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March 21, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

You always hear about how hard it is to find time to train when you have small kids. I think it’s true that it presents a challenge, but one that’s pretty easily overcome if you are disciplined with your schedule. Finding time to train isn’t the hardest part of training when you have small kids.

The hardest thing about training when you have small kids is that there seems to always be a cold, ear infection, or sore throat lurking around the house. I don’t notice it so much when the schedule is light, but when volume picks up and the body is more susceptible to the crud, I seem to get it at every turn.

March 20, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

March 15, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

Saw this posted yesterday. Made a card today.

Recommitting by Actually Registering

March 14, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

I’ve been training for Ironman 70.3 Florida since mid-January, and so far training has gone great except for a couple of weeks of illness. Even then I didn’t miss any of my long workouts.

But…

I’ve been putting off actually registering for the race. Part of the reason is that I’ve had a string of injuries (real and phantom) for the past couple of years and didn’t know how I’d do when I started amping up the volume in training. I think staying away from rugby and all of its related antics has gone a long way in avoiding injuries. Then there’s the money part of the equation. If you know me at all, you know it’s hard for me to chunk down a few hundred dollars for something and not get immediate value for it.

Today, when I was pretty wiped out from yesterday’s workouts, I went ahead and registered for the event.

So I’m officially in.

That’s a commitment to the commitment. Now it has to be done for sure. And it’s easier to get up and train on the days you aren’t feeling well if you think of it as getting your money’s worth.

Luckily, the race is close to home. So I won’t need to also purchase a plane ticket as a secondary commitment.

Now, about that diet…

The Hardest Part of Lap Swimming

March 13, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

Deciding who to ask to share their lane.

Our gym has a four lane, 25 yard pool, and it’s very rare to show up there and find an empty lane. If you do, chances are you won’t finish your workout before someone else comes in and needs to share with you. No big deal…I don’t mind sharing a lane. But I’d rather be the one who does the asking instead of being asked. The reason is simple–if I’m doing the asking, I get to decide what kind of swimmer I’ll be sharing with, and who I’ll be accidentally punching in the face. If I get asked, I’m obligated by the social swimming contract to say “sure”, but whether or not I’m about to get accidentally punched in the face is a crap shoot.

Choosing lanes is a little like choosing urinals. There’s an art to it. Today’s swim put all of my lane choosing skills to use.

Lane 1: a pool walker. This lane was automatically ruled out since the first lane is supposed to be reserved for walkers anyway. Plus, I like to avoid swimming next to the wall if possible. It doesn’t have any give to it when you accidentally punch it in the face.
Lane 2: a swimmer. Not going fast, but an able swimmer.
Lane 3: a swimmer. But not a freestyler, a breast-stroker. She was getting into the pool just as I showed up and seemed to be stroking as wide as she could (and eyeballing me the whole time). Obviously, not the choice.
Lane 4: a swimmer. Going about the same speed as the Lane 2 swimmer.

So the dilemma was Lane 2 or Lane 4. Again, I’d rather not swim on the wall, but Lane 4 is extra wide, so that usually isn’t a problem in this lane. So I watched. Even though they were going the same speed, the Lane 4 swimmer was working harder than the Lane 2 swimmer to maintain the pace. And her form (I may not be able to lay an egg, but I can tell a good one from a bad one) wasn’t nearly as clean as the Lane 2 swimmer’s. Finally, the clock is directly in front on Lane 2. I don’t like to wear a watch while I swim and depend on that clock, so I prefer having it right in front of me if possible.

I chose correctly. Not only did I avoid making contact with Lane 2 swimmer during my workout, there was only one time during the session that we were side-by-side. I must have walked in during one of her rest sets because she picked up the pace with some sprints while I was in the pool. In fact, even when a lane became open I opted to keep sharing Lane 2 instead of jumping over to the empty lane and taking the risk that I’d end up sharing again with an unknown entity.

I need to do a post soon about choosing where to line up for the start of an open-water swim. Note: the decision is heavily skewed if you’ve already caught someone moving your stuff in transition set up and would like to kick them in the face.

Accidentally.

Photo Credit

The Post-Cycling Wine-o

March 9, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

I’ve been doing a lot of my cycling at night lately, and I’m fortunate to be able to do that. The only problem is that riding the bike really wakes me up. I’m typically very alert and awake for at least an hour after getting out of the saddle. It’s like the anti-swimming. And that’s great for morning rides, but when I finish a workout at 11:30 pm, I just want to go to sleep…but I can’t.

