On the Joy of Trails - or - Why I Will Not Take the City Shortcut Again

When I decided to try bicycle commuting from Silver Spring to downtown DC, the first choice was whether to take the Capital Crescent Trail, or just to make a straight shot down 14th Street into the city core. The trail would take a long time, but it would be safer - no traffic. The straight shot wouldn't be as peaceful, but it would be a lot faster. For the first couple weeks, I made the 12.7-mile hour-long journey around the Capital Crescent Trail. Today, for the first time, I took the direct route: Seven miles straight into town. Even with traffic and stoplights, it only took a little over 40 minutes, effectively cutting my commute time by a third. Instead of lazily wandering my way around the outskirts of town, I went right in there and got 'er done. So, I'll be commuting like this every day, right?

HELL TO THE NO.

I far prefer the hour-long trail journey, for many, many reasons, presented here in reverse order. I will try to recall them here, but bear in mind I am still woozy from all the bus fumes I inhaled this morning, so I might miss a few.

• Asshole Cabbies and Ignorant Trucks.
  
  I really do like the concept of "bike lanes." Even though I'm really no farther from the cars than I would be if they just went around me, that solid white line provides an impregnable mental barrier and gives me the confidence I need to just keep swimming, just keep swimming. At least, that's the theory. All too often it's blocked by a megatruck that's decided to rest a while while the CVS unloads some shipments, or by a reckless taxi driver who thinks "bike lanes" and "passing lanes" are synonymous. Actually it's not just taxis that do this, but they seem to be the most flagrant violator. So sometimes when my path is blocked, I have to move into the traffic lane, but there's no room, so I am just stuck there breathing in fumes, until I decide to just pick my bike up and bring it to over the sidewalk, where I have to walk it past hundreds of people until I can get back onto the road.
  
  
• Metric Fuckton of Hills.
  
  For some reason, I had the impression that riding from Silver Spring to downtown DC was basically one big hill. After all, Silver Spring is at 340 feet above sea level; DC is basically at sea level. That's 340 feet over 7 miles, or about an 8 percent decline. But it didn't play out like that, ohhh no. Here's the log from today's trip -- be sure to check out the elevation profile at the bottom:
  
  
  See that? That's not a smooth slope. That's a series of extended half-pipes culminating with a mega hill at mile 1.5, a minor mega-hill just before mile 2, another at 2.5 and 2.75, then again at 4, until FINALLY we see the big quarter-mile roller coaster drop off just before mile 6. So there's a lot of uphills, which sucks, but it's usually not so bad because uphills have a built-in reward: downhills. But EVEN THE DOWNHILLS ARE NOT FUN, because there are so many Stop Lights and Pedestrians and Weaving Cars and Inattentive Drivers and The Possibility of Danger, that you can't just sit back and enjoy the hills. Which brings me to the main problem...
  
  
• Not Enough "Weeeeeeee!" Time.
  
  Here's what it comes down to. The only way I am going to ride to work is if it's fun. Dodging traffic and dealing with hills is not fun. It gets me to work faster, sure, but it feels so... utilitarian. I'm getting some exercise, yeah, and I'm getting there about as fast as I would with the metro. But it's not fun. It's not something I seek out. It's not something I dream about.
  
  I dream about the bike trails. I dream about the long 4-mile gently sloping uphill ride into Bethesda, and more to the point, I dream about the amazing 8-mile downhill into DC. I don't buy bike gear and wake up early and get all suited up to go pedal through traffic; I do it so I can feel the intensity of powering up that long big hill, and the rush of reaching the other side. I do it for that feeling we all get on long steep hills with no cars to dodge and no stop lights to contend with. I do it for the Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!
  
  I dream about the trails because I get to ride to work under a beautiful green canopy, surrounded by nature, passing waterfalls and streams, and when the trail opens up into a view of the Potomac and I've gone over 10 miles and there are only 2 left, I feel satisfied and content and happy. And I'm smiling all the way to work.
  
  And when I get there, I can't wait to do it again tomorrow.
  
  Cut 20 minutes off a beautiful journey by shortcutting through a noisy, crowded metropolis?
  
  Why on earth would I want to do that?

