Umair Yasin

The high for yesterday was 87 F, a lot better than the 103 last week. We went out into the hills southwest of town, to the end of Redwood Retreat Road and back. It was still in the low 80s by the time we finished with a pleasant breeze, so it was actually cool enough to eat outside for lunch, something we could not have imagined last week. Temperatures are expected to be in the low 80s for about a week now, we will continue to enjoy the spring-like conditions while they last. July and August are often the hottest around here, so I expect more days of getting up earlier to beat the heat. Some nice greenery on Watsonville road on the way out An alpaca ambling by us on his way to his food at a ranch on Redwood Retreat. I’m sure he likes the cooler weather too, he must have been miserable last week from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/qytkHJo via IFTTT

I did a four-hour combination bike and hike today. I rode down Santa Teresa Boulevard to Bernal road, then climbed Bernal road to the top. I then entered Santa Teresa Park and hiked up the Coyote peak trail to the top. On the way up at a couple of steep sections, I got to try the “walk assist” mode on my Vado SL. It gives just enough assist so you don’t have to push the weight of the bike, a nice feature. I made it to the top by about 10:30, so it was still cool. Then back down to the parking lot and retraced my steps home. I was pleased that my Vado performed well on dirt (fire roads, mostly) but was glad to have good disk brakes to keep down my speed on the downhill. On the way back I did some intervals on Santa Teresa Boulevard which were fun using electric assist as I was able to exceed 20 mph with a headwind. View From the Top of Bernal Road. Mt Umunhum in the distance, IBM research center to the lower right. Looking at Mt Umunhum planted the seed that I’d like to hike it again,...

https://www.clearinghouseforsport.gov.au/kb/reds I’ve discussed the concept of overtraining and “how much exercise is too much?” previously . Another harmful phenomenon among exercisers is undereating, now called “relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S)”, which I discussed here . It used to be called the female athlete triad, because it appeared to be more common in female athletes, but is now known to affect males as well. A lot of the discussion of RED-S has been about issues like trying to achieve an ideal training weight. But a recent study [1] has shown that undereating can occur unintentionally for people undergoing a high training volume. It seems that your appetite cues become unreliable and can lead to undereating, and especially inadequate carbohydrate consumption. This inadequate fueling can exacerbate the symptoms of overtraining. I think the key takeaway is to not exceed the amount of training that is right for you. Then this unintentional undereating phenomeno...

I try to work out hard twice a week for the upper and lower body. A do hard lower one day, hard upper another day, and on Thursdays, I do both. That was yesterday’s workout. It was supposed to get hot again so I got the workout in early. After a warmup, first I did about 30 minutes of Heavyhands walking!!, then my upper body workout in the garage. Then I went for my ride, and stood up to pedal for 90 minutes, which counts as an aerobic tempo workout. This was enjoyable as it was still cool out. On the way back I did multiple standing intervals for about 30 seconds. These were challenging because I think I was running out of gas, I probably went a bit too hard during the tempo part. These days my lower body hard day workout consists of this: about 1 hour aerobic standing pedaling or seated on recumbent short intervals: 8x about 30 sec; optional also 8x15sec sprints Strength, conventional: standing on-bike (I put it in a high gear and stand on a short hill) Strength, Isometric dead...

I just read Alistair Wilson’s autobiographical account of his life as a paddler. He has done sea kayaking, competitive flat water kayaking, and some exciting expeditions, including running the Colorado River and its rapids through the Grand Canyon in an open two-person canoe. www.amazon.com/books He was also the founder of Lendal paddles, which he ran for several decades. He started with wooden paddles and later transitioned to fiberglass and carbon fiber, introducing many innovations along the way. He started out enjoying sea kayaking off the Western coast of Scotland in his youth. He made several of his own kayaks from kit plans, mostly of lath covered with canvas. He graduated from college as a civil engineer and worked for a couple of years for the highway department, but felt called to make boating-related products for a living, so started his own company. He made wooden kayaks at first then later transitioned to paddles. There was not a lot of competitive kayaking in Scot...

