Reader May 28, 2008
Posted by postalblue in Life.add a comment
Why is it so hard to get my friends to start using Google Reader?! I’ve only been using it for five or six months myself, but it has most certainly revolutionized the way I browse the internet. I used to use ‘Live Bookmarks’ to manage all of my RSS feeds, but the second I found out Google offered a clever way to keep on top of the news, I was hooked.
I’m a bit of a Google junkie when it comes down to it, despite the fact that I use WordPress instead of Blogger. I use GMail, Picasa, Reader, Talk, Maps… you name a Google service (except Blogger) and I probably use it.
Anyway, Reader’s awesome. I’ve got all my feeds linked to this site now and I don’t miss a thing. Now they’re starting to improved the sharing features on the site. I’m able to hit one simple little button below one of the articles that I like and it’s instantly delivered into my friends’ Readers. They don’t have to read it – they can choose to ignore it if they like – but at least it shows up!
I do have five or six friends who use Reader and those friends are pretty good about sharing interesting articles my way, too. I love that. There’s nothing better than logging in and finding a clever entry or informative blurb waiting for me at the top of my Unread pile.
And on the fourth day… May 27, 2008
Posted by postalblue in Cycling, Life.add a comment
Yesterday was my fourth day of fairly intense riding in a row. Let me be quite frank. I got my ass kicked.
The day started well. Nice weather, sunlight, etc. The first thirty-one miles of my ride were absolutely brilliant: a 19.6 mile per hour average that included what close to 1,750 of the 2,400 feet climbed on the day. I was cruisin’. No chain and all that. I even made my way up that tiny John Bryan climb with relative ease and then on into Clifton.
[Side note about John Bryan: the climb isn't very steep (6-7%) or very long (about 500 meters), but the reason I hate it so much is because there's no fun downhill to enjoy after reaching the top! It just levels off. Lame!]
Anyway, I rode smoothly through Clifton (the town) and then made a right-hand turn onto Clifton (the road) where nature promptly decided to ruin my day. There was a front rolling in and the winds had picked up. They are insane along that road. It runs in a west-south-westerly direction and the wind was blowing with considerable force in a north-north-easternly direction. It really couldn’t have been much worse.
I normally like Clifton (again, I’m talking about the road here) for two reasons: they repaved it last year, so the asphalt is smooth as silk; and it’s mostly down-hill. Neither of those factors could help me yesterday. Even though I was pointed downhill, the wind was practically blowing me off the road – or stopping me in my tracks. I began praying to pass a house, a copse of trees, anything! on my left – anything to break up the wide-open, empty fields that did absolutely nothing to block the gusts.
No dice. I crawled – crawled – back to the trail with my tail between my legs. It hurt so bad. My average after 31 miles was a very respectable 19.6. My average on the second 18 was a miserable 16.8… to make for an 18.5 mile per hour average over the 50-or-so miles I logged.
I hate wind. :-/
Lost and Found May 25, 2008
Posted by postalblue in Cycling.add a comment
I wrote a long post about beer this morning that WordPress seems to have spontaneously deleted. It was a good one, too. I’ll have to wait for inspiration to strike again before I attempt to write another. Sigh.
In other news, I went for my first ride with my brand-spankin’-new Garmin Edge 705 this afternoon! I’m treating this first week as a ‘trial period’. That sucker was expensive and I’m not going to keep it if I’m not completely sold on the thing.
Anyway, my legs were feeling especially rubbery this morning after two consecutive days of riding (probably rides #6 and #7 on the year, I’m ashamed to say) so I decided to mix it up a little bit and sneak a short three mile run in before riding. I haven’t run since Monday, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Fortunately, it was a pain-free run! Not only that, but it was a fast pain-free run. I guess six days off was just what the foot doctor ordered.
After the run, I came inside to listen to the last fifty kilometers of this morning’s Giro stage – Sella won (again!) – before installing the Garmin and hitting the road for a quick, flat twenty mile spin.