Zen and the Art of Cycling

I am finding cycling to be invigorating, refreshing, relaxing, and therapeutic. The other day I snapped a shot of the Potomac on my ride home from work:

On Saturday I met up with a friend in Bethesda and we rode along the trail together! It was the first time I've ever gone bike riding with someone. :-) Here we are being awesome:

I have admittedly gone kind of wild with the bike-related spending. But it's all in the name of safety, so I'm okay with it. My blinking lights are awesome but I think my favorite item has been the Reflective Dots and Dashes, which I got on clearance at City Sports for $2.86.  Check out my helmet!

Looks like my reflectors work!

This morning I woke up too late to ride to work and by the end of the day I was regretting it. After a long day at work I was so wound up, and I realized how great the hourlong bike ride home felt last week. It's hard, especially on the uphills, but it's also calming. I almost crave it.

Notice that I haven't talked about calories or my heart rate or anything like that. I've just been talking about how fun and relaxing and invigorating it is. Oh, I'm still strapped up and I know I'm burning about 1,000 calories a ride, but that's not what I think about, it's not what I'm focused on. I just want to get back on there and ride some more. It's exercise, but it doesn't feel like exercise. It just feels... awesome.  And THAT is how I know this is going to help me shed some weight.  :-)

Biking to Work Rocks

I rode to work today and it was AWESOME.

I made a trial run on Saturday, checking to see how long it would take, and to see whether the trip back was doable or far too uphill. (Answer: Doable.) This morning I strapped up my heart rate monitor, completely immersed myself in blazing yellow spandex, and set out on the 12-mile arc.

Below is an incredibly cool interactive map of the trip. Go ahead and click the "Speed" and "Heart Rate" check boxes to see them overlaid on the elevation graph. (Isn't that cool!)

In total, the ride took about an hour of actual riding time, six minutes of resting or waiting around at stop lights, and ten minutes of enduring taunts from coworkers when I showed up wearing skin-tight bike shorts. The hour is only about 10-15 minutes longer than it would take for me to take the metro (walking to metro + riding the train + walking to office), and I arrived at work with my exercise already done for the day!

If the calculations are to be believed, I burned over *900 calories* on my ride -- and I felt GREAT when I got to work! Totally energized, and -- after a quick hop in the office shower -- ready to go. (NB: I did need coffee about an hour later.) Over the last couple hours I have felt the slightly odd combination of tired and wired.

I've also been incredibly hungry all day; going forward I'll be sure to have some more protein and slow-digesting carbs before I head out.

I've got choir rehearsal tonight so I plan to leave my bike here, take the metro to work in the morning, and ride back tomorrow evening.

So far, so good.

SCHWARTZ ARMSTRONG

I went on a 9 mile bike ride on the Capital Crescent Trail and I loved it! 

That is the good news.

It has come to my attention that I am kind of fat.

That is the bad news.

Hopefully, those two pieces of news will take care of themselves. By taking the Capital Crescent Trail about 12 miles to work a few days a week, I hope to have fun AND melt away the pizza pounds at the same time. (NB: This will work better if I stop adding NEW pizza pounds. Believe me, I am trying to work up to that.)

My bike had just been sitting around, gathering dust, ever since it came out of storage 7 months ago. It was leaning up against my bedroom wall and the tires were deflated and it looked very sad. So a couple mornings ago I filled up the tires and rode it a couple times around my apartment's parking lot... seemed sturdy enough... the next day was beautiful and so I decided to see what the trails around here have to offer...

Wow!

It was a blast!

I was kind of nervous at first, because I haven't ridden in a while, and because the first part of the trail is a packed gravel, which I'm not used to - it's kind of bumpy. But after a few minutes I got the hang of it, and over four miles went by like they were nothing. I rested briefly near a fountain in beautiful downtown Bethesda, took a couple pictures to prove I had been there.

The ride back was even better than the ride out, because I was more comfortable and knew what to expect. In total I rode almost nine miles and I could have gone a lot farther. This bodes well for my 12 mile commute!

I'm thinking that for a while, I can just do the one-way trip there, and then put my bike on the bus rack in the evening. Once I build up my endurance a bit more, then I can tackle 25 mile days (and a somewhat more uphill trail ride going home).

One problem I noticed was that, because I wasn't wearing my wrap-around sunglasses and hadn't taken any allergy medication that day, my eyes became so teary at one point I could barely see!

But once I'm all Zyrtec'd up and wearing sunglasses, I should be fine.

