Umair Yasin

One of my local meetup groups was doing a hike in Coyote Open Valley Space so I rode my bike there to meet them. I took my Sirrus upright and did a lot of stand-up pedaling. We went on a four-mile hike and I took the long way home to help work off the Thanksgiving feast. At the start, the hills a a glorious green now At our first regroup, a nice vista point Lots of great views on this loop Coyote valley looking southeast, Morgan Hill is a few miles further south. from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/3I0KHBn via IFTTT

I did a three-hour ride today, and for the majority of it, I wanted to stay at a heart rate of 120, which is a brisk aerobic pace for me. I discovered my gps watch has “alerts” you can set, one of which is a heart rate range, so I set that for 116-122, and it beeped!! at me whenever I went higher or lower. This was helpful, I didn’t have to keep glancing at the watch to spot-check my heart rate. It turns out if my level of exertion is what I call “brisk but comfortable”, it reliably keeps me in the target range. This is enjoyable and relaxing, and also a good workout. For me, I also notice it corresponds to “ventilatory threshold 1” (VT1): the “talk test” is recommended for an easy pace. If you can sing, it’s too easy. If you can have a regular conversation, it’s just right for easy pace. As your pace gets a bit brisker you just start to notice a bit of a challenge on your breathing. That’s “VT1”. On the way back I threw in some 60-second sprint intervals and some “on-bike strength tr...

My Tuesday group ride was mostly in the rural area to the Southeast of Morgan Hill and down towards Gilroy. We did some nice cruising on the flat part before heading into the east foothills. There are some upscale homes with large lots in that area, and one of the owners has a camel named Aladdin. He’s mostly a (very large) pet, although he tries to earn his keep by mowing the grass. He’s quite a handsome fellow, with beautiful eyelashes that could get him a job as a Maybelline model. He’s also quite friendly and partial to carrots, which his owner doesn’t mind us giving to him. Heading East towards the foothills of the Diablo Range. You can tell I’m riding my recumbent and using my handlebar camera mount because it caught my foot out front pedaling Heading up Roop road into the neighborhood in the foothills where Aladdin lives. The Star of the show He takes the carrots very gently with his lips A couple of cows live with Aladdin. They are an Ethiopan breed with very thic...

Yesterday I rode my upright bike (no electric assist) with my local bike group. We went up into the hills west of town on a beautiful late fall day. I was “feeling my oats” so kept up with the faster folks in the front, and it felt great. Going over the hill on Sycamore Road, about to drop into Paradise Valley The vines are reaching their peak fall colors More of Paradise Valley Chesbro Reservoir Rancho Canada Del Oro Open Space Parkng Lot, at the end of Casa Loma Road Fall color near home on my way back, with El Toro in the background from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/3CFYFVi via IFTTT

From People for Bikes : “SRAM generously offered to match our $5,000 donation to Silver Stallion Bicycle & Coffee Works if we can get 200 riders to ride 100 miles by the end of the month. That’s 100 miles total, not all at once. Silver Stallion is a small nonprofit bicycle recyclery based in Gallup, NM, serving Dinétah (the Navajo Nation) and the surrounding communities with a mission to empower and develop youth and young adult vocational skills in the bicycle repair and specialty coffee industries”. So I have to ride 100 miles by 11/30. I rode the first 42 mils on Thursday and Friday and will polish the rest today. It’s nice to have my exercise contribute to a worthy cause like this. Cottonwood Lake in Hellyer Park on Thursday Thursday, Out and Back to Hellyer Park on Coyote Creek Trail On Recumbent. Electric assist level 1 mostly. I was into a bad headwind and afraid I’d be later for an appointment on the way back, so I bumped up the assist. I was shooting for an average he...

I guess I didn’t have enough bionic body parts with artificial hips and heart valve, and screws attaching my rotator cuff. I just found out I need cataract surgery, so now the natural lenses in my corneas will be replaced by artificial ones. An optometrist had noticed what he thought was the beginning of a cataract in my right eye about 3 years ago. It must have progressed since then, as well as one forming in my left eye: in a recent visit to an ophthalmologist I found out I have fairly advanced cataracts in both eyes now. I knew my right eye was getting cloudier so I’m not too surprised. I’m getting my pre-op measurements done tomorrow, and I think we’ll be doing the right eye in January, and the left after the right one heals. Cataract surgery is a minimally invasive outpatient procedure. The natural lens is removed through a small incision, then a replacement “intra-ocular lens” (IOL) is deployed. I was given the choice of the replacement lens correcting distance, with glasses ...

