by Elijah Nicolas on Friday, August 13, 2010
If you haven’t already figured out by now, Adelle and I just moved to a Downtown San Diego apartment to start out our first year of marriage. Why not live it up right? Well, last night, I was finally able to grab our bicycles and port them to the tiny dwelling just in time for a ride with my Uncle Romy this morning. It’s been a little more than a year since I first started riding and what a great way to celebrate it with a ride to Pt. Loma. I broke down my ride on my Garmin Edge 500 into two parts: Warmup and Actual Ride. Off the bat, Downtown is a lot different than the hills of my old neighborhood but I was betting on the hill to Pt. Loma Lighthouse. Casually navigating my way around Downtown, I quickly noticed the lack of an actual bike lane instead replaced with a bike path that is shared with runners who, if running in pairs, span the width of the route. Suck really, but I made due.
Here’s the warm-up phase. I kept the cadence up and you can notice my steady heart rate. The stop lights as well as roads kept me from a constant flow, but it worked out.
Meeting up with my Uncle, a quick warmup around the
Sheraton strip followed by a ride along the Harbor then a direct shot to Canon Street then Catalina Blvd. up to Pt. Loma. Down the hill towards Mission Bay, around back towards Old Town then back to the apartment. All in all, it was a great ride.
I went through areas of San Diego that I’ve been wanting to venturing out around and I got to do it with the guy who got me into it. Constant spinning & quick accelerations proved to be a great way to kick up the cycling again! One more month till the San Diego Tri-Rock (Sprint Triathlon). I probably might want to start working on the swimming portion eh?
by Elijah Nicolas on Friday, July 30, 2010
Now was the time to start an awesome overnight workout regiment. Staying at the Hilton in Downtown Toronto which has an awesome gym and accommodating facilities, I was determined to finish what would become my first hotel brick. The pool was pretty much full around 11:00am with the ensuing
Caribana 2010 Festival going on and people checking in, but the indoor cycling machine and treadmill was available for full utilization!
Sleep last night was almost a lost cause as I went to bed at 2:00am and woke up at 5:00am. Three hours of sleep wasn’t that much, but at I was rested well enough to conduct one flight from Atlanta to Toronto. I knew that I needed some nutrients so I grabbed a quick airport breakfast of Corned Hash, Potatoes, Scrambled Eggs & a Biscuit somewhere on the Atlanta A Concourse then headed to the plane. I ate enroute, we landed smoothly, took the local shuttle downtown to the airport (25 minutes) where I took a light nap, checked-in, got to my room and quickly put on workout clothes.
I did so because I knew that if I laid down for just 1 minute, I would fall asleep. I got on the indoor cycling machine and started hammering. I set the timer at 1 hour knowing that I could at least get my 20K/12.2 miles in and around 30 minutes, I started really hurting. I could feel that my lack of sleep wasn’t contributing to the ideal body feeling but I kept on going. I finished w/ approximately 16.73 miles in 65 minutes (5 minute cooldown) but I have to say that the riding position is far from the real thing. Not sure if that’s going to affect my actual rides but the workout did do a number on my thigh burn.
I had to refill my water bottle during the transition but in order to do so, I had to swap out the water jugs on the cooler. I took a little bit of a breather and started a light jog at 6.0. My legs were definitely a little mushy but I increased the pace to 6.5 and felt great! At mile 2.0, I hit a wall but I kept on going. I increased to 7.0, then to 8.0 at the last quarter and did a long cool down stretching at the same time. 3.63 miles total!
There was a point in the transition that I was going to skip the run altogether, but I was proud of myself that I kept on going. I even walked another 4-5 miles with the crew around Downtown! I have to head to bed early for a 4:50am van ride back to the airport so, goodnight for now. I might wake up early and do some upper body or maybe some early morning yoga streches in the room. Good times in training.
