Almost Spring

Let me first say that I am extremely jealous of all you southerners, no not for your backward ways or inbreeding but for all those "cold" days you complain about. I find it quite amusing reading other blogs and hearing people complain because it was in the 40's and couldn't get your workout in outside because it was to cold.

Well today we finally had some decent weather here in Chicago, it got up in the mid 30's and the majority of the streets and sidewalks are finally clear of the snow and ice. So with the sun out and clear skies I decided to take my run to the outdoors and oh how nice it was. I can not stand running on the treadmill for more than 30 minutes so this was definitely a nice change of scenery. I was able to get a nice 7 mile run in today and not once did I miss the constant clock reminding me how long I have been running, or the almost tumbling off the machine due to staring at the same thing for an hour, which is usually nothing.

Oh spring you can not come soon enough, as it is still a little to icy to venture outside on the old bike and riding a bike in place is much worse than running in place.

So needless to say today just helped influence what I already knew, I hate Chicago winters!

Buckeye Outdoors

I have been using Buckeye Outdoors for tracking my weekly workouts of late. This is the first time I have ever kept some sort of workout log since I started participating in this crazy sport 3 years ago.

What I have found is that this is actually a great way to stay motivated and to get remotivated. When you track your workouts having the actual milage, yardage and time on the bike (using trainer only currently as Chicago weather sucks in the Winter) is a great assett for tracking your progress and commitment. I have also found that if you do slack off one week it is great motivation to get you going the following week.

Just a little about Buckeye Outdoors: first it is free, second it allows you track all kinds of info about your specific workout including HR, Wattage on the bike and almost anything else you want to track, third it gives you weekly and monthly totals, fourth you can create teams to track team totals or competitions and lastly did I mention that it was free.

New Goods

Today I decided to upgrade my wetsuit! Yes I know it is 10 degrees outside and this will not see any action for quite some time but there is some logic here, the local tri club I belong to held a fitting at our masters class with Quintana Roo. The promotion was you could trade in your old suit for $150 towards the purchase of a Quintana Roo Hydrofull, usually around $400 bones. Not a bad deal I must say considering I got another 5% off for being a club member and I only paid $120 or so for my old suit.

So I must admit I was hesitant about the full arm suits as my old one was a cheapy sleeveless I picked up when I first took up this crazy sport three years ago but I must admit the full suit was comfortable, fast and it made it seem like you could float just lying there. The suit probably won't get any outdoor use until Galena in May but I am thinking I will have to try it out in the pool a couple of times before hand just to be that guy.

If anyone is interested in picking one up Endure It! here in Naperville is running the promotion through the end of February so stop on by.

Gym Etiquette ....Round 1

Ok although it may not always appear so, I have been going to the gym pretty consistenly for quite a few years and over those years quite a few different gyms at that. There is one consistent theme that seems to catch me off guard and that is the weird and wacky things that happen there and in partiular the mens locker room. So I am going to start a list of things over the year that have either frightened me or made do a double take as I could not believe what I was actually seeing.

So here it goes, my list of crazy stuff from the locker room:

1. The hair dryer..this should be renamed to "the hair on the top of your head above your ears dryer" as many people seem to confuse the use of such device. I have seen this used in places you would not believe.
2. Nakedness..many sub topics on this one. First and foremost I understand that nakedness is expected, it is a locker room but the extent that people take this is a little strange. Such as: Shaving in the nude, even if this is your prefered practice at home I do not think acrowded sink area of a public gym is approbriate. Just to clarify: shaving your face, completely naked in front of a mirror while a bunch of other individuals are trying to get dressed and ready for the day..what gives?
3. Nakednesss part two...once again completely naked, strutting through the entire locker room, paper in hand to go drop the deuce, seen it more than once.
4. Nakedness part three...the individual that insists on carrying on a full fledge conversation about the state of the union while standing in front off you in their birthday suit; once again not an isolated incident.
5. Nakedness part four....checking the underside of their junk in the mirror with their foot on the counter, seen it only once but was enough to scar me for a lifetime.
6. So enough on the nakedness for now, the next topic is the "over agressive grunter".We all understand that you are lifting a lot of weight but you do not need to grunt loud enough that everyone else in the building needs to stop what they are doing to turn around and see how much weight you just put up. One individual at out local gym has such been nicknamed "Child Birth" for obvious reasons.

More to come just the icing on the cake.

Garmin Forerunner 405

I admit I am a gadget junky. Even though the overall purchasing of such gadgets has gone down the last couple of years I am still very much interested in cool new gadgets, especially when it comes to something tied so directly between excercising and technology.

So the newest gadget that caught my eye was the newly announced Garmin Forerunner 405, this is the closest thing to having an everyday usable GPS enabled watch. I have always stayed away from the Garmin 305 as I did not want to run with such a buly ugly piece of equipement strapped to my wrist. Now that Garmin seems to have gotten it right with the 305, small, usable as an everyday watch, wireless syncing of routes and workout data with your computer. Almost all the features that I desire seem to be there, excpet one critical one. What is that you ask? The watch is not waterproof. This is critical for any triathlete that wants to use this watch not only for training runs but for use during the race. So the conclusion is: so close but yet so far.

It's official, Austin here I come!

Well I may be crazy but I have decided to take the plunge and register for my first half IM, and my decision is the Longhorn Ironman 70.3. This is the last 70.3 of the year and so I have until October to get my @$$ in shape!

So I need to start working on the Bike portion and getting the milage up as I think this will be the toughest part. I have started my masters swim class this week and have done around 3000 yards Monday and Thursday, feel good about the swim training program. I think I need to sit down and put togther a formal training program along with some goals for each month in order to make sure I am on track.

Another bonus is this will be a good little vacation for the fam come October and for those who never have been to Austin, it is a really cool town!