Bike riding is a lot more fun than running, and I reaaaallly hope I can build this into my life.  I've already gone on an Amazon shopping spree for a "SCREAMING YELLOW" windbreaker, a SCREAMING YELLOW pair of bike gloves, some nifty padded bike shorts with SCREAMING YELLOW accents, a bike mirror, and an iPhone holder so I can track speed and distance and all that. Yes, yes, I know, probably overkill, but I like my accoutrements.  :-)

I'll do my next bike ride either Friday evening after work, or on Saturday. The first commute to work is planned for Monday morning. It should take a little over an hour, which may sound like a lot, but it's only about 20 minutes longer than my Metro commute takes normally.

Onward!!!

Dancing Body Parts

I can make my pecs dance.

The above sentence is part boast and part excuse. I know I've been gone for a while. And this time it's not because of some sort of "good silent period" where I am chugging along. I fell off the wagon. I fell off the wagon, but don't worry, for my fall was cushioned by a pile of stuffed crust meat lovers pizzas. You know how if you overeat for several weeks a row, you can gain something like five pounds? Yeah. That.

But it's okay because I can make my pecs dance!

I realized this the other day when I was trying to imitate a classic scene in which Marge asks Homer if he drinks to escape reality, and he responds by looking in the mirror and jiggling his pectorals while humming the Can Can. I can do that! I won't post video of me doing it, because I may have political aspirations one day, but trust me, it's pretty awesome.

Over the past couple months I have gone through a couple jugs of protein powder. I ate like crap, yes, but according to my napkin math, those two jugs were the equivalent of about 12,000 calories of pure protein. And, other than a 2.5 week period in which I didn't set foot in the gym once (2/21 - 3/8), I have lifted weights hard once or twice a week for the past three months.

It turns out 3 months of weight lifting + 12,000 extra calories of protein powder = a few extra pounds of muscle. You see, my scale measures body fat too, and here's an interesting statistic:

Body Composition

	Weight	Body Fat %	Fat Free Mass	Fat Mass
Oct. 2007	207.2	26.0	153.3	53.9
Mar. 2012	212.7	24.8	160.0	52.7

Over the last 4.5 years, it's true, my weight has gone up over five pounds. But look at the breakdown. My fat free mass (muscle, etc.) is up almost seven pounds! And fat mass is down over a pound. In other words, I haven't really lost much fat, but ALL the weight I have gained in the past 4.5 years is muscle!

This explains why I can wear pants I bought in 2005. And it explains why I can now make my pecs dance.

Good News

Don't worry! Unlike certain BAD periods in the past, three weeks of silence in this case does NOT mean I have given up or fallen off the wagon or anything like that. I have just been busy with my new job.  :-)   Admittedly it is harder to fit a daily workout in when I have to leave for work at 8:30. I have not and never will be a morning person, and so morning workouts are simply out of the question. I've tried them; even when I can force myself out of bed (which is doubtful), I am never awake or energetic enough to get a good workout going.

So I've tried to fit workouts in after work, but it's tricky. I've mostly been getting them in on the weekend. I'm averaging about 2 workouts a week, which is not ideal, but it's better than nothing. My weight is holding steady.

Here's the REALLY GOOD NEWS. I've compared my weight and body fat logs from 4.5 years ago to now, and it turns out that although my weight has gone up 3 pounds, my body fat has actually gone down over one pound! Which means I've lost more than a pound of fat, and gained more than 4 pounds of muscle!

I still have a lot more to lose, especially around the middle, but it's nice to know I haven't completely dropped the ball these past several years. :)

Today's Workout:

• 36 mins recumbent bike (pulse avg 130-140)
• Leg Press: 10 reps at 170 lbs, 10 @ 240, 10 @ 290

Treadmill and crunches = good combo

I wouldn't go so far as to say I've "fallen into a routine," but I've noticed that I tend to naturally follow my treadmill C25K runs with 60-80 Swiss ball crunches. It works out pretty well, and I'm in and out of the gym in less than 45 minutes. And I feel great when I'm done!

I finished Week 3 of C25K today. Less than 60 days now until the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler. Honestly I don't know if I'll be up to 10 miles by then. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to handle it from a cardiovascular standpoint, but I'm still just worried about doing too much too soon and getting another stress reaction in my metatarsals, like I did back in aught-nine. But we will see how I feel a couple weeks before the race; if I can't handle it, I'll drop down to the 5K and shoot for 30 minutes.  :-)  (OK, 35 minutes.)

