Awesome Dog

When I get a dog, I think I know what one of the first tricks I will teach it is. 

A friend saw this video and thought of me!

I feel like someone should take a photo of that dog and photoshop it into this one

PS, that cat is pretty awesome as well

Big Training Day

Definitely my most challenging day of 2009 so far (5k TT a distant second). The day started off with my cycling maximum effort test, since I've already described that I'll simply summarize and say it was hard.

This was followed up with some casual lab time, and then once I had gotten enough of a "day" done I escaped to go swimming. Nothing particularly exciting about this, just a solid 1 hour swim, we did a kick set, it hurt so bad after this mornings workout. I rushed out of the pool and skipped my favorite part of the workout, social hot tubbing it afterwards, oh well. I had to meet Choppy because he was finishing my workout plan. Last time we went over legs and today we finished it off with a good list of core exercises to do. I'll describe this gym workout in more detail another time because that could be a post all of its own. 

I left this workout where we discussed Chops newest business move, he recently bought into the franchise Survival Bootcamp and now is the owner of a piece of the franchise (I don't think this is how it is described but you get the point). So thats really exciting for him.

Coming home I was famished, food was a necessity and was quickly devoured. I recovered for a few hours and then joked with my roommate for a while about how he needs to get a powertap for his bike. 

Deciding to follow my workout plan to a T, I finished the day off with an easy run. The purpose of this was twofold, first, allowing me to keep true to my half marathon training, and second to flush out my legs from this mornings cycling test.

All in all was a good day, I'm feeling pretty good right now, I think I managed nutrition pretty well for a day like today.

Here it is:

Cycling Test 30 minutes

Swim 1 hour

Gym 45 minutes

Run 45 minutes

2009, I've begun.

Cycling Study

Its been a fairly busy past couple of days. The most exciting event being the cycling study I took part in this morning. The study is being put on by Dr. Mike Koehle at UBC. Today's evaluation was simply a maximum effort test. How it works, after a 10 minute warm up the test begins at 0 Watts. That part is fairly simple, but then it picks up by 1 Watt every 2 seconds. The idea is to keep pedaling seated until you can no longer pedal 60 rpm. At that point the test is over.

I was a little nervous coming it to the test for two reasons, first, the test required "Elite" cyclist.  I didn't think I fit into this bracket, however, upon getting there today I learned that in reality that was just to discourage Joe Schmoe

from signing up. At this point I was more confident in my ability to perform well in the test. The only thing that was still looming over my head was the fact that my legs felt a little dead from last nights killer run workout (I know, making excuses before the test even takes place). Last night we did 5.5km of hill intervals, definitely not the ideal workout prior to a cycling power test. Our coach is kind of a jerk and just doesn't listen to people. Someone should really put him in his place.

With the test underway, I felt pretty good and was talking with Mike until I reached about 220 Watts at which point I was still feeling alright but decided to be cautious and stop talking because the pain would surely hit me pretty hard soon.

With Mikes encouragement (I wasn't allowed to see the computer or time) I kept pushing through and when I estimated was about 300 watts it got real hard, I managed to get my bike jersey off because it was hot in that little room. I finally cracked and I mean cracked HARD at 378 Watts. I'm fairly pleased with this. I've charted this on a graph below, my breaking point is signified by the lightning bolt!

As you can see, my maximum power output is roughly the same as that held by a professional cyclist during a 75 minute time trial (Note, my graph says 6-7 hours, in reality this should be at TT, this was a mistake but I decided not to redo the graph). However my maximum average is somewhere in the 200-250 Watt range for a TT, which was roughly what Floyd Landis held as an average for the 3 weeks of the Tour.

All this to say I have a little bit of work to do. My max power is 6Watts/kg, and my sustainable power is in the range of 3.5-4. This season I would really like to bring this up higher to maybe 4.5, that would be epic.

The next days of the study involve going at 75% (282.5 Watts) for as long as I can hold it. Apparently that is usually 15-40 minutes. I fear this workout because after todays workout, I realized that I am pretty comfortable and then BAM hit a wall. This 75% may still be in my comfortish zone, meaning that I could be one of the fortunate ones who gets to hurt for 40+ minutes. YAY!

Oh, and my legs felt good, no excuses needed from last night.

I will have all the heart rate data to go along with this after all the testing is done. Also I did a similar test to this a few years ago, it will be interesting to see how I compare to a mid June (when I did this last) test.

I'm out for a run in the rain, enjoy!

Bike Commuting On The Bus

I very much like the Vancouver Transit System because all buses can accommodate bikes allowing you to take the bus home on those days with really crappy weather. I was going to describe these racks but instead I came across this great instructional video posted on bikesnobnyc earlier today.

