Wednesday, November 26, 2014

What Not to Do When Riding Your Bike

When the roads are not covered in ice, and the skies are not dripping snow or rain, I ride my bike to work. It's a short ride, less than two miles, and I have only one major intersection to navigate. But that one intersection is a doozy. 

The road I ride has no bike lanes. And it also has an unusual light sequence. Instead of having the left turn green arrow turn on before the straight green, it comes after. This means that while I wait to cross the street, I have to worry about people coming up behind me and deciding that they should turn right in front of me. 

Legally, they shouldn't be doing that. As a bicycle, I am a vehicle on the road, and cars should not be turning in front of me. But they do, and it is my most dangerous moment of the day. 

Or, it is on most days. 

One day, I was riding home and pulled up at the red light next to a white car that did not have turn signal on. I don't actually trust that, but I take it as a good sign. The light turns green, they go straight, and I pump my legs to get the bike moving. There's a lube shop just across the street, and I can see they are signalling to turn in. Miracle of miracles, they are actually waiting for me to pass before turning, rather than cutting me off. 

I ride by as fast as I can, and give them a friendly wave to acknowledge their gesture.

Then I almost fall off my bike when a car behind them blares their horn, presumably because the white care is not moving. I'm a bit pissed at that, because they were only being nice, and treating a bicycle like an actual vehicle with a person on it. So after they turn in, I turn around and flip the bird to that honking car. 

Now, usually, at this point in my ride, I would keep riding straight for three more blocks before turning right, but while I may have been foolish enough to flip off a car while on a bike, I wasn't foolish enough not to turn at the very next intersection and pedal my butt off to get out of sight. Their horn blared behind me as I turned, as well it might. 

My heart raced all the way home, but it was worth it. I hadn't ever done more than yell when cars cut me off or nearly ran me down, but this car had honked at someone else doing the right thing, and I wouldn't stand for that. 

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Standing Strong

I overheard a snatch of conversation recently about Crossfit. Rather, about the speaker's idea of Crossfit, which boiled down to "I don't want to be yelled at."

Now, I cannot say that I have not been yelled at during Crossfit, in a technical sense. But I don't think that my experience of being yelled at is the same thing that these people were referencing. My particular experience has been that the Crossfit coaches want you to have good form, and they want you to complete the workout as best as you can. Therefore, they tell you how to improve your form, and they encourage you.

Now, during the WOD (workout of the day), loud music is played. Very loud. It's nice. I don't feel self-conscious about giving out barbaric yawps or swearing while music is blasting. Also, the beat can help keep your body moving. But the volume necessitates that the coaches raise their voices in order to be heard. Therefore, they yell.

But they don't call names, they don't belittle, and they do offer constructive comments, albeit at high volume.

One of the comments that I have frequently received at Crossfit is not to let my knees bend inward during squat motions. For several months, I only worked on not letting my knees bend inward while I was actually squatting. It was then pointed out that I do the same thing when I dip my knees for a power lift.

That was my wake up call.

I realized that the tendency of my knees to bend inward when bending, rather than outward, is a systemic issue. I have done it for as long as I can remember. If there's one thing I remember my dad saying to me as frequently as "stand up straight" it has to be "don't lock out your knees." The posture that I habitually stand in is one that weakly allows the knees to sag in. And I do it all the time - while I'm walking and running as well as standing. In order to stop receiving those comments during squats, I had to focus on the position of my knees when I'm not squatting.

After seven days of focusing on that, my squat position has improved. It is supposed to take 21 days to form a habit, and having that high volume encouragement at day 7 helps me to keep my focus on standing strong.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Not a Fluke

I have continued to run faster. It's not a fluke!

I managed to completely tire myself out over the weekend. My husband and I have started to sandwich runs around our Saturday morning weight lifting sessions instead of saving the run for the end. This past Saturday we ran 1 mile before the weights and half a mile after. I timed my first mile at 8:15, and I wasn’t sure I was reading the clock right or counting my laps right even with my handheld clicker counter. Even if I were slightly off on the timing or counting, it was my fastest mile ever. Ever!

