Tri Dad

 With my birthday coming up tomorrow and my workout for the day already in the books, I thought it would be a fun time to reflect on what I accomplished from a sports perspective in the last year. Some things that I found particularly interesting - I biked, ran, swam, or did some other activity on my Garmin 350 out of 366 days this year.  Sixteen days off in a year - a little more than one per month.  That is an average of 66 minutes of activities per day (56 minutes per activity).  That actually seems a bit higher than I would have expected.  I do strive for an hour workout everyday, but there are definitely days where I'm lucky if I get 45.  I guess the long sessions I had more than made up for it. Of the 1540 miles I ran, 621 were indoors on my treadmill.  In fact, I ran an entire marathon on my treadmill this year at the start of the pandemic.  Living in the suburbs, I'm actually extremely lucky in that I am not restricted in my outdoor running by COVID.  Typically I'm

At the beginning of April I got an email from Zwift announcing this season's Watopia Run Festival by Maurten.  They did this earlier in the year with races ranging from 1 mile to 13.1 miles.  For this iteration, they would be running those races throughout the week, but the festival culminated in a Marathon on Sunday. The timing was perfect in terms of tricking me into doing something really stupid.  You see, just a few days prior I had completed the last running route in Zwift, and I had therefore unlocked every running-related badge in Zwift (including the half marathon), with the exception of a marathon.  Prior to the event being announced, I just resigned to the fact that I would never get the marathon badge (technically, it's the "Going the Distance" badge), but that email came in and the seed of possibility was planted. I wasn't committed to doing the event.  I wanted to get the kit you get as a reward for participating so signed up for a one mile ra

One of the pieces of gear that I've wanted for a while is a power meter.  I've had my eyes on the Favero Assioma Duo, basically since it came out.  The cost/quality ratio seems to be off the chart for it - one that everybody that I read on the internet seems to think is reliable and very accurate.  Plus, it's something that I could install myself, and use on my trainer (and if I ever upgrade my trainer to a wheel-off trainer, continue to use on my trainer). Through work, for being healthy and physically active, I get a reward that I can convert to a gift card, or a specific product that the vendor's store carries.  While this particular program is new this year, I've had similar programs the previous couple of years and have used the reward to get an Apple Watch for my wife, and to put toward my Garmin 945 last year.  Since this is a reward for being active, I like to put it toward my active lifestyle.  The Assioma Duo fits the bill, and I started looking for wher

I've been having issues with my HRM-Tri recently where it just doesn't seem to give me results consistent with my relative perceived effort.  For example, starting out fresh on a treadmill at about 10 min/mile pace and the HRM-Tri shows my heart rate around 140 bpm.  I've been so annoyed recently with this perceived inaccuracy that I actually stopped my warmup to manually take my heart rate.  I completely stopped and took my pulse for 15 seconds and came up with a heart rate closer to 100 bpm.  All the while, my watch was showing right around 140 bpm from the HRM-Tri.  It didn't even slow down despite the fact that I was completely stopped, which is completely different from the issue that I have occasionally with the Scosche Rhythm+, which will lock on to my cadence if I'm not adequately warmed up and it's cold outside. I want the HRM-Tri to work because there are some metrics that are only unlocked if you have a heart rate strap, as opposed to an optical HRM

I love listening to stuff when I go running.  I always go running with my phone, and for years I've been using the Sennheiser PX 100 over-the-head headphones.  They are light, open-back headphones so they let in ambient noise which is great for outdoor runs as I typically run on the street and I feel safer being able to hear what's going on around me. For trainer rides, those headphones suck.  My Tacx Vortex Smart is ridiculously loud and I need that noise blocked out, if only for my sanity.  For the longest time, I was using a set of inexpensive Anker wireless earbuds .  I wore them during my trainer sessions and they worked great.  I tried to use them when I was on my treadmill as well, but they would never stay put.  As soon as I got sweaty, they would fall out of my ears, so instead, I typically just turned the volume up really loud on the TV or on my phone, depending on what content I was consuming. Those Anker headphones bit the dust when I ran the Marine Corps Marat