Scott Adcox

Doing More With Less Since 1972

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Awesome Bike Route Close To Home

July 7, 2010 / / 0 Comments

One of the things I miss about living in East Tennessee is being able to ride my bike on nice country roads. I don’t miss the dogs tearing through yards when they see me coming, and I don’t miss having people honk and yell, “Git off tha roawd!!!” either. But hilly, curvy country roads are definitely a plus of living in Knoxville.

On the flip side, one of the really nice things about living in a small town in Florida is that you can leave right out of the house and go on long flat rides. Safely. Yeah, no hills means no chance to get stronger going up hills, but it also means there’s no opportunity for rest coming down hills. The result is a long, steady pedal in aero position. Besides, you can always go do intervals on a causeway or hit a spin class if you really want hills.

I’ve been riding loops in a nice safe residential area, but it was getting kind of boring. So last night I jumped on to MapMyRide to see if there were any rides near my house that locals have posted. I found a course that passes right by my house and picks up a nice country road about 3 miles away from home. I checked it out with streetview on Google Maps, and I couldn’t wait to get out there this morning.

It didn’t disappoint.

No hills, but it’s pretty nice when you have to keep refocusing on your ride because you’re constantly on the lookout for dolphins instead of cars. The one caveat is that I had to jump out onto US-1 for about a half a mile–traffic’s not too bad at 6:20 am, but a little more traffic on the way back at 7:30. I ended up doing two loops of Rockledge Drive this morning, only passing two cars on my first loop and maybe 6 or 7 on the second. Love riding a course where the number of cars is tripled by the number of runners and cyclists. Even better when your bike speed is the speed limit! I shot this video at 20 mph as the sun was coming up.

Ok, not the greatest video because I have a Hero and not an EVO (HD), but I shot it while my CardioTrainer app and mSpot were both running. That’s right iPhone<4 owners…I been could do that!

Needless to say, my new favorite ride.

Best While-You-Work Television Ever

July 4, 2010 / / 0 Comments

If you have multiple monitors, there’s nothing better than throwing the live coverage of the Tour de France onto one of the screens to listen to the race in the mornings and glance over to see what the announcers are talking about when you hear excitement in their voices. This is the only televised sporting event I really care about watching (or listening to) live.

I don’t care if they are on steroids, HGH, doped blood, meth, or monkey dung. They still have to get on those bikes and ride them a long way up some steep mountains. And since everyone is cheating anyway, the playing field is level, right?

It’s going to be nice to listen to something besides talk radio and Texas country music for a couple of weeks.

Here’s the stage schedule.

UPDATE:

Those  greedy fat cats over at Versus are charging to follow the tour online this year. How dare they try to make a profit on an event held in a socialist democracy! The Tour belongs to the people and accounts of it may not be produced without the express written consent of the NFL and commissioner Pete Rozell.

What Is Your Swim Goal?

July 1, 2010 / / 0 Comments

The plan for today’s swim was to warmup with a 300sw/100kick/100sw. Then some sprints, 4×200, and a 200 swim down. The warmup was so atrocious that I changed my plan–technique was all over the place and I felt like I was kicking to stand still on the kick part of the warmup. Instead of the 4×200 I decided to do a straight 800 and try to find an even stride. I sort of zoned out for the whole middle portion of the swim, so I guess it worked.

Patience.

When I finished my 800 and was checking my HR, the lifeguard at the pool asked me, “What’s your swim goal?” He was asking because he noticed my soft kick off the side at the end of each length, and once I told him I was training for open water tris he understood why I was taking it easy on the turns. But still, it was a good question, and it gave me some things to think about and focus on during my swim down.

What are my goals, really?

  • keep my heart rate at 120-130 during the race
  • find someone to draft as much as possible
  • make it through the swim with as few strokes possible (stay on course)

Ultimately, I would like to duplicate my best in-race swim ever if possible. The only thing I really remember about that swim was getting out of the water with a huge smile on my face and thinking, “This is really going to happen!”

Some Stuff About Swimming

June 29, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Swimming Bear

I’d originally planned to do an Olympic distance triathlon locally in October, but I had a schedule conflict and decided to do one in August instead. But the idea of traveling 3 hours to race didn’t seem like a good idea, so I decided to do one a little closer to home in September. I liked that decision since I’d missed a two weeks of training due to illness and traveling. Then my schedule conflict for the October race went away, so I switched back to that one, which put me ahead of my training schedule.

So I decided to step back to the correct point in the schedule, which made my training distances shorter again. Not really a big deal for running and cycling (I’m just better rested), but I can already tell a huge difference in the swim, which is what I really wanted to concentrate on this season.

My longest swim session before stepping back was 2250 yards, and it involved a lot of kick drills. I suck at kicking, and it made the swim sessions long and brutal. But I think it made me noticeably faster. The last two days’ workouts have only been 1000 yards total. Yesterday’s workout featured a 500 yard sprint, and I swam my best 500 ever. I mean, yeah, it’s still really slow, but it’s my best one by almost 20 seconds. Today’s workout had 5×100 with 15″ rest between. I was a little bit faster than normal on the 100s, but the real noticeable change here was the consistency. I only lost 2 seconds between my first 100 and my last 100.

