely move, much less do anything productive. Then you spend the next 3 months in physical therapy trying to undo all the bad things you did to your muscles in the short time it took you to do the race. And you spend the next 3 years trying to convince yourself that if you just train a little it won't hurt quite so bad the next time.

So, I've decided I'm going to start my very own blog. I have a couple of reason for doing so, but mainly it's for self motivation. You see, this way, I can pretend I have thousands of adoring fans that I need to keep training for. If I don't train and then post on this blog I will feel the wrath of my cultish followers. Not to mention, I may be able to help someone in their own journey to completing their very own race. Mainly by learning from my mistakes, but I'm not picky. Or someone reading this may be thinking, "What the hell is this guy doing? I better say something before he kills himself." They will then go on to dispense their knowledge upon me saving me from impending doom. Don't think I won't listen. I'm not so full of myself that I'm not above learning something new. Just don't be offended if I don't follow through on your advice, I'm a little thick headed when it comes to that. Considering that I may be the only one reading this, it may just be a case of the first reason.... assuming that I am going to read it, which I probably won't. I really don't have that kind of time.

A little about me and my sporting past. I was a runner in high school. Distance mainly. I did everything from the 400 to the 2 mile and cross country. A friend introduced me to my first road bike in 1990ish. I have been in love ever since. I transitioned from running to doing duathlons. Which is basically a triathlon without the swimming. It basically consists of a run in the 5k range, then a 15-20 mile bike followed by a 5kish type of run again. They're a lot of fun, but they're fairly difficult to find. I did that for a few years and then I decided to try bicycle racing. What a rush! I immediately fell in love with criteriums. If you've never had the pleasure of watching a crit I would highly recommend it. It's about as physical as bike racing gets. Nothing like screaming around 90 degree corners at 25+ mph while riding elbow to elbow with about 30 to 100 other guys. It can be dangerous at times. I have some scars to attest to that fact. It takes a lot of time to train for something like that, and you need to race a lot in order to keep your edge. Crit racing really isn't something you can go out and do once a year just for kicks. Well, unless you like getting your butt handed to you on a silver platter. I'm not saying that triathlons don't take a lot of training, but it doesn't seem to be quite as mentally involved as crits are. So, since I don't really have the time to spend training and racing for crits, I thought I would give tri's a.... try.... sorry.... Now, I don't swim much, which I figure is good and bad. Bad, because that's generally how tri's start and it'll put me in the hole early. Good, because I haven't developed any bad habits that I'll need to undo. So, that's the abbreviated version. I'm trying to keep it brief because I have an awful tendency to ramble. I also have ADD so I have a tendency to jump around a lot. So if your confused, keep reading, I'll probably get back on track at some point..... or not.

I make my own training plans. I spent a lot of time in college studying for a Phy Ed degree and getting very good at ping pong (which, btw, is not a skill that you can just pick up 10 years later and wow the crowd. You'll wow them alright, just not how you vision it in your minds eye...), so I've learned a few things about the body and how it works. I've also read a ton of books on training and building plans, I guess you could call it a hobby. I'm just good enough at it to be dangerous, so it's probably not wise to ask me to build you one without getting a lawyer first. Anyway, it's cycling heavy, since I don't have much pool access and I really don't like running all that much (it's really painful). I figure, if I can get out of the lake without drowning, I stand a pretty good shot of gaining enough time on the bike that I can cruise through the run and still end up in the top half of my age group.... hopefully, there will be more than two us.... If it goes that well, I'll work on the swimming a little more over the winter and really give 'er hell next year. It's a trial thing. I may end up selling the bike and take up cross stitch, but we'll see how it goes.

After my ride tonight, I'll post again... Or maybe I'll recap early next week. I'm kinda lazy like that. Anyway, I'd like to take this moment to thank all my adoring fans for their support (you know who you are, mom), and thanks for reading. I'm not entirely sure how this blog thing really works, so.... I guess that's it!

May you all find smooth roads and little dogs, and remember to keep the rubber side down!