Hot and humid. I just decided to take it easy today and went for a walk on the beach.
I walk from the house we are renting this summer up to the house we rented last summer, which was right on the beach in North Truro.
It took an hour and 23 minutes to walk 6.85km, and I was pretty tired at the end of it. I’m glad I decided against running. The sand was soft and I really wasn’t in the mood for a slog.
I visited the nice people at the Ptown Bike Shop and they fixed my bike. I had apparently bent my derailleur tab. He also adjusted the brakes, pumped up the tires and sold me a new seat (much more comfortable. Very happy with how this went. I walked in and walked out with a fixed bike 30 minutes later.
So, today, I was set for an adventure. We had invited a family that we have been friends with for decades to come down and visit us for a few days. My friend John is an avid sportsman. He canoes, runs, bikes, hikes and all that stuff. He brought his bike with him and we did yesterday’s adventure up in the Provincelands together. Today we decided to do the Cape Cod Rail Trail end to end and back. This is about 22 miles (35km) of reasonably flat, generally shady, smooth paved bike path that meanders through the interior of Cape Cod. Some of it is very pretty, but much of it looks a lot like the view out of a train window. Backs of buildings and woods.
John and I tend to push each other. And today was no exception. He rode lead on the way out, and I rode lead on the ay back. So, I was pretty fresh halfway through and he was a bit toasted. By the end, I was completely destroyed. The last 5 miles were very hard. The other challenge for the bike path is that, although it is flat, it is crossed by many, many streets. Each crossing requires you to slow down, look both ways for traffic and then proceed. There is also a significant amount of slower traffic on the path. The result of all of this is a fair amount of speeding up and slowing down, which makes it a bit harder.
Here is my heart rate and speed. (I was drafting along happily in the first half and out front for the second.)
If you feel like exploring my ride any further. You can look at it on Strava.
About 60km. About 23km/h. On my son’s bike, since I broke mine with my slide on the sand.
I was sore all over, especially on my knee, hip, and elbow where I had the worst scrapes. I just went for a walk, basically looking around the neighborhood at places for sale.
Then in the afternoon, I went for another walk along the beach.
We’re happily ensconced in our vacation house in Truro. I got up this morning and decided to do a nice long bike ride. I usually go north to Provincetown and the bike trails through the national seashore up there. Today, I decided to go south and ride down to the Cape Cod Rail Trail. This is a paved, wide bike trail that starts way down in Dennis, and continues for 22 miles up to Eastham. Our house is in Truro, about 10 miles north of the Eastham end.
To get there I took mostly back roads with very little traffic, but a portion was on the main highway, Route 6. This has a lot of traffic, but wide shoulders.
Here’s my path:
Here are some stats for my ride on Strava.
I averaged about 25 km/h for the ride. I covered about 60km in 2:28. I have to admit that I ran out of gas around the 2 hour mark. I also made an error in navigation at the end. I though a dirt road was good enough to ride on, but it had a lot of loose sand and I I had to walk my bike about a quarter of a mile.
Then when I was less than 2 minutes from home disaster struck. I was turning into the the road that our house is on. It is a sharp turn and I hit a patch of sand and the bike came right out from under me. I have a bunch of road rash on my right forearm, hip and knee. Stings like hell.
Here is speed and elevation. The HR data is wrong. I was working way harder than that.
Tomorrow: I think a run on the beach. Maybe a walk on the beach. Maybe lying on the beach.
Thunderstorms forecasted for this morning so I decided to not row. I went for a bike ride in the early afternoon instead. I headed out to the west of my town, where it gets quite rural. If you live out there, we say you live in the middle of nowhere, so viola, the tour of nowhere…Tour de null part.
It was 45km of rolling hills. Nothing too steep, but challenging for a novice, I did it in 1:43, so a speed of 26.6 km/h. The main point was to get some good low intensity aerobic training, and on that point mission accomplished.
WHo knewthat Google Earth can give you plots of elevation, speed, and even HR from GPX data? I had no idea! I found this when I was playing with the data from my run in Austria from yesterday morning.
A good 66 minutes or UT2/UT1 and another 10 minutes above that.
Tomorrow: Steady State row on Quinsigamond.
I beautiful, sunny, warm morning in Linz. I went for a run along the Danube. I was basically trying to keep it pretty low intensity, HR less than 155. I was OK until close to the end, when a desire to be done overwhelmed my desire to keep my HR down.
