I’m back home. I did the MS150 this weekend to challenge myself and raise money for the National MS Society which is important to me because of my sister. The wind was atrocious the first day but I managed to complete the 100 miles in spite of that. I didn’t manage to do it very quickly but at least I arrived under my own power. I met Rusty for breakfast this morning at the camp in La Grange and then we set out for Austin. Today was shorter and there was almost no wind so the only thing I was really fighting against was the damage I’d done to myself the day before. Rolling into the finish line is an amazing feeling. I don’t know if I’ll do it again next year but it was definitely worth doing once.
Category: Exercise
Lots of little things
A few weeks back my 2001 Honda Accord that I bought new crossed 200,000 miles. It has been a fantastic car but I told myself I would start shopping for a new one when it got to 200k and so I have been. So far I’ve driven a BMW 335d, a Lexus CT Hybrid and an Acura TSX wagon. I have been dreading the car shopping experience. I’m not a particularly assertive person. More of a go along to get along which means that I’m basically sure I’m going to get taken advantage of at the dealership. However, it’s turned out to be not as bad as I thought. The BMW dealer was excellent. They let me take the car out with just me and my friend. The saleman didn’t pressure me at all and just asked if we had questions when we got back and then wished us a good afternoon. The Lexus dealer was a little more pushy and the Acura dealer a little more than that but all of them were polite and I wouldn’t say I got the hard sell from anyone.
The 335d is very fun. It’s 265hp, 425lb-ft and is otherwise very sporty. It is, by far, the most expensive of the three and you have to pay for every little thing option wise but it definitely stands out in terms of driving experience. It does get 23 city / 36 hwy which is fantastic.
The TSX wagon is basically my Accord ten years later. It has a nicer interior and a Nav and a lot of little improvements here and there and the wagon part is nice because I could just toss my bike in the back. It does want premium gas though which is kinda meh considering that it gets 22/30
The CTh is not really for me. It’s completely gutless and the center console is like this giant wall between you and the passenger seat and the “NuLux” interior is plastic. I’d rather cloth than that stuff or at least a real leather option. Leather is actually a fantastic material and not just because it’s fancy.
Anyway, the 335d and the TSX are candidates right now. I figure I should go try a Chevy Volt and maybe like a VW Jetta TDI. Need to check Consumer Reports on that last one because I have a lot of apprehension about VW reliability.
So, that’s cars. I also finally got the TR6 running enough to back it out of the garage a few times in September which means that I got a little work done on the eternal bookshelf project. Of course I managed to aggravate a radiator leak badly enough that now I need to get a new one of those so I stop leaving big green puddles on the rubber mat under the damned car. There’s a guy on Ebay that sells new ones for ~$270 + s/h which beats the hell out of the $450ish that the resto catalogs want. But anyway, bookshelves. I found a paint that I like for the final finish. Sherwin Williams ProClassic Acrylic Latex. It’s water based so painting and cleaning isn’t awful and it dries fast and hard so it will be reasonable to use on something I actually use regularly. I’ve milled the face frame pieces and dry fit them and they look good. I have also milled the map drawer pieces and they are awaiting priming, painting and assembly. Basically the big obstacle right now is the top. I still don’t know what I’m going to do about that. Good news is that a sheet of bamboo plywood similar to the floor in the office is down to $270 from $400 so I’m more likely to do that now since it isn’t a huge deal if I mess it up and have to try again.
I rode the 60 mile route in the LiveStrong Challenge a couple of weekends back and that was good. It was a lot harder than it should have been because I basically didn’t ride the bike at all in August because of the 106 F median high temp for that month and September wasn’t really enough to get back into shape. I have been riding a little more in October though and it’s been good to be back into it. It’s been cooler too which really helps.
I joined www.fitocracy.com this last week. It’s basically Facebook + WoW for exercising. You log your activities when you do them and it awards you points which causes you to “level-up”. I put quotes around that because there’s basically no point to it. You don’t get anything for your levels. There are Achievements and Quests too. Quests are sort of progress indicators. Like for bicycling there is 10k, 50k and 100k that I know of and you have to do the first one to unlock the next one and so on. Achievements are more like milestones and you can earn them whenever. There are Achievements for various lifts 0.9x body weight bench press, 15 pullups, 1000 career miles run, that sort of thing. I expect that the list of those will grow because there aren’t any for a lot of different thing that people commonly do for exercise. It’s a pretty good idea and is responsible for me riding my bike to Mighty Fine today rather than driving the car so I guess it’s working.
