An Update From the Far Side of 48!

Turned 48 this week. I reach this age with mixed emotions. The number says I am getting older, but someone who I met recently was surprised to find out I was that "Old" - he thought I was in my 30's. Thanks.

My wonderful wife's comment on all this is that, she is worried that in 2 years she will be married to a 50 year-old!! I must admit, 50 does seem a bit daunting - half a century and most likely more than half of my life gone. Although, I seem to be blessed with good genes - many in my family have lived to a ripe old age. I have had Great Grand-Parents and Grand Parents live into their late 80's and in one case mid - 90's. God willing, I hope that I will be as fortunate.

Forty-eight is not one of those significant birthdays, but for me it did send home the message that I am indeed, closer to 50, than further away from it. I should start to think about planning something special for the 50th. What I would like to do is, get a bunch of good friends and fellow athletes together and we'll ride 50 miles. So if you are reading this now, book the day - April 23, 2011. We have a nice 50 mile loop starting and finishing in Aurora, ON. That is actually going to be a great year - it will be the 100th Anniversary of North Toronto Collegiate - my High School. Plans are already well underway for some major celebrations.

Picture above is of me climbing Mt. Lemmon about a month ago on our trip to Tucson, AZ. It's an amazing place to ride and Mt Lemmon is one of those must-do rides. I can say this, it is stuff like this that keeps me young. I feel lucky and grateful that I can still do things like this. It's been a big part of my life and it continues to be so today. I look around and I see the many other men my age and I realize that there is actually a very small percentage who still do things like this. It shocks me how inactive the general population is. I used to let this bother me, but know I just go out and ride and take a deep and great satisfaction from the fact that I can still do this and I still get a great boost from being physically active and taking on some challenges. It's not training - it's more than that to me these days. It's more like playing - but shouldn't it always be like that!

Quick Update

I have fallen behind with the blog. It's been a nutty last few weeks - on the road almost full bore for 14 days straight - work, travel, play, training vacation - it's all a blur!

I thought I would have a few spare hours here and there to update things on the blog and get some new content up while I was down in Tucson at TriFest, but it was not too be. I did get in a solid 5 days of riding, which was nice, but I was totally trashed from that and it's taken me a week to recover. The good news is that, I can tell already that the over-load worked. I jumped back on the trainer for a few short work-outs in the last week and the legs have felt amazing - very strong.

The other good news is that wetsuit sales are looking strong at the front end of the main selling season. We'll keep our fingers crossed that the tend will continue.

Anyway - I do have a few posts that I am working on and will be posting that new content up soon. This includes:

- Follow up to the Drafting in Triathlon post I did a whole back
- Some highlights from TriFest and the 6 days in Tucson
- Wetsuit selling season is almost here, so I will be posting up some primers on selling wetsuits, that hopefully some of of Nineteen retail customers will find helpful.

A brief Twitter up-date: It's been fun. Not sure exactly what it is accomplishing, but it's strange to me the people that find me and start following. I think that I am up to 60-odd "Followers". Whoever you are, thanks for, "following". They have a Widget that posts up my Twitter feed on the Blog - you can see it to the right and the top of the page.

That's it for now. It's been a long day and I need to get home and get to bed.

Picture above was taken by the folks at the German Triathlon Magazine and appeared in their Feature issue on Ironman Hawaii - yes that's me having a shot of Espresso from the Coffees of Hawaii boat about 500m into the Ironman Hawaii swim( not during the race!!)

Twitter

I'm am giving Twitter a bit of a test drive. It's been fun so far. I think that Twitter and the Livestrong organization must have some sort of deal as Lance Armstrong was one of the people that I was automatically "Following". Something must be going on as, Lance has, as of tonight 185,000 followers on Twitter.

Believe it or not their are Twitter rankings - who knew? See more here:

http://twitterholic.com/

The cool thing is, when you set things up, your own posts or "Tweets" in Twitter parlance, can appear right next to Lance's on your home page - which is kinda neat.

Anyway, my Twitter up-dates, for what they are worth, can be found at:

http://twitter.com/stevefleck

I have a ways to go to catch up to Mr Armstrong on the Followers front.

We'll see how it goes. Hard to know how different this is from the "What Are You Doing Now" header on your Facebook page.

Great - more social networking web-2.0 stuff

Spring Training

The snow is still piling up on our front lawn, but the days are getting longer and spring is hopefully not too far away. For those winter-bound cyclists and triathletes like us, it may still seem like a long way away. It's the time of year when many take a vacation or holiday or a dedicated training trip away from where they are, to some place warmer and nicer. This has become a very popular thing to do for both serious and recreational triathletes and cyclists. It follows the tradition of Professional cyclists who would travel from their Northern European homes to the south of Spain, France or Italy in later winter to put some early season miles in.

