[blog.]mountainbike.pro

Off-season training is difficult this year. Every wish I made as a kid for snow cancellations is finally being answered. The roads are slushy and the trails are pulling double-duty as a beautiful winter wonderland. I’ve been spending some quality time in the toasty gym - working on swimming and strength while putting in time on the treadmill and in spinning classes. But I really want to hit the trails.

The National Duathon Championship is just around the corner and nothing can prepare me like riding and running on the trails. Conditioning in spinning class is great, but it doesn’t get me ready for the tough, technical climbs or the subtleties of the course. I won’t feel ready until I can ride the actual course on my actual bike with ease - without the motivating music, 5-minute cool-down and hot instructor. But, for now, I’m at the mercy of this crazy winter weather. Maybe I can improvise a hill training program workout using a sled for the downhills.

I found this video by following a link from the Harvard University Skeletal Biology Lab site for Biomechanics of Foot Strikes & Application to Running Barefoot or in Minimal Footware.  It’s a very interesting site.

One of the things that energizes and reassures me on a long trail run is thinking that us humans are built to run.  Our bipedal locomotion strategy is unique in the animal world.  We can also breath independently of our stride and we sweat more than any other animal.  We’re built to run long distances.   This video pretty much explains why:

This hunting technique allowed us to feed ourselves in the prehistoric world without claws, strength or sharp teeth.  I find it amazing.

This is just insane.  It looks like a lot of fun though.  He probably goes through three rear tires a day.

This is pretty crazy:

The music is horrible.  So, just like watching Kelly Ripa on TV, this is way better with the audio muted.

Back in the 80’s my dad bought two Schwinn Sprint 10-speeds.  One was for him and the other was for me.  They were heavy beasts by today’s standards.

I found a picture of one online at OTSG:

Both bikes were identical so we were never really sure which one we were riding.  We lived in the very hilly city of Roanoke, Virginia at the time.  My father loved riding around the city to take pictures of downtown scenes and homeless people.  I loved just taking off in whatever direction to explore.

Not too long after we got them I left one of the bikes on the front porch overnight and it got stolen.  We lived in a pretty bad neighborhood so it was a stupid mistake. I just forgot it was still out there.  My dad was pretty upset and just let me have the one that was left.  To this day I feel bad about it.  But I still loved the bike he gave me.

I can’t even guess how many miles I put on that bike.  I owned it for years and I rode it consistently.  School was boring, but the classes would fly by as I looked out the window and daydreamed about riding when I got home.  When I would get upset or stressed I would jump on the bike and pedal as fast as I could until the stress melted away.  There was something about burning legs, wind in my face and the landscape zipping by that would make my junior high school stresses seem trivial.

Spending time on my bike got me in touch with the changing seasons and gave me an intimate relationship with the city around me.  In Roanoke I climbed Mill Mountain many times to look at the star and the view and, more importantly, to come hauling ass back down the mountain.  I took countless spills, got good at fixing flats and probably had the hardest calves of anyone my age.  At the end of junior high school I moved to Maryland.  Finding friends at first was pretty hard so I spent a lot of time riding the B&A trail.

My bike met its end when I was in high school.  I mortally wounded it by putting pegs on the back axle.  At the time it seemed like a great idea.  The bike was significantly faster than anyone’s BMX bike, so adding pegs meant that me and a friend could ride forever, taking turns either standing or pedaling.  However, the axle ends weren’t long enough to support the pegs.  The pegs kept falling off under our weight and ended up stripping the axle ends down to rounded nubs.  While this alone wasn’t the bike’s undoing, it was the start of ever-worsening issues with the bike.

The rear derailleur was kept in place by tightening the bolt on the axle (probably not the best design).  After damaging the axle I eventually had to change a flat rear tire.  Normally I just held the derailleur in place while I tightened the bolt on to the axle.  But with the axle damaged, the derailleur would eventually slip out of place by the time I got the bolt tightened enough.  I would work at it until I got it all tightened down, but it was tougher every time.  Once it was really out of position so, to compensate, I made the huge mistake of blindly adjusting some of the screws on the rear derailleur and it was never quite right again.

