Author Archives: jt

Not strong

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I am not a strong man. I used to think I was a strong man, but I am not nearly as strong as I was when I used to think that. You don’t realize how quickly your strength fades away when you stop working out. That all became crystal clear today. It was chest day.

I started off feeling really good, but after just a couple reps at 185 on the flat bench, I was done. After I finished making a fool of myself on the flat bench, we moved to bar dips. I was certain I wouldn’t be able to do any at all, since I had always had a hard time with dips, and my arms were clearly out of juice. To my surprise I was able to do a few without cheating, but soon I could barely extend my arms on their own power. It was pretty sad.

Flat Bench:
135 x 12
185 x 5
205 x 3
205 x 1

Bar Dips:
3, 3, 2

Pec Fly (machine):
80 x 12
80 x 10
80 x 8

Standing Tri Extension (machine):
160 x 12
150 x 10
150 x 8

French Curl (skull crushers):
65 x 6
65 x 5
55 x 6

Incline Dumbbell Fly:
30 x 12
30 x 10
30 x 8

We went to Carl’s Jr on our way back to work. The only way I could drink was to balance it on my leg and bend down to the cup. There was no way I could hold it up. It will be interesting to see what happens next week.

Pushing the sled

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Today I wasn’t able to get away with just hitting the treadmill. No. Today Sam and Tom came to the gym and we met up with some of Sam’s friends from a previous job. One of them brought “the sled”. The sled is a 60-pound metal structure with three feet, each on a small skid pad. We added a 45 pound disc to each of the two back legs, bringing the total weight of the sled to 150 pounds. Then we pushed it back and forth in the parking lot. One direction we pushed from a high position behind the two legs on the back, and then we switched and pushed from a low position just above the single leg on the front. Each direction was about 35 yards. It was pretty tough. We did each direction 10 times. Most the time you got a break between pushing each direction, but sometimes nobody at that end of the parking lot was ready to go, so you just had to jump back on and push it back.

For those that really wanted to hurt themselves, there was also an army duffel bag filled with sand bags that you could lift to your chest and carry back and forth when it wasn’t your turn on the sled. I wanted to see what it was all about, so I ran the duffel a few times. I didn’t do more than about 3 rounds with the duffel. It was much harder than pushing the sled, because you have to carry all the weight of the bag. I don’t know how much the sand weighed, but it was plenty. With the sled you don’t have to carry any of the weight; you don’t even have to carry all of your own weight. There was nothing as brutal as finishing a round with the duffel and hearing that it was your turn with the sled without any rest. I think that’s what convinced me to stop carrying the duffel.

I said I wouldn’t do any rounds with the duffel next week, but I think we all I know I will.

Back at the gym?

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I started a new job recently. A few of the guys on the team have been going to the gym on a regular basis. I decided to start going with them and brought my gym clothes today. I was expecting a legs day, since that was what we discussed last week. But a problem came up with one of the components we build, causing several people to work on it through lunch. Since I’m new, I wasn’t involved with the project that needed a little extra help today, so I went to the gym on my own.

You can’t really do a whole lot by yourself, and I wasn’t sure if the leg workout would get delayed till tomorrow, or just skipped for this week. Not wanting to do 2 legs workouts in a row (or 2 of anything else I may have chosen instead), I opted for running on the treadmill. It’s sort of the wimp’s way out, but I figure I really do need the running if I’m serious about surviving the 10k run at the end of the Spudman this year. So I ran… for a ways… then walked, then ran a little more.

4.0 miles

All in all, I’m glad I at least went to the gym instead of sitting around or grabbing a big lunch. It was a much better choice.

Runkeeper screws me over again (Alpine Loop)

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UPDATE: I am considering the possibility that the bad data and problems I’ve had with RunKeeper are actually caused by my iPhone 4. I was reminded that when I click the built-in Maps application, it almost always shows my location incorrectly.

