That's What She Said

Ride
time- 1:21
distance- 18.1

Today before I left the house to meet the Grey and Diesel for the weekend's ride I looked outside. This is what it looked like:

Oh..so we are going to get rained on then. Right. Weather reports said watch for flash floods but that wasn't supposed to start until later in the day. Bloody weather. We decided to not ride down to the North Shore and back because getting caught that far from home in a storm would be the suck. Instead it was laps around Wheeler Air Field and Schofield Army Base. It rained, drizzled, and poured pretty much the whole time. It was still fun. Mostly because none of the three of us are grown-ups. Conversations went very simply.

Regarding the weather- "It's really wet, it's getting my back all dirty."

Regarding construction on the road ahead- "Lotta pipe being laid here."

Regarding the loop we rode- "It's not long, but you can have some fun with it."

St. Crispins Day

Swim
1 x 200- Warm-up
Ladder
200
300
400
500
400
300
200

Run Day
time- 1:03
distance- 6.53mi

Damn near another dead even split during the run. The swim was a grind-it-out kind of morning, which wasn't great but it got did. It was raining for about half the run and it turns out Dirtbag loves him some running in the rain. I was going to post a short clip from the Danny DeVito movie Renaissance Man, which happens to be one of my favorite movies and is often forgotten when people (teachers) list inspirational teacher movies like Stand and Deliver (my other favorite teacher movie). The scene I wanted was where the drill sergeant is encouraging his boots by yelling at them, "Bring on the rain! I love the rain! My old drill sergeant used to say, 'If it ain't rainin', we ain't trainin''". But I forgot about the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V. So instead of going on and on I'm going to post that whole scene. Because it's awesome, and Shakespeare is important.





Also, please note that I've done a little playing around with the blog format and added a few pages. It would be very cool if you could click over to the Dirtbag Supports page and at least take a look. Cheers.

When It Rains It Means Airport Repeats

Ride Day
time- 1:38
distance- 29mi

The plan for Saturday was scrapped when everyone involved woke up to rain. Not little, ahh this is nice and cool rain, but WHAT I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE SOUND OF THE RAIN ON THE ROOF rain. So instead of risking Pineapple Hill in the extremely wet we (Sean "Dirtbag Diesel", Andy "Dirtbag the Grey", and myself "Da Dirtbag") decided to meet out at Dillingham Airfield where we knew it would be dry for some repeats.
I've never ridden with Andy before, he's one of my swimmers, and it turns out he's a great guy to ride with when Sean's there. Because Sean is a freaking rocket on his bike and Andy is more my speed. Which meant that after Sean took off, "Sure was nice to have that tailwind, huh guys?" we could hang back and plot. "Ok, I'll pull for a while and you draft, the we'll switch and we will catch him in no ti-wait, where'd he go?" Though I am proud to say that on the third lap into the wind I managed to grab onto Sean's back tire and stay there for almost the entire seven miles. I realize he wasn't working as hard as he could but Shut Up! Knowing that at any moment he might decide that he'd had enough rest and disappear in a cloud of road grime made the lap more interesting.
Riding in a small group is nice too because we would stop between each repeat and shoot the breeze for a few minutes. It was then I learned Andy is a kilt fan like myself. And Sean teased us about being three guys in lycra talking about wearing skirts. And later Sean and I discussed the finer points of leg shaving, at which point Andy reminded us that we were three guys in lyrca who had just discussed skirts and were now sharing tips on how not to get ingrown hairs. And then Sean and Andy started talking about ultra-running, at which point I reminded them that anyone who runs 100km for fun is mentally damaged. They agree.
 And after our ride we went to The Bakery in Haleiwa and had the Best Cookies on the Island. Seriously, one dollar and they kick ass. Right across the street from Opal Thai, the Best Thai Food on the Island, in the Market parking lot. Everyone should go.
Also, I love my Garmin, minus the tech issues I'm having uploading data to the computer. But that's probably more of a user error than the machine's fault. Here's the link to the ride. I love being able to see Moving Time vs Total Time, average everything, speed over time or distance, speed broken down by mileage. It's all so cool!
I registered for the 100k of Sharon's Ride Run Walk for Epilepsy. Check out my post here for more information. That's right, I masterlinked again.

