So I Might Mix in a Bike Event

**Update: I rode in the Candy Corn Classic this weekend and you can see some pictures and read my wrap up here

There’s a bike event here in SLO coming up called the Candy Corn Classic that I heard about today and I’m thinking about signing up to do it. It’s more fun than racing oriented and I kind of get an open-water-esque kinda vibe from the whole thing. They have a 15, 35, 62, and 100 mile rides available. I’m not quite ready to tackle a century, even though I’d like to complete one some day, but I think the 35 mile ride might be cool to do. I have a few friends that might be interested in participating but I’m not sure what distances they’d want to do so I’m waiting to see if anybody is going to sign up for real before I pick a distance.

The Candy Corn Classic is going on Saturday the 25th of October when the UCLA meet was originally scheduled to happen. It gets started at 7AM for everything except the century. It’s $40 to sign up and the proceeds go to charity.

Getting back to my aquatic interests… tonight I rode out to the pool and went through a decent workout. Plus I got to demoralize someone who got into the pool looking really confident about his aqua powers. After I casually lapped him a few times he wasn’t looking so confident and retreated to the hot tub. As it turns out young muscle-y people hate getting passed repeatedly by bald fat dudes :)

Warm Up
200 free
100 kick
100 breast

10 x 100 free (the last 100 was all out, I went about 1:10… kinda lame really. I can’t wait to do one for real soon)

150 cool down

1550 yards plus 10 miles on the bike

Tomorrow is a big day at the office… end of month report time, boo. So I might not make it to the pool, but I’m planning on swimming Thursday and having a short workout Friday. Then Saturday I have to drive up to Davis and Sunday I’m doing the pentathlon, yay!

September 30, 2008 | No Comments »

An Unexpected Training Partner

So today on my ride home from the pool I had the added motivation of a big ass pit bull chasing my bike to make sure I kept going fast. At about 8th street as I made my way east up Grand Ave this big dog comes bounding across the street at me. I jammed on the brakes so he wouldn’t knock me off the bike. He nudged his head against my front tire and then came around on my right side and jumped up on me. Luckily he was friendly. I pet him on his head while I used my other hand to check his neck for a collar. Unfortunately he didn’t have anything on him so I couldn’t try and get him home. I tried to get him off the street and onto the sidewalk but he decided to run back across the street again into the darkness. I thought we were done here so I started riding towards home again. Once I got moving again my new canine friend decided to follow me all the way down to about 16th street! That guy was fast, I was going about 14-15 mph and he was right behind me the whole way. Eventually he got bored and made his way off to more exciting things.

RHINO, One Of Tia Torres' Pit Bulls

Anyways… back to the swimming… I focused on turns and did some sprinting.

Warm Up
200 free
100 kick

10 x 25 sprints from mid pool w/ focus on turns
(2 free, 1 fly, 1 fly to back, 1 back, 1 back to breast, 1 breast, 1 breast to free, 2 free)

4 x 50 sprint IM order

100 IM Fast

50 kick
100 easy with focus on form
50 kick

200 cool down

1250 yards total plus 10 miles on the bike

I like dogs and I don’t mind a little company when I work out but I’m hoping that I don’t have another pit bull training partner the next time I ride my bike!

September 29, 2008 | 1 Comment »

My Hobbies Combined…?


If only I could ride my bike underwater… two birds with one stone right?

This picture came from an ad campaign for Insight… since you can’t actually tell from the picture, it’s a clothing brand. Anyways they have some really cool pictures out there and you can check out more at booooooom.com.

September 28, 2008 | No Comments »

27 Miles and a Trip to the Pool

I got my money’s worth out of today man. I hopped on my bike this morning and rode out through Oceano, up Hwy 1 in to Pismo, up the coast through Shell Beach, and then took the Bob Jones Trail out to Avila Beach. I sat by the ocean for a little bit, refueled with a hot dog and a bottle of water from a street vendor and then made my way home. All told I rode about 27 miles today. I’d like to go further but that kind of seems like the longest I can tolerate a bike seat.

the view through the fog from my rest stop in Avila

After resting a little bit I made my way to the pool to get in a little yardage and mainly stretch out. I think I was the only person in the pool under 80 years old this afternoon. Most of the folks in the pool were walking and noodling but nobody bothered me churning along out in the far lane.

My swim was basically 10 x 100 whatever I felt like. It was a mix of freestyle, kicking, breast stroke and an IM for good measure. It wasn’t a real serious workout I just wanted to swim a little today. This coming week I need be a little more structured to get ready for the Davis Pentathlon. I need to focus some effort on turns and if no one else is around some starts from the pool deck (the pool has no blocks to start from). I’m still figuring out the details for my 300 mile trek, but I know I want to at least be moderately fast!

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Need to Find Some More Lights…

I rode my bike out to the gym again tonight, I think I want to make this a regular part of my routine. 4 trips a week to the gym plus my regular commuting would mean that I get in at least 60 miles a week which is about where I’d like to be. The last couple months I’ve bounced between as little as 30 and as much as 70 in a week. I do however need to do some research into bike lights. There a few sections of my ride that are too dark and I need one light to see the road and one light to see in front of me. I almost ran down a pedestrian dressed all in black on a stretch of Hwy 1 with no street lights!

