DailyBlog

Brad, back row left center

Jovance

I feel like a year slipped by.  Jovance moved next to Sprouts in early 2016, almost two and a half years ago.  It feels like that was last year to me.  In any case as hair does, mine had grown past the point of long to unkempt and over grown.  With an appointment at 9:00, I headed to Jovance and “my barber”, Brad.  Brad is a personable, married, black man who is also a good hair stylist. His clients are predominantly black guys in their 30’s to 60’s.  Brad is gregarious and a lot of fun to talk to.

The front desk said, “go right in to the barber section.  It sounds like they’re having a good time in there.”.  In “the barber section”, which is a separate room to the right of the main entrance, stood Brad putting the finishing touches on a gray short and neat afro and his 2nd chair working on a buzz cut.  Brad always introduces everyone in the room when someone arrives.  That encourages conversation among everyone, and it works.

This is fun for me.  As a white guy, I don’t typically socialize with black people.  It’s not that I don’t want to, rather that in my group of friends there just aren’t any people of color.  Sean, a friend and neighbor of some years, moved to Georgia a year ago and took with him my connection to “black people”.  Now I have Brad “and company”.

The most interesting thing about the conversation is always how color blind it is.  I usually avoid guiding the conversation to see where it will go. It’s often wide ranging and focused on things like Facebook’s stock tumble, roller coasters and the “sling shot” that everyone agrees they just would not do.  Brad’s wife’s 40th birthday is coming up and he’s planning to take her to San Diego and surprise her with a video of friends and family.  Knowing I visit San Diego often, he asked, “
Can you recommend good restaurant in San Diego?”  I asked what kind of food he and his wife enjoy. Brad likes Italian food.  He said his wife loves a good steak, “She enjoys spending my money.  No Black Angus is below her standards!”  I know Kirsten will have a few great suggestions.

Peloton

I had intended to take Matt’s 90 minute endurance ride live last week, but I overslept. Such are the hazards of retirement.  This morning I took it “On Demand” with about 50 other riders.  It was a lively leaderboard and a long 90 minutes.  Long moderate exertion is an entirely different feeling of exhaustion than interval training.  Most short duration spin classes are interval based with short bursts of high output followed recoveries.  Endurance rides are longer at a constant moderate intensity, builds cardiovascular and muscular efficiency, and encourages fat burning.  Interval training is about building power and quick recovery.  Athletic performance is enhanced with a mix of endurance and interval training over time,or so most coaches will tell you.  I am seeing steady, but slow average improvement over time, which is both encouraging (improvement) and frustrating (slow).

I use strava.com to track my cycling performance.  Today’s ride overview showed a “Massive Relative Effort” of 178 with a relatively low intensity of 79% with 27 miles pedaled.

Tomorrow is another day, though all the live classes are short.  I’ll take an “on demand” class in the afternoon.

Jennifer Jacobs

 

Another day, another Peloton class.  This one Jennifer Jacob’s 80’s theme ride, in keeping with the advance power zone training program.   Some instructors are easier than others.  You just know the cadence and resistance called out will not be challenging.  Not so with JJ.  She’s always pushing hard, then even harder.  This class would have been a personal best had I not taken it easy during the
“arms portion” of the ride.  It was fun; I felt strong today.

Yesterday Ellen had two new followers: Jen and Marty, friends of Kirsten & Chanda.  They took delivery of a Peloton.  Now we can “ride with them”

I completed the cross country challenge.  Unfortunately once you’ve’ completed a myvirtualmission mission, it is not possible to go back and do it again!  I’m looking for another Peloton group mission to join.

Robin Arzon

I chose Robin Arzon’s Hip Hop class this morning.  Robin is a ultra marathoner and Peloton’s VP of fitness programming. As I’ve stated in the past,”That girl is Crazy”.   There was no way I could match the cadence and resistance pairing Robin called out for the duration of her pushes, even with nearly a year on the cycle.   The inner conversation (shouting match) that goes on in my head as I try to push through is revealing.  I push on, hold on, then some time later collapse as Robin says something like, “Just another sixty seconds then we’ll increase resistance by three to five.”  Sure.  I bookmark her rides thinking I’ll take them again and do better.   All in all this was a grueling work-out. It ran the full range from easy, fun, through sustainable and exhausting, to let me outta here I can’t do this, then back to recovery, easy, fun and over again.