—– Original Post —–

After the swimming party earlier today, we decided to meet up with Mark and Kristen to ride the Alpine loop. It was the perfect day for it. The weather was nice and cool, slightly overcast with a gentle breeze. The top of the Alpine Loop is still closed to cars, so there was no traffic to deal with. It really was ideal.

Like usual, I decided to have Runkeeper track my ride. It has messed up many times in the past, but most of it’s problems haven’t been that bad. Only one or two have been really ugly. Today was the worst Runkeeper problem I’ve had. For some unknown reason, half way through my ride up American Fork Canyon, Runkeeper stopped recording data. I know there is no cellular coverage up there, but that really shouldn’t matter for collecting GPS data.

https://runkeeper.com/user/jtalbot/activity/39924225

Take a look at that map. Do you really think I magically bounced home from part way up the canyon? No. We rode all the way over the top, down through Sundance, down Provo Canyon, up through Orem, Lindon, and Pleasant Grove, and then back home. My bike computer said 41 miles, so I’m pretty upset that Runkeeper just stopped collecting data a third of the way through the ride. It may be time to find a new tool.

At least Charmaine’s Runkeeper didn’t mess up. Here’s her map. Compare and contrast it to mine. What a joke.

https://runkeeper.com/user/charmainetalbot/activity/39924164

Despite all that, it was a great ride. We took our time and really enjoyed the scenery. I think there’s a picture of us at the summit trailhead floating around on someone’s phone. If I find it, I’ll upload it.

Splish Splash

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It’s been a really long time since I’ve been in a pool to swim laps. That’s sort of funny and sort of sad, considering this is my “swim” blog. But the fact is that the last time I swam any distance was in the Spudman Triathlon last year.

Today we went to the Lindon Aquatic Center, which had been rented out by Charmaine’s work for a party. We took the opportunity to swim a few laps in the 25 yard lap lane pool. It was an eye opening experience. I couldn’t swim more than a 200 without stopping. That is just terrible. I didn’t let myself get out of the pool until I had gone a full mile. By the end I was stopping every 50 yards to catch my breath and let my arms recover.

If it wasn’t before, the message is certainly clear now: we can’t afford to stay away from the pool if we want to survive the Spudman this year.

Tour de Cure

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Yesterday was the Tour de Cure in Utah. This is a 100 mile bike ride where each rider helps raise money for the American Diabetes Association. You have to raise at least $150 to ride. Just a few weeks ago, my niece was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, so we decided to throw a family team together at the last minute. Raising money and awareness was fun, but I really wish we could have convinced more riders to join the team. As it turned out, only Charmaine joined the team to ride the 100 miles with me. My brother joined the team and raised money, but he stuck with the family fun ride (only 1 mile) so he could stay closer to his family. Mark, a friend that works with Charmaine, and his neighbor rode with us, even though they were representing a different team. It was a lot of fun.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written about riding or running. I haven’t been avoiding writing, I’ve been avoiding riding and running. It all broke down when I went to the Google I/O conference in San Francisco the first week on May. After that I was really busy getting my garden ready before I went out of town the next week. I was in Israel and Jordan for the next two weeks. All in all, it’s been about a month since I’ve done any working out, but that wasn’t going to stop me from riding the Tour de Cure.

The weather was just about perfect. It was nice and cool, slightly overcast most of the day, and not very windy. That’s somewhat unusual, as the area we were riding is known for extreme winds. I should mention, even though there wasn’t a lot of wind, we always seemed to be riding into it. I guess that’s just the way it goes.

I was surprised how well I did. My legs never really felt tired until the very end, when were really pushing towards the finish. Part of that was undoubtedly due to having Mark out front most of the race. He’s doing Lotoja this year, so I didn’t feel too badly about letting him work a little harder.

I did have some trouble with my right knee though. There was a big climb at about the 45 mile point. I stopped a few times on the way up (I think the grade was something close to 12% by the end), but was still feeling good. After coming down the other side, my right knee started to feel wrong. A few miles later it was really bothering me. I would pop my shoe off my pedal and shake my leg out every now and then, and that seemed to help, but it continued to hurt more and more until I was really having a hard time with the starting and stopping.

