Team McAlister

Today was my first run on my new running shoes, and MAN does having the right shoes make a difference! I ran (ok, mostly walked) 4.8 miles in 56 minutes. My best mile, I think, was 9:36. I say I think because I used the iPhone app Fitnio to track my run, and I’m not sure exactly what that “9:36 mile” is referring to. Let’s just go with that being my best mile time. The weather is amazing right now, so I’m very glad to have shoes that don’t constrain me to the treadmill.

The shoes are the Saucony Progrid Guide 2. I was pretty set on getting Adidas, since they were my favorites when I sold them, but the Sauconys just fit better. I tried at least one shoe in every brand at Lombardi’s before I made up my mind. Hopefully it was worth the trouble and I’ll be able to run regularly again without fear of injury. Oh, and the best part? My former boss gave me the employee discount. So now I’m sitting on the exercise ball I got with the money I saved!

Tags: equipment, running, shoes, Weather

The weather has been very uncooperative of late, so road work has been tricky.  It two attempts last week to get in one good intervals session and even at that I had computer problems that made me mad.  Today would have been a 50 mile kind of day except for the spitting rain, 40 degree weather and 30 mph wind!  Instead, I ended up at the bike shop where I was able to retrieve my rollers (finally) and check out the Guru Crono and Orbea Ordu Tri bikes.  The Crono is custom-built for the rider and is the choice of one tri world champ.  The Ordu is maybe the sexiest bike anywhere at any price and is the choice of another world champ.

Anyhow, I got home with the rollers and managed to get in a 35 minute session.  It was nice to have them back; I’ve actually missed those stupid things.  Good training music is important when riding rollers in the garage!  Led Zepplin is great for cranking a fine, fast, high cadence.  However, Keb Mo’ is the challenge.  It’s hard to ride a smooth stroke when you’re wanting to juke along with that foot-tapping, thumping blues he turns out.  Hopefully, tomorrow will see some high-quality road miles.

Tags: Guru Crono, Keb Mo', Led Zeppelin, Orbea Urdu, rollers

Long time no see, huh? Yeah, I haven’t been doing a whole lot of training, to be honest. I do make it to the gym 3-4 times a week, but now that I’m terrified of shin splints I keep the running pretty short. I can do a mile in 7:30 now! So I’m improving, in spite of things. My Lombardi’s coupons expire soon, so I’m gonna go ahead and get some running shoes before that happens… then maybe I’ll have some more activity to update on! The weather is getting nicer all the time, so I’d really like to take the running outside and get away from that treadmill.

I hope to be doing a lot of tinkering with the site in the coming weeks, so if anything looks weird or broken it’s my fault. I’m working on my personal site (no link, because it still sucks) and some of what I learn might apply to this one as well. So yeah, there’s the news.

Forty-six more or less easy miles today on a very social ride.  It wasn’t all BBQ and beer though.  There were 2 very good climbs;  a tough pursuit of a fast rider that had a 100 meter lead; and, 2 5-mile stretches at 20+ mph.  All-in-all a good day in the saddle.  Happy to report no hot foot, no knee pain, no back ache, no crashes or close calls.

I didn’t report on Friday’s interval training.  That may be because it sucked so bad.  I was tired from a bad week at work.  I wasn’t properly fed or watered from a day of loose nutritional living.  I also love to see old friends and acquaintances on the trail, but not when I’m on a tight schedule with a specific purpose in mind and a bad day under my belt.  Of course, I hit a social trifecta Friday evening with an old law school buddy and a couple of current riding partners who were all beginning some light evening pleasure cruising.  I had to get organized and on the clock for speed work though.  Despite all of the distractions, forgotten gear, bike computer mishaps (almost busted the Garmin!  YIKES!), and physical limitations, I rode a set of 12  1-minute x 2-minute recovery bits.  These are 15 seconds of standing sprint with 45 seconds of heart pounding hammering followed by a 2 minute recovery.  I know this is helping my overall ride conditioning.  I can easily tell when on the road for regular rides.

but the self-inflicted pain is similar.  This post covers both Monday’s and Tuesday’s rides.  The Monday ride was a nice little guy.  Covering a bit over 9 miles, I managed it in 29 minutes.  It may not sound too impressive, but there are 9 90 degree turns, 7 of which require a stop and 5 of them lead directly into a climb.  The route also includes a good deal of climbing.  This definitely counted as my interval workout for this week!

