The Solo Century

I got home from my bike ride yesterday and Michele asked me "was your ride fun?", to which i replied "Umm, no.".. My ride was 101 miles with over 8700 feet of climbing. On the way, I climbed up the Pack Monadnock autoroad.. Twice. I climbed Pead Hill in Wilton. I climbed up Rt 124 from W. Townsend, MA to the top of New Ipswich, NH. I climbed up Rt 101 on my way to Pack Monadnock. Climbed Chestnut Hill in Amherst and there were numerous other climbs spread out through New Boston, Mont Vernon and Lyndeboro. Fun? No... Physically and mentally draining? Yes... As I write this today I'm still nauseous from the effort. 

I headed out yesterday morning with a 75 mile ride scribbled onto a cue sheet in my back pocket along with my GPS to measure my elevation gain. As I got on the road there was a thought in the back of my head that maybe I would extend the ride to 100 miles. There's something about a solo century that pushes you to a level that few other things can. Especially when you're throwing in every nasty climb along the way. I started the ride with a couple minor climbs in Hollis and Townsend and then I started the real climbs into New Ipswich. These are long climbs with grades that average from about 5% to about 15% in some sections. Climbing from W. Townsend to the highest point of RT 124 in New Ipswich is about 10 miles with about 1500 ft of elevation gain. I stopped in New Ipswich to refill water bottles. I was 25 miles into the ride and feeling pretty good. It was ten miles to Pack Monadnock. Coming from New Ipswich through Sharon and into Peterboro has a bit of downhill before turning onto 101 and the 2 mile climb to Miller State Park. I got to the info booth at the entrance to the park and was told it would $4.00 to climb the autoroad on my bike.. I knew this before getting there since I've done it before (when it was $3), but it still kills me that these people charge me to destroy myself on my bicycle. It's one thing to charge people that are actually there to enjoy themselves. Trust me when I tell you I'm not there enjoying myself. The Pack autoroad is 1.3 miles long with 800 feet of elevation gain. The average grade of 12% with extended sections in the high teens is the equivalent of Mt Washington, and the last 1/4 mile to the top is an absolute wall at 22%. This is a nasty climb. Going up the road I was passing many on foot that would shout encouragement as I went by. At the top of the climb I was coming into the observation area drooling and gasping for air. Pretty sure there was stuff coming out of my nose too. As I headed back down I was cursing myself for deciding earlier that I would do it twice. To be honest, if I hadn't had so much more climbing intended for the rest of the ride I would have done it three times, so I guess I should have been thankful. I got to the bottom and turned right back around and headed up again. This time I was passing people on the way down that had just seen me at the top minutes before.. In addition to the encouragement I also heard whispers "Oh my god, it's that guy again.".. I got to the top in the same state, if not worse, as the first time. I was 40 miles into the day and decided I was doing another 60.. 

Here's the thing about a solo century. Riding with a group is easy. There's camaraderie to help the time pass. There's pacelines where you get to draft and relax a little until it's your turn to pull at the front. The refueling stops at the stores are a little longer. As the miles add up and the body fatigues it's easier to push to the end when there's others suffering through it with you. When you're alone, you're alone. You fight the wind by yourself the whole time. When it starts to hurt, it hurts alone. When you're 50 miles in and it starts to rain on you, you know you're only half way and you wonder why you do this and vow to never do it again. The mental toughness required to do a solo hill-climbing century is beyond most things I've taken on in my life. The only way to understand what it takes is to do it. 