It was forecast to reach 103 F yesterday (at 2 pm), and to be already 97 F at noon, right around the time our ride would end. So only myself and four other intrepid (or foolish?) souls showed up for our weekly ride. It turned out to be not too bad, we got a couple of hours riding in before it got overly hot. But we were definitely glad of the air conditioning at the cafe where we stopped for lunch. I had to ride home at about 12:45, and it was really hot then, but fortunately, it is only 3 miles and I had my electric assist bike. I find I do OK on a bike in the heat as long as I have plenty of water and the air temp is less than my skin temp, so evaporative cooling from sweating, combined with the breeze caused by the motion works effectively. The owners of this ranch on Casa Loma Road rescue horses, including miniature breeds Taking a break at Rancho Canada Del Oro Open Space, we were grateful for the shade from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/AyoOdut via IFTTT

I felt a lot better on Sunday so went for about a 3 hour harder ride. I did a lot of standing on my Sirrus upright (unassisted). It’s interesting contrasting this with my similar Vado which has electric assist. The Sirrus is fun to ride in a different way because it is lighter so feels “snappier”, even though I’m actually going a little slower. I did some standing sprints on the way back too. I do a couple of hard rides like this a week these days. I also do two days of harder upper body workouts. I combine one of the upper and lower hard days into a single session, so this gives me four easier days in between. I find this is enough to recover. If I try to do more than that I can tell it’s too much because I feel unenthusiastic about doing a harder session. If I’m adequately recovered, I’m raring to go. I’ve also tried more scientific measures like heart rate variability in the past, but this “by feel” method works fine for me. Foothills and Mountains to the West seen past the grass...

I went pretty hard on Friday so took it easy Saturday, just cruising around on my ‘bent. The Weather was nice with interesting clouds over both the hills to the East and West. I felt great after. This often happens with a good recovery ride, I feel tired or sore at the start but I guess the blood flow from gentler exertion helps. Clouds to the East Clouds to the West . One nice thing about Morgan Hill being a small town is that it gets rural fairly quickly. This is probably only about a mile from downtown . from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/iZYDFWq via IFTTT

I’ve been intrigued by the success of the Peloton company, which sells indoor exercise bikes (and now treadmills) with sophisticated displays that allow users to take virtual classes over the internet (either live or on-demand). The bikes are not cheap, and the subscription price is $40 per month which seems high compared to other subscriptions like say Netflix. And I have a very inexpensive exercise bike that works great and is quiet. I usually don’t take classes, but there are plenty of good ones available (admittedly not live) on the internet. So why are they successful?My first hint was when Adam Pick, who founded the heartvalvesurgery.com website, raved about his Peloton bike. He talked about how he and his wife gave up their expensive memberships at a boutique gym when they got the Peloton. So for them, by comparison, $40 a month was a reasonable price. The second hint was when a friend of mine in our Tuesday riding group got his Peloton. He was already a pretty good rider. But ...

Today was a relatively short easy day, I stayed local in town and did mostly standing pedaling on my Sirrus upright (which has no e-assist). I had a pleasant ride of about 90 minutes. which included crossing over US 101 on Main street and using the bike path next to the Santa Clara Valley Water District canal. This runs for several miles, pretty much the whole length of town north to south. Unfortunately, the budget did not include enough funds to put tunnels under the streets that have overpasses at 101, so it doesn’t work that well for transportation because at each street you have to work your way out to a traffic light and cross over there before picking up the path again on the other side. Maybe we’ll have more funding in the future… In the meantime, this stretch between Main and Cochrane works well for me because it is a safe back way to a shopping center at which I sometimes do errands. Bike Path next to the Santa Clara Valley Water District canal. There is a choice of hardp...

http://www.Amazon.com/books “Going the Distance” is the story of George Thomas. In 1984, he was struck and severely injured by a drunk driver. He spent several months rehabbing from that incident, got in great shape, and was working as a ski instructor in Oregon. But in 1989 he started having seizures, which were eventually diagnosed as a result of brain scarring caused by the trauma. This can cause epilepsy as a delayed reaction. This did not respond to conventional anti-seizure drugs and they also caused severe side effects. This was his low point. He lost his driver’s license and could no longer work as a ski instructor. Fortunately, he got accepted into a clinical trial of a new drug at the time (!!). It worked great for him. No seizures, no side effects! Then he bounced back. In 1982 he had read the story of the first Race Across America, and seen the coverage of it on ABC TV. This had planted a seed. So now he decided to get in shape and give it a try. He first did it a coup...

