October came and went. I ran my solo half marathon, backed off on my running miles, rode my bike, spent some time in Iowa for Beerpig, watched part of the Des Moines Marathon, and watched all the leaves fall off the trees.
I also hit my 1,000 mile cycling goal early in the month, and rode a really excellent trail before meeting a friend for some beers. And I ordered a bunch of new components for my old Trek bike. Hopefully I can make the 2014 parts work on a 1984 frame.
I got a good picture of the lead runners in the marathon too. The man in blue with the number 4 bib won the whole thing, and set a course record.
I did OK in October, though not as well as I might have hoped. I lost only 3 pounds because I spent almost two weeks eating too much. But I’m still losing weight and that’s what matters. The weather was good all month, and I tried to get outside a lot. But now the leaves are almost gone and the color of the landscape is back to pale blues, tans, and browns. We’ll be that way until spring comes back again.
And no, I don’t think I’ll hit my weight loss goal for the year. It was pretty ambitious anyways.
Last week was rough. I had too much stuff going on at work: too many priorities, too many tasks, too many deliverables. I was on a short break from running after my half marathon, eating too much, drinking more than usual, unhappy with the rain, and generally feeling down.
But we got everything done, and I wanted to do something better with my weekend than just sit around Denver. I sent a text to my friend John on Friday and suggested we get together in the Colorado Springs area.
A run and a ride
Saturday morning was clear, cool, and bright. I started my day with a chilly 4 mile run, and saw more runners than I’ve ever seen on my regular trail. The trees were brilliantly colored, and one of the ponds had a lovely layer of fog as the sun burned off the thin layer of frost that built up overnight. My run was unstructured, and I mixed fast and slow periods as I went. My legs still need some time to recover from the half marathon, but the rest of me felt amazing.
After my run I put on a red shirt, loaded my red bike into my red car, and drove down south to Palmer Lake to try out the New Santa Fe Regional Trail, an unpaved rails-to-trails route that parallels the interstate for a while until it gets to the Air Force Academy, where it winds through more hills and trees. The weather was still perfect, and the trail started out downhill. Because of recent heavy rain parts of the trail were soggy and slow, but it was mostly in good shape. I rode 15 miles south before turning around and heading back uphill.
Most other riders were on mountain bikes, but I saw a couple people on cyclocross bikes. The wide 40mm tires on my bike did well on the soft trail surface, and the lower gears were plenty for the short steep climbs.
I even overcame my general aversion to stopping while on a ride to actually take some photos. I only had my iPhone, but as they say the best camera is the one you have with you.
I joked in my last post that “I planned to hit my thousandth mile of the year on some long weekend ride in lovely fall weather, on my beautiful red Tamland.” Well I may have hit 1,000 miles one ride early, but this was that ride I imagined.
Catching up with a good friend
Before I left for my ride I sent John a text asking if he’d like to meet for a late lunch. I hadn’t seem him since May and I was already going to be most of the way to Colorado Springs on my ride. He was game, and suggested we meet at a the Manitou Brewing Company in Manitou Springs. Solid beer and solid food, just like he said. I had a nice refreshing sour, a couple commons, and a tasty burger. I also had a great conversation with someone I love who I hardly ever get to see.
After lunch and a couple of beers I followed John down to Colorado Springs where we stopped at Bristol for the afternoon. Bristol moved into an old school building, which includes a coffee shop, bakery, kitchen, and is really all kinds of amazing. Good beer too. They’ve hit 20 years in business now, which is pretty darn good for our local microbreweries. And John and I had time to continue our conversation before it started getting late and it was time to head back home.
It was the best kind of Saturday. And incidentally the bike rack I built kept my Tamland safe and sound all day.
I set a goal to ride 1,000 miles this year. I got a strong start in late winter, lost early spring to travel, and then made steady progress all summer and into fall. I had a minor setback when I broke my road bike in July, but I own enough bikes that losing one or even two is not the end of the world.
About a month ago I started riding to work a few times a week, and even though it’s only 7 miles round trip it adds up. Today it added up to a round 1,000 miles.
I planned to hit my thousandth mile of the year on some long weekend ride in lovely fall weather, on my beautiful red Tamland. Instead I hit it on my ride to work, on a boring stretch of road, on my fixed gear commuter with a bad pedal bearing.