Michael Phelps?

So Michael Phelps trains on a Peloton.  I’ve marveled at the total output displayed at the top of the leaderboard.  I’ve thought, these guys are either pro athletes or their bikes are way out of calibration.  I suspect many have detuned their cycles to bump their standing. I also think there are pro-cyclists who actually make those outrageous output numbers.

OlympicTalk: I watched your CNBC interview today, and you mentioned being on the bike. It reminded me of a Men’s Journal interview you did last year where you mentioned doing a competitive spin class. Is biking your primary form of exercise now?

PHELPS: It’s all I do. I pound it. I went 30 straight days on the bike. (Pulls out phone to look up statistics) 500 miles in 30 days, 1,100 minutes and 28,000 calories. I was just basically at the point I just was like, I’m just going to grind for a month and see what happens. Somebody said, what are you going to do after that month? Probably keep going. I like having that competition on the bike. I ride a Peloton, so I ride in classes. I have an alias. No one knows it’s me.

That’s something that gets me going because I know how it was in the pool. If I didn’t feel well, if I was tired, this or that, I knew I still had to do it. For me, having that leaderboard on the right-hand side of the screen that tells me where I am in the list drives me a little bit. So it’s now basically I’m probably top five, top 10 percent every single time I’m in there. I just try to push myself. The biggest thing for me now being retired, I know how important it is for me to get that energy out, to be the best version of myself. So I make sure I have to get a workout in six or seven days a week. I mean, I was up this morning at 5:15 to get a workout.

http://olympics.nbcsports.com/2018/04/12/michael-phelps-2008-olympics-swimming-peloton/

Me?

For comparison I just checked my stats for the past 30 days.  I took 28 rides in that time and logged 366 miles and 13,780 calories.   Phelps burned more than twice as many calories?  I’d guess he takes 30 minute classes and his output is more than twice mine.

Here’s another reason I really enjoy Peloton.  Where else can you have fun and compete with an international community?

 

Pizza

Last year’s trip to Italy was wonderful.  We intentionally avoided ordering pizza during most of our trip, but it is impossible not to have the occasional pizza.  We loved the crispy crunchy crust of the Florentine pizzas.  Back home, the pizza I ordered delivered was good, but had the typical bready even soggy crust that’s the hallmark of most “American” pizza.  I decided to make my own.  I found a well regarded, if small, propane fired pizza oven and a great pizza dough recipe.  Over the months I’ve nearly perfected making an authentic Italian style pizza.   Then I ran out of two Penzey spices that underscore that great pizza taste.  I ordered Mexican Oregano and their Pizza Spice blend on 7/8/18.

Jess King

Peloton

Today’s scheduled exercise in self flagellation was a 45 “theme” ride.  Theme rides vary wildly in difficulty and music genre.   The live classes this morning were 30 minutes long.  Peloton has roughly four thousand “on demand” classes.  I selected Jess King’s Trap music workout from the on demand list.  Trap Music? So I must have missed the 1990’s musically. From Wikipedia:

“Trap is a style of popular music that developed in the late 1990s to early 2000s from Southern hip hop in the United States.^[1][2] It is typified by double or triple-time sub-divided hi-hats,^[3] heavy, sub-bass layered kick drumsfrom the Roland TR-808 drum machine, layered synthesizers and an overall dark, ominous or bleak atmosphere.^[4][5] The term “trap” referred to places where drug deals take place. In the 2010s, artists crossbred trap with dubstep to create trap EDM.”

Jess is a beast.  Look at the size of her thighs relative to her waist in the photo above. She pushes hard.  So hard that I hardly remember any of the trap music, just the beat that I pedaled to as I struggled to keep up.  In overall leaderboard rankings for the class, I did “ok”.  I finished in the top 1/3 in terms of output. In terms of keeping up with the class effort, I bailed; often.  This was a kick ass class.

Tomorrow’s scheduled self-flagellation is a choice of an endurance ride or a theme ride.  We’ll see.