Also, I’ve (finally) realized that the purpose of doing sprints in the swim is to raise your individual expectations of what “taking it easy” means. I’ve never gotten that before in the swim because I’ve always jumped into the pool and just did full distance at a slow and steady speed. I’m hoping this pays off in October!

Photo Credit

Stuff You Should See– May 24th through June 29th

June 29, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Understanding Your Motivation – I stay in all 6 states at all times.

FamilyShield is a No-Setup Adult Content Blocker for Your Router –

Best Place to Set Up Shop Online? –

Greener Than You — Entrepreneurial Foraging – This is nothing new. Broke college students have been foraging in bars for half drunk bottles and in the student ghettos for morning-after "yard beers" for decades.

Banksimple – Long overdue, and supposed to be launching in 2010. You can sign up for an invite right now. Loooooong overdue.

The Breaking Point for Children in Sports – The middle ground between letting kids live a sedentary lifestyle and pushing them to the point of injury and psychological distress is pretty wide. I can see where parents at both extremes would point to the opposite extreme for justification, but it's only a justification.

Soluto – This looks like a promising solution to help you diagnose and end PC problems. I'm signed up for the beta, hope to get my account soon, and will let you know!

Mark Twain autobiography to be published in November – Can't get enough. This is one I'll be looking forward to.

mSpot Is Your Music In the Cloud

June 28, 2010 / / 0 Comments

And by “your” music, of course I mean music you ripped from CDs that you own or downloaded legally online. Also, the files have to be unencrypted.

Click over to mSpot to sign up and upload your music.

Oh, and you need an Android device to use the mobile version of the service. 🙂

The free version includes 2Gb of storage. Can’t wait until Google comes out with their own version of this service.

HT Gizmodo

Rugby As A Positive For At-Risk Girls

June 23, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Don’t be surprised if you see more stuff like this as school administrators realize that rugby is not only a very affordable sport to promote in comparison with other sports, but it’s also relatively safe and full of positive life lessons:

“There’s a new attitude in the house,” Del Valle said. “The girls are taking ownership. Rugby promotes character, trust, loyalty and honor. You represent your program on and off the pitch.

HT: ScrumhalfConnection and RugbyBuzz

Super Busy, But Check These Things Out

June 21, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Check out the beta of Soluto. It’s a pretty cool idea–it monitors your PC at startup to find out what’s being loaded. After your computer starts, Soluto gives you a report of what was loaded, how long it took to load each program, and give you suggestions on which programs could be removed from your startup routine to not only speed up boot time, but also keep your machine running faster. All suggestions are based on the actions other users have taken with the same programs.

Soluto Screenshot

If you are running WordPress, version 3 is out. Some good stuff here like custom post types, which make it pretty much a full fledged CMS, and bulk updates of plugins. Nice.

And finally, here’s a great deal on a 7″ digital photo frame

KFC May Do Chicken Right, But…

June 1, 2010 / / 2 Comments

Chick-fil-A does marketing right.

Thanks to a heads up from CouponKatie, we were treated to a sneak preview of Chik-Fil-A’s new spicy chicken sandwich for lunch yesterday, a week before they plan to make it available on the menu. Ok, that’s great. But they did a great job of marketing this new product. So despite being delicious (it was), they’ve also created a buzz:

  • The restaurant had special tables set up (with place settings) for those who had made “reservations” to try the new sandwich. There was also a hostess to take you to your seat and bring you your food. We heard at least two other parties ask our hostess what it was all about–a perfect opportunity for her to tell them all about the new spicy chicken sandwich and that it was not available yet. Manufactured scarcity and creation of a group/tribe!
  • Every time an order for a spicy chicken sandwich was ready, someone behind the counter would shout, “Spicy chicken sandwich for (whoever)!” There’s no telling how many people stood in line between the hours of 11:00 and 14:00 yesterday who wished they could also order a spicy chicken sandwich, if only they were special enough.
  • Our sandwiches were “upgraded for free” with cheddar jack cheese, tomatoes, and lettuce. I’m sure all of these will not come on the stock sandwich once it’s on the menu, but after you’ve had a “deluxe”, are you really willing to go back? Remember, Elaine had never sat in first class before, but Jerry had. He couldn’t go back to coach, but she could.

So props to Chik-fil-A for creating a good product–it really was good. But what a great marketing job. I hope more companies become savvy to these type tactics. It’s in their best interest, and people with reservations love that kind of treatment. They sometimes even write complimentary blog posts about these experiences–more free marketing!

Living Off The Fat of Our Great Land — For Profit

May 31, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Selling free food is now known as “entrepreneurial foraging“. It’s for the ubercool only.

When Walmart carries organic frozen dinners and even your neighbor with the Hummer is touting the environmental efficacy and bonus deliciousness of peaches grown within a 50-mile radius of the neighborhood co-op, foraging represents the next link on the food chain of greener-than-thou eating.

This is sort of like charging panhandlers $2 the morning after a kegger to scavenge for yard beers and empty cans for recycling. In my day, we were just happy they were willing to come by and clean up after us. It was a voluntary symbiotic relationship before the Wall Street Fat Cats got involved.

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