Hey, I really can’t complain. I set a goal and did the work to achieve it. It’s been a good year.
And here’s a chart of my two distance goals, for the chart lovers.
True my plan I went and ran my own personal half marathon this morning. I’m annoyed and frustrated that the real race was cancelled, but I’m glad I went through with my personal race. I trained all summer for this and it would have seemed wrong not to cap it off with the last run.
I had set a goal to run a pace of 9:45, but recent training runs showed I could probably go faster. Based on my heart rate and how I felt in the first mile I decided to try to keep things just a little bit under 9:30 a mile.
Since I had to keep myself motivated I set my watch to auto-lap every mile, and turned 13.1 miles into 13 individual mile runs, plus a little more. I find this a lot easier to handle mentally. I ran based on my heart rate and average pace for each mile. It worked; my average pace was 9:23 a mile, and my slowest mile was 9:30. In fact I’m impressed with how consistent I managed to be: only two mile splits out of 13 were not between 9:20 and 9:30 a mile, and they were 9:13 and 9:17. It helped that I chose a course that is nearly completely flat.
And until about mile 10 my heart rate and breathing stayed consistent as well. After that I got progressively more tired, but had plenty left to finish. It helped that I had 2 liters of water and a bunch of fuel with me (Clif gels and blocks), so I didn’t ever feel like I didn’t have enough energy. Really the only real threat to my run was my left knee, which started to hurt on the outside after 9 miles and got progressively stiffer until the end.
In the end I finished at 13.12 miles in 2:03:13. 25 minutes faster than the half marathon I ran in March. I’m thrilled with my time and with how I feel. I wish, really wish, that this run had been the race I signed up for. I’d love to have an actual official time, even though I know it would have been 1 to 2 minutes slower to account for the difference between distance ran and the measured course (last half was 0.19 miles over GPS distance, last two 10ks were 0.1 miles over).
I trained so hard, and I’ve improved so much since this spring. I’ll run a timed half marathon in the spring, whether here or back in Iowa. Maybe then I’ll break 2 hours!
Another month gone already. 2014 is going by quickly.
I did well this month, even with a couple stressful weeks and the extra eating that comes with it. I dropped another 5 pounds and—fingers crossed—am under 200 pounds for good. I ran just under 100 miles and rode my bikes nearly 300. Fall is here, and it’s a great time to be outside.
Activity
2014 Goal
September
To Date
Progress
Running
600 miles
95 miles
749 miles
125%
Cycling
1,000 miles
290 miles
962 miles
96%
Weight Loss
40 pounds
5 pounds
22 pounds
55%
Running
Unfortunately the half-marathon I have been training for all summer (all those miles didn’t come from nowhere) was cancelled just 2 weeks before the race. I spent some time looking for a new race in October, but nothing will work out. I was offered discounted entry to a Denver race on October 19, but I’ll be in Iowa that day. The Des Moines half marathon is also on the 19th, but I’m planning to spend the 18th eating and drinking and staying up late with friends. I don’t think signing up for a race the day after is a good idea.
So here’s my plan. I’ll run my half marathon on October 5 as planned. It won’t be sanctioned. The course won’t be accurately measured. It won’t be professionally timed. There won’t be water stops. I won’t be running with 1,000 other people. I’ll just have my hydration pack, a few gels, my GPS watch, and a target pace. It’s not what I wanted or planned, but I’ve trained too hard and too long to not run at all. Sunday morning I’m heading to the Highline Canal. I’ll run south until the halfway point, then run back north until I’m done. The canal is dead flat, which will make this easier than the last half marathon, and I plan to beat my old time by 20 minutes.
The planned route is simple enough. From Hampden south to Orchard road is about 6.6 miles on the trail. Double that for an out and back run and you get 13.2. A half marathon is 13.1. I’ll definitely post the route and how I did. I might look into live tracking, but I don’t know if anyone would be interested.
After this I’ll take a week off entirely. Then I’ll have a week of just easy running. Don’t expect a lot of miles in October.
Cycling
I’ve been lazy, and so my Trek is still broken. I had a minor crash on the 4th of July that bent the derailer hanger, and the rear wheel ate itself and the rear derailer a few miles later. The bike itself is an easy fix. I just need to clean it up, make sure the derailer hanger is straight, and install the replacement derailer I bought. But the wheel is still in bad shape, and that’s the real issue. The hub is beat up from the accident but it seems mechanically OK. The cassette is perfect. But I broke or ruined so many spokes that I basically have to rebuild the wheel, and that sounds like a lot of work. I plan to pull it apart, measure the spokes, and order replacements but it feels like a low priority. Maybe I’ll get to it in October. Maybe not.