If I had unlimited time and access to a lap pool, I’d handle this solution like Elvis–jump into the pool and swim for a while to induce sleep. Then I’d also need to jump on the bike after swimming to get my energy levels back up. It’s a vicious cycle.

Since I can’t go for a quick swim to make me sleepy, could a list of great post-cycling wines be the solution?

I just have to be careful not to partake when I have a workout the following morning…running with a headache is no fun, and even a glass affects me these days.

March 5, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

How can you hate the free market on a Wednesday when it is the very existence of the free market that allows you to successfully pressure for-profit entities to remove their advertising dollars from someone who says something you don’t like on Thursday?

This isn’t commentary on what was said, who said it, or whether it was right or wrong.

But doesn’t this prove (yet again) that free markets are a good thing.

What’s Missing From Every Help Desk App

March 5, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

If I were designing a Help Desk application from the ground up, there’s one feature I’d put front and center: Requester Competency Rating.

Every time help desk personnel handle a call or request, they should be able to rate the technical competency of the person on the other end of the phone. Right now, the default position for every support call is that the person asking for assistance is a pre-schooler, and you build up from there.

Case in point: a month and a half ago I registered a request for help with a vendor. I’d already spent a couple of weeks identifying a problem and eliminating as many possible causes as I could think of, documenting every step with data and including this information in my request. I was finally granted my request for a remote session today, where the person helping me spent over an hour performing the exact steps I’d already performed and included in my request.

The problem is that I have logged several requests with this vendor in the past, and each request has been in regards to an actual problem with their system that I’d identified and isolated. Wouldn’t it make sense to have a system that can flag any new requests I make in the future? Shouldn’t the default position be “incoming request from a guy who it’s safe to assume has already read our manual, read the community support forums, and still has a problem”?

Help desk people who deal with internal users (behind the firewall) probably develop a pretty good idea of who has technical skills and who doesn’t already, but there should be an easy way for them to share this information among themselves and for any new people who join the support team. Every time the phone rings or a ticket is submitted, the person who will be handling the request would have a huge leg up if they already knew what kind of user they are going to be dealing with.

And that’s not meant as an insult to non-technical users either. They need (and deserve) to have their hands held a little more than a tech savvy user, and there’s nothing wrong with doing that. It just doesn’t make sense to waste the time of someone who has already done half of the help desks work by isolating the issue for them. Why not leverage them to help provide better service to everyone?

March 3, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

This is your pain….Don’t deal with this the way those dead people do. Deal with it the way a living person does.

~Tyler Durden

That Rude Smart Phone Thing

March 2, 2012 / Scott / 1 Comment

The topic of discussion on a local radio talk show this morning was “things people do that are unbelievably rude”. The general consensus was that the most rude behavior in our culture is paying attention to your phone when others are trying to engage you in conversation. This behavior is also known as “I-Don’t-Know-Who-This-Text-Is-From-But-It-Has To-Be-More-Interesting-Than-What-You-Are-Saying-Itis”

We’ve all done it. Some more than others. Some are aware we’ve done it and have tried to correct it. I’m proposing a nation-wide movement to address it.

I’m going to be trying out a couple of behavior modification initiatives on people I come into contact with. To be fair, there aren’t that many, but I’m interested to see what happens.

If I’m in a fixed location like a living room and am having a discussion with someone, I’m going to stop what I’m saying mid-sentence until they look back up from their phone, then continue on until they look back down again. I can only assume they are completely bored with whatever I’m talking about, so this is sort of a spiteful way to get back at them for ignoring me by making it drag out even longer.

If I happen to run into someone coming in/out of the grocery store or something and we stop to talk, I’m going to walk away the instant they start paying attention to their device. I’ll just assume the conversation is over and we’re done.

Turnabout is fair play. Do the same thing to me if I’m paying more attention to a device than I am to you. Feel free to add a throat clearing sound in there too.

I won’t think you’re being rude, but I may be embarrassed at my own behavior.

I’m reading– February 3rd through February 29th

February 29, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

How to make hard-to-obtain Sudafed from readily available street meth. – I’m on week 3 of a cough/cold. Haven’t resorted to medication yet, but at least this gives me options.

U.S. water bills to triple – Don’t worry…someone will declare it a right since it’s necessarily for life. That will magically make it “free”.