At the time we had very little money so taking the bike to the shop was never even considered as an option.  So I would sit in front of our apartment building with a pair of vice grips and a screw driver trying to keep this thing from falling apart.  Eventually the axle got so stripped that I couldn’t get it back together.  That was when I realized that I had lost the battle.

I kept the bike when we moved and put its dismembered carcass in the basement with hopes of one day having the means to fix it.  A year or so later it was sitting by the curb.  I don’t know if someone rescued it or if it got picked up by the garbage truck, but I like to imagine that someone found it and had the money to get it back up and running.

As I get back in to road biking I think about this bike fondly.  I’m sure it weighed 5 times what my current bike weighs, but I doubt I will ever have as much fun riding my new bike as I did riding my Schwinn Sprint.

The National Duathlon Festival’s Off-Road Sport race was my first multisport event.  The event I raced consisted of trail running, mountain biking and more trail running.  I have become very aware of my abilities (or lack thereof) and limitations in both trail running and mountain biking.  I spent a lot of time on the trails to prepare for the race and my hard work paid off.  I was very happy with how I did in the race and I had a blast.  I’m now hooked on multisports.

Now I’m getting ready for the XTERRA Sport triathlon.  If I maintain what I have with running and kick up my mountain biking a bit, I will be good-to-go with those. Swimming, however, is a big unknown. So I spent some time in the pool at my gym recently to get a feel for my ability.

I’ve found that I’m terrible at swimming.  I’m honestly surprised by how much I suck at it.  None of the cardio benefits from biking and running seem to have transferred to swimming and I definitely feel like I’m starting from ground zero.  My race is a month away and I don’t know how I’m going to pull this off.

The swim portion of the race is 500 meters of open water in the James River.  I think that if I can finish 750 meters non-stop in the pool, I’ll be able to deal with the current and getting kicked in the face by other swimmers.  And I don’t need to be able to swim it fast.  Getting the swim done in a certain amount of time is something I will worry about next year.  This year I want to focus on not getting hauled out of the river by a rescue boat.  750 meters may not seem like much, but currently the most I can swim without needing to rest (gasp desperately for air) is 50 meters.

My brute force approach of just getting to the other end of the pool seems to be wasting more energy that I have to spare.  And no amount of conditioning will make up for my complete lack of technique. Watching other swimmers glide though the water lap after lap makes me realize that I’m missing some key pieces of information that would make my life a lot easier.  Some quick googling gave me the answer:

How to Use the Arms in Freestyle Swimming

I am doing everything wrong.  This is just one of the guy’s videos. Click here to see more. He does a great job of explaining it so simply that a complete newbie like me can understand. I have a lot of work to do.

Hopefully I can remember all of these pointers when I’m in the pool.  As long as I keep finding time to train (spring is such a busy time of the year) and get this swimming thing down, my first triathlon will be a success.

From 2007

Also from 2007. Longer video. Shows a lot of the Urban Assault mountain bike race, which is now part of Dominion Riverrock instead of XTERRA.

From 2008

It’s nice to see such experienced riders working so hard to ride our local trails. Watching these videos is getting me pumped up for the XTERRA and Dominion Riverrock races.

River District News is reporting that the vehicle bridge on the south side of Belle Isle has been reopened.

The article quotes a press release from the city that mentions that the re-opening of the bridge “provides a safe method of travel for emergency vehicles”.  Emergency vehicle access is really important as the weather improves and more people spend hot days sunning on the rocks and playing in the water.  But more importantly, the re-opening of the bridge will allow a vehicle to drive down to drain the port-o-poty.

I made the mistake of entering the port-o-poty back in February and it was one of the most disgusting things I had ever seen.  A park employee told me that no one had been able to drive down to change it out since the bridge was closed.  I imagine that the guy that ended up changing it out was either the new guy, or someone that lost a bet with his coworkers.

The re-opening of the bridge is good news for anyone interested in the XTERRA races, the Urban Assault or next year’s Duathlon.  It’s also good for people riding the Buttermilk/Northbank loop.  We’ve had to resort to throwing our bikes over the barricade and climbing over to avoid a detour over the rocks or the Lee Bridge.

Here’s an article that talks about the initial closing of the bridge and has a picture of the barricade.