Monthly Archives: July 2011

Chest 20110720

Posted on by
Reply

It’s getting serious again. I haven’t been great at going to the gym every day, in fact, I’ve been pretty terrible. But I’m starting to believe that my strength can come back. I have somehow managed to be there for chest day most weeks. Today I was finally able to push a little harder. It felt really good.

Flat Bench:
12 x 135
10 x 185
4 x 205 (+1 with help)

Incline Bench:
12 x 135
8 x 155
4 x 165 (+1 with help)

Skull Crushers:
8 x 65
5 x 65 (couldn’t hold form on #5)
8 x 45

Incline Dumbbell Press:
12 x 35
10 x 45
5 x 55 (+1 with help)

Bar Dips:
8 x -100 (machine provided 100 pounds of lift)
8 x -100 (machine provided 100 pounds of lift)

Needless to say, my arms feel like Jello. Tomorrow will be an interesting day.

Chest 20110713

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday we pushed the sled across the parking lot. There wasn’t a lot to say about it, so I didn’t blog it.

Today we were inside. I have a long way to go to get back into shape, but I feel like I may be starting to make some progress. We’re guessing my one-rep max on flat bench is about 225. We based the rest of my weights off that max. We had to cut out a little early today, because someone scheduled a meeting for 1:00.

Flat Bench:
12 x 135 (60% of max)
5 x 170 (75% of max)
5 x 190 (85% of max)

Incline Bench:
12 x 135
5 x 155
5 x 175

Skull Crushers:
6 x 65
6 x 75
6 x 75

Bar Dips:
0 (+6)
1 (+5)
1 (+5)

Upright Fly:
8 x 90
8 x 100
8 x 110

Seattle to Portland

Posted on by
Reply

We spent the last week or so in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. We drove through the Columbia River Gorge, up the Washington coast, around the Olympic Peninsula, and in to Seattle. Then we rode our bikes 203 miles from Seattle back to Portland with about 10,000 other people in the annual STP classic. It was not without incident, but it was a whole lot of fun. We were 6 of the 72 riders for Crush Kids Cancer, raising money for a study done at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

The good:
We all finished the race. Dave and Rob had never ridden any supported ride before, had never done any drafting, and their longest ride up to this point was less than 50 miles. Brett and Jess have done plenty of other rides, but this was their first STP. We managed to ride 150 miles the first day and 50 the second.

The bad:
Both Dave and I crashed while stopped at different times. He got some nice scratches from his crank, and I got some gravel cuts. In both cases we were not being smart, so we sort of deserved what we got.

The annoying:
I attempted to use my Atrix with RunKeeper as my GPS for the ride. It ran out of batteries just 6 hours in, despite having a full charge at the start. At least I have some data from those first few miles.

The funny:
At one of the stops, Rob accidentally started eating a tube of Chamois Butt’r, thinking it was a GU Energy Gel.

The ride:
We rode the first 150 miles on Saturday, then the last 50 on Sunday, riding through the finish line in Portland as a team. At one point, Dave and Rob dropped off the paceline we had going. We expected to meet up with them at the next stop, but they didn’t show up. They had followed a group of riders heading off to a hotel in a city that wasn’t on the course… and wound up riding a bunch of extra miles to get back on course later.

Angry at my Atrix

Posted on by
Reply

I think I’m going to get a single-purpose GPS device for my bike. I’m so tired of having my phone run out of batteries part-way through an event, and then have either no data, or only some data recorded. It happened again this week when I tried to use my Motorola Atrix 4G to record the first day of riding the STP.

I am extremely unimpressed with this phone. I spent many hours last month tweaking and optimizing it so that I wouldn’t have to recharge it every single night. I have it set to automatically kill every single app as soon as the screen turns off. I also have JuiceDefender set to disable Wifi, Cellular Data, and GPS when the screen is inactive. This makes for a less-than-desirable experience with the phone, since everything is dead each time I turn off the screen. I never get text messages, email, etc. until I manually turn on the screen. It’s pretty sad, but it’s the only way to get the battery to last more than 2 days. It’s more than a little pathetic. It’s definitely the worst overall phone I have ever had the displeasure of owning. After just 2 months, I don’t think I can keep using it. It’s that bad.

I had to make an exception to allow the RunKeeper app and the GPS to stay active when the screen goes dark. I knew that would mean less time with the phone alive, I just didn’t realize how much less. I charged the phone fully before the start of the STP, then I enabled the GPS and started RunKeeper. The phone died just 6 hours later. I had planned on checking it at the 100 mile point, but it was already dead by that point. I was so upset. I thought about switching back to my iPhone 4, since the battery on it seems to last about 5 times as long on standby (without sacrificing texts, email, etc.), and about twice as long when in use, but I don’t want my GPS to prevent me from making a phone call if I get stranded. I think the real solution is to break down and buy a single-purpose GPS device like the Garmin bike computers you see on so many of the bikes these days.