Penzey’s

Off the cycle and updating my riding history I heard a car pull up playing trap music!  What? OK, sure.  That’s strange.  I had been meaning to check on my Penzey’s order.  We’re headed to San Diego soon and I hoped the order would arrive before we leave.  It’s been over two weeks. The order status email had a link to track the package, click on that, copy the tracking number, *POP* UPS states “Delivered”.  Oh Crap, check the date:  Delivered 7/25!  That’s today.  The spice order had just been delivered courtesy of trap music.  How funny.  Pizza anyone?

 

Peloton

Three rides down in Matt’s advanced challenge of thirty rides in six weeks.  He’s really great at focused isolation exercises to improve full circle pedal stroke.  Riding in zone five or zone 6 for a minute sounds easy.  Doing nine of them is not easy.

Bread

Yesterday’s bread making effort turned out well.  I used a non traditional recipe that used a bit less flour (all whole wheat), more yeast, and practically no kneading. Less kneading did not give the gluten a chance to develop and strongly bind the bread together.  The result is a light whole wheat loaf that is a bit crumbly. It came out really good.

Rising before Baking

 

The First Loaf Disappeared Quickly

Weight

You’d think that I’d put on a pound or two after scarfing a full half loaf of bread on top of a balanced dinner last night.  I thought so.  I weight myself every week or so to avoid obsessing about diet and weight.  I do obsess about exercise as a means to keep doing it, but I digress.  My weight this morning was 174.7 lbs.  That is within “normal” for my height.  Could this bread be a key to weight loss?   Probably not, and that will not keep me from making and devouring home made bread in the coming weeks.  This particular recipe is easy and made significantly easier with a mixer.

The Recipe

 

 

 

Matt Wilpers Doin’ His Thing

Cycling

Ok.  In keeping with my decision to return to Power Zone Training, starting today I’m following Matt Wilpers’ advance PZ training program.  Yay!  Trouble is, the very first ride is the FTP test to gauge physical condition and set zones for subsequent rides.  Sounds good, right?  An FTP test requires riding at the maximum output sustainable for 20 minutes.  If done correctly, you’ll feel like barfing at the end and hardly be able to dismount the bike.  This is not “fun”.

I’ve taken four FTP tests in the past, I knew what I was in for.  Knowing and doing are two very different things.  I went out a bit too hard.  If I hadn’t corrected I would have blown up and not finished.  As it was the last five minutes were a struggle.  At least twice I chose to quit and backed off power output only to get back into it a few seconds later.  Success in life is very much a mental thing.

My output was 2% below my last FTP test.   That’s not bad, but it is not good either.  Though I’ve been riding regularly, I have sloughed off some.  Time to get back in the game.’’

Bread

I’ve been making pizza dough for months now.  It is easy to do with a mixer; it just takes a bit of time and planning ahead.  Shopping at a local grocer today, I picked up a loaf of my favorite (non specialty) bread.  Typically I don’t pay attention to pricing.  I just get what I want.  Today I noticed that this single loaf of bread was $6.39. Six plus bucks for a loaf of bread.  It’s good bread.  But $6?  

So I bought pounds of stone ground whole wheat and I’ll make whole wheat bread.  The first few batches will be “plain” whole wheat.  Later I’ll get more adventurous and add nuts and dried berries/fruit/pureed fruit to the bread.  Making bread is easy.  I did it in college for fun.  I’d knead between study sessions. The reward?  Who doesn’t love the scent of freshly baked bread or the joy of cutting into a hot from the oven loaf? 

Cycling Revisited

I’ll have to redouble my cycling effort just to maintain my weight.

Yesterday was a day off after Wednesday’s attempt at 100 miles or 8 hours on the cycle.  That day was a minor success; 68 virtual miles pedaled in 4.5 hours.  Clearly I’ll have to work up to 8 hours of saddle time.  “Don’t you get bored?”, I was asked. “Do you read while pedaling?”.  My answer at the time was inadequate.  When working toward a goal, the process is not boring; it cannot be boring.  In the gym I’ll see people reading while pedaling and not getting a work out.  It is simply not possible (for me) to push athletically and read at the same time.  It takes focus to maintain moderate to hard output over hours.  Focus precludes boredom. What does happen is a struggle between discomfort, effort, and the will to continue.

