2008-07-29

Oh. My. God.

Another flat!!!! This one in the middle of El Dorado Regional Park in Long Beach, during my morning ride. So I hoofed it nearly half a mile out of the park, hoofed it another half a mile or so to the nearest bus stop, rode a bus to Del Amo and Norwalk, changed to a Cerritos bus, and took that to Liberty Park in Cerritos, where I park my van for my morning rides. Drove to my LBS, where Steve was utterly astonished to learn about the flat—remember, this is new tire, new tube, new liner, and new Slime! So Radagast the Beige-and-Black is in the shop again. I didn't even stop at the Y on the way home, just came straight home to blog about the earthquake (you'll have to head over to the Gathering Place for that account) and the flat.

2008-07-27

2008, Week Thirty

Monday, July 21: Home treadmill for 1.301 miles; morning bike ride for 15.78 miles; post-work stop at the Y for 2.28 miles on the elliptical.
Tuesday, July 22: Home treadmill for 1.357 miles; but when I got to the park this morning for my ride, I discovered a very flat rear tire. Went to the gym and spent 40 minutes on the elliptical, for 2.52 miles; the post-work visit to the Y was spent on strength training.
Wednesday, July 23: Home treadmill for 1.40 miles; no ride today because the bike is in the shop (and things were so hectic in the afternoon that I couldn’t get away to pick it up); no pre-work visit to the Y because I had to be at work early because the morning guy had to take a day off for personal stuff; post-work trip to the Y was spent on the elliptical, for 2.88 miles.
Thursday, July 24: Home treadmill for 1.401 miles; picked up the bike from the shop, but not early enough to find a place to ride before work; post-work stop at the Y for strength training (UBWO, plus the two hip machines).
Friday, July 25: Home treadmill for 1.251 miles; morning bike ride (yay!!!!!!!!) for 14.88 miles. No visit to the Y because I don’t finish up at work early enough on Fridays to get there.
Saturday, July 26: City of Cypress 5K today with Melissa. And even with the early (7:30) start, the heat and humidity were nearly unbearable. While at the water stop, I chatted briefly with a family out on their front lawn, and jokingly asked one of them if they had “any more of that coffee.” He said they had plenty; was there anything in particular I wanted? I laughed and said the song I was listening to at the time was “Wildwood Weed,” and the whole family laughed. The Big Stick Popsicles were a wonderful “prize” and I was tempted to grab a second one. But I’d had to ask for help getting the wrapper off the first one—my hands were so slippery! Anyway, I came in 490 out of 492 listed on the results page, with a chip time of 57:05, and 17th in my Division. My pedometer said I covered a total of 3.9 miles, including all the walking before and after the actual event. That’s an improvement for me by a full minute. And congratulations to Melissa for her new PR!!!!!!!!!!
Sunday, July 27: Home treadmill for 1.503 miles; no bike ride; no visit to the Y. Kept driving around to different stores and just never stopped for a ride nor got to the gym.

Total distance for the week: 50.282
Distance from Bag End: 2831.048
Distance to Isengard: 102.952

2008-07-22

Halfway...

…to eleventy-one today. And what a day it's been so far. Got to Liberty Park in Cerritos, where I start my daily ride, opened the back of the van, and found a flat tire. This is the same tire (different tube) which went flat a couple of weeks ago. So I went to the Y instead and spent 40 minutes on the elliptical in my cycling clothes because I forgot to grab clean gym wear on my way out this morning. I also forgot to take my water bottle in with me. Then I took the bike to the shop, where they'll install a new tube and new rear tire, replace the broken spoke, true the rear wheel, clean the hub, and install the liner in the front tire. Happy Half-birthday to me.

City of Cypress 5K on Saturday.

2008-07-20

2008, Week Twenty-Nine

Happy Moon Day! Has it really been thirty-nine years since Armstrong and Aldrin stepped out of the lander onto another celestial body?

A pretty good week for once, I think.

Monday, July 14: home treadmill for 1.175 miles; morning bike ride for 14.06 miles.
Tuesday, July 15: home treadmill for 1.351 miles; morning bike ride for 115.15 miles; and—finally!!!—an after-work visit to the Y, for an upper-body workout. I also used the two hip (adduction and abduction) machines.
Wednesday, July 16: rest day today, mostly, though I did stop at the Y after work to spend nearly an hour on the elliptical, for 3.69 miles. Hey, it was nearly 24 hours; that’s a day of rest!
Thursday, July 17: home treadmill for 1.155 miles; morning bike ride for 15.14 miles; and another post-work Y visit for more upper-body strength training (and the two hip machines).
Friday, July 18: home treadmill for 1.252 miles; morning bike ride for 14.59 miles.
Saturday, July 19: home treadmill for 1.502 miles, but never did manage to get in a bike ride.
Sunday, July 20: home treadmill for 2.112 miles; bike ride for 25.33 miles; upper-body workout at the Y (plus the hip machines).

Total distance for the week: 96.507
Distance from Bag End: 2780.766
Distance to Isengard: 153.234

2008-07-17

I Can Already Hear...

Melissa's virtual razzberries, but I did 3.85 uninterrupted hands-free miles today at El Dorado Regional Park. This is all the more impressive (or wacko!) given that the Santa Ana Riverbed effort was a level straightaway on concrete, while the El Dorado ride included both concrete and asphalt and was full of curves and not completely level.

2008-07-13

2008, Week Twenty-Eight

What a week this was!