I tried to get Ambrose to gauge his speed by carrying my cell phone with the MapMyRun app going. Unfortunately, it didn’t like him running on the track, which is about a tenth of a mile long. It counted the first tenth and then stopped counting, so he ran for about fifteen minutes, which was probably close to a mile for him.

We proceeded to our usual landmine session in the downstairs weights area, and then went upstairs to do the cable cross machine. Both of us were tired, so we didn’t do our full slate on the cable cross. Ambrose didn’t want to do the full mile run either, so I proposed that we do our fastest five laps.

I was going to go first so I’d have time to recover before hitting the bouldering wall. I wanted very much to run my laps in 4 minutes or less. With that goal in mind, I ran as fast as I felt I could sustain for the duration. By lap 3, I was hurting.

But it was worth it when I finished my 5th lap at 3 minutes and 44 seconds. Fastest (0.045 short of a) half mile ever!

Ambrose then ran his 5 laps. I noted his first split was 1:11, and then the second one took him longer. By the third lap, his time had continued to increase, so I tried to encourage him to go faster. On the last lap, he really pushed and finished lap 5 with a split time of 1 minute. His total was 6 minutes, which I think is a good place to start.

Actually, I hope he stays at that pace for a while longer, while I continue to get faster. I really dig the idea of being twice as fast as him.

On Sunday, I ran a 10K distance, split into 4.25 mile and 1.95 mile segments, because I stopped to do calisthenics at the new outdoor gym. Ambrose ran 2.6 miles to get to the outdoor gym, so he did beat me there and left before me. But I caught him up at the very last stretch of our run.

The combination of the cold weather and running every split under 10 minutes, for my first ever 10K distance under an hour, made me into a blob of soreness for the rest of the day. But my speed is not a fluke.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Speed Thrills

I go on a run almost every Wednesday with someone at work. We’ve been going outside for the most part, though I expect that to change as the weather continues to get colder. He and I tend to run between 10 and 10:30 minute miles on the outdoor run, which is faster than I have been running by myself, so I consider the Wednesday run my fast one.

Last week, my running buddy was not at work. I had all of my stuff ready for running, so I decided to go anyway, but since I’ve been getting through a cold and the weather wasn’t great I’d run indoors. I also planned on going nice and slow, taking it easy since I wouldn’t have anyone to goad me into running faster.

Once I got to the gym and changed into my running clothes, I headed upstairs to the track. I made a detour to swing on a pull up bar and remind my callouses why I don’t want them to disappear. Then, atypically for me, I walked a lap before starting to run.

And when I started to run, I was running fast.

Now, I have no illusions about being an actually fast runner. When I write fast, I mean, fast for me. The outer lane of the track is a hair over a tenth of a mile in length (1 mile is 10.09 laps), and I found myself running each lap in under a minute. When I’m doing my slow runs, I tend to run laps at about 1:08 to 1:20 minutes per lap.

Even though people passed me on the track, I still was going fast for me, faster than I’ve gone in a long time. And while I was uncomfortable, I wasn’t panicky. Even with my chest still feeling tight from being sick, I was making it work. I decided I would do my fastest 23 laps and stop. 23 because the route we usually run outdoors is about 2.25 miles and that would get me close to that distance.

I wasn’t quite sure when I started, but it was approximately 10 seconds to 11:48 (or that’s how I counted it), so I was quite happy to find that my first 10 laps were done in under 10 minutes. And I started pushing a bit harder and counted out my last 10 laps at just under 9 minutes (8:54). Since 10 laps is technically only 0.99 miles, I calculated out the pace to an 8:59 minute mile pace for the last mile. It’s still sub-9, and I’m counting it as a major win. That’s only the second sub-9 I’ve ever recorded and my first in about three years.

I guess maybe this running faster to run faster thing might be working.