Finally, the “Power Ball” lottery was up to like $208M last night so I bought a ticket because why-the-hell-not. And I matched one number and the power-ball which got me FOUR DOLLARS WOO! So now I have another ticket for the $245M drawing and a Big Red soda and $1.39 in change. Not bad at all.
Oh! One last thing. Apparently the clothes that I had tailored for my birthday present to me are finished and are ready to ship. The charges were declined by the card company but I got that sorted today so when they try again it should go through and then they’ll mail me my new duds.
Bike to Work Day
Today was bike to work day and I did so. 54.4 miles round trip with 3:33 on the bike. 2200 ft climbing elevation (give or take). And I did it carrying my computer, change of clothes, wallet, phone, etc which was an extra 13lbs. Woo! That is one major bicycling goal completed. I believe that I decided the others were to do the 90 mile route at the next LiveStrong Challenge and to do the MS150 from Houston to Austin next spring.
Unrelated, Portal 2 was awesome fun and the Turret Opera / Cara Mia at the end was great and these folks did a totally sweet version of it.
BIG MAN
I haven’t written here in a while. I’ve been busy. The large number of projects I’ve been plowing through at work is winding down. I really only have three or four things I’m worrying about right now aside from the normal, day-to-day rat killing (thx. Alex for that phrase). The big news though is that there is life after Warcraft (though it is still a grind). Eight weeks ago I started an exercise program derived from the beginner section of www.exrx.net. It’s been going well and today I finished it. I need to figure out a more long-term program to complete the ultimate goal of getting my weight down to 180lbs (81.6kg). When I started this I was 215(97.5) and today I’m down to 208(94.3). That’s a little behind pace but I figure a pound of water weight isn’t much to worry about. Some highlights are:
- Max instantaneous output rowing – 632 watts
- Max Calories in 30 min rowing – 508
I need to do some work on the lifting before I post that information. It’s only been two months so I’m still making decent gains but it’s slowing down and I was never exactly strong to begin with. I actually need to buy two more 25lb plates to increase my deadlift weight but I also want to see about getting a squat rack as I’m limited in that by what I can lift over my head. Academy doesn’t have what I’m looking for in a rack though so I’ll have to go elsewhere.
Good and bad
Bad first. I have not had the opportunity to row since Thursday night due to my back acting up and having a full schedule all weekend besides. Tonight I was looking forward to getting back on it especially since Saturday I weighed myself for the first time since I started this and found to my shock that I am heavier than I was before. While the weight gain is probably more related to muscle building than me becoming even tubbier I still would like to actually lose some weight. So, I climbed onto the machine and after about five minutes I started feeling like I was pulling something in my inner thigh. I stopped after ten minutes and tried to stretch it out but whatever it is doesn’t want to be stretched it wants to be left alone and is willing to tell my brain that in no uncertain terms. I guess I’ll have to take it easy until it’s better. I can still do small strokes just with my back and arms but that wears me out quickly. I’ve been religious about my stretching so this is a big disappointment.
The good news is that staining is complete on the table. Huzzah! I have pictures to show of the top which are located here. Next step is the finishing and I have finally decided what I want to do for that. Oddly enough it is the least exotic of the things I’ve tried. Three coats of water based polyurethane and then sanded with 330 grit paper/sponge to smooth and #0000 steel wool to get a nice satin finish. It looks great on the sample (which does not photograph well at all so you’ll have to take my word for it unless you saw me Sunday when I was carting the thing around). I’m thinking the best course of action is to coat everything before I start worrying about rubbing out the finish so I avoid getting dust in something that’s still drying. I should also consider getting another grit of sandpaper between the 330 and the steel wool. I’ve put in for vacation the week of July 2nd to 6th which will be a nice opportunity to get this thing complete.