Skateboard Swing – Building this in 3, 2, 1…

Acer Iconia Tab A500ICS updates coming in April – This article complains that the update isn’t coming soon enough. I’m teaching my kids to be happy with what you have. Not everyone is getting ICS.

HTC: Updates to Ice Cream Sandwich in March – This will make March creep by. Maybe I should take out a 30 day loan to speed up time?

Contador loses Tour de France title – Finally someone else will get the chance to be crowned the best dirty cyclist in the game.

Masters athletes keep their muscle with age – “The authors also note that it’s these aspects of aging that tend to increase health care costs, so if each individual continues to develop their muscles as they age, the exercise could channel those unspent billions back into the economy.”

Does this mean taxpayers should be subsidizing my training?

Circle of Death Workout

February 24, 2012 / Scott / 0 Comments

This is a dang good ‘un. Also known as “The Vicious Cycle”, I learned this one back in the late 90s from a sadistic South African rugby coach. For any former teammates who are reading this, let me apologize in advance for the nightmares you’ll have tonight. I know you’ve done your best to repress any memory of being put through this.

The only equipment you need is a place to do pull-ups and a little bit of space. Think of your pull-up station as the backstop of a baseball diamond. That’s where you start. The rest of the stations are arranged just like the bases on the baseball diamond. Home plate = push-ups, First base = sit-ups, Second base = burpees, Third base = jackknives*. Here’s a diagram if you’re confused. I like to arrange the distance between the “bases” at about the distance between bases on a t-ball field. You can make them further apart if you want…that distance isn’t the key to this workout.

Start by doing a single pull-up. Then you run the bases, stopping at each one to do one repetition of the exercise at that station (1 push-up, 1 sit-up, 1 burpee, 1 jackknife). Then it’s back to the pull-up station for the second round. This time, you do two reps of everything. The next lap is 3 reps, and so on. Starting with one rep and ending with six reps is a good way to start. I did it that way yesterday at the halfway point of a four mile run, and it absolutely destroyed my pace and heart rate on the 2nd half of the run. As my fitness improves, I work my way up to ten laps/reps.

And that’s when things start to get really interesting.

Once you can comfortably do the ten lap incarnation of this exercise, try doing it in reverse instead…starting with ten reps and working your way down to one. It sounds like it would take the same effort level to do go in reverse, but it’s actually much harder for a couple of reasons. First of all, unless you are a pull-up machine, the quality of your pull-ups will probably tend to decrease the more reps you have to do. There’s no shame in using a spotter or “self-spotting” by flailing your legs to get pull-ups in, but if you have to do 10 pull-ups on your first set instead of your last, you’ll probably do those 10 better. And at the end, it’s easy to do 3 good pull-ups, so you’ll make the extra effort.

Secondly, you’ll probably find that the sit-ups and jackknives almost feel like a rest in this workout since they give you the opportunity to lie down on the ground. The only problem is, you have to get up off the ground. Starting with ten reps and working your way down to one means that at the end of the workout, when you want to rest the most, you get less and less rest. As soon as you get on the ground to do 3 sit ups, you have to pick yourself back up and run to do burpees.

I consider this a “toughness” workout as much as it is a fitness workout. There really isn’t much of a reprieve at any point of this workout. It’s one that makes you feel like you can’t wait to get to the next thing, only to detest where you are as soon as you get there. You’ll have to hunker down mentally to push to the end.

Then finish it up with a 2-3 mile run and see if you can ever regain control of your heart rate.

* If you aren’t familiar with jackknives, you lie flat on your back with your arms stretched out above your head, then you simultaneously raise your hands and feet, basically folding yourself in half, and (attempt to) touch your toes.

What I’d Do To Make Triathlon Participation Explode

February 8, 2012 / Scott / 2 Comments

There aren’t that many high profile professional triathletes, and I don’t think there necessarily need to be. But I have a few ideas that could really make amateur triathlon participation grow by leaps and bounds. I think what is needed is the introduction of a team concept, and maybe some rule tweaking.

I think triathlon clubs membership would grow tremendously if there was a really compelling reason to belong to a club. I mean, I like to train alone because I have to race alone. So outside of some seminars here and there, what does a tri club really have to offer me? Training programs? I can find those for free or buy them online. I think I can get more for my money by joining a masters swim group and take a coaching beat down there a couple of times a weak.

But if the idea of triathlon “Club” was changed to triathlon “Team”, things would be different.

