A Beautiful Day for a Ride w/ Uncle

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.

Downtown from the Harbor Sheraton

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?

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My First Not so Nite Moves (@NiteMovesSD) #FAIL

by Elijah Nicolas on Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been attending a weekly 5K in San Diego called Nites Moves SD which takes place on every Wednesday night at Liberty Station Park in Pt. Loma. I’ve been improving constantly (by seconds almost a minute one week ago), finding my rhythm & stride and what I initially thought was good headway. That is, up until last night’s performance. I finished a miserable 28:45 which makes it my worse time in four tries! I’ve been running treadmills a lot lately on a incline of 1.0 at a steady speed of 6.5 / 7.0 so that might have made this run a little slower but I thought that I could best my 27 minute wall. Granted the last few days looked like this:

Monday/Tuesday Morning: I worked all day and was delayed on the flight back to San Diego for 2 hours arriving at 2:00AM not going to bed till shortly after.

Tuesday: Woke up around 8:00am motivating myself for the move to the new apartment in Downtown San Diego. Excited but somewhat exhausted

Tuesday Night: Definitely had a hard time falling asleep being anxious, excited and just new

Wednesday Day: Breakfast was a quick bar, daily mass, meeting w/ our priest to tie up loose ends before the wedding, coffee, head home to pack up more stuff, spill the full venti caramel macchiato in fiance’s car, meet up w/ the caterer for finalization and payment, show mom the new apartment, grab lunch at JWok which is conveniently around the corner from our new apartment, head to Vons in PQ, drop off mom, go the bank on the way back to the apartment, get ready for the 5K.

If you notice, my nutrition and liquid intake prior to the 5K wasn’t all that great. I didn’t get to stretch that well nor was I feeling the tip top shape that I’ve been use to the previous weeks. It’s crunch time and August is a big month . Good times! I’m just glad that it’s somewhat smooth sailing from here. *crossing fingers*

Also, if you haven’t already had the chance to see my tweet or facebook profile update, make sure to check out @DCRainMakerBlog on twitter, follow him and also navigate your way to his webpage for a chance to enter into his contest for a free Garmin 310xt! Check out his website here! http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2010/08/garmin-forerunner-310xt-giveaway.html

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My First Hotel Brick

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.

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Thanks for the Birthday Wishes!!!

July 28, 2010

Nothing, except this video, can show you how I’m feeling right now! Please watch through 1:40 and just revel in this man’s simple joy as I am doing so right this very moment! Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes! Keeping up with my fitness workouts, since last Wednesday’s NiteMovesSD 5K, I’ve run / trained on [...]

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Yet Another 5K w/ @NiteMovesSD (3rd one)

July 22, 2010

Going into tonight, I was all about the stride and keeping up a beat / cadence. I started off strong and on the right note but somewhere after the first 1.2 miles, I lost it. I tried keeping up with a guy that had a great pace but I still limped out and ended up [...]

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2nd Brick in the Bag

July 19, 2010

Getting out to perform another brick was a little bit more of a task than the first. Motivation wasn’t necessarily high but I knew that I should do it up so I donned my Saxo Bank Cycling Suit and headed out. I put on earbuds this time w/ my iPhone Quattro set to shuffle my [...]

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Another Wednesday, Another Nite Moves San Diego 5K (@NiteMovesSD)

July 15, 2010

As much as I wanted to run below the 27 minute mark, I was forced to walk more than run.  I haven’t been this fatigued since the first time I became a weekend warrior and ran a 10K.  My legs basically just said no.  It’s not excuse but the night prior, I finished my first [...]

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