Man, I am not impressed with strava for running. For example, here's what it says for my running lap:

Distance: 1 mile
Pace: 10:17
Time: 9:50

So if you run a mile in 9:50, isn't your pace 9:50 per mile?

It also claims my best 1 mile on the run was 11:48.

The only way this makes any sense is if it doesn't have a very fine grained way to represent distance - like if my run was really .95 miles and it rounded it up.

Trying to work up the motivation to go ride 50 miles by myself

50 miles by my lonesome out on parmer. Pretty brisk wind but not too bad.

One really funny moment. I'm barrelling up a hill at top speed and I pass someone and I'm feeling really great about this. At that EXACT moment someone whizzes by me, as much faster than me as I am than the person I'm passing. So deflating. I caught up to him at the next gas station and slashed his tires.

Time: 2:55
Distance: 49 mi
Avg Power: 170 (200)
Avg HR: ??? (This ****er is still on the blink, I replaced battery yesterday too)
Avg Speed: 16.8 mph

It just occurred to me that from my wife's POV I am lazy as ****. Sure, she knows where I'm going and what I do, but she doesn't experience it in any real way. Most of her experience with me is me sitting in a chair on the computer, or going upstairs for a while and coming down sweaty and pantsless.

The boy, though, he knows what's up.

Same run as before, 5 minute warmup/cooldown, 1 mile run in between. Will increase to 1.25 miles next time. Mile time was 9:15. No weight lifting, legs are already sore and I am doing between 20 and 40 miles tomorrow.

My current training plan is pretty much abandoned, I think. I've started upping the volume a lot to prepare for Tour du Rouge and the program I was on is tailored for a low-mileage rider, the idea being to spend less time at a higher intensity. Putting in more time, I can't maintain the intensity also. I am going to try to spend some time this week modifying the plan to work for me, probably something a lot more like the Cyclist's Training Bible plan, i.e. something based on 10-15 hours/week instead of 6. (I rode 9 hours last week, 141 miles, probably more in future weeks)

That's a pretty good pace on the run given that you're picking it up from scratch again. If you're running that now, then if you keep up training it you'll hit a 25.00 5k by race-time I reckon.

Unless they actually train themselves, most ppl don't have a clue what goes on. I'm pretty sure that most people's idea of cycling is that we just go out and pootle round the countryside and would be pretty shocked if they actually came out a ride with you (well, for the 30 seconds they could keep up anyway).

A 25 minute 5k would be nice, real nice. Yesterday I deliberately ran at about the fastest cadence I can maintain, about 170-175. There were many times that it would slow down and I'd have to re-sync to the music.

I went on a bike ride with my wife one time, and this was prob 2 years ago when I was nowhere near where I am now. I was on a mountain bike with the boy attached to my bike with a "trail-a-bike", see pic at end of post. She was on her bike (a crossover bike). I deliberately took it pretty easy - she had a very hard time keeping up with us. She basically won't run or ride with me at all, even if I promise to take it easy. Actually, we did run together a little bit a few weeks ago, my first time running in over a year. It was at the boy's elementary school, they have these things a few times a month after school where people will walk/jog around the track.

She runs a few times a week (usually on a treadmill which I find so lol) and wanted to do triathalons a few years ago but sort of never really got into it. It's a shame - she has a LOT of time for this kind of stuff, since she's a stay at home mom. I'm often a little jealous of that, having like a solid 6-7 hours a day with no one around.

My wife and a friend of hers are organizing a 5k race to benefit the boy's elementary school. An honest-to-goodness race, like, chip-timed and everything, not a "fun run". I got roped into doing the photography for it, so I won't be running (although I'll probably be biking ahead of the runners and stopping to take pictures). Then that evening I'll leave for houston for Tour du Rouge. Anyway, she's hopefully going to start picking up the pace to prepare for that (she's running in it)

Back in the day when I was into mountain biking I had tons of friends that just thought I went out and pootled around like they did the one or two times per year they got their bike out for a ride. It was always fun taking them out and destroying them on the trails. The best bit though was that everybody was always like "lol downhill-mountainbiking? How is that a sport? Anybody can ride a bike down a hill fast!". I had one specific route I'd always take them and from the top they'd have turned white and started walking their bike down while I stood and laughed at them from the bottom.

My gf never understood the whole running/exercise-for-fun thing but she got inspired when she came with me to the race I did last year so recently started the couch-to-5k program. She did 3k for the first time this morning so is looking good for her first official 5k soon, but not only that, she is loving it. Major win there imo. She's 100% adamant that she's never going to do a triathlon, but I'll work on it, very subtly over a long period.