My recumbent has pretty fat tires (45 mm/1.75″ in the rear, 38 mm/1.5″ in the front) and does surprisingly well on poor pavement or off-road. I certainly wouldn’t use it for a mountain bike, but it is equivalent to an upright “gravel bike”. I tried it out on some gravel and flat off-road as well as poor pavement today and it did fine. Today’s schedule called for easy day for the legs, hard day for the upper body, so I first did a warmup, then weights and resistance bands for the upper body, then went for my ride. Before this ride, I improved my electric assist a bit by mounting it lower, which lowers the center of gravity of the bike for better handling. The only place to put it besides a rear rack is under the main frame tube, but the seat clamp gets in the way. So I made a little bridge to clear the clamp, and the battery attaches to that. Some velcro straps serve as a backup in case the battery worked its way loose. Here is the finished product. I no longer need the rear rack...

When most people decide they want to get fit, they focus on goals like running faster or lifting heavier weights. While strength and endurance are an essential part of fitness, they tend to get a lot more focus than they deserve. Flexibility is a frequently overlooked fitness aspect that is extremely important. There are a few key reasons that people need to focus more on improving flexibility.   Enhance Daily Quality of Life   In day-to-day life, almost no one is using the ability to lift 300 pounds over their head. Meanwhile, flexibility is something that people use throughout the day. The ability to smoothly move joints through their range of motion makes it easier to pick up shoes off the floor, walk up a flight of stairs, or get out of bed in the morning. Improving flexibility also reduces aches, pains, and cramps, ensuring people have the energy and motivation to get through the day without pain. When people stretch, they can spend their day focusing on what matters ...

I had previously put an electric-assist kit on my Trek hybrid, which I enjoyed for a couple of years. Then it kept working its way loose. This was a “mid-drive” kit, with the motor located where the cranks are. I could tell it was in danger of damaging my bike frame, so I took it off. I was able to reuse the battery from that kit and get an electric-assist rear wheel kit for my recumbent. A downside of a rear-wheel kit is that you lose a couple of gears because the motor takes up some of the available width. So my bike had nine gears in the back and now has seven. This is not a problem because the missing two gears were for climbing, and now I have assist for that. I’ve had this set up for a couple of weeks and love it. It really extends my range. For example, last Sunday’s 60-mile ride would have been doable, but I would have been pretty tired after. It was a breeze with the assist. Plus it is fun to cruise at a faster speed, it’s really easy to go 20 mph for long periods. My heart r...

My Recumbent Group (Bay Area Recumbent Cyclist, AKA the BARC-O-loungers) rode from the Curtner light rail station in San Jose to a more rural trail, the Los Alamitos Creek trail, in South San Jose, and back. I rode 20 miles from my house to the start, did their 20-mile ride, then home, for a very pleasant 60-mile day. It was a challenge to get to the start, the first 16 miles were on quiet streets with good bike lanes, but the last 4 could have been a tough urban ride on busy streets. A couple of San Jose’s bike trails came to the rescue, I was able to piece together a combination of the Guadalupe Creek trail and the Highway 87 bike trail, both paved off-road bike paths, with some safe city streets with good bike lanes. At the start in the Light-rail parking lot. A motley collection of two-wheel ‘bents and trikes. Trying out my chest camera mount while riding. It only works if my knees don’t get in the way . I need to get a handlebar mount On The Los Alamitos Creek Trail. Mt Um...

I’ve done a lot more reading on the science behind intermittent fasting in general and time-restricted eating in particular, and the evidence of the health benefits is sound, including reduced insulin resistance (which leads to overall metabolic health), improved triglycerides, and improved cholesterol [1,2,3]. Ref 4 is a great review article on the topic, for which full access is available here . The “metabolic switch” the authors refer to occurs when insulin levels are low, and the body has sufficiently depleted its liver glycogen stores so that it is having difficulty producing enough glucose for the brain. It then starts entering the state of ketosis by producing ketone bodies to replace the missing glucose. This occurs, according to the authors, after about 12 hours of fasting, and increases until about 18 hours of fasting, after which the benefits continue during longer fasting. The benefits include the aforementioned metabolic benefits, and the health-enhancing and anti-aging be...

This is a meetup group of pretty serious hikers I used to go with. This was my first time back with them since the pandemic. We did an 8 mile plus hike with close to 1500 feet of elevation gain in Santa Teresa park. The hike started at the Bernal-Gulnac-Joice Ranch entrance to the park. We hiked from there up and over to the main parking lot, then continued on the rocky ridge trail to Coyote peak, then looped back to the start. It was a great hike on a beautiful fall day. The only problem for me is that there were a lot of steep downhill sections which I’ve become unaccustomed to. This led to a lot of soreness in my legs over the next couple of days. I’ll either have to avoid these or do them more often so my muscles get used to them. Just Starting out at my house. The fog was just burning off which looked cool in front of El Toro. At the historic rance entrance to Santa Teresa park, which has some interesting buildings We started out by walking a short way by the buildings, th...