Garmin impressions: I love data and the Garmin is packed full of it. The speed and distance readouts seem incredibly accurate, as does the altimeter. I don’t know much about training with cadence, but it’s got that detail in there. It tracks heart rate, too.
It’s the elevation information that I find most intriguing. Granted, there are no hills within ten miles of me here in Beavercreek, it’ll still tell me what my gradient is – that little rise from the bike trail along Beaver Valley to my development is actually a 3% grade. I can’t wait to see how that John Bryan climb scores tomorrow. I can’t wait to find out how craptacular I am when compared to these pros who blast up 10% grade climbs at 18+ miles per hour!
I haven’t played with the actual mapping capabilities, but I did plug the Garmin into my computer to see what kind of information it can gather.
It’s got graphs! First thought: wow, I’m not very consistent with my speed, am I? Second: there are a lot of stops/street crossings/slow oblivious families walking four people wide that I have to deal with on that damn trail. The elevation graph looks pretty daunting… until you read the scale. The highest point that ride is only 150 feet above the lowest point. Ahaha. You’ve gotta love (or hate) Ohio.
So… the Garmin was fun after one quick ride. Five-hundred-bucks fun? We’ll see. I’m planning a longer ride tomorrow (down to Waynesville, perhaps?) that may yield some more interesting results. I just hope the weather holds out.
Web Browsers May 21, 2008
Posted by postalblue in Website.add a comment
This is going to sound blasphemous to some of you, but I’ve actually been using Safari (Apple’s browser) quite a lot in recent months. I quite like it. It’s no Firefox, but then again, I don’t know if anyone can hope to produce a browser as awesome as Firefox.
A few months ago, I realized my website looked a bit funny in Internet Explorer. That made me a bit paranoid. I don’t want to be sending this website to any potential employers if it’s not going to look it’s best regardless of the browser they use. So I made a point to start using all of the browsers interchangeably. Yes, that’s right – I spent some significant time using IE7, Firefox 2, Safari, and now Firefox 3.
Firefox 3 is definitely the best browser I’ve ever used. Safari’s nice. They say it runs faster than most browsers, but I don’t buy it. It may run fast on OS X-based computers, but I haven’t noticed any marked improvements on my Thinkpad. The one thing Safari does have going for it? Text smoothing. Text just looks great in Safari. The smoothing option is spiffy on my laptop – and Lenovo’s are known for their incredibly sharp displays. Whenever I want to read an article, a blog, anything – I tend to gravitate to Safari for just that reason.
I’m not saying I’m going to make the switch or anything. I’m a Mozilla man through and through. But it’s nice to have a change every once and a while.
Oh, and as a side note: Internet Explorer has absolutely no redeeming qualities.
Forced Inactivity May 20, 2008
Posted by postalblue in Cycling, Running.Tags: pain, rest, wind
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Last weekend was great. I flew home in a raging rainstorm and checked the forecast. Sunny on Friday with rain on Saturday and Sunday. Hrmm. Not what I like to hear.
Fortunately for me, the weatherman (or in this case, weathersite) was wrong. Sun, sun, sun, all three days. Unfortunately, there was also wind, wind, wind. I don’t know what’s going on in Ohio this spring, but the wind has been ridiculous.
Either way, I got thirty miles in on Friday and another thirty on Sunday. I did the hilly route out to John Bryan and back, avoiding the trail where ever possible. Not bad for my fourth and fifth rides of the year! Every season I am removed from the rolling hills of the Lehigh Valley, my ability to climb shrinkings significantly. Sigh.
Anyway, Saturday’s goal was an 11-mile run. It should’ve been possible: I’ve done it before. But I set out mid-morning and knew less than two miles in that I wasn’t going to hit my goal. My calves KILLED. Not in that shin-splinty way. It’s a more significant pain, like my tibias were made of glass and they were threatening to shatter with each impact. Blarg. I made myself go for six miles… but in reality, I should have stopped immediately.
I took Sunday off (from running) and got up Monday morning for a paltry three-miler. Nothing doing. I got on the treadmill and my lower legs immediately felt like they were about to explode. I finished the three miles, but it wasn’t pretty. Now I’m worried: maybe this is a more significant injury than I had originally thought?