I brought a swimplan.com workout with me but forgot it in my locker. I had committed most of it to memory though and already knew what I was going to change. Here’s my workout:

Warm Up
200 free
100 kick
100 breast

Main Set
3 x 400 free (paced at about 1:30 per 100)

Cool Down
100 kick
100 breast
200 free

2000 yards total plus 10 miles on the bike

My left shoulder is still crunching and aching in a way that I’m concerned about but it seems to be fading a little bit every day. I’ve got about a week left before the Davis Pentathlon and I want to be as close to 100% as possible when I go.

September 26, 2008 | No Comments »

In the Beginning…

I was going through my Twitter stream today looking for a few specific conversations to use as an example for a talk I’m giving next month on social media. I came across this tweet of my first day back in the pool… a pathetic 200 yard struggle. Still kind of embarrassing when I think about. Anyways… if you’re debating a return to swimming after a long hiatus and your first outing sucks don’t sweat it. I started at 200 yards and within a month I was back to swimming 1000-3000k yards. It all comes back you just have to build up a tolerance!

September 25, 2008 | No Comments »

Rob D’s Pitch Black Biathalon

Even though I’m not a big fan of riding at night from a safety perspective I decided to bike out to the gym tonight. I usually ride to the office to get my truck and then drive to the gym, but I think I’m going to try riding for a little while to see how death defying it really is. It was actually really nice out tonight, the fog kept me nice and cool both ways. It was kinda refreshing…

Anyways I did a short swim once I got to the pool.

500 warm up

4 x 50 sprint IM order

200 free

100 kick

1000 yards total bookended by 10 miles on my bike

My shoulder is still feeling crunchy but I’ll survive. I’m stretching a lot more before I hop in the pool just in case.

September 23, 2008 | No Comments »

Snap, Crackle, Pop… in my Shoulder

So after a few days of dryland excitement I was back in the pool tonight, but honestly I felt like crap in the water. My left shoulder has been fighting me a little bit recently. It’s kinda crunchy which isn’t really the best thing a swimmer’s shoulder could be doing. I need to work on stretching more before I just hop in and start swimming. I forget that I’m kinda old sometimes…

I promised my special lady friend that I would be home in time to take a walk down to this frozen yogurt place by our apartment tonight so I had a slightly condensed workout.

Warm up
400 freestyle

Main set
10 x 100 choice (mixed freestyle, backstroke, breast stroke, IM and some kicking)

200 cool down

1600 yards total

I need to start working in more time on my bike to supplement the fact that my shoulder seems to only be able handle so much yardage a week right now. I ride about 6 miles everyday but I’d like to add a little more. I like riding out to the gym because it’s a 10 mile roundtrip but I’m not a big fan of doing it in the dark… and generally I hit the pool at about 8PM so it would be dark both ways, not cool. Maybe I’ll stock up on more lights and some extra reflective gear. If I look like a Christmas tree people would have to see me right?

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Pedaling and Rescheduling

This weekend didn’t really afford me much of a chance to hit the pool. I did get in a really good ride on my bike up the coast through Pismo and Shell Beach. I don’t know what it is about the super spandexed up people that ride bikes. They don’t smile or acknowledge your general presence. I had a small group of roadies behind me and I let them pass, no hellos or thanks yous. Turns out I didn’t need to move anyways. I stayed right on them till they turned a few miles later even though I wasn’t wearing $200 of cycling gear and I was rocking Vans instead of clip in bike shoes.


View Larger Map The view from my ride

A little extra excitement for the day… I got a notice that the UCLA meet was moved to the 18th from the 25th which is actually pretty awesome for me because I was going to have to be in LA anyways on the 19th. You can check out the meet info here.

I’ll be back to my aquatic grind tomorrow.

September 21, 2008 | No Comments »

Keeping My Mouth Shut

I think everybody has something that they’re good at and it causes them physical pain to watch someone do it wrong in front of them. When most people talk about SEO and Adwords type topics it makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit because they are usually so incredibly wrong. I need to physically restrain myself from handing out throat punches.

Watching people swim at my gym invokes a similar reaction. I’m not a coach or a kinesiologist or anything fancy like that but I know wrong when I see it. Tonight the pool was just full of wrong. The thunderous 2 beat freestyle flutter kick, the front crawl hand slap, and the list goes on. *shudder* But I don’t want to be that guy giving unsolicited advice in the pool. It’s like that meat head in the weight room that comes over to critique your form on the lat pulldown machine despite your best efforts to not make eye contact. So in the unlikely event that any of you are readers… small fast kicks on your freestyle please, if you’re making a huge splash with every other kick that’s not helping you… also your hand should slide into the water not slap it, trust me.

… and I’m off my soapbox… sorry about that

Tonight was my second night of using swimplan for my workout. I had it generate a new workout but it came out suspicously similar to the one I did the night before. So I had it create another new workout that was more to my liking. After making some modifications to make it more appropriate for my pentathlon meet coming up I was off to the pool.

Warm up
100 freestyle
100 breast

Main set
50 free
50 fly
50 free
50 back
50 free
50 breast
50 free
50 fly
50 free
50 back
50 free
50 breast

(… at this point my shoulder starting grinding so I started cooling down to not hurt it)

200 free
100 kick
100 free

1200 yards total followed by a trip to the hot tub.

I think the stuff I’m getting from SwimPlan is good inspiration for workouts. I don’t really dig the drills that they insert so I pretty much keep the yardage but drop the drill. The other thing that had been a little weird is that I only seem to get freestyle and breast stroke in my workouts from them. So I’ve been turning some of the freestyle portions into IM’s or alternating through other strokes. I’m going to keep using them for my root workouts though and see where it takes me.

September 19, 2008 | No Comments »
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