I headed out of Miller State Park, a little beat up, knowing that I wasn't even half done and that there was still a LOT of climbing to do. The hills in Wilton, Mont Vernon, New Boston, Lyndeboro, and Amherst can be brutal as the miles add up. Next big climb was up Pead Hill in Wilton. This is about a mile long with a pretty steep grade. If I had to guess, I'd say the average was around 9 or 10% but it doesn't really get steeper than about 12%. What made this climb tougher was the roast beef sub sitting in my stomach that i just finished in Wilton center. It was about 0.3 miles from the sub shop to the hill. But I had to eat. I was burning about 700-800 calories per hour and I can't really make up for that with energy gel and sports drink. At the top of Pead Hill I headed northeast through Lyndeboro which is full of steep ups and sharp downs. I had a route that I planned out on Mapmyride.com.. I know that when I'm riding in this area of NH there are a lot of dirt roads. I was hoping to avoid as much of this as possible since flatting on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere when you're alone sucks. It's fine once, but if you do it twice then you're screwed because you typically only have one spare tube with you.. Anyway, I chose a route that I thought would limit the amount of dirt roads. I picked long roads on the map that connected between major roads. Roads that had town names on them, like Lyndeboro Rd.. At 4 miles long, and connecting to RT 13, that couldn't be a dirt road could it? Ummm, yeah. Not only was it a dirt road, but it narrowed to the point that only a single car could get through, it was completely overgrown so that it was dark enough that it could have been 8:30 at night, it was all rutted out from washout, and it had tons of sharp stones. This was not a well-graded gravel road. This was a backwoods cart path. It amazes me that I didn't flat, or get jumped by rednecks like in Deliverance. And then the rains came.... Nothing better than knowing you're going to spend the next 45 miles on a soggy chamois, the cycling equivalent of a wet diaper. I finally make my way out to where I'm supposed to cross over RT 13 in New Boston. I'm soaked, I'm starting to get pretty stiff from the cold rain, and I'm annoyed with Mapmyride.com for not being able to tell me where the dirt roads are. I'm 60 miles in at this point, it's still raining pretty good without any signs of letting up and I know I'm about 15 miles from home if I take a right. I look across RT 13 at the road that I'm supposed to take (according to my cue sheet). It's called Hooper Hill Rd and it is an absolute wall rising straight up into the sky from RT 13. Knowing that trying to convince myself that I actually have a choice of heading home at this point is merely in my imagination, I mumble WTF to myself and head into the hill.. I'm doing 100 miles. Nothing is stopping me. Very tough climb, I find myself cursing this Hooper guy that the hill is named after. At the top there is a great view, if you're into that kind of thing. I believe that views are reserved for tourists and people with too much time on their hands. I look forward to the day when I'm much older and I can relax with a view and a cup of coffee from my log cabin in the woods of Maine or Vermont. Until then, the only solace I take in a "great view" is the fact that I've now climbed high enough to be above everything else in the area, my climbing is temporarily over, and I am hopefully about to come into a blistering descent. Climbs like Hooper Hill Rd were sprinkled in along the rest of the way, Chestnut Hill in Amherst was pretty difficult with 70 miles already in my legs, but the 45MPH descent on the other side was fantastic.. 

At 75 miles I stopped at a store in Amherst to refill water bottles one last time. I'm standing over my bike outside the door to the store at the top of a parking spot. Some guy pulls in the parking spot that I'm in (there were at least 6 other empty ones right next to it) and he beeps at me so that he can pull forward. In my current state I had little patience for this. But in my current state of maturity I refrained from using my middle finger to direct him to an adjacent spot. Instead I used a glare that would have made Clint Eastwood proud.. If I was Wolverine, I probably would have engaged my knuckle swords for effect. The guy, realizing that this parking spot was taken, parked elsewhere and entered the store without making eye contact, tail tucked firmly between his legs. I was happy that I motivated him to get an extra 10 feet of exercise for the day. I am a trainer after all :)

I finished up the last 25 miles in a state of something between exhaustion and euphoria. Definitely not a fun day, but I wasn't looking for fun. I was looking to test my boundaries. I regularly do rides of 40 or 50 miles by myself. The first 50 is always about the physical part. When you go to 100, it's more about the mental part. Mentally and physically I finished this ride much stronger than at any other time I've done something like this. The workouts that I do on a regular basis provide me with that. And it's only by continuously pushing myself to my limit that I'm able to continually get stronger. These workouts aren't fun, but they allow me to have fun. They give me strength, endurance, and self-confidence. I honestly feel like I can do anything. 

Oh yeah, and one more thing. On a ride like this, especially in the first half of the bike season, my lower back would get very tight and sore on the climbs and any kind of tough effort beyond about 65 or 70 miles. But yesterday I didn't have that problem and I attribute that to my kettlebell training and what it's done for my core strength. Everybody coming to Dynamic Strength and Conditioning has seen improvements in their other activities, whether it be competitive sports or just weekend warriors out for some fun. I'm convinced that with some simple kettlebell and bodyweight exercises complementing my cycling training I am well on track towards my goals on Mt Washington in August.