Today's C25K didn't feel quite as easy as a couple days ago -- my body is likely still rebuilding from the 9 mph I threw at it! -- but I did keep the treadmill between 6 and 7.5 mph on the running portions, I didn't have too much tightness, and I felt pretty good overall. It's still hard to believe that in just two weeks I'll theoretically be running 20 minutes without stopping! That's what the program calls for anyway. We'll see if that happens.

I'm not sure exactly how high my pulse got while running, but just after finishing the last 3 minute run it was around 170. Yesterday I ordered a Polar heart rate monitor, so starting with my next run I will be able to monitor my heart rate continuously over the treadmill. I enjoy heart-rate training, as it lets me know quite naturally when I should pull back, and when I can push harder.

My new job starts tomorrow and I am super pumped... it's back to a journalist's life for me! I won't be able to workout tomorrow, and maybe not Friday either, but I will hit it again on the weekend and I'll try to figure out a way to incorporate fitness into my daily routine once I actually have to leave for work every day by 8:30!

(Say what you want about unemployment, but I will miss the lazy mornings and 11 am workouts.)

Here's a picture from today between sets on the Swiss ball! Good runs + good crunches = happy Matt!

9.0 mph ACTUALLY EXISTS on a treadmill

Tonight, in an attempt to make my cardiovascular system capable of running 10 miles without stopping just two months from now, I flung myself down to the gym, where I set the treadmill to a 1% incline and proceeded to do Week 3 of Couch to 5K.

Here's the news: I started my first running segment (90 seconds) at about 5.8 mph, but I was feeling good and quickly pushed it up to 6.2 mph. Did the second running segment (3 minutes) at 6.5. Third running segment (90 seconds) zipped along fairly easily at 7 mph. Fourth and final running segment (3 minutes) started at 7, but my footfalls weren't keeping up with Aerosmith's beat, so I pushed it up to 8. Now I was barely keeping up with the beat, but I still felt like I could do more...

For the first time in my life, I pushed the treadmill up to 9 mph!

I kept it there for over 30 seconds before my body forced me to pull back. I quickly dropped down to 8, 7, 6, and finished the last 30 seconds with a 5.5 jog.

The key takeaway here is not just I managed run at 9 mph for half a minute and not go shooting off the back of the belt (that's a 6:40/mile pace!), but also that my speeds were generally off the chart the whole time. Except for that part at the end where I really pushed myself... it was all so... easy! When has 7 mph EVER been easy? Sure, I didn't hold it for very long - just 90 seconds - but just a few weeks ago, even holding a 5.5 mph jog for 90 seconds was treacherous. I felt like I was going to die. And today it was EASY!

Is this all just a quick reaction to a bit of applied exercise? Sure that's part of it, but I think there's more: For one, my diet today was pretty clean. I started with a spinach florentine bagel with butter, and coffee. With butter, cream, and sugar, we're probably close to 700 calories. So far not so good, but after that, the next thing I ate was a wild rice mix with grilled chicken breast and sauteed walnuts! It was positively delicious, and probably no more than 600 calories. A few hours later, I had some whole wheat pasta with three turkey hot dogs: 500 calories, perhaps. And throughout the day, I had been partaking of sweet Honeybell oranges. Add 200 calories for the juice and fiber.

All told, before I went out running at 9, I had consumed about 2000 calories for the day, most of them pretty solid grains and protein. My body had no gooey cheese to contend with, no disgusting deep fried BLECH to clog the veins. I was appropriately fueled and my body had rebuilt itself from the last time, and I was ready to go.

(Oh, and due to frequent massages with The Stick, my calves didn't tighten up at all.)

For the first time in years, a really good run! To cap off a really good day. I might just make this 10 Miler after all.

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Addendum: Upon reviewing the archives, I am shocked to learn that tonight's experience is about exactly where I was, cardiovascularly, in 2003 -- nine years ago! Take a look at my 2003 description of a treadmill run. I wasn't knowingly using the C25K program, but my method -- run till my pulse hits 170, walk till my pulse hits 130, rinse and repeat -- is essentially exactly what I'm doing now. Wow! This means that I might be in just as good shape as I was when I was 23; I just have a little extra padding around the middle, that's all!