Had planned to ride to work/back today but it was 45 degrees and raining when I got up, so, nah. Probably would have gotten to work earlier than I did driving there though: took more than 1:25 door to door.

Then I was going to go tomorrow but I realized I am going to an all day movie marathon from noon to midnight (All the Die Hard movies, culminating in the new one) and there is no ****ing way I'm riding home at midnight. If it got out earlier I could take public transportation most of the way but it doesn't and that **** don't run at midnight on a wednesday.

So I guess I'll try to get in 25 miles tomorrow morning before I go. 40 on thursday, 40 saturday, 45-50 sunday, total of 150-155. Will try to get some intervals in there. Still working out what my plan will be for the next 3 months.

... and now it's 40 degrees out with 16-20mph wind. I think I'll just go running instead.

Perfect running weather imo.

It kind of sucks that the area right outside my house is bad for running. I live in a pretty small subdivision. If you ran on every street once, doubling back where you had to, it would probably only total to 2 miles and you'd be making lots of dumb turns and turnarounds. I used to run a lot at work - there's a gravel track around the lake with lots of options, and, um, a very nice view.

Anyway, are there any reasonable guidelines to getting back into running? I think aerobic fitness is no problem, so mostly just the other physical stuff. I've run a mile 3 or 4 times now, can I jump up to 2 miles or 1.5 miles or something? Should I run a mile, walk a few minutes, run another one?

Yeah I've started trying to drive out to nice places to run so I can mix it up a bit. Running the same route every time, especially if it's just normal streets, can get pretty boring. As running is like 50%* mental, keeping it fresh is important.

As far as getting back into running, I'm not really sure tbh. The general guideline is to increase your distance by a max of 10% per week, but that's obviously not applicable below a certain distance as you'd take months to even get from 1 to 2 miles. My guess is that you'd be fine increasing your long run by say 1/2 a mile every week. Just be very aware of how your joints feel as your aerobic capacity will be way above what they can handle. With any kind of knee/ankle/hip pain it's way better to be overcautious than to push it and injure yourself. Trust me, running injuries suck.



* figure pulled out of my ass, but it's about right imo

I think running, in it's early stages (like, if you're a relative beginner) is way more than 50% mental. I did couch to 5k when I ran for the first time and I remember getting over a certain hump. If I could run for, say, 8 minutes, I could run almost indefinitely. The first time I ran after I'd done 8 minutes at a time, I was supposed to do 10 and I think ran for 15 because my app died and I just hadn't noticed that I was way over time. I dunno, you have to feel like you can keep running for X more minutes. I usually do a lot of tricking myself.

Like, I might say to myself, ok I'm going to stop and walk for 1 minute when I get to that tree. Then I'll get there and be like, nah, sorry sucker, still going to run. I might delay walking like 3 or 4 times, by which time the run may be over or close enough to it that stopping to walk is ludicrous.

Once I get up to 2 miles I think I'm going to try a bike-and-run brick. The tri I'm doing is actually 90% the same route that I normally bike on week days so I'll probably do the full bike portion, run a mile or 2 and see what that feels like (awful, presumably)

Do you ever run on the town lake trail? Here's what I did to bump up my run. I would just set my goal on a particular loop. Like the lamar/s 1st loop is about 1 1/2 miles. I'd just make myself do that entire loop. Then, bump up to the lamar/congress loop, then the lamar mopac loop. It sort of made it easier for me to attempt to finish the entire thing. No matter what, if you get a certain distance you have to finish anyways even if you walk it.

My gf has just got over that exact same hump on her C25K program. She was really struggling on the 3, 4, 5 minute runs, but once she'd done 8 mins it was no problem for her to just keep upping the distance.

I do a similar trick as you by just breaking tough sections in a run or ride up into smaller bits. I'll just set my goal as a tree/wall/sign etc say 50m ahead and just think about getting to there and no further. Anything past that point just doesn't exist, but then before you know it, you're there, and you set another goal another 50m ahead, and just keep doing that until you've got through that section.

I've heard meditation is good for helping out with the mental aspect of endurance sports but never got round to trying it. Yoga too as you have to learn how to focus on your breathing.

With my lack of running recently I've not managed to do any brick sessions yet. It's gonna be interesting cos I still get a bit of jelly-legs after cycling hard.

Yeah I have run there a lot - not this year, I've been running in the evenings from home (Pflugerville). I work downtown though, near 6th and Lavaca. So I usually get on the loop around lavaca and do the loop that goes through the pedestrian bridge under mopac. I come back over the newish walkway. It usually ends up being right around 4 miles which is about right. I walk 5 min, run 3 miles, then walk the rest.