Bloody Weather

Brick Day- Cycle/Run

Ride pt.1
time- 18:10
distance- 3.o9mi

MAP 1

Ride pt.2
time- 50min *approx
distance- 11.23mi

Run
time- 10min
distance- 1.1mi

MAP 2

Those of you who are paying attention may have noticed something odd there. I have posted a ride pt.1 and pt.2 and two maps to go along with them. "WTF, señor Dirtbag?" you may be asking yourself (if you were so inclined to throw random spanglish into your everyday speech). The answer, my friends, is very simple: It rained hard today.
I had such a good plan. Really, it was a KISS plan, couldn't have been easier. Today the wife worked at my school. So we threw the bike and my gear into the back of the truck with the plan being I would ride home and she could drive home. I figured the ride from school to my house would be just under an hour, and since my ride time today was supposed to be one hour I would find a way to fill the extra time. Once home I would quick fast change shoes and go for my ten minute run. Mr Murphy (of Murphy's Law fame) also liked my plan. Because he got to mess with it.
All day long I would glance out the door of my classroom and see dark, foreboding clouds gathering on the horizon to the north. You know, the direction I'd soon be riding in. Damn. So wife and I came up with a plan. She'd drive on ahead and I'd ride, but if she got to a spot where the rain was really bad then she would flip around and come get me. Good plan. And a good thing too, because that's just what had to happen. The first map is from my school until where she picked me up. The next couple of miles were sheets of rain. I'm glad she did what she did. It would have been the suck. Once it cleared up she pulled over, let me out, and I was on my way once more, which is where map 2 finds me.
Only it didn't stay clear. It looked clear. But it was not. Because I had to make up missed time and distance I rolled onto the base where my hill is and rode through there. I didn't assault the hill, not enough time, but did ride through pretty good. And got poured on. Heavy. Drenched. The street was staying-in-the-middle-of-the-lane-because-the-side-of-the-road-is-deep-and-it-might-turn-into-a-swim-workout filled with water (by the way, I just won the Longest Hyphenated Term in a Blog award for September 2010). Had to pull my glasses down to my nose because they were so wet they were doing more to block my view rather than keep rain out of my eyes. Kind of the suck.(Also, you'll notice the * with the second ride time. I'm going soley by the JogTracker numbers, which are normally accurate anyway, because genius-boy forgot to start his watch after stopping for the red light to get on base. Durf. This why I have two forms of time tracking.)
But I can't complain too much. It didn't get really cold. The people on base drive significantly safer than the rest of the island. And I was working out. The only frustrating part is that I never felt like I got into a good rhythm. I never really got working today. It was more like just going from point A to point B rather than training for a race. And that's kind of my problem on the bike right now. Because I'm still so new to it a lot of workouts are spent making the muscles learn to ride rather than getting a really good cardiovascular workout. I rarely feel out of breath when I'm done, just tired. Meh, it'll get better. I'll figure out how to race it eventually. Having somewhere flatter to ride will help. We kind of live on the highest point of the island right now so going any direction very far entails a drop then a climb.
Got home, hopped off the bike, took off my dripping wet riding shoes and my helmet, threw on my Vibrams, and headed back out for a ten minute run. I'm still taking it easy, keeping a close watch on the foot. But, aside from very little soreness, it was fine. This makes Dirtbag happy. Tomorrow will be a bigger test since I'll be running farther. But I will be watching my stride, not overrunning, and doing what I know how to do. Covered a mile in ten minutes, which is my default cruising speed anyway. Feels so weird to go from 90rpm to a jog.
Long stretch, good shower to get the road grime and rain dirt off me, lots of water and a banana, and now for some sushi.