The St. Paddy’s Day trip was 42 miles at an 18 mph pace.   I spent 50 minutes with my heart rate in the 90-95% range so I think it was a good workout.

Congratulations to Jett on finishing the Little Rock Marathon and getting the world’s largest marathon finishing medal!

seems to be a shift of 24 hours or so.  I’m perpetually a day behind on updating this site.  In this case, I had a challenging 2 hours on the bike yesterday.  I spent the first hour convinced that my prior training was yielding a result of superior athletic performance.  I was riding uphill into a steady headwind at 20 mph.  Truly, feeling every bit the elite cyclist!  Since I am sticking to a very strict training schedule, the end of one hour signaled the turnaround point.  I took a quick breather and drink, let some fast-moving traffic pass and headed back for what promised to be a scorching downhill return with a lovely tailwind.  As luck would have it, the tailwind was blowing from the opposite direction!  ouch!  The one hour ride home took about 1:15 and wasn’t nearly as easy as it should have been.

I can easily remember,though, when that same 40-ish mile ride took everything I had and hurt me for days afterwards.  I even remember the first time I did that ride and thought I would die while struggling to get back home.  Ah, sweet progress.

So yesterday I decided that a run would be in order.  The knee seems to be sufficiently healed to set out on the training regimen again.  Also, I was in a situation that I thought best to avoid on a bicycle – extremely rare, I know.  I re-started my Hal Higdon program with a 30 minute walk/run.  I must admit that being out there was invigorating, although i really do hate that activity alot.  Against my better judgement, I hit the road before breakfast.  I figured since it was only 30 minutes, no big deal.  It was a nice, warm day even though the wind was kicking up between 23 and 29 mph!  Man, the rest of the day I was starving!  I ate like crazy all day!  It all worked out fine.

Today is the first day of Daylight Saving Time!  YAY!  I managed to get in a little 1 hour ride with some hills.  It was not a high-quality ride.  I was short on sleep, hydration, and proper food, but a bad day on a bike is better than a good day in many other places.  Average HR for the hour was 135.  Knocked out about 1200 calories.  82 degrees!

So, I’m still not really training, but it’s not like I never move. I’m keeping up with Krav and TRX, and now that the sun is visible once again, maybe I can get out for some bike rides.

While my training is still relatively slow compared to the family, I stumbled across something interesting today and thought I would share it with everybody.

NutritionData.com is a website that gathers information from the USDA, restaurants, and food manufacturers to make it easy to find the nutritional value of nearly any food.

My favorite features of the site are the graphs for each food. They show how balanced the food is, the quality of the proteins it contains, how filling vs. how nutritious it is, and what makes up the majority of calories (carbs, proteins, or fats).

If you can’t find a food on their site, you can customize one using the My Recipes and My Foods tools (these require creating a profile). When you add things to your foods, you can then tell the site what you ate in a day, and it will give you all the previously mentioned graphs for each food combined so you can see how balanced your daily diet is.

It’s all pretty sweet, and since diet is an important part of an exercise regimen I thought it might be worth trying out.

Tags: diet, eating, food, health, nutrition

Man, school is keeping me busy. I’ve pretty much put the training on hold, although I try to make it to the gym a couple of times a week. Still no running—I’ve tried a few short, 1-2 mile runs here and there and completely given up until I can get running shoes.
The weather has turned, so there may be some bike rides in my near future! Assuming, of course, that I can get my homework under control. It may be Spring Break before I get outside again.

I totally forgot to post this entry yesterday….oops.  I’m not sure if it was because I was so frozen that the effects shut down my brain or what.  

It was a brisk day down by the river – 42 degrees F with an easterly wind ranging from 12 – 13 mph.  I rode a bit over 13 minutes to warm up, including a climb of just over 1 mile at 9 – 10% grade.  I stood up for probably 2/3 of the climb and it felt pretty good.  Then I did 8 sets of 15 second sprints, 45 seconds of hammering it out, and 2 minutes of recovery.  Even into the wind I managed to get up over 25 mph in the sprints.  Heart rate peaked at 152, but jumped to about 150 on each sprint lap.  This interval business is getting easier even if my legs felt dead and rubbery at the end.  I made an executive decision today to take a recovery day.  Tomorrow is a 2 hour mileage and pace day – looking for 36 to 40 miles on the road.