Milestone
I’ve been a little slack on the rowing this week. I’ve had things to do in the evening and I’ve been filling in for my boss so time has been short. However, tonight I met one of my goals and rowed for an hour. 1:00:05 to be specific and I went a hair over 13,500m which is an average split time of 2:13. Yippie! I treated myself to an ice cream cone after dinner as a reward thus negating easily half of that. It was tasty though.
Merrily merrily
Early in 2006 Zach convinced me to go down to the Texas Rowing Center on Town Lake and learn to row. The package included the three lessons and a six-plus-one month membership for a price that I can’t remember now but that seemed reasonable at the time. They’re all nice people down there and they have boats for all skill levels and training for the asking. My first lesson went well and I paddled out a bit and then turned around and came back. The second lesson was basically watching a safety video and then more practice on the lake in sight of the dock. So I watched the video, climbed in a boat and started doing low-speed laps between the Mopac bridge and the downstream bend. I got going faster than I should have coming back upstream on what was to be my last length of the day and dug an oar in wrong and dumped myself into the cold, March 1st “water” of the lake. It took me about twenty minutes to get the boat to shore and to climb back into it. I returned to the dock under escort; cold and miserable.
The rest of my rowing experience was colored by my swimming lesson. Every time I would get going a reasonable speed something would happen that made me think I was going in the water and I would stop and tense up and basically let the boat glide to a stop. This is not really the way to get good at the rowing and it kinda puts a damper on the workout aspect as well. I went down there at most once a week and more like once every two weeks which is also not good for training or skill. So at the end of the seventh month I decided to not renew the membership and played World of Warcraft more instead. The year and a half that I played the game has made me even pastier and flabbier than my long history of pasty and flabby.
So now a new year has dawned. I stopped playing the game which is a topic for another time and started building an end table, working on the yard more, watching new anime and actually seeing my friends again which are also things better discussed later. None of this was making me feel any better about stairs and mirrors though so my thoughts returned to rowing. I always liked the actual exercise. It’s practically no impact, uses most of the big muscle groups and is pretty good aerobically. The thought of buying another membership and making the 40 minute drive down to the lake once a week didn’t really seem to be a good solution though. There are stationary rowing machines that are used for off-season training and for chickens like me. They are available for amounts ranging from anywhere to whatever and employ a range of different resistance techniques. So, I bought one.
The company I purchased the machine from is Concept 2. They were the same make as the ones the Texas Rowing Center had and they seemed to be pretty sturdy and have useful features without a bunch of extra junk to jack the price up. I got the Model D with the base monitor. Putting it together was simple and everything fit correctly. I had to clear out a pretty big space in my bedroom to fit it but I like that in a way. If I have to dedicate a large parcel of floor to it I’d better be using it. The instructions that come with it say that over a two week period you should work up to being able to row a half an hour straight. So I figured two days at 5 min, two days at 10, etc. with two days rest somewhere in there would do it and, to my surprise, I actually managed to complete that without much trouble.
Concept2 Model D Torture Device
So far I’ve done thirty minutes for four days in a row and today (Friday) is going to be my day off. Yesterday I went ~6750m in the alloted time and I was completely whupped afterwards. There is a pretty significant wall at about twenty five minutes. I haven’t really managed to push past it yet. The last five minutes is just will power. I’m hoping one of these days I’ll get that second wind thing that everyone talks about. Maybe I’ll have to work up to forty five minutes to get that.
One of the neat things about the monitor on the machine is that it has a USB connection. I haven’t installed the software on my laptop and connected them yet mainly because I’m just working on being able to finish the session without feeling like passing out afterwards. If I’m lucky it will actually output the data stream over the USB connection while I’m rowing. That would be superb. Think of all the fun things you could do with continuous speed / power / acceleration data. I bet you could even get something like the old quake 2 engine and fill up a map with a faux lake and trees and scenery and stuff and display it on a monitor or TV in front of the user a’la Zach’s old stationary bike with magnetic particle brake feedback idea. How cool would that be? Guess what I don’t need? Another damned project. Especially one like that where I know essentially nothing about how it would actually work. I’ll just put this out here and maybe someone will give me one for Christmas. Oh, there’s an idea. Rower data stream + flugtag flyer simulator = flying trainer! Someone write all that up and e-mail it to me ok thanks.
– Eric