The big decreases in pace are when I was climbing stairs to the bridges over the Danube.
Here’s the path that took.
I ran along the outer arm of the Winter Haven where the rowing club is located, and then looped back to run along the south bank of the Danube. I followed this towards downtown Linz, past all the river cruise boats docked along the bank. I crossed the bridge in downtown.
In this area, the Danube demarked the border between Russian and US controlled occupation regions in Austria and there are still signs in English and Russian telling you which zone you are entering on the bridge. After that bridge, I ran back on the north back to the bridge before my hotel. This is a more recent bridge.
A very pleasant time. Now I’m on my way home, sitting in the tiny Linz airport. I’m thinking that tomorrow, I will probably do an easy session out on Quinsig.
It was a beautiful day. Sunny and warm. I decided to go for a nice bike ride. Nothing too intense, just keeping things moving.
I did an out and back from my house to the nearby town of Grafton.
You can take look on it on Strava.
The highest elevation of the ride is the point where I turned around (North Street Elementary School). I pushed a bit harder going out than coming back. About half way along I saw a rider up in the distance and the lure of catching up to him was irresistible. It took me until the second to last hill up on the way out before I passed him, and then he drafted along behind me until I turned off at the school. I got the impression he was going on a much longer ride that I was, but it was fun having someone to try to catch.
It was 28km, done in about 65 minutes for an average speed of about 26km/h.
Tomorrow: 2 x 1000 / 10 minute rest
Tueday; No training. Flew out of Boston at 6AM (eastern time). Finally got to my hotel around 8 PM (pacific time) and I was pretty much done in.
Wednesday: Up at 4:15AM and off to the hotel fitness center. I did a 1 hour session on the treadmill. The first 20 minutes at 15deg incline and 3.5mph. The second 20 minutes at 5deg incline and 5mph. The third 20 minutes at 15deg and 3.0mph. The intent of the workout was all aerobic maintenance.
This was the first time that I tried the whole maximum incline thing. I think this is a good cross training session. By increasing the angle and decreasing the speed, it is much lower impact, and I can manage my HR quite easily with speed changes. Because it was unfamiliar, it was pretty tough,, even with a lowish HR.
After the workout, I went straight to the airport to fly to Dallas. Went right into meetings, then from there to a customer dinner. Two beers, some wine and a very nice port was consumed over a 4 hour dinner, along with a extravagantly large bone-in sirloin. I finally got back to the hotel around 11.
Thursday: Up at 5:15 to get in a workout. Discovered that the fitness center opened at 6. Damn. Went back to bed for half an hour, and then went back around 6:15. I was feeling a bit bloated from last night’s festivities and in no mood to work hard.
I started on a bike because the treadmills were being used. Then after 3 minutes, one opened up and I jumped to it. I did 10 minutes at 15deg/3.5mph and saw that the next treadmill had a working TV, so I jumped again. I did another 10 minutes at 10deg/3.5. Then I went to 5deg/5mph, but after a couple minutes, I decided I wasn’t in the mood to jog, so I cranked the incline back up to 15degrees and played with the speed between 3.0 and 3.5mph to keep my HR right below the top of the UT2 zone.
I ended up doing about 50 minutes of exercise over 60 minutes in the gym
It felt like a lot more work than the HR would indicate.
Tomorrow: I fly home at 7AM, arrive before lunch. I have some meetings in the afternoon, so my plan to sneak off and row has been destroyed. I will try to get in a erg session though.
Training is going to continue to be sporadic into next week. I have another graduation coming up this Sunday through Tuesday, so I will probably miss multiple days. After that, it will be time to settle down and make a plan for three weeks of sprint specific sessions to get my starts in shape and get ready for the Festival Sprints.
I’m in Orlando at a Conference. We are at the Loew’s Royal Pacific Resort which is part of the universal studios theme park complex. Around 4 in the afternoon, I snuck out for a run. The objective was to do some sightseeing, and get some exercise. The loop around the outside perimeter of the park was 5km, so I did that first. When I finished that I walked some of the paths and then did some more chunks of jogging around the grounds.
All together it was about 11km. I ran about 8km of it at about a 6min per km pace. I walked the other 3 km.
Tomorrow: I fly home at 9:45AM. I will most likely take it as a rest day.
Quantified Rowing 