[vimeo 96560790 w=500 h=281]
Zegama-Aizkorri from B&B on Vimeo.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTb4IJvTTtY&w=560&h=315]
Author: Chris Rivard Page 25 of 36
http://www.strava.com/activities/148752510
Trying to keep heart rate low low low today. I moved so slowly up to Washington Park I probably could have pranced and gone a little quicker. One more run this week, then racing on Sunday. I’m trusting that my 50 mile weeks were enough of a base and that my 20 milers will carry me through.
The Beacon Rock course has about 1K more elevation than Gorge 50K – 7500/vert. Most volcanoes (Hood, St. Helens) are about 5K… and I’ll be running what I can. My strategy is to start slow and negative split the second 15 miles, which means I’m going to need to dig deep the 2nd time up Hamilton Mountain.
Starting to inventory food and hydration and planning a feed strategy. It’s going to be in the 70’s and I think there will be a lot of open running (full sun).
7 Days.
The weather in Portland is best suited to long-sleeve zips most of the year and that’s what I’ve been wearing all through the winter and early spring. I have a nice short sleeved Nike Dri-Fit T-shirt from Hood to Coast a couple of years ago – I really like the (nearly) absence of any seams and that it dries really fast… but I don’t really want to wear a H2C shirt at this weekend’s race. Sounds vain – but I have major issues with chafing and I really don’t want to deal with the aftermath next Monday. I have a TNF tank top that I like – but anything longer than 10 miles, it chafes very bad below my pits. So new Patagonia Outpacer shirt in the laundry.
Weather looks like it’s going to be in the low 80s, so I also picked up salt tablets to avoid any hyponatremia problems. As there are aid stations every 5 miles, I was thinking of just taking a handheld bottle… or two – and then carrying gels and just eating from the table – the problem with this tactic is that I haven’t done my long runs this way, so …. bad idea to do something different in a race. I may not be able to hold a bottle for the second 15 miles and I can imagine freaking out trying to decide if I should dump my bottle or not…or trying to clip it to my belt somehow so I don’t have to carry it — I’d rather save the angst and stick to my run pack. Still considering taking one bottle — and then taking aid when it’s available.
20 oz of Tailwind every 5 miles… is about 6 bottles… if I take a hydration bladder @ 70 oz it will take me to about mid-race before I’ll need a refill. I think the best strategy is to take 2 bottles, no hydration bladder and refill at every aid. If I count and mark my Tailwind in baggies, I can refill with water and tailwind when I roll into aid.
Beacon Rock AS
5.5
11.8
15.5 – drop bag
21.0
27.3
I think I’ve tapered correctly the past 2 weeks – I’m planning to get 2 medium runs early in the week and then just stretch/yoga/foam roll the back half of the week and be ready to rock on Sunday. Woot!
This past weekend we painted Sunny Crossing in our neighborhood (Sunnyside). In conjunction with the Village Building Convergence we had a great turnout and painted and street partied all day long.
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Music, parades, lots of food (2 Brothers Cafe donated ~20 full meals of Cevapi). The kids had a great time and I was reminded again how special it is living in Portland.
We have plans to add a bicycle repair station and a little library. I’m on the hook to design and build both, but I’m not sure of a design – specifically for the bike repair station. I have a few sketches and some requirements (small shelter to protect users from the rain, etc.). We didn’t finalize permits by last weekend, so we’ll need to continue later into the summer. I’d also like to build in a few features to make the intersection a little more sticky, e.g. allow pedestrians and cyclists to linger.
I had no idea that people came from around the globe to participate in the VBC events in Portland. There was a women who traveled from Japan and was participating in many of the activities throughout the city – and of course there were the grizzled veterans of past VBC projects who showed up with their own gear (paint brushes and knee pads) and immediately got to work.
It’s a great excuse to have a block party every year to take over the street and repaint Sunny Crossing.
It was amazing seeing cyclists stop, smile, and admire the painting.
https://vine.co/v/MpzJVWdFguE
https://vine.co/v/MpW6m9UPPYD
https://vine.co/v/MpWap11TpUq
{dude can’t you see i’m vining this amazing painting?}
http://www.strava.com/activities/147056541
Get to a clearing, look around…see that highest point. Run up it.
Having a very difficult time throttling back the intensity this week. I purposely brought my running shoes home from work today so that I can’t *accidentally* go running tomorrow.