At lunch (somewhere around mile 80) I got some tylenol and took some time to really stretch it out. A few minutes later it was feeling great again and we rode the last 20 miles home at a good clip. It was really fun.

100.16 miles

Now I need to start running again, and it needs to be in the mornings, since I have a “real” job again.

Carpe diem

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I won’t have many more days like today. For the past year or so, I have been mostly working out of my home office, which has given me a certain amount of freedom that I won’t have in the very near future. This week I am basically unemployed, having finished my final contract with Ryati last week. Next week I’ll be in San Francisco at Google IO. The week after that I will start a new job at Adobe. So, you can see, my days of total freedom combined with amazing weather are quite limited. It behooves me to use them wisely. That’s exactly what I did today.

I spent 3 or 4 hours yesterday working the tiller through about 4,000 square feet of garden in my back yard. It looks great, but it really wore out my arms and back. I also came away with two very inconveniently placed blisters – right in the fold between each thumb and index finger. By itself, that’s not much of a big deal, but it really makes it difficult to ride a bike, shift gears, brake, etc.

As promised on Monday, I ran today without walking. Unfortunately, I ran slower today than I did on Monday, but I’m still very happy with the result. I blame the slightly slower run on the fact that RunKeeper only has one setting for audio cues, which is just stupid. I *never* want audio cues for anything other than running, and I *always* want them when I run. Unfortunately, because of bad design, I am forced to go into settings before each activity and change the setting. Today I forgot to do that, so I had no audio cues once again. Oh well, like I said, I’m still happy with the end result.

29:33

It’s definitely time to add more distance to my runs. I’ll look into that when I get back from Google IO.

After running, I chugged 10 ounces of chocolate milk. Then I debated working in the garden again, but it didn’t stand a chance against my favorite option: biking. Charmaine challenged me to ride up Provo Canyon to Vivian Park and see if I could go up South Fork. When I got to Vivian Park, there was no way I was going up South Fork. The wind was howling down that canyon so hard that it nearly blew me off my bike as I rode past.

The wind was an interesting beast today. It was very gusty, and I’m talking about extreme gusts. One time, while riding down hill and pedaling, the wind hit me and brought me to a complete stop. I was dumbfounded. Of course, most the time the gusts came from the sides, which made me a little nervous, but sometimes the wind got behind me and gave me that push I needed to keep going up. After deciding not to turn or stop at Vivian Park, I thought I should try to ride up to Deer Creek dam. The wind was a good friend on the way up. It seemed to get behind me every time I really needed it. It kept building and getting stronger as I got closer to the top. I went sailing up and across the dam with a huge grin on my face, but then I realized a subtle problem with my plan. I was on a divided highway and couldn’t just turn around. I had to keep riding until there was a break in the divider. Luckily, that wasn’t all that far.

48.69 miles

The ride back down the canyon was very difficult. That strong wind that helped me up the canyon was still building. My speed going down was quite a bit slower than my speed going up. Think about that. Part of the reason for that was safety. When you’re riding into a serious headwind and a semi trailer blows past you, it sucks you in way more than normal. If that happens right when there’s a side gust, it’s not fun. It didn’t take too long to get back down, but my legs were toast. I had anticipated being able to rest on the way back down, but it just didn’t happen. I didn’t know how far I had gone, but I figured I should just get home and get some food. Other than that 10 ounces of chocolate milk, the only other thing I had eaten was a small bowl of cereal. I would have had more had I known what I was about to do. Oh well, I’m still very happy.

Spring at last

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It may be 6 weeks late, but it seems to finally be warming up a bit. Today was another beautiful day. I had a great first 2 miles, but then I walked the second half of the hill on Ironwood. I think I walked for about a minute, which means I probably cost myself 20 to 40 seconds by walking. That was the difference between the time I earned, and what would have been a new record.