So my paranoia has convinced me to, against all of my instincts, take some time off. No running until next week. Fortunately, I WILL ride this weekend – every day, if my quads can handle it. It’s hard, just sitting around in the evenings when before, I’d be logging hour-long runs. I thrive on workout-induced endorphins – it’s my only addiction – and now I’m suffering withdraw symptoms.
But it’s all good. I think my legs were begging for some rest; I had been ramping up for five straight months with nary a light week in between. And I’m just about to embark on a rapid, moderately aggressive marathon training schedule. It was supposed to start this week (and end in the Boulder marathon on September 21) but now it looks like I’ll have to take a breather and jump into the mix in week 2.
The Broad Street Run May 8, 2008
Posted by postalblue in Life, Running, Strange Happenings.add a comment
I had one New Year’s resolution this year: learn to run. I started with a very vague understanding of the theory and the physiology behind it all. In the past few months, I’ve cleared more than a few milestones: my first five, seven, ten and thirteen-mile runs EVER, my first thirty-mile week, etc. But last Sunday, I competed in my first official running event: the 2008 Philadelphia Broad Street Run.
The BSR is a dead-flat ten mile run through the heart of Philadelphia. There’s nothing tricky about it whatsoever. You start five miles north of City Hall… and you run ten miles due south to the Naval Yard. Yep, it’s that simple.
Anyway, a few of my friends from college had decided to do the run, and I’d been doing a lot of running myself, so I decided to sign up. I wasn’t sure what to expect. None of my training had been done at any kind of significant pace. My friends, by comparison, were talking split times and race strategy. Yeah, I was a little bit intimidated.
Twenty-two thousand people started the event. Yep, that’s right: 22,000. It’s a big number. I started running with Tyson who was aiming for a 75-80 minute finish time. We were moving at a relatively fast clip through the first few miles, though I’m sure we spent a bit of extra energy simply trying to navigate around the thousands of runners who weren’t keeping up with our pace. Once the field opened up a bit, we were able to stretch our legs a bit. Not only that, but we were moving. We came in under 24 minutes at the three mile-mark – my fastest three miles ever. If I hadn’t felt so great, I would have been worried about holding that kind of pace across the remaining seven miles. I thought I’d have to let Tyson go off on his own.
To my surprise, I was able to hold that pace. And another surprise: Tyson wasn’t! He faded around the seventh mile. I slurped down one of those gel packets and hit the final stretch as hard as I could. Sure, aches and pains were starting to creep into my knees and ankles, but by God was I going to give this finish everything I had.
When I finally crossed the line, the race clock read 1:15:40. A bit of quick division tells me that’s roughly 7:34 per mile – almost a full ninety seconds faster per mile than my typical training run!
I went into this race thinking myself the slowest runner in the world. And I surprised the hell out of myself. That race went so well that I’m already itching for another… and that’s something I never would have imagined myself saying six months ago.
Fantasy Cycling & the Giro d’Italia May 7, 2008
Posted by postalblue in Cycling, Website.Tags: Astana, Cycling, fantasy, fantasy cycling, fcycle, giro, giro d'italia
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I spent most of the winter building and testing a website. It was a huge project and it’s finally come to fruition. The finished product is a fantasy cycling site, much like the fantasy football or baseball sites you may use to pass the time at work… when you’re not reading random blogs, that is.
Anyway, I’m having the hardest time drumming up interest in this site. I know there’s a demand for fantasy cycling. It’s got to be out there. There are other, smaller, less-advanced sites that are quite popular, especially when it comes to the Tour de France. Why, then, can I not convince anyone to join mine?
If you’re a cycling fan or are interested in checking out this site, head on over to www.FCYCLE.com. It’s totally free, I promise, and I’m not going to do anything with your e-mail address or any of that business. I just want people to join and have a good time following the sport. The Giro is going to be a great race. I am very excited to see how the site handles 21 days of racing!