Instead I started September with a lot of miles on my single speed Schwinn. I also pulled my Redline 925 off the wall, cleaned it up, and started riding that to work. And midway through the month I saw that the Raleigh Tamland “gravel bike” I had been eyeing was on sale at the local shop and they had my size in stock. It may be a gravel race bike by marketing, but I see a stable, fast, Reynolds 631 steel road bike with clearance for big tires and fenders too. Even with its huge 40mm tires it rolls fast on pavement and it can really fly off pavement. It even handles smooth singletrack just fine, though it bogs down in the sand. I’ve only had it two weeks, but I’m really happy. It feels like I could ride it almost anywhere. I may even keep the saddle.
Now if I could only get the plastic pedals it came with off. I’m having no luck at all, and may just take it into the shop.
Shortly after the introduction of the iPhone 5s with the M7 motion processor, David Smith released an extremely basic pedometer application that read and displayed this data. It was a free app that I considered almost more of a hobby project or proof of concept than a product.
Over time the app added features, including daily goals, and now supports additional features from iOS 8 and the iPhone 6. These include a notification center widget and floors climbed. The app has continually moved from hobby to product.
And unfortunately that change has really come through recently.
My phone is set to automatically install updates. It simplifies keeping track of things, but also means that I have to trust developers to not do something shady. And in this case the developer has definitely been doing shady things.
Ads were added to the most recent version (or one of the more recent; I’m not certain). This addition of ads and the use of “tips” as in-app purchases to (apparently) remove them are mentioned exactly zero times in the app description and version update changelogs posted to the app store. So even if I was reading and manually updating this would have snuck through.
David, I like you and your apps in general, but this is gross. If you think the app is worth a few bucks, charge a few bucks. Seriously. Developers need to eat, and that requires money. But don’t add advertisements to my phone without asking. And don’t use the “tip” euphemism for ad removal. It feels dishonest.
Developer trust is important to me, and because of this I no longer trust you. And I’m less likely to trust your other projects that I did pay for such as FeedWrangler and Check the Weather. I have deleted Pedometer++ from my phone, and am now considering whether to move my RSS feed subscription service as well.
Two weeks ago I wrote that I weighed in below 200 pounds for the first time in almost six years. That was just one scale measurement, and the moving average to I use to smooth out the variation in day to day measurements is what I consider my “real weight”. When I report how much weight I lost in one of my monthly goal updates it is the difference between the moving average at the end of the month and at the end of the previous month.
But by its nature this average lags behind my daily measurements, and it took a little while to catch up. Yesterday, two weeks after my first weigh in below 200 pounds, the average caught up. I’m under 200 by every measure I use.
And this morning I recorded the single lowest weight of my adult life. I still have a ways to go, but my hard work is paying off.
With four months to go I am confident I’ll make my cycling goal before year’s end. I’m doubtful make my weight goal, but I’m thrilled with my recent progress. I noticed that I hit 104 miles running in both July and August. Fun, but I beat last month by three tenths of a mile. So there.
This is a brew straight off the homebrewtalk forums. It seems to be highly regarded, and is supposed to be a crisp light low-alcohol beer. I hope it’s as good as it sounds.
This was a very smooth brew day. I hit all my targets and had no issues through the process.
I set some ambitious goals this year, and I completed one already by running 600 miles so far this year. I’m about 350 cycling miles away from achieving my second goal, which shouldn’t be a problem.
I’ve had a harder time with my third goal. I wanted to lose 40 pounds, which would take me from 215 pounds down to 175. I would finally no longer be overweight. I knew it would be hard, but I still underestimated just how hard. I got to 205 fairly quickly, and then basically stalled. Several demoralizing months later though I made the right changes and the trend is downward again. And today was the first time in many years that the first number on the scale was a 1—even if it was 199.9. It will still be a few weeks before the trend line catches up, and since weight moves around by a few pounds a day I know I will bounce back above 200 for a while.
But as motivation seeing a weight below 200 pounds is a big deal for me. And I know that if I keep working that will become permanent.