What if every race had a Team division, and it awarded points not just for the top 3 overall times a team turned in, but within age groups. For example, a race could award 10 points to the team with the top overall men and women finishers, 8 points for second, and 6 points for third. But beyond that, why not award 5, 3, and 1 points respectively for the top three age-groupers in each division? This would push clubs/teams to invest into the performance of members on race day.

It would also encourage clubs to go out and pursue age groupers and keep them in top shape to earn points for the Club throughout the season.

Everybody wins

Age groupers could really benefit from this type of setup. By paying to be a member of a club, they’d actually get something very tangible in return for their money. First of all, they get to be on a team. Not every age grouper is going to race every weekend, so there’d be chances for multiple folks to represent their club within a division over the course of a season. Secondly, the age groupers could gain a lot of tips from the “Overall” members of their club–that means training and racing tips along with what will most likely be a higher level of passion and intensity that will be contagious.

What about the “Overall” team members? Well, aren’t most of those types doing stuff like coaching and personal training on the side? The top level members of a club could actually be paid by the other club members’ dues to coach and pass along their knowledge. Worst case–they can use the club as a way to introduce themselves to potential clients. Even if there was no money involved, I can imagine some people would be happy to be one of the top dogs in a club for nothing more than a complete or partial reimbursement of race fees by the club if they place in the overall division.

Pros win too. First of all, they’d be in high demand by the more elite teams. Imagine a team made up of a few guys with some real jack…they just want to win. So the pro would not only get money from their sponsors, but also by team members and sponsors to wear their jersey.

Rule Changes

How cool would it be if you were able to draft teammates in a race? Safety seems to be the biggest and most logical reason drafting isn’t allowed, but if it were limited to teammates, that wouldn’t matter as much. I mean, you are going to be much more careful to not cause a problem for a teammate, right? And penalties for drafting non-teammates could actually be increased at the same time to further encourage safety.

This may be a long shot to happen, and I realize that.

Series Instead of Single Races

There are some race series already out there, and they make up their own sort of mini-seasons. But what if there were State-level organizations that awarded championships? Clubs could simply pay yearly dues to participate. It wouldn’t even matter that there were multiple races in a state on a single weekend. Points available at each race could simply be determined by the number of finishers at each race. A small club could strategically rack up points on a big tri weekend by sending key age-groupers to multiple smaller races.

This isn’t all that different from what WTC does for rankings and qualifications, so why can’t it be done on a bigger scale? And why can’t it be across organizations?

Image Credit

Pop For Sight Words Game Option

February 7, 2012 / Scott / 1 Comment

One of the best literacy gifts Pea got for Christmas this year was the Pop For Sight Words game. It’s a pretty simple toy–a popcorn box filled with sight words printed onto little cardboard pieces of popcorn. There are also some instructions included on how to play the “official” game, but we haven’t played it that way yet. Instead, we’ve made up a bunch of different games we can play with the pieces of popcorn.

[amzn_product_inline asin=’B0032EKAJ2′]

Pea’s favorite way of playing right now pits her against us. She picks a word and tries to read it (preferably by sight, but we’ll let her try to sound it out). If she can read it within three seconds, she gets to keep it in her stack. If she can’t we get the piece. One important action to take here is to not just read the word and put it in your own stack. Make sure you show your child the word as you say it. Remember, we’re working on sight words here, so it really drives it home for them to see the word and hear it at the same time. The good thing about the words included with the kit is that many of them are really hard to sound out (“when”, “where”, etc.), so it really emphasizes sight word learning.

We play until we have 10 words in our pile–these are words that she could not read. Then we give her an opportunity to “steal”. We show her every word in our stack, and if she can read it she gets to steal it to her pile. Another option would be to wait until we’ve gone through all the words and give her only one chance to steal, and we may change to that option later. But by having a “steal” round every 10 words it gives her a chance to see and hear the words she’s having trouble with several times throughout the game.

At the end of the game, she gets to count all of the words in her pile (not a bad math activity either), and we keep a running score of how many words she’s able to read. We’ve seen some really good improvement, and we’ve noticed that the more often we play the game the more quickly her score rises. Repetition!

Note: the packaging makes this game very convenient and fun for the kids, but there’s no reason to purchase it necessarily. You could make your own sight word cards yourself. We’ll probably end up doing this ourselves in order to expand the number of words involved.

Scott Adcox