Anyone who has driven long distance knows it takes the first hour or so to acclimatize.  That first hour goes by slowly.  The next few hours stream by and at some point fatigue sets in.  The last half hour can go by quickly or can seem to take an eternity.  Bicycling is similar in the beginning. For me, the first hour goes by slowly with some fidgeting (physical and mental).  Hours 2 & 3 were relatively smooth.  I selected scenic rides in the Italian Alps and Hawaii.  They were fun.  The next half hour felt like a riding a knife edge; a battle between exhaustion and the will to “break on through”.  I don’t even remember which half hour scenic ride I chose.  Next up was another hours ride.  The first 30 minutes went by with moments of discomfort between stretches of an athletic high.  It felt really good mostly.  The next 15 minutes were a struggle.  I almost quit.  Once I overcame that little negative voice in my head, the last 15 minutes were strong.  Even so, “the voice” won out and I stopped at 4.5 hours and 68 miles.

Today for grins I took a 60 minute power zone endurance ride with Matt.  Matt is a world class running coach who has worked for Peloton for the past year or two.  His classes are structured and push hard.  Even his “easy” endurance rides are not easy if you follow his lead.   This was a wake-up call for me.  I stopped power zone training (PZ) about 8 months ago in favor of heart rate training (HRZ).  I realized today that PZ is a much better way for me to improve.  Because of my age, my heart rate zones have collapsed. The difference between zone 2, 3, and 4 is very tight.  If I stay in zone 2 for an endurance ride I simply am not pushing at all.  My power zones are significantly wider.  Staying in PZ 2 or 3 can push my heart rate into zone 4 or even 5 with a high cadence and relatively low resistance. 

I recognize that by not taking a power zone challenge (a 6 or 8 week training course) every now and than,  I have been cheating myself.  By not having short term goals aside from dropping to an arbitrary  target weight, I’ve allowed myself to slip into a comfort zone.  I’ve had this nagging feeling that my performance (endurance and power) have not improved,  even with regular exercise.  It’s time to adopt one of Matt’s power zone programs for a few weeks and “see what happens”.

I really enjoyed Matt’s class today.  Unlike other instructors, Matt provides just the right encouragement at just the right moment throughout the ride.  He knows how exercise at particular power levels changes physiology and will describe the changes a particular class type will have over time.  I’ve done his intermediate now to start Matt’s advanced power zone challenge.

It’s good to have a Goal. 

My 8 hour 100 mile endurance ride is postponed a day.  We are meeting friends for lunch today.  We met Jon & Marilyn while traveling in Asia.  We enjoyed their company and meet with them often.

Granted riding a Peloton stationary cycle is not cycling per se; it can be much more challenging.  There is no coasting and no downhill on a stationary bike.  That makes any stationary bike ride more strenuous than cycling outdoors.  Sure indoors there’s no wind to contend with, though it can be modeled by increasing resistance on the stationary cycle.

Tomorrow I will attempt to ride for 8 hours or 100 virtual miles, whichever comes first.  I’ve selected a series of scenic rides that total 9 hours of saddle time just in case my butt can handle 9 and not 8 and assuming I feel “good” as the day unfolds.  The rides are recorded so there’ll be no cheating on distance or duration.  Class start time is recorded as well. Any long break between segments will be apparent.

This ride will be entirely aerobic and in my FTP “endurance” zone.  Heart rate shouldn’t break low zone three.  This will be an easy ride made hard by time/distance. My training program calls for an endurance ride tomorrow.  I’m guessing this qualifies.

 

At the Press Briefing Q&A Earlier Today

I routinely watch CNN and listen to NPR.  After CNN’s coverage of the Trump Putin “Summit” I tuned into Fox News.  The difference in coverage is night and day.  Fox had nothing disparaging to say about Trump or Putin.  They focused on oil and trade between US and Russia highlighting the good that could come from working together.  No mention of anything else in the short time I could bear to stay tuned.   Granted some of the points Fox News made about oil are likely valid.  Russian Oil, ostensibly run by Oligarchs, is virtually Government Controlled.  Funny how that never came up.

As for the Mueller  investigation, Russia’s invasion of Crimea, the war in eastern Ukraine, and Russian hacking during the 2016 election, Trump turned the conversation to “where are the servers” referring to the DNC servers and the 30,000 missing Clinton emails.

Fox’s news coverage was embarrassing, but Trump’s behavior with Putin and his total distain for facts is disgusting.  I wonder what Russia has on Trump.  Trump’s behavior cannot be predicated on his (possible) future business with Russia, can it?