Ben Collins

Loren had a race Saturday morning, and Gret was in Seattle for a wedding, which meant that I got to take care of the little ones. Piper started off the morning with the biggest poop I’ve ever witnessed (her diaper weighed the same as she does). After I recovered from the trauma (I recruited my friend Christine to help me, so the “trauma” was just me watching her change the diaper…) I took the girls out for a run around the neighborhood so that we could all have an early nap time. By the time Loren got home I was completely beat. I really don’t understand how people like Loren and Greta manage being parents full time. “Uncle Ben” is the closest I’ll get for a LONG time.

I’m rounding off my third week in Tiburon. Sunday I ran the loop around town, which was a lot of fun. I used my Garmin to monitor my pace, and stay consistent which is really helpful on the easy runs because I tend to go too fast. Not this time, I stayed at4:40/km roughly, with a couple faster sections. Here’s the workout overview from Motionbased (if you click on the image it will take you to the motionbased website where you can check out all the charting features and maps):

I’ve been swimming with Bob Placak, who is a masters swimmer I met one night at the local pool in Tiburon. When I say “masters swimmer” I should elaborate that he is a former UCLA swimmer, nearly made the ‘84 Olympic team in the 100 fly, then moved on to open water swimming where he kicked butt for a number of years. He currently holds the record for the SF around Alcatraz swim (1:05, but he swears it was all about the conditions that day). Also, he’s never worn a wetsuit (BRRR!!!). Last week we did a set that Bob didn’t make:

500 @ 5:50, 400 @ 4:20, 300 @ 3:30, 200 @ 2:10, 100 @ 1:10,
100 @ 1:05, 200 @ 2:20, 300 @ 3:15, 400 @ 4:40, 500 @ 5:25

We’ll do the set again this week, only we’re both going to make it.

In other big news, I got a new road bike from Beyond Fabrications. It’s really fun to ride (stiff, light weight…), and now I actually have a bike to use at my first ITU pro race in Poland (1 month away!!). I’ll post pictures of the bike soon.

For now, I’ll leave you with this:

I have a training buddy that I need to give some credit to. My Garmin Forerunner has been the sweetest toy I’ve had to play with this year. I picked it up in May, and I’ve hardly done a run or ride without it since.

Here’s a graph from one of my long rides last weekend. (click on it for a more readable image)

You can do all sorts of plots with cadence, heart rate, speed, pace, elevation, you name it. There’s even a weather report for the ride, so you can brag to your friends about 20-30 mph winds on your ride across the Golden Gate.

But unlike other heart rate monitors, it also tells you where you were, can correct elevation errors, and gives run pace while more accurately than any foot pod. Check out a map from that same ride:

Ok, so that’s cool, right? Now check out what I did before Nationals when I was at the course in May (click on the image to see a bigger version, then check out the last 5k. That’s the out and back run course!):

According to the stats from that ride, the 20k loop had over 1000 ft of elevation gain!

Now I can upload that course into a Computrainer, or if I want to revisit the same ride/run next week, I can set it to have me race my virtual self. That way every week I can try to be faster.

I love my Garmin. I’m going to start posting more workout stuff on here, so you can see the whole suite of things that are possible. I’m still finding new stuff to play with on the watch.