Santa Cruz Tri Geek

Keeping Up

Got in a nice ride on Monday night and a decent swim with Masters this morning.  More stats to follow; for now, work calls.

Testosterone 101

The test they use to determine if Floyd took illegal drugs is pretty sketchy IMO.  It measures the ratio of two types of hormone in the body.  Thing is, since its a ratio, a skewed result could mean high testosterone, but it could also mean the other hormone is low, i.e., no doping.  Add to that, things like fatigue and dehydration can skew the results...any chance Floyd was fatigued or dehydrated after Stage 17?  You ride at the front during a 6 hour mountain stage and tell me how you are feeling....

Innocent until proven guilty, I say.  Or as the French say, "Innocent until proven American."

Floyd Landis

For those of you not watching the Tour de France, you are missing the Summer's best drama.  Floyd Landis, man of one hip, has managed to bonk and ressurect himself on consecutive days in what has got to be the most thrilling Tour in memory.  I'm still to excited to post anything more substantial.  If you can set your TiVo's from work, do it.  Today's stage was amazing.

Wow.

Hills

So my fiance and I set out for a nice ride in the hills with our friends.  Man, I was not ready for the ride that awaited us.  Two monstrous climbs.  Tons of fun though and we made it through them all.  First time I'd spent 2:30:00 in the saddle.

The stats:  34.70 miles, 2:34:52 in the saddle.  Avg speed, 13.4, max of 35.0.  According to Garmin, 2206 calories burned, at an AVG HR of 136 bpm, max of 175 (though it felt harder).  Total ascent of 4313 ft.  Damn, that was a hell of a ride.  Looks like I kept my HR in Zone 3 and 4 for most of the ride, over 2 hours, so a good exertion indeed!

Thanks to my fiance and all the folks on the ride, especially our boy Big E who came back for us and pulled us up to the end, letting us draft all the way home.  You guys rock and made this a very enjoyable ride, despite my sore butt! :-)

How to Ride Hills

That was the topic of our 80 minute coached ride last night.  Great session.  Learned a ton about how to ride the rolling hills along the coast here in CA.  The most important takeaway is that I should be downshifting and getting out of the saddle to crest the hills rather than peddling up in a higher gear.  Harder on the legs, but damn if it isn't twice as fast.

A Good Day

Things are looking up as I continue to heal hip-wise.  Managed a solid 46 minute, 13 mile TT ride today.  No pain, just a little weakness in the muscles around the injection site.

I met up with some of the Nu2Tri group for an open water swim this afternoon as well, but we decided not to brave the ocean since there were many warning signs posted.  Something about nastiness in the water.  Any time the lifeguards don't want to go in, I'm not gonna question them.

Finished the day with a class on SMFR (self myofacial release) therapy using foam rollers.  Ouch, that stuff gets into the really tight areas.  You know how they call the time trial in the TDF the race of truth?  The roller is like the stretch of truth.  If you have a muscle that is knotted, inflexible, scarred, etc., the roller will tell you.  You can't hid from the roller.  After just a few different rolls, I felt as if I had gotten a full hour of deep tissue work.  I'll definitely be doing this on a daily basis.  Updates on progress to follow.