Hope you enjoy.

A real post will be up later today or tomorrow.

Guest Post

I wrote a guest post for a Triathlon blog out on the east coast. 

I probably will do so again in the future giving them a west coast perspective. 

Live Multi Sport, you can check them out.

Something funny in the blog world

For any of you who know me, you'll know I love statistics. As a result I've got the site stat tracker going on for this site. My typical site activity is in the range of 15-50 hits a day depending on if I am frequently posting or leaving a trail on other blogs. However today something funny happened. My stats were around 40 hits when I left for my run at 5 and when I got back at 6 were up to 82. I didn't know what was up, and the strangest thing, is that normally when I get a lot of hits like that its the result of posting on someone else's blog and then people linked that way. Today that wasn't the case at all, and when I look at the IP addresses they come from all over the world. Check it out.

I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone in any of the following places. But take a look, Vincent's Ramblings is apparently international!

- Scarborough,Tobago,Trinidad And Tobago

- Madison Heights, Michigan, United States

- Atlántida, Canelones, Uruguay

- New Orleans, Louisiana, United States

- Oslo, Norway

- Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

- Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia

- Córdoba, Cordoba, Argentina

- Orem, Utah, United States

- Santiago, Region Metropolitana, Chile

- Toluca, Mexico, Mexico

- Sampaloc, Rizal, Philippines

- Londrina, Parana, Brazil

- Malang, Jawa Timur, Indonesia

- Caracas, Distrito Federal, Venezuela

- Tokyo, Japan

Had anyone else noticed this on their blog? When I look

at the incoming link it tells me address undefined 404,

so who knows.

Anyways, interesting nonetheless.

Sticky Wet Snow

It's 9:25 in the morning, my phone alarm has been going off for 25 minutes already and can be found muffled by one or two of my pillows on my bed. I normally am not this tired in the morning, however, forgetting to turn off the heat in my room, I was baking at 3 in the morning leading to a semi disturbed sleep. 

Finally rolling out of bed, I sit on the edge, dehydrated, debating with myself whether to go to practice or simply fall back to sleep. No, I had to go, otherwise I would waste away the day. My feet hit the ground, I feel the soreness from my massage in my right quad from last night. This thought doesn't linger long though, once I'm committed to going, I need to be quick otherwise I won't catch the bus. Rushing to get some food; a bowl of cereal and glass of juice later and I'm ready to go just in time for the 9:40 bus. Good thing I was rushed and hadn't looked outside, had I seen the weather that awaited me I surely would have rolled over and stayed in bed. 

Large white wet snowflakes falling down, just enough wind to give them a slight angle so that they can sneak under my hood. Do I have time to get my umbrella? Can't risk it, bus should be here any minute. 

Running around my house to the front yard I look up the street and the 25 is turning onto Dunbar from King Edward. Getting my umbrella would have cost me this bus. I quickly cross the road muttering, "what am I doing going out in this.". 

I get to UBC a few minutes before practice, just enough time to run into the locker room and get changed. Doing so I run into a few teammates and we all mutter about the weather. How if its snowing in Vancouver, how come we aren't in Whistler taking advantage of it. 

Quickly I get changed and prepare to head outside. As I approach the door, my hand reaches the bar to release the lock and I hesitate to push, do I really want to go outside in 0*C weather to get wet and cold? I'm still sheltered by the indoors, I can still turn back. 

No! No turning back, I open the door and the cold wind and snow hit me immediately, however, now I'm dressed for training, no longer wearing my big winter coat and long pants. I notice goose-bumps immediately appearing on my arms and legs. As I do the short dash to catch up to the others, I see Ivan our coach is back from his winter vacation down south, this weather must be a shock to his system, its going to be a long hour for him. As I approach my teammates, my toes are already going numb from having to step through puddles, the sleep that was in my eyes not 30 minutes ago is surely gone my now, scared away by the fowl wind.

As I am running out the door taking long strides to try and maximize my efficiency there is just one thing going through my mind.

"Why am running through the snow barefoot only wearing a speedo?"

The perk of swimming outdoors all winter long is you don't linger on deck before a workout starts, once you're present, you're in the water. Diving in, my red toes shriek with the shock of the sudden change in temperature, and with that, I'm on my way to a solid sunday morning swim workout. 

During the swim, while doing social kick sets, we take turns pausing the conversation to dip our heads underwater to melt the snow that is sticking to our hair. I couldn't help but glance to the side every once in a while and witness pedestrians walking by the pool and pausing as they watched the crazy swimmers outside in the snow while our coach stands on deck dressed for winter. I can't help but think what we must look like. 

But I guess thats what it means to be a Canadian training for triathlons in February.