Entries from June 2010 ↓
June 12th, 2010 — asha, cycling
Today I spent the an awesome sunny day cycling through Redmond, Duvall, Snohomish as past of the the Flying wheels summer century ride.
I have done this ride in twice before (2006 – 70miles, 2007 – 100 miles). I had a sort of deja vu from 2007 I started getting cramps around mile 70, but the good part of I’m quite happy with how i pushed myself. I learnt two things –
1. Human body is amazing, if you push it can survive a lot of things. I ended up pushing through the last 3 miles hill with cramps, after a few pedals the cramps disappeared.
2. Make sure your condition your muscles for performance not just endurance. I did hard run on Thursday and I was still sore from it. I should use my training time effectively, just like Body by Science.
Anyways, the Asha Team and Emel (a friend from Run, Dinner Social) did awesome! Most riders finished the 65 mile loop, now folks are eyeing the STP. Emel did awesome on her first century beating me by a full hour!
My stats: Ride time 8 hours 20 min. No where good but given the conditions I’m very happy with how i pushed myself.
Now the pictures.
7:30 start ended up being 8:20 start as i forgot my helmet 
Gorgeous sunny day!
Rest Stops – I did about 1:30 of rest stop time (Slacker )
Finish line fiesta and team Asha
June 9th, 2010 — backpacking, cycling, mountaineering, travel, vacation
Alrite summer is just around the corner! Its the time we folks in Northwest look forward to! The entire misery of dark winters and rainy days is worth the gorgeous 3 months of summer we get around here!
I have been meaning to do a few outdoorsy things this summer, and wanted to started chalking my list here so that friends and family can join in, talk me in to and out of few things -
- Rock-climbing & Bouldering
- A weekend bouldering trip to Squamish!
- Climbing as many single-pitch 5.8s as I can. May be pick up Exit-38 Wednesdays!
- Goal: Outer space (?) (July 2nd week or Aug 2nd week) – Outer space is a six pitch climb near Leavenworth, and it has been my goal since i started cragging a couple of years ago. Given my space and rock-climbing touch, it might not happen this year but still a worthy goal.
- Mountaineering –
- Mt. Adams (June 19th?)
- Mt. Baker (June 26th)
- Mt. Shuskan (?)
- Goal: Lead a trip up Mt. Rainier (July 17th), may be two
- Goal: One ice-climb, may be Mt. Hood late in the season (Aug 1st week?)
- Cycling
- Flying Wheels Summer Century! (June 12th)
- Goal: Lead a week-long trip along Oregon Coast (week of July 24th), in preparation to India biking adventure.
- Motorcycling
- Now that i still have my SV650s for this season I would love to do some long riding and track days with it. I have already been eyeing some routes.
- Goal: Do at-least one long ride and one track day!
- Backpacking
- Yosemite (?) (Late summer Aug(?))
- Need suggestions and friends to go with!
- Hiking & Camping
- Granite Mountain
- Camp Muir
- Goal: At-least do one camping trip with friends
- Try a new activity
- Rafting down Yakima river! (July 4th –?)
- Sea-kayaking or Sailing
- Goal: Learn to swim in open water
May be I should make a outdoor activities calendar. Making it public is a little itchy but hey its summer in the northwest!!
June 9th, 2010 — nutrition, workouts
Last week when I visited India my friends and family commented on how I looked fitter than the last time they saw me! I attribute some of that improvement to Body Of Science. For past 6 weeks or so I have seen reasonable results from this new workout!
Lowell introduced me to this workout, and has been coaching me through past few weeks. The book – Body Of Science describes the workout in detail. However, in short the idea is to design as efficient a workout as possible. Our muscles are made up of four kinds of fibers (slow twitch, 3 fast twitch – oxidative, glycolytic and oxidative/glycolytic) each of those engage in different activities (strength, endurance etc). Our muscle fibers grow stronger only if we push them hard, to the point that they fail. Once that happens the body reacts by building better muscles over a recovery time!! So an ideal workout is the one which engages all the muscle fibers and gets them to the point of failure as quickly as possible! Well that is what, Body By Science is about!
In the work-out one tries to engage major muscles groups one at a time, by putting them under load (i.e weight) and doing it in a slow consistent way until the muscle group reaches to the point of failure and then we try to go for an extra bit (10 more seconds)! To illustrate the point here is a video of pulldown, starring Lowell :
The goal of each exercise is to increase the weight and time under load (TUL), repetitions are not that important. The idea is to start with a weight which one can do for at-least 45 seconds and each time increment the weight as soon as one can comfortably do it for 80 seconds or so. The ideal time for each rep is about 20 seconds! The Body by Science authors recommend 45-200 seconds for each workout, but from what we have been doing 60-90 second seems like an effective range for most folks.
Following are the results from last few weeks doing the five major muscles groups (note: core muscles are taken care of by all workout but specifically by shoulder press, leg press and pull-down).
(Please note: score is a connived measure of the entire routine which Lowell has been experimenting with, its a function of weight, time & reps)
More Resources -
Comments/ Suggestions/ Questions?