29:02

It is sort of interesting to me that I can walk and still get my second fastest time ever, but I’m committing to not walk again… at least until I add more distance to my loop. I seem to have all this energy left over when I’m done running. Today there was a great debate between working in the garden (it really needs it) or riding my bike. My bike won. But I think it’s definitely time to add some more distance to my runs.

Despite feeling like I had a lot of energy, my legs felt pretty tired when I tried to make them climb the hill in Alpine. I had set out thinking I might even go up Suncrest today, but after the slow climb into Alpine, I doubted I would do the Suncrest climb. When I actually got to Suncrest Drive, my legs just said no. I wasn’t going to let them off that easily though, so we headed down towards the lake. I thought I might try the loop I did the other day, but in reverse. Well, I’m terrible with navigation and directions. I got a little lost in Lehi, trying to find a way under the freeway. I did eventually find the same one I had used the other day, but then I went off some other way and wound up over by Saratoga Springs.

When I crossed the new Pioneer Crossing highway today, I noticed that it had “Bike Route” signs. I decided to try it on my way back from Saratoga. I liked it a lot. Well, I stopped liking it when it dropped me onto US-89 in American Fork, but the traffic was light, so it wasn’t too big of a deal this time. Once I found Center Street in American Fork, I was back on my home turf. I love taking that road up to the cemetery and then jumping over to the Alpine Highway, which also has a great bike lane. There was a little bit of wind coming out of the canyon as I headed towards the final hill, but there was no wind going up the last big hill. I was still slow. My legs were pretty burned up by then, but it wasn’t too bad.

32.99 miles

I only wish my legs had more juice so I could have stayed out longer. It was that good.

Cold and windy

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I wasn’t sure I would get to run at all today. We woke up to more snow, and it was supposed to be snowing all day and most of the next few days. Someone needs to tell the weatherman that the term April Showers means rain, not snow.

Weather Forecast


The freezing temperatures and amazing wind speeds (I’m guessing the gusts were much faster than the 30mph predicted) made for some interesting moments on the run. It’s garbage day today, and I had the opportunity to dodge several flying garbage cans. I also got nearly blown to the ground by the wind on one occasion, and lost my right shoe on another. To make things more fun, I couldn’t get my shoe back on without untying it first. It was quite comical. Luckily I knew how to pause RunKeeper so my stats didn’t get too messed up.

The wind was coming from the northwest, which meant every single hill climb was directly into the wind. By the time I got to the last big hill on Ironwood, I couldn’t do it. It seemed running into that wind may actually be slower than walking, so I walked up to Sandalwood. I jogged the rest of the way home and was quite pleased to see both my garbage can and my fence were still standing.

31:13

I guess my time isn’t as bad as it seemed, but I really need to get to the point where I never go over 30 minutes.

As hard as I thought it would be

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I woke up to the sound this or that electronic gadget making noise a few times last night, but I knew today was a run day. All morning I kept thinking about how hard the run was going to be for this reason or that, starting with my perceived lack of sleep. As it turns out, my run was hard. It was exactly as hard as I thought it would be. I am pretty sure my thinking that it would be hard, made it hard for me. I’m such a psychological runner.

I did manage to recover fairly well from the last hill and sustained climb through mile 3, but is that really an accomplishment when I went so slow prior to that point? I’m not sure. It was probably the prettiest day and the best weather I’ve seen all year, so it was still nice just to be outside.

30:33

After I came in and mused about what a waste it would be to not spend more time outside, I convinced myself to go on a bike ride. I had no plan for where I would go, and I ran into quite a bit of construction detours and flaggers making me stop here and there, but it was awesome to be out there.

28.7 miles

At about mile 20, I decided to tack on an extra jaunt up through Alpine, to get a little climbing in. Around mile 27, as I headed towards the final climb up Canyon Rd, I found myself questioning the decision to tack on that extra climb. Just moments after that, a member of the Adobe cycling team went flying past me and up the big hill. I thought about trying to keep up, but quickly realized my legs had nothing left. I didn’t really care, in fact, having nothing left almost made it better. I had a huge smile on my face. It was such a great day to ride.