I think this will be my last tempo run in this taper. Racing next Sunday. I was going to go easy today, but my Thursday schedule is such that I have a huge chunk of time just before and just after the lunch hour, and if I time it right, I can escape for a long-ish run. I first considered the Balch Creek run up to Pittock and through the Japanese Garden… then I found myself engrossed in a design that I was working on and couldn’t pull myself away – so I was late getting out the door… even then!!! I considered running up and over Council Crest to the Zoo and back through Washington Park. It was a full on crazy moment of perpetual optimism. My mom used to always say I had no concept of time (thank goodness!).
As I made my way up Council Crest today feeling rocksteady I still considered going up and over… I set up a data page on my watch so that I can see elapsed time, HR, pace and mileage in one view. Even as I popped out of the woods at the radio tower I *still* thought about just dropping down the other side, crossing 26 and picking up Wildwood at the Zoo even though I knew I would be 10 mins late getting back to the office.
It took quite a bit of restraint after circling the top to drop back into the woods and return the same way I came up. Super fun dropping down on twisty singletrack. I haven’t done that downhill in months and I would typically run that section around mile 15… not so fresh… today it was perfect.
Starting to do some visualization about the race – it’s two loops of the 25K course, with aid stations about every 5 miles, so I don’t think I need to carry a pack/hydration bladder – maybe just one bottle and refill as needed at the AS. We’ll see, generally pretty relaxed about it – although with 7500 ft. of climbing, the second time up Hamilton Mtn is going to be *the suck*. Looking forward to it.
(this post is sponsored by the 80s … all of them.)
Starting to taper for Beacon Rock and feeling karate strong. Overall mileage is coming down, intensity is staying level.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk-SDreueMw]
This is a good example of a design team that has too many things going on.
In a past design of the Twitter web app, the “collapse entry” icon was located in the header bar (I think it even said “Collapse”). It has since been moved down into the feed attached to specific stream entry. Where previously it was a common, centrally located icon used to collapse all open entries, there is now an explosion of similar and confusing icons + mismatched labels. The icon (historically an “open new window” icon) is doing the work of multiple actions.
It says to me that no one is minding the gap … by which I mean there is some communication or process issue that leads to this kind of design. It’s also an example of how hard icon design can be… from memory, I recall that the past collapse icon may have been a hamburger menu… which may not been the best choice either.
I’d love to see the data that lead to removing the collapse control from the header, but I think the explosion of iconography indicates some other issue. I have a hard time believing that users grasp the distinction between all of the above icon/label combinations.
Many times a designer’s job is to create a solution based on an identified need within a pre-determined set of constraints. In the context of designing for business – the constraints can be a release schedule, a product launch or simply the evolution of a larger strategy.
One interesting scenario that I’ve encountered is in fact the deconstruction or the dismantling of software within the context of a larger system. Feature extraction. The constraint manifests in designing a feature out of the software. Think of an old house that needs to be remodeled. The first step is to take all the walls down to studs and then begin the remodel.
So much effort goes into planning, researching, designing, communicating, iterating *building* … but it’s rare as a designer to consider how your design will be dismantled or “undesigned”. Most of the work that we do is creating; not elegantly destroying. This type of design is some of the most complex design I’ve ever done. It’s more like surgery in fact.
A distinction we often make in designing software is that it can simply be thrown away. There is no material cost. Software products die or are abandoned. Features are left unfinished (this is UX debt in a large system). This issue is probably more salient in industrial design where the designer considers materials and the environmental impact of design decisions (hopefully … the track record of mobile device manufacturers is abhorrent). Hardware isn’t cool , it’s fucking dirty…but I digress.
There are many metaphors to describe the process: swapping out the engine as the car is driving, building the rocket ship as it’s launching, etc. Deconstruction design is all about minimizing impact, making sure everything is patched up as you design interactions out, slowly backing up to the door, exiting and closing it behind you.
With no bike commute downtown to work, I took the entire weekend off! Unbelievable. It really felt like I was on vacation. The last few weeks have been heavy mileage for me. I never post my cycling miles, but a regular commute week is about 30 miles of riding … pushing 50 + miles of running, my legs are tired.
The point was to have a stressful training block – and then back off to recover. I was starting to feel my hip flexors and my heels were bothering me. Not much other than that – didn’t run anything very fast, just piling on mileage. That was 11 days straight with no rest days.
