Tag Archives: bike

05042019 – Bike & CrossFit

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I had been feeling a little sick yesterday and skipped CrossFit as a result. So I wasn’t 100% sure how I’d feel this morning. I woke up feeling better but decided to go for a bike ride instead of running thinking that’d be less strenuous before CrossFit later. All the trails were closed due to some rain overnight so I headed out on the roads. I rode up to Lowry and across to the river before heading down to the Cedar Lake Trail and around Cedar Lake and home. Pretty straight forward, not pushing too hard but trying to maintain a steady pace. I ended up with 13.78 miles in 1 hour.

I was a little disappointed that the Question of the Day was related to Star Wars, but maybe that’s too cliche! After our warmup we worked on a Muscle Snatch and Power Snatch combo. One of each inside an 8 minute EMOM time box. Working up to a challenging weight. It was hard not to bend the knees on the Muscle Snatch especially as it got heavier! I started with 55# and worked up to 95# before stopping. At 95# I was barely able to Muscle Snatch so that felt good, especially after hitting a 2RM last week at 101#.

Our MetCon for the day was 2 movements in a 18-15-12-9 rep scheme. The movements were Toes to Bar and American Swing. We practiced kipping a little bit and I did my best Toes to Shoulder (they were maybe shoulder height but not extended and not coming to the bar) and used a 35# kettlebell. I finished in 5:02 and cheered a few other athletes as they worked hard at their chosen scaling. It was impressive.

04272019 – Bike and CrossFit

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Some of the Mountain Bike trails are slowly opening up. At one point we had snow in the forecast, it had been changed to rain in the late morning. I decided to get the Mountain Bike out and do some of the trails – the one open trail is an Expert. I did it once, but walked a lot of it. No point in trying it.  I rode the Karate Monkey section. It was nice to be out riding the trails.  There was one muddy section and the section by the creek was a little wetter than tacky.  Then I rode hard on the paved trails to the SW section of trails.  This is the Quaking Bog area. Its got a lot of hill and flow sections.  I struggle with confidence on some of the flow stuff but it was still fun to be seeing dirt and mixing up the training.  I definitely felt the heavy squatting yesterday!  After finishing this section I took off on the pavement again and did the Karate Monkey section one more time!  

Finished 8 miles in 57:53. 

Then just over 2 hours until CrossFit!!

We did another nice long warm-up and then started working on Power Snatching to a heavy set of 2. I actually did an overall PR for these! I had about 2 minutes left in the 12 minute time cap and was at 95 pounds. I added the 2.5# plates and a pair of 0.5# plates to bump it over my 100# PR. I could probably have done a little more, but felt better doing the 6# leap instead of a 10# one.

Then another short burner. 2 Rounds for Time (12 minute cap) of

10 Dumbbell (25#) Right arm cleans

10 Dumbbell Overhead Squats Right arm

5 Pull-ups

10 Dumbbell (25#) Left arm cleans

10 Dumbbell Overhead Squats Left arm

5 Pull-ups

This was a good one, we drilled the cleans as full depth so that’s what we tried to do with them. I think the 25# might have been a little light, but the 35# would have been too much. I finished in 7:06.

This afternoon we biked as a neighborhood group down to the Trailhead for their Spring Block Party. We had a lot of fun goofing around and enjoying what turned out to be a beautiful day!



04232019 – Run & Bike

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My foot was feeling better so I decided to give it a try! It is also a deload week in the training cycle so it seemed reasonable to go for today’s workout. Today’s short interval work was a nasal only breathing for 6 x 2:00 with 1:00 rest in between. They stressed that the entire thing should be nasal only so not to push too hard on the intervals so that the recovery would be nasal only.

This was definitely a challenge! Different for sure, but to focus on keeping my mouth shut and breathing only in the nose is a whole new idea. It seemed more of a mental challenge. I was able to do it pretty well, even with a little bit of hills. It was weird to be hearing my breath and heart beat while so focused. It looks like they were all around .20 miles for the 2 minutes.

I ended up with 2.99 miles in 33:56.

It was a great day to ride. The am ride was just cool enough to not sweat too much and the after school temps were upper 60’s. We rode just over 4 miles taking the long way to the river. We checked out the waterfall and the flooded river!

Great ride home!

About 15 miles biking.

04162019 – Run & Bike

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Back on the 4:30am train… I woke up early and struggled to get up and out of bed, but I made it. The plan for today was 20 minutes of 200m repeats with 30 seconds rest in between. Getting as many repeats as possible done in the 20 minutes. I messed up the timer initially, but ended up getting 15 repeats done in right around 20 minutes. The goal was to have them be consistent time – this of course is hard to do on a hilly course.

I had one brief scare on the run. I was using an hand held running light and it swings back and forth quite a bit. I saw what I thought was a pole as it didn’t move, but when I turned and came towards it my light shone on a person standing still in the trail. He wasn’t doing anything weird, I think just standing to see what I did. But man he gave me a jump! He was just walking a lap as I saw him towards the end of the run again but he didn’t scare me that time!

For what it is worth my 200’s were:

47

52

56

1:03

1:11

59

1:23

1:00

57

55

52

53

54

I’d say that’s pretty consistent given the hills. I know at least one or two ended part way up a hill! And a few of them were steeper. My 30 seconds recovery was all walking. I started jogging when it beeped 5 seconds left.

Overall 4.26 miles in 41:39.

Then… I rode to work! I didn’t push the pace at all, but still was pretty tired. During after-school it was gorgeous – right around 70 degrees and we rode just about 4 miles. The kids are so funny as we rode along Bassett Creek they were excited about the ducks, going under a bridge, and saying that so and so lived this way. We ended up stopping at a park in the next city over and the gets were all amazed at where we were!! So fun! My brand new rider did better than some of the more experienced riders but I think a lot of them were complaining about sore butts and legs! I had a nice leisurely ride home too. Lots of people were out and about considering the nice afternoon!!

I’m calling it 15 miles for the day.

04092019 – Bike

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Another nice morning for a bike commute. I’m glad I have a reason to add bike commuting to my schedule! So 5.5 easy-ish paced miles to work.

After work was the first ride with my bike class. I have 4 kids in the class who don’t know how to ride so a co-worker and I took them out during the day to the basketball and tennis courts and worked with them. One kid was just needing the final push to do it so we just held her seat and boom she got it pretty quick. The other 3 were more at the beginning level so we took the pedals off the bikes and had them stride. One bike I could only get the 1 pedal off so she did her best. (I was able to get it off once we got inside). We really only ended up with less than 45 minutes to practice. When it came time to ride after-school I asked the girl who just got it if she was going to ride with us or stay back and practice some more. She told me she was going to practice but changed her mind and joined us. As expected she was a little slower than the group but she had a great time until we did some small hills on the way back! As a group we rode just over 2 miles to the nearby regional park. The kids had an awesome time and we did a little exploring.

On the way home I decided to spice up the ride a little bit and did some sprint intervals basically a fartlek on the bike. After every street crossing on Victory Memorial Parkway I sprinted for an increasing number of light poles before getting back into a relaxed pace. I obviously got several segment PR’s this way but still wasn’t riding super fast.

At home my little guy was wanting to ride so we did a little ride. He wanted to go down the hill but not come back up it! So we went down the Washburn hill and rode a few blocks around and found a less steep hill to come back up! We did just over a mile.

This was about a 13 mile day on the bike.