Sickness derails fitness: NEWS AT ELEVEN

Ah, January 16. I remember it well. As readers of this blog may recall, I worked out harder than I had in years. I warmed up with 20 minutes on the recumbent bike, then did an intense upper body workout, and THEN did a bunch of running on the treadmill. I got the speed up to 8 mph at one point. I felt exhausted, and amazing.

But there's something I neglected to mention in my last post. You see, while I was running I felt great, but right afterward, I felt a tightness in my chest. It wasn't a heart attack or anything, but it did feel kind of hard to breathe. I've never really had asthma, but it felt kind of like what I thought asthma might feel like. I came home and Googled "exercise-induced asthma." Such a thing exists, so I chalked it up to that, and vowed to take it a little bit easier in the future.

Then, calamity: Over the next week, I got very sick. My main symptoms? Fatigue... and chest congestion. It turns out that while I was KILLING myself at the gym, my body was also trying to fight off a bug that has been going around DC, and which has cleared all the DC-area drug stores of every formulation of Mucinex. By working out so hard, I inadvertently compromised my immune system.

I fell off the wagon. I couldn't exercise, and because I was sick, I decided it was okay to treat myself with some of the foods I love.

When you go to the gym every day, and exercise hard, and eat well, you build up a momentum and it is easy to keep it going. You always have energy and you WANT to exercise! You WANT to eat nutritious foods! You just naturally want to build on success. Your body has no desire to consume pizza and donuts, because it will just make it harder to exercise, and it will undo the very real gains you are making at the gym.

The flip side is also true. Once you fall off the wagon, it's really hard to get back on. The momentum is lost. It sucks, and it's hard to get started again.

And I don't even want to think about how much pizza I've eaten over the last week. And donuts. Ohhh the donuts.

I know what happened, I know what I did wrong, and in the future if I feel myself coming down with something, I will take it really easy until I know I'm in the clear. I've had almost two weeks off, and my diet has been horrible, and the scale reflects that. Now it's time to get back on the wagon. It will be hard for a few days...

But then it will be easy again.

The Hardest Workout in YEARS

I don't have a lot of time because I want to go to sleep, because I am exhausted, because of what I am about to discuss. Today I was at the gym for two hours and I pushed myself harder than I have in years. I started with 20 minutes on the recumbent bike to warm up (getting my pulse up around 150), then did about an hour's worth of upper body resistance training, and THEN to follow that up, I decided to do one of the Couch-to-5K Week 2 programs. This means I was walking for about 15 minutes, interspersed with 9 minutes of running for 90 seconds each. And this wasn't just any running. It went something like this:

• Walk 5 minutes
• Run 90 seconds at 5.5 mph
• Walk 2 minutes
• Run 90 seconds at 6.0 mph
• Walk 2 minutes
• Run 90 seconds at 6.5 mph
• Walk 2 minutes
• Run 90 seconds at 6.5 mph with 1% incline
• Walk 2 minutes
• Run 90 seconds at 7.2 mph with 1% incline
• Walk 2 minutes
• Run 90 seconds at 7.5-8.0 mph with 1% incline

During that last run, when I pushed the treadmill up to 8 mph and held it there for at least a minute before I "dropped it down" to 7.5 (normally "dropping it down" would be to 4.5 or 5!)... just WOW. I felt incredibly invigorated. My arms were pumping. And I absolutely could not have gotten through it without Aerosmith. 

Another cool thing is that I took my pulse right after the final run, and it was just a little over 160. I wasn't even in my top 10% heart rate zone!

And when I learned that, I realized something pretty awesome: I don't know if I'll be able to train myself to run the 10 Miles on April 1st, but I have no doubt I'll at least be able to run the 5K. And not in 42 minutes like 4 years ago, either. I've got 74 days left till the race. I haven't even begun to fight!

Mmm dinner

My food today was equally healthy:

• Chocolate protein shake and banana (500 cal, 44g protein)
• Grilled chicken with whole wheat pasta and sauteed peppers (~700 cal, 40g protein) 
• Vanilla protein shake with skim milk (500 cal, 54g protein)

TOTAL: 1700 calories, 138g protein

I know, that's pretty low calorie-wise, but I just haven't been hungry. Whole grains and slow-digesting protein powder keep me pretty full.

The scale has been hovering around 210 lately but I'm convinced 208 is at my doorstep!

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Addendum, 7:50 am - 208.4!!!