Best,

kevin

My Functional Foot

I recently posted a link to an article about the evils of running shoes and how shoeless populations like the Tarahumara Indians are able to run ridiculously long distances without shoes and without injuries. I've been working out and spending as much time as possible either barefoot or wearing the Vibram Five Fingers (like in the picture) which is the same as being barefoot except without having to worry about puncturing the bottom of your feet. The result, for me, has been increased lower leg and foot strength and reduced lower leg and foot injuries. I trail run, I play soccer (not as much as before but still kick around at the practices I coach). I do stuff that puts me in lots of off-balance and unstable positions and I don't get hurt. I used to turn ankles playing soccer and trail running. Now I don't. I don't need a scientist to tell me going barefoot is good for me. And I don't need a podiatrist telling me going barefoot is bad for me. To be fair to the podiatrist, if you spend 12 years studying feet you should be able to get a job that pays more than selling shoes at Marshalls, even if it means you're selling people on things to make bad shoes better (or worse depending on your point of view) instead of just telling them to go barefoot and strengthen their feet. But, hey, podiatry isn't the only part of the medical industry that's not really interested in making you better. If they did then they'd be out of a job. Nothing is better for job security than treating symptoms rather than providing solutions. But I digress. That's a blog for another day.

There's lots of studies for and against going barefoot. Don't trust studies. There's always an ulterior motive.. I recently saw a study showing that High Fructose Corn Syrup was no more likely to make you fat than regular sugar. Cool, pass me another Twinkie and a Coke (both of which probably had a hand in funding the study). Cigarettes are also no worse for your breath than licking toilet seats. Or did you miss that study?

So lets go back to the old tried and true method of using common sense. Common sense tells me that shoes deaden my nerves which is bad for my proprioception which is my body's ability to tell where it is in space. Watch somebody who spends all their walking hours in shoes try to balance on one unshod foot with their eyes closed. Or better yet, try it yourself. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to do it for a minute without touching your other foot down. If you can't, then your proprioception needs work. Common sense also tells me that shoes provide my feet and lower legs with the support that my body should be providing to itself. If my muscles don't have to provide that support then they're going to get weak.. Like I said, since going barefoot over a year ago I have definitely had huge increases in lower leg and foot strength. I'm not a podiatrist, but I'm pretty sure the foot has about 40 or more joints in it. How many joints do you suppose a running shoe allows to move in the way they were intended to move? Here's more common sense... When I wear shoes I heel strike when walking or running. When I don't wear shoes I don't. Know why? Because heel striking hurts. Heel striking sends shock waves through your body and messes up your knees. Want to fix knee pain? Stop heel striking. Want to stop heel striking? Go barefoot. Our body's natural movement pattern is to land on the balls of our feet, softly, without sending shock waves through our bodies.

Popular arguments against going barefoot are that it would hurt. I would argue that any muscle or joint that hasn't been properly used for years and years is going to hurt when you start using it. You also don't want to decide you're going to go run a marathon barefoot the first time out. Consider that your foot has essentially been disabled in a wheelchair for the better part of your life. The first time out of the wheelchair are you going to go run a marathon? Of course not. Ease into it. There's arguments that if you look hard enough you'll find just the right shoe that doesn't mess up your biomechanics. True, and if your problem is that you repeatedly hit yourself in the head with a hammer then you can eventually find the right helmet that will make it so that it doesn't give you such bad headaches. But why spend hundreds of dollars on shoes and orthotics when all you probably need to do is spend more time on the feet you were born with. Speaking of babies, ever see how they freak out when you put shoes on them? It's because they know something that you forgot..

Go barefoot, train your feet properly.

kevin

At What Age is it Safe to Make Kids Non-Functional?

There's a lot of studies out there regarding when it's safe to have kids start lifting weights. Any time you're asking a question about how safe it is to do something, you have to weigh the risk against the reward and you have to determine whether or not it makes sense.. For example, it's not safe for a kid to have a license until they're 17 (and this is arguable with a lot of kids out there).. But the reward justifies the risk because now the kids can get places on their own and get jobs, etc.. That makes sense... With weightlifting, people are asking the wrong questions. They're asking whether or not its safe to lift weights instead of asking whether or not it even makes sense. Why would it ever make sense to take a kid who's, let's say 14, and start teaching his body to isolate muscles and restrict natural movement patterns? Name me one activity in the real world where the bench press or the preacher curl helps you function better. I'm going to go grab another cup of coffee while you're thinking about that one. Be right back........... OK, what did you come up with? It makes you look better on the beach? Right. I love seeing "that guy" on the beach who spends hours in the gym on his chest and biceps and has those skinny little legs. He looks like the engorged tick you just pulled off your dog. I can see the old school football coaches scowling at me right now because they know how much better their players perform with a properly executed weightlifting program.. Sorry, coach. The bench press will really only help your football players who find themselves on the ground a lot and need to push people off of them. Those players need to be cut, they don't need to bench more weight. I can't think of another scenario in football where your back is completely supported while you press weight off your chest. And as far as biceps curls go, if your players are pulling other players closer to them then maybe it will help. Unless the game has evolved into something I'm not aware of, the idea is to keep the opposition away from you, not pull them closer.