Monday, July 7: with the treadmill dead, it was just a bike ride today, 10.81 miles.
Tuesday, July 8: rest day today, unless you want to count muscling the old treadmill out into the alley by the garage before work (and it was gone by the time I got home!) and muscling the new one into the house and assembling it and shoving it into position, and no ride because I went treadmill shopping on the way to work.
Wednesday, July 9: the distance goes to three decimal places on this thing! On the new treadmill, 1.071 miles; morning bike ride, 12.90 miles. I also finished the audio version of the second Harry Potter book this morning, so there was a mad rush to get the next one ready to load into the MP3 player I use for audiobooks, then uninstall HP2 and load HP3. And not all of HP3 fits, so once I get through a few chapters, I’ll have to uninstall some early chapters so that I can load the last couple or three of chapters. Ah, the disadvantages of buying the 1G MP3 player!
Thursday, July 10: home treadmill for 1.005 miles; morning bike ride for 15.14 miles.
Friday, July 11: home treadmill for 1.200 miles; morning bike ride for 15.10 miles.
Saturday, July 12: home treadmill for 1.601 miles; morning bike ride for 5.54 miles until the rear tire went flat, then pushing the bike for 0.77 miles from the river bed to a grocery store to get cash, then to Bus Stop A, then from Bus Stop B to Bus Stop C, then from Bus Stop D to my BFFs’ home. Left the bike in their garage while we four went to our regular Saturday breakfast, then they took me to where I’d parked the van near SART’s Rampart access. BFF-N rode shotgun on the way back to the house, where I loaded up the bike, and then I went on to Performance down in Fountain Valley, where I left the bike for tire repair while I hoofed it over to A Snail’s Pace to pick up a couple of packages of Body Glide. A new tube, a liner to add a layer of protection between the tube and the tire, and another bottle of Slime now have me ready for a ride tomorrow morning before class at the LNS. The bad news is I have another broken spoke! I also need to replace that tire. I opted for the liner instead of a new tire because that particular shop didn’t have a tire in the same size. No trip to the Y today.
Sunday, July 13: home treadmill for 2.002 miles; no bike ride before class at the LNS, and it's the class at the LNS which kept me from the Y today, so no weight training at all this week.

Total distance for the week: 67.139
Distance from Bag End: 2684.259
Distance to Isengard: 249.741

The new treadmill is, of course, fancier than the old one, with a magnetic “key” and digital displays of time, distance, speed, and calories walked off. There’s a lap counter, an oval track a quarter mile long, and also a heart-rate monitor that’s activated by a light thumbprint (don’t press too hard or you’ll cut off the circulation and get an inaccurate reading!). It’s also bigger—longer, a bit wider, and taller—than the old one, so I had to move a cabinet several inches over to make it fit into the old one’s space. I also have to push the stop button; just removing the key wipes the display and there doesn’t seem to be a way to retrieve the information. I still have to install the locking devices for the "stored" position, and don't have the locking pins for the incline device in place.

2008-07-08

New Treadmill

I took a rest day today so I could bite the bullet and buy a new treadmill. Ouch. It's the Weslo Cadence G40, and a good bit fancier than the old one, even though it's a "cheapy" model sold through discount houses. Now I wanna go home so I can put it together and put the bike back in the van.

2008-07-06

2008 Week 27, June Recap, and 2008 The First Half

2008, Week Twenty-Seven
Monday, June 30: morning bike ride for 12.84 miles.
Tuesday, July 1: home treadmill for 1.01 miles; morning bike ride for 15.45 miles.
Wednesday, July 2: home treadmill for 0.46 mile (treadmill stopped and wouldn't start again); morning bike ride for 15.44 miles.
Thursday, July 3: home treadmill won’t start; morning bike ride for 15.12 miles.
Friday, July 4: morning bike ride for 18.48 miles; walking around 4th of July celebration venue for 0.5 mile.
Saturday, July 5: morning bike ride for 21.64 miles.
Sunday, July 6: morning bike ride for 23.79 miles; upper-body (and hip adduction and abduction machines) workout at Y.

Distance from Bag End: 2617.12
Arrived in Minas Tirith with Aragorn partway through Saturday’s ride and jumped back to Rauros to join Merry and Pippin.
Distance to Isengard with Merry and Pippin: 316.88
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June Recap
Walk: 11.90 miles (May: 7.19) (even discounting the Downtown Anaheim 5K the mileage increased slightly)
Elliptical: 6.60 miles (May: 1.25)
Bike: 347.29 miles (May: 421.26) (the bike was out of service for 3 days in June)
Weight Training: 2 Upper-Body workouts (May: 1 UBWO)

Goal for July: increase all distances, increase the weight training.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First Half of 2008
Walk: 82.02 miles
Elliptical: 46.16 miles
Bikes: 1,533.23 miles (7.29 miles of that on stationary bikes)
Weight Training: 17+ times (I don't have a count for January)

2008-07-05

5 Things

Found this one on Melissa's blog:
TB posted this interesting twist on the Five Things meme on his blog in honor of his 1st anniversary of blogging. The rules are to post five things about yourself. The twist is that four of them should be true, but one should be false. I thought it sounded like fun, so I’ve decided to play along. Here is my list of five things about me. I’ll leave it up to you to guess which is the false one. Of course, those of you who know me well will immediately know.
As for me and my five things:
1. My first (and only) new new car was a 1975 Pontiac Trans Am.
2. I was at the 1967 All-Star Game.
3. I was at the only game the Angels won in the 1979 ALCS, the first post-season series in Angels history.
4. I'm an only child.
5. I've lost somewhere around 40 pounds since I started working out last August.