"No Excuses"

Pump prices and sports injuries

Having a scooter is awesome, and it's only getting better. It used to cost me $7.xx to fill from empty, now it's broken the $8 mark. Yeah I'm still laughing at the pumps... Of course our SUV fill-up aren't much fun.

That $8 fill up takes only a couple of minutes and will get me 300km of driving. With prices expected to only ever go up, it's amazing how many more scooters and motorcycles I am seeing on the roads within the last two weeks. Also people driving their SUV's to work in the morning seem to actually be doing the speed limit now. Before it seemed that they couldn't wait to get around me when I would drive 65km/hr in a 50km/hr zone.

On the training front, things haven't been going to plan. Last Friday during an open water swim at Thetis lake I was swimming well and was nearly back to the beach on my 1st of 2 laps around the big island. When I suddenly felt a massive calf cramp. Normally I can swim through these cramps, just let it tighten up and it will loosen it's grip soon enough. This cramp was different, it stopped me dead in the water and it was painful. I eventually made my way back to the beach and then drove home thinking that it was still a bad cramp. It stayed with me until midday on Monday. I am certain that it was/is a calf strain, as the bruising showed up Tuesday morning. Since then I have done a fair bit of rest, ice, compression and elevation (RICE) to help my recovery. I am going to ride the bike today for the first time since it happened and if that goes well I will run on Sunday.

Coffee

Is there life before Coffee? Sure there is, unfortunately we are all sleeping through it.

I like Coffee

@#%$^@!# Trainer workout

I don't know exactly what I did, but the weather gods sure love to play tricks with me. It rained hard all day long as the weather gave it's best February impression in June. I decided after riding home from work on the scooter that I will wait until 5:30 then I will decide if I ride outside or indoors on the trainer. I was really hoping the weather would turn around and I could do the ride coach Mike wrote out.

I don't know what it is about the trainer rides but I never look forward to doing them and they are typically skipped in favour of the couch and TV. 5:30 came and the weather looked worse. So I decided to ride inside. Or maybe I wouldn't.... Tammy interjected and she wouldn't let me skip this workout, I know I'll thank her in the long run. But I am still allowed to grumble a little.

It always seems to take longer to set-up a indoor ride for me, I just don't seem to be able to find anything right away. So I'm setting up the trainer and bike; gotta find the right QR skewer, grab a towel, fill the bottles up, make sure I have music, spinervals DVD's, remotes in jersey, turn on the fan, etc... After about 20 minutes I finally put my shoes on and start riding. I looked out the window and it's very sunny and the roads are 90% dry (@#$##!^). I refocused on the task at hand and complete my workout on the trainer. The weather outside during my entire workout is amazing! I jump into the shower, take a fast shower and afterwards I look out the window and it's pissing rain with crazy wind again. This is some crazy stupid weather......

Nerding out/ Aero helmet testing?

I've spent a few afternoons wondering what I will write about for my final Mechanical Engineering report. This report needs to be fairly lengthy and must utilize my Mechanical Engineering skills. I think I have come up with a decent topic and a plan to implement it. I'm considering creating a very small and inexpensive low speed wind tunnel to test the aerodynamic effectiveness of cycling helmets. The wind tunnel could be constructed out of cardboard and lexan (for a viewing area) and be run from standard room fans. I will need to verify the wind speed with a wind speed indicator. The tricky part will be constructing a frame to hold a sytrofoam head and helmet while measuring the force (in grams) that is exerted by the wind speed. Between Tammy and myself we have 3 "aero" helmets (2 are different sizes), 2 different road helmets and a motorcycle helmet (just for fun I'll throw this in the tests). I may need to borrow other "aero" helmets to complete my testing to be able to differentiate what style of helmet works over other styles. Firstly I have to have my idea approved by the co-op office, which shouldn't be a problem. The only problem I can for-see is having enough time on the weekends to start and finish this with enough time left over to complete a decent report.

We have Ironman Austria coming up quickly and we are now entering our final hard 2 week build for the race. So I can't see myself really starting this project until after mid-July. I should be able to create the designs and build it fairly quickly afterwards, but ideally I would like to have an idea as to which helmet tests faster prior to my race in Austria. I guess I will have to flip a coin between the Rudy Syton Open and the Giro Advantage 2.

And yeah I still haven't done anything with my hard drive yet. It'll have to wait until later this summer.

Now it's time to watch the Triathlon Worlds (www.triathlon.org) in Vancouver.