At the conference Michele and I were at last weekend there was a presenter who said "Arnold Schwarzenegger was the best thing and the worst thing to ever happen to the fitness industry.". He was the best thing because he brought fitness into the mainstream like nobody else ever has. He was the worst thing because now everybody wanted to become a bodybuilder.. It was great that people wanted to get in shape, but now they all wanted to do it the wrong way. There's a place for isolation exercises and it's in physical therapy. After an injury or surgery, you will most likely need to isolate a particular muscle to develop strength in it so that it can start to be used again in a functional manner along with all the other muscles in your body. Other than PT, there's no use for isolation exercises. Life is a full body sport. All athletics require full body strength, agility, endurance, coordination. There isn't one isolation exercise that enhances any of those requirements. So why do them? Because Arnold did? Because your fat 67 year old football coach told you it was good for you? And this is a topic for another day, but is it just me, or are 90% of football coaches grossly deconditioned? I saw a pop warner team practicing last Fall and there were 3 coaches there screaming their heads off to a bunch of 10 year olds and they easily tipped the scales at a collective 1000 pounds. More coaches look like Charlie Weis (pre-gastric bypass surgery) than Jon Gruden and that's a shame. (not sure why Gruden popped into my head, but to look at him, he looks pretty fit and that is my point)

Part of the problem is education and stubborness. A lot of people think that weighlifting was what we did when we were younger so that's the way it should still be. A lot of people don't even know what functional conditioning means.. Thanks to the swiss ball people, functional conditioning has become synonymous with "off-balance". You see people on Youtube standing on a swiss ball pressing a dumbell overhead with one hand while reading a book and this is supposed to be "functional conditioning".. That's not functional, that's a circus act. Functional conditioning is not Cirque Du Soleil. Functional conditioning is exactly what it sounds like. Conditioning the body to be functional. This means training movements, not muscles. It means having all of the joints in your body being able to move properly through their intended ranges of motion with and without resistance. It means being able to execute explosive, ballistic movements using kinetic chains that extend from your toes to your finger tips. It means developing great core strength. Core strength is not a defined six-pack. Core strength comes from the large and small muscle groups all the way around your midsection and glutes. You don't develop that doing crunches. You develop that doing kettlebell swings and turkish getups.

So back to the original question.. When is it safe to make kids non-functional and get them weightlifting? It's never safe.. And it's not smart. Coaches shouldn't be sending kids to the weight room, they should be training them the way we train at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning. Developing full body strength, endurance and power. Increasing flexibility and mobility. Training movements, not muscles, and performing at a much higher level.

Train smart,

kevin

Blue Hills Classic

Much better race this week, all things considered. After coming off one of my worst days ever on a bike I went into this past week with a new level of focus. Last Sunday I signed up for a couple races, the Blue Hills Classic and the Mt Sunapee Road Race, both in May. The Blue Hills Classic was held today, it's 6 times around a 7.2 mile rolling loop with a 1 mile climb and a hilltop finish. To be honest, I didn't really know what to expect. In the past week I did three really tough training rides. Tuesday was 3x10 minute threshold intervals, Wednesday was hill intervals, and Friday was 5x8min threshold intervals. If you've never done long threshold intervals on a bike and want to know what it feels like then do burpees. 10 minute threshold intervals are like doing as many burpees as you can in 10 minutes without ever stopping. The 5x8min interval session on Friday was stupid. I should have stopped at 3. Most people I talked to say I shouldn't have ridden that hard at all 2 days before a race, but like I said before, I'm not shooting to win races here, I'm just trying to get in race shape and put in some really hard efforts to set me up for later in the season. Friday's ride strained my left quad and I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to race at all on Sunday. But Michele fixed me up Saturday with a great leg massage and loosened it up to the point that I was willing to give it a shot this morning. Still tight, but I knew it would be OK for 43 miles. Just didn't know how hard I'd be able to go.