Worked on a few house projects that had been lingering. I replaced 3 basement windows 2 years ago 😉 (reframed / new pressure treated bucking / new windows) and never finished the exterior trim… worked on that on Saturday and then started to get the pop-up ready for camping season.
I always take the magnesium anode out of the hot water heater over the winter when I drain the water lines, so I had to put that back in and sanitize the water tank and lines with diluted bleach. The battery is questionable. It will be fine for a weekend, but it hasn’t been conditioned in a while so I’m not sure how much life it has left. At 7 years old it still holds a good change – last year in the North Cascades I was able to keep it at 12v for almost a week using one 15w solar panel. Maybe I’ll replace it after this trip – ideally with 2 @ 6v golf cart batteries wired in series (for 12v + more amp hours than a single 12v deep cycle).
The battery powers the water pump, LED lights (super-efficient) and the fan on the furnace. The refrigerator, stovetop, furnace and water heater (6 gallons) run on propane. On a long trip, the water pump is getting heavier use if we’re taking showers (outside shower hookup). I got a Weber baby q grill for Father’s day last year and with the cast iron griddle, I can cook every meal on it (no cooking in the camper). I make a mean huevos rancheros.
If anything, managing daily activities on 12volts and solar for an extended time give you a new appreciation for your energy usage. Plus it’s just rad living off the grid 😉
I’ve still been researching Sprinter vans and found these guys out of Cali – Habat Vans. Love the little 2500 High Top.
http://www.strava.com/activities/141589649
The most difficult thing for an athlete to admit is…
My right heal has been “of concern” for about a month or so… maybe longer. It’s funny b/c you almost go through the Kübler Ross stages – if it’s just a little ache, it’s easy to just power through and ignore it. The injuries that are completely debilitating are really the only ones that can be fessed up to, because it’s difficult to deny an injury that takes you out completely.
Cool nature
This one started on a descent through the woods from Council Crest. When I popped out of the woods at Marquam shelter I though I had stepped on a rock and my heal was bruised. I wrote it off – for months. Cutting to the chase – it’s called plantar fasciitis. The plantar fascia is the tendon/ligament/fascia that runs from the bottom of your toes to your heel on the bottom of your foot. It typically presents as a sore heel. It is in fact a distance running malady. I’ve been researching it for about a month and trying various fixes. I’m only writing because I found the one that worked. More on that in a moment.
First I want to talk about zero-drop shoes, calf injuries, plantar fasciitis and compression sleeves – because (imho) they’re all related. Most people don’t have the correct biomechanics or ligament / musculature to run in a zero drop shoe (the drop is measured in mm from the heel to toe). The closer to zero the drop, the closer to barefoot the shoe will feel. Not considering the barefoot / toe shoe lawsuit that a company settled this week (was it Merrell)? I was thinking on my run yesterday about cave men. That I am a caveman firstly, but also that all the paleo diets and caveman rock lifting workouts and barefoot running … that guess what? The average lifespan of a caveman was about 16 years (don’t quote me on that). Maybe that entire testosterone-fueled movement needs a re-think. The thing that just kills me is seeing really heavy guys wearing a backpack and barefoot running shoes..on concrete sidewalks. Dude; I’m crying for your knees and your feet. It’s painful to watch.
My particular issue is mostly around the carbon fiber orthotics that I don’t want to wear in my running shoes. Why? They slide in my shoe on descents b/c they’re only mid-foot to heel orthotics and not full length. As they slide, they burn through the shoe. For realz. That and my podiatrist said to just put them in on top of the insole that comes with the shoe. This is stupid advice (I didn’t tell him this) because it adds too much lift and increases the chance of a high ankle sprain in technical terrain. The past few months were mostly an experiment on my part to run a bit more natural – sans custom/aftermarket insoles. The experiment ended as of today.
Mt. St. Helens from the Arboretum in Forest Park. Hazy today.
I have 3 pairs of Superfeet insoles in various pairs of running shoes and I pulled a pair and ran with them today. No issues at all. They provided just enough arch support that my plantar fascia wasn’t over-flexing while ascending or descending. It was pure joy running with no little nagging ache in my heel. Super. I’ll keep them and maybe pick up a new pair.
Buff trails in Forest Park. So. Damn. Fun.
Good soul run today. Not fast – pretty mellow. I carried a single bottle w/water, but couldn’t find my handheld strap, so I just hung on to it (only dropped it once).