Todays run:
5 min walk
1.5 mile run @ 10:01/mi
5 min walk

For the running part, I ran downhill to a park, ran around their track a few laps, then ran back up the hill. Since I did 2 1/4 mile runs around the track I am guessing that means .5 mi downhill, .5 mi up hill, .5 mi level. Going uphill I got pretty close to max HR.

You'll prob find that you can reach a higher hr when running than you can cycling. Not sure why but maybe your muscular endurance is more of a limiter when cycling?

Yeah I'm not really sure why either but it's definitely true. I have to work my ass off to get my heart rate to the max on a bike, and it really only happens up steep hills. Partly this is probably gearing - I don't have a high enough gear to work as hard on flats as on hills because there's an upper limit on RPM. When I replace my cassette I am probably going to go to one with a higher top gear.

The funny thing is, given this fact, why is it so much easier to blast out huge calorie/hour numbers on a bike compared to running? I can do 800-900 cal/hour no problem on a bike. I've never run an hour but if I did it would be more like what, 500-600 cal/hour?

I'm really interested in this. I run mostly because I never feel like I've done much on the bike - for the reason you said. But, is this cal/hr thing right? How do you accurately measure this?

It's all related to the effort that you're conditioned to put in. As an experienced cyclist you're conditioned to be able to keep up an intensity that allows for 800 cal/hr, but you don't have the running conditioning to keep up a pace that would burn at the same rate.

According to this site (http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist3.htm) at 180lb, you break the 1000 cal/hr rate when you're running 8.00/mile, so atm you might manage that for say 10 mins but then you'd have to slow down.

The only really accurate way to measure this stuff is in the lab with one of those masks that measures your oxygen consumption and what not. Those lab studies are used to make formula to estimate in the field.

I use pretty much the 2nd best method compared to those lab studies - I have a calibrated power meter on my rear wheel, that measures force applied to the wheel. Power in watts * time in seconds = joules, a measure of energy. 4.2 kJ = 1 kCalorie.

Here's where the fudge factor comes in, though. Based on lab studies, we know that the body is 20-25% effecient at turning food calories into power so if I produce 100 kJ of energy on the bike, that's "about" 25 kCalories, but we assume that it took me about 100 kCal to produce it, so a 100 kJ readout on the bike means 100 kCal burned.

The other slop factor is that my meter measures power applied to the wheel but I'm actually applying it to the pedals. There is some power loss in the drive train so the actual number on my power meter is likely to be a bit low (5-10%) but since there's some slop in the numbers already I ignore that.

800 cal/hour for me is tough - but I can do it for 2 or 3 hours OK if I'm motivated (i.e. I'm chasing someone). Riding on my own the number is more likely to be 650-700 except for short rides (like my interval sessions are often 1 hour long and 800-900 calories)

Keep in mind that like almost all exercise, and this is super important, this is not calories above maintenance. Since I already burn like 100 or more calories/hour sitting on my ass, if the computer says I burned 800 calories in an hour, I only burned 700 more than doing nothing.

**** I saw on the way to work today, commuting in on my bike:

* woman jay-walking across the busiest street on my commute (3 lanes both ways, constant traffic) pushing a stroller with 2 tiny kids in it

* guy in a motorized wheelchair cruising down the same street in the bike lane

* Woman putting on her makeup who would take her hands off the wheel and let her car drift to the right (into the bike lane)

Also I got stuck behind 2 or 3 city busses for a bit going through the UT campus area, always a huge drag. So hard to get around them. They also tend to drift in and out of bike lanes indistriminately.

This one always kills me. Parents will do stupid stuff like that but make sure they walk sort of in between the child any possible danger like that's going to protect any of them.

Rode to work and home today. Broke record to work by a minute, not sure about ride home, took a slightly different route.

Time: 2:23
Distance: 39.6 mi
Avg Power: 180 (200)
Avg HR: ???
Avg Speed: 16.6 mph

On the way home, 2 cars very nearly had an accident RIGHT in front of me. The one in my lane ended up screeching to a halt and jumping onto the curb to avoid hitting the one that was changing lanes (without looking) into my lane. They got into a huge shouting match with one of them saying, over and over, "YOU CRAZY" and the other one repeatedly yelling "CALM DOWN" (surely yelling at someone to calm down 20 times will work)

Saw another jaywalking baby-walker.

Oh and the best: a totally beat to **** former cop car - we're talking like it was a stunt car in an action movie or something, driven by someone most definitely not a cop. Both sides were scraped and dented like crazy.