The Blue Hills Classic doesn't have a Pro/1/2 field, it only has master's categories. This means that all the super strong guys that are 35+ that would typically ride in the Pro/1/2 field, like Mark McCormack who is about 3 years removed from a US Pro National Championship, ride with the master's group and basically destroy the rest of us. The race started out with about 60 in the field and the pace went up right away. Average pace for the race was 25.4 MPH which is a pretty blistering pace considering there's a 1 mile hill that had to be climbed 6 times. Every time an attack would go off the front, the pace would go up and the attack would be reeled back in. Nothing was getting away today. Every time McCormack or any of the other big guys would make a move at the front they were marked and the whole pack would respond. The hill was the only chance for anybody to try to get away, but it wasn't steep enough or long enough to string the group out as much as the attackers would have liked. I was finding myself hanging with the group really well today, feeling much stronger than I anticipated. I would crest the hill every time with the top half of the field with my heart rate around 95% but I was recovering really quickly. It was pretty exciting. Still, I was waiting for the one major attack that I wasn't going to be able to hang onto. But every attack that came I was able to respond and hang in there. At one point in the 4th lap I hit a hole at about 35mph and my handlebars dropped about an inch. This sucks for two reasons. First, now you're hunched over and spread out over the bike in a much more unnatural position than you want to be in. Second, you know that if you hit another hole while leaning on the bars that they're going to drop much further, probably enough to make the bike unrideable. I was super careful to not hit any more holes like that the rest of the way.

Once I hung with the field through the first four laps, recovering from max efforts as quickly as I was, I started feeling pretty confident that I would finish with the field. Several riders were dropping off on every lap at this point and the field was getting smaller. We got into the 6th and final lap and the pace went up again. There were two major attacks before we got to the final climb, both of which I marked and stayed right towards the front of the group. We got into the climb and I put everything into it. I was side by side with guys that I felt were much stronger than me, but I wasn't getting dropped. It was an all-out effort. I came across the line with the main field, right around 20th (haven't seen the results yet). It was a much better finish than I had thought I would get coming into the day. It puts the rest of my season into a new perspective because I know that I'm racing against guys who are already in race shape and I'm just getting going.. This has the potential to be a really good year :)

best,

kevin

AHHHHHH! Run and Hide! It's R2D2!

Or C3PO.... No, wait a minute. It's H1N1. That's right, the swine flu.. You'll have to forgive me in advance for any typos. I'm typing this wearing the big rubber gloves that provide me access to my laptop which I inadvertently left on the outside of my plastic bubble that I'm living in for the next xouple weeks (oops, there's a typo) until this pandemic is over. Can you believe how many people have already caught this nasty cold? It's up to like 350 now.. And that's out of 300 Million people in our country! That's roughly 1 in a million. Scary, I know. When I heard that, I wasn't sure what to do first; go fill up the gas tanks in the cars, generators, mowers, and chainsaws or head to the market to buy 10 gallons of milk and 20 loaves of Wonder bread. I was so glad today to hear that the president of my daughter's soccer league declared that all kids were not allowed to partake in the post-game handshake (not a joke). "....the players may line up at the end of the game and congratulate each other without physical contact...". As coach of the team it was a struggle for me to communicate with the team from my golf cart enclosed in Saran Wrap. They also had a lot of difficulty hearing me through my gas mask. One of the girls said I sounded like the teacher on Charlie Brown.

You might think this is written as a joke, well it's not. I've already deleted all cell numbers from my cell phone and email addresses from my address book of any people who I know that have come into contact with, are friends with, or are.. swine.. In fact, I've gone so far as to throw out my daughter's Charlotte's Web DVD because I don't trust the pig in that either. 

Thankfully the media isn't blowing this thing out of proportion to sell advertising, magazines, newspapers and get people to watch their overpaid talking heads blather on about it during a couple slow news weeks. Also, we're lucky the medical industry isn't playing into the fear of the population so they can sell more prescriptions and get more people to spend co-pays for unnecessary visits to the doctor when their kid sneezes or coughs. (couldn't be allergies at this time of year, could it?).. Headlines like this "Swine Flu Deaths Ebb, But Could Come Back Strong." are informative, not sensational.

OK, let's see. 1 in a million have r2d2, i mean h1n1.. I have a 200x better chance of being struck by lightning in my lifetime (if i don't get killed by swine flu first, of course). I have a 50x better chance of being murdered. I have a 5000x better chance of writing a NY Times bestseller. I have a 150x better chance of getting hurt in a shaving accident. It's true, they have odds for all these things. Of course, since I forgot my razor and shaving cream on the outside of my bubble, my chances of getting injured shaving have been reduced drastically.

Did you know that in soccer games across the country today there will be about 100,000 sprained ankles? How is it even possible that CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News aren't all over this?

Be safe, everybody. It's a crazy world out there.

kevin