Yesterday was my regular Tuesday group ride. I wanted to get a bit more mileage in so I started earlier, and headed over to do some off-road riding at the Coyote Creek Trail. The only problem with starting early on a weekday is that my normal route to the east side goes right by Live Oak High School and the traffic is bad right before school starts. But I realized there was a back way I could take that avoids this, which worked great. After some fun riding in that area, I headed up to meet the group. We went up into the hills to the west via Day road, then headed south to the bike path along Uvas creek in Gilroy, then back north to Morgan Hill for lunch. I discovered another good use for electric assist: there was a brutal headwind for almost 10 miles on the way back. So I turned the assist on and provided a draft for those without it. Actually, two of us did this, my friend Bob led out a faster group with his e-bike and I took a second group with mine. It was fun to make it easier for...

Sunday I did a ride that started out urban in Morgan Hill, then through rural roads to the West and northward up to San Jose, then urban again in San Jose and back home, for a total of 48 miles. The high for the day was 84 degrees, and I was done earlier than that, so it was pleasant the whole way. This was another good test of my e-bike. I’ve mentioned in the past that I like to stand up to pedal a lot. I was against the wind heading north, and it worked great to stand up to pedal with a bit of assist. In the parking lot of Morgan Hill’s Centennial Recreation center, which I passed on my way. The chainlink fences to the left enclose the outdoor training equipment, which dates back to Covid indoor restrictions. Some people liked working out al fresco, so they left some machines out there. This is the community park adjacent to the rec center. It has a pleasant dirt path around it I like to ride on We are excited the new “Magical Bridges” part of the park is about to open, which...

I got going about 8:00 this morning so I could beat the heat. It was still about 90 F when I finished up my three-hour ride, which is not too bad on a bike because you are generating a breeze. Like yesterday I ended up heading back towards the north against the wind, but that was fine because it helped keep me cool. Also today I had my e-bike to help fight it. There are two pretty vineyards across the street from each other at the corner of Buena Vista Ave and New Ave, east of Gilroy. This is the first, Verde vineyards, and as the Spanish name says there is a lot of green around. Morgan Hill’s El Toro, which dominates my view at home, looks like a little pimple this far away (peeking over the top to the tank in the middle) And across the street is Satori cellars. Satori is a Japanese Zen term for enlightenment . from BionicOldGuy https://ift.tt/EW6AreX via IFTTT

Today, after a warm-up, I started out with “ double-poling ” with six-pound weights, then nordic walking with poles. For both of these, I threw in intervals of higher intensity. Then it was back to the garage for work with bands and weights. First intervals at several stations including kayak simulator, “ski erg” simulator and its reverse with hand weights, chest press, row, shoulder press, and pulldowns. I described some of these exercises here . I do them briskly to simulate activities like kayaking and cross country skiing. I then finished with isometric strength training on the chest press, row, shoulder press, pulldowns, and a cooldown walk. I’m excited that kayak rentals have started back up at Vasona lake county park. I can get there readily on my e-bike, and plan to do that soon. I went for a ride out to Harvey Bear park and back on my recumbent afterward. I flew out with a tailwind and was quite a bit slower on the way back with a headwind. But I did not mind because I had al...

I went for about a 42 mile ride yesterday, starting early because it was supposed to get hot later in the day. It was a nice outing, a little bit on the rural roads of the east side of San Martin and Morgan Hill, then an out and back on the Coyote Creek trail. It was “Taco Tuesday” at the Coyote Creek Golf club’s restaurant, which they do once a month and we enjoy going to. By lunchtime, it was in the low 80s but still pleasant in the shade because of a nice breeze. I took my e-bike which made it more enjoyable on the northbound leg against a pretty stiff headwind. But I also threw in some standing riding without assist so I got a nice workout. On the way to the start of the group ride, I rode to the top of West Dunne Ave in Morgan Hill, for this nice view past the town to the hills on the East side of the Valley Heading Northwest on the Coyote Creek Trail, with the Santa Cruz mountains in the distance Enjoying some shade on the way back to the Golf Course, as it was starting...

www,Amazon.com/books Dynamic Agin g is the title of a book by Katy Bowman, a movement expert. It is filled with good exercises to keep us limber and moving well as we age, including working on balance and joint mobility, and practicing walking on uneven surfaces. These are easy to do at home with little or no equipment. I was already doing the equivalent of some of these, for example in my stretching routine, but I definitely picked up some good tips, like using a tennis ball to keep feet flexible. The other thing I liked about the book is that Katy collaborated with some of her students, three women in their 70s, to provide commentary on how this program has helped them, which I found inspirational. I definitely recommend this book. Katy also writes a blog with interesting essays on movement at https://www.nutritiousmovement.com/blog/ . A recent post describes why calf raises are good for your heart (by helping with peripheral circulation via “venous return”) as shown in the figu...