The Fit Nation

https://ift.tt/coUpwvO On Tuesday I did my long ride with my group, West of Morgan Hill and around both Uvas and Chesbro reservoirs with an out-and-back to Rancho Canada Del Oro Open Space on Casa Loma Road. We had pleasant weather for it although we had a pretty decent headwind in the southbound legs. Taking A Break In the Shade at Rancho Canada Del Oro I rode my recumbent with electric assist, which works better for me nowadays for longer rides (this was about 35 miles for me, including riding to and from the group ride start from home). I am working on getting my ride length up on my upright. Currently I can go a bit over an hour with no issues, but sometimes my SI joint gets a little cranky if I push it longer. I don’t want to overdo that because it can progress to a sciatica flare-up. So I add a little more to my upright sessions each week. Loma Prieta in the Distance To the West From Rancho Canada Del Oro

https://ift.tt/oakAMZJ www.Amazon.com/books This is an excellent book I recently read by Matt Tenney. The title, and the message of the book, are reminiscent of Thich Nhat Hanh’s classic The Miracle of Mindfulness . The magic, or miracle, happens when you spend more of your time paying 100% attention to what you are presently doing. This make you spend less time worrying about the future or reliving painful moments from the past, and more time in the present. This is something I’ve been working on for some time but it is admittedly difficult to do on a regular basis. This book gave me motivation to try harder. There is an amazing story at the beginning where Matt discovered this. He had made a bad error in judgement which led him to a very distressing place (he attempted to commit fraud and ended up in prison). After a couple of years there he noticed that instead of ruminating about how bad his situation was, if he just paid full attention while brushing his teeth he felt a lot ...

https://ift.tt/mkDOdce Although we are only a few weeks from the official start of summer, the weather has still been cool like late spring lately, a beautiful time to be riding. I’m able to pretty routinely go on brisk three hour rides lately, with no sciatica symptoms. I’ve been doing a lot of PT work to keep the nerve openings in my lower spine open, and strengthen the surrounding muscles to support the area. Aside from that, I’ve avoided long hard rides. It’s either a long brisk cruise or hard stuff like intervals and strength training on shorter days. Not only is it avoiding symptoms, but I enjoy this combination. Most of my riding is still on my recumbent. I’m only doing shorter rides on my upright. I still have to toughen up my butt for longer upright riding as it got soft when I couldn’t ride as much the last time my sciatica flared up badly. I’m chipping away at fixing that. The Grass Has Switched to Summer Mode on the Coyote Creek Trail. That is Loma Prieta in the distance...

https://ift.tt/SMG6g45 On Tuesday my group rode out to the end of Redwood Retreat road and back (to the Southwest of Morgan Hill). I did a long warm-up before meeting them, turning this into a 3 hour ride for me. The weather was a little on the cold and foggy side at first but it got nicer when the fog burned off. With electric assist this was a pleasant pace for me. Looking Southwest from the top of Day Road Rest Stop At the Entrance to Kirigin Cellats Beautiful Vineyard at the end of Redwood Retreat Road

https://ift.tt/hwKV4Wr https://www.cyclingnews.com/features/wrist-vs-chest-strap-heart-rate-monitor-which-is-better-for-you/ This article has a good discussion of accuracy ot wrist (also called optical) measurements. They even mention that freckles can throw off the results. Guess what! I have freckles on my wrist. Devices that monitor our heart rates based on a measurement at the wrist are pretty prevalent nowadays, including Fitbit, Garmin watches, and Apple Watches. There are also devices that promise more sophisticated results such as heart rate variability from Whoop. These devices then tell us insightful things about our recent workouts or our activity throughout the day, how long we should recover before our next hard workout, and even how well we are sleeping. The trouble is that the accuracy of the data all this information is based on is suspect. I first noticed this back when I had a Fitbit. It would often read higher than I suspected was correct, based on how hard I fe...

https://ift.tt/qZFc3X4 I finished up my round of antibiotics and have been asymptomatic for a few days now, so the last couple for days I’ve been able to workout for longer and with higher intensity and it felt great. Yesterday I went on a brisk long cruise of just under three hours. The only problem was it was hotter than I realized so I got a little dehydrated, which didn’t feel well later but I recovered OK. It’s always important to hydrate enough so I’ll watch that in the future. It’s also probably time to go into “summer mode” and take ice water in my hydration bags. Aside from that little glitch training has been good lately. I just have to avoid getting too enthused and overdoing which could flair my sciatica back up. The Northern Part of Coyote Valley. Still pretty, but unfortunately going from green to brown since we haven’t had a lot of late spring rain

https://ift.tt/p1bZhVH http://www.Amazon.com/books I just read an excellent book The Beck Diet Solution by Dr. Judith Beck. I was looking for a book applying cognitive behavioral therapy to weight loss, and came up with this one in a search on Amazon. CBT is excellent for improving negative thought patterns that affect our behavior. I personally notice negative thoughts leading to bad eating habits especially snacking (like when the little voice of temptation whispers “what could it hurt just this once?”) and I figured others might also, and CBT might help with this. It turns out Dr Beck’s father was a CBT pioneer and she is well versed in this, and excellently qualified to write this book. I have gone several weeks avoiding snacking between meals and unplanned eating at mealtimes, my two downfalls. The first couple of weeks I had to gut it out, but afterwards it has gotten easier due to applying techniques from this book. For clarification, Dr. Beck means “diet” in the sense of...

https://ift.tt/KamQUTW The illness I referred to as a cold in my last post is persisting. By last Wednesday I had not had .fever symptoms in 3 days so I went on a long ride with intervals thrown in, and it felt great I did have a stye in my left eye that was getting redder, however, so I got in to see my Doc the next day. She said the stye was infected and put me on antibiotic eye drops. I asked her about whether I was still infectious with the cold. She said the rule of thumb is a week after a fever. However, she also thought some of my symptoms might be related to my infection from the stye, and told me to keep her posted of any changes. That night (last Thursday) the fever returned as bad as previously. So I called her office and she put me on internal antibiotics as well (Amoxicillin). That knocked the fever back out and by Yesterday it had not returned. I’m being a little more careful ramping the training back up. I did short easy rides Friday, Yesterday, and Today. What my tr...