Many triathlon and cycling coaches offer fully supported training camps now in Southern Europe as well as southern parts of North America. In fact, we are about to head off for 10 days of riding in Tucson, AZ starting this weekend - although there is a bit of business side in for me with Trifest going on. Tucson has become a bit of a go-to place for this sort of thing at this time of year. It's long, been the winter home of top triathletes and cyclists, but now more and more recreational triathletes are starting to take a week or so and head to Tucson for some warm weather training and an escape from snow, cold and wet weather.

So, what to do on these weeks away from home? My general suggestion is that for most, if they are coming from a place where the outdoor riding has been limited to non-existent for the last 2 - 3 months, that the best use of a week or more, where you can ride outdoors in nice weather, is to . . . . . just ride. Many get all hung up on what to do and what about running and swimming, but a 7+ day block of just cycling can really jump-start things for the spring, and start to lay down a decent base of cycling miles. Don't worry so much about time and pace - just get out the door every day and ride. If their are groups of others so much the better. Part of the challenge for more than a few with this, is that they are on their own proprietary training program. Nothing wrong with this, and I am not advocating not doing what a coach has said to do, but that push-pull dynamic of a good group can be hugely beneficial. A good coach will know this and give you the green light to ride as much as you want, or as much as is realistic or reasonable during such a time period.

Cycling is good for this sort of thing - unlike swimming or riding where it is much harder to really ramp up the training in a very short period of time. It's a much more pleasant environment to spend a lot of hours doing something and the overuse injuries typically, are minimal. That's not to say that you are not supposed to pay attention to how you feel day to day and that you need to know what a serious ache or pain is vs. the good ache or pain from good training is. If you have been doing a decent amount of indoor riding - quality oriented sessions of about an hour 2 - 4 times a week, it's realistic to think that you could get out and ride about 2 -3 hours every day for a week at a decent pace and maybe throw in a few longer rides to.

Don't want to take the bike or you are going on a more family oriented vacation - then think about doing a run focus week. The great thing about running is it's portability. You can do it anywhere. Also a good run takes up far less time than a good ride. You can be up at sunrise run for an hour each day for a week and no one would know about it. For most, that would be a solid week of running!

Happy holidays!

Lance Attacks

Wow! The racing has barely begun but the fireworks has already started. At the pre-race press conference for the Tour of California, their was an exchange between Paul Kimmage and Lance Armstrong that has to be seen to be believed.

Now to set this up properly, one needs to know that Kimmage is a former Professional cyclist himself and is an award winning sports journalist who currently writes for the London Times Sunday Magazine. He is perhaps best known for his book, Rough Ride, which was one of the first books ever written that really exposed the behind the scenes drug use in Professional cycling and the hard life and indeed rough ride, that is the life of a professional cyclist. Kimmage has been an outspoken critic of drug use in cycling and is a bit of an outlier in the sport since he retired from racing and wrote the book. But much of what he talked about in Rough Ride has proven to be true, as the years have gone by, and rider after rider either was caught using drugs, confessed or retired with controversey swirling around them.

Then their is Lance Armstrong - his story is well known and his comeback out of retirement has many people again focussed on the seven time Tour de France Champion. In a radio interview last fall when he learned of Armstrong's return, this is what Kimmage had to say: "The Cancer of the peloton has returned. It has come out of remission". Have a look at the exchange between Kimmage and Armstrong:

http://velonews.tv/?articleID=2591

Ironic that another big anti-Armstrong proponent, Greg Lemond introduces the news-clip on the VeloNews web site!

It's an extraordinary exchange. In particular, it shows Armstrong at his best, when the heat is on and backed into a corner, is when he takes his performance, be it on the race course or even in a press- conference, to another level. I am guessing that most other athletes under similar circumstance would be absolutly dumb-founded, but Armstromg takes it all in stride and does not miss a beat - even making the whole thing a bit of a joke. Indeed, the look on George Hincapie's face to Armstrong's right is telling - he doesn't know what to make of it all!

The season has barely started and already, the stakes and the excitment is at a high-level. Bring it on!

Love!

Paolina and I met on a bike ride - yes it's true. It's remarkable, beyond the fact that we are both keen triathletes( Well, has been a keen triathlete for me) and cyclists. Had I turned right on that road at HWY 9 and Dufferin, north of Toronto, we may have never met. But I went left and that's how it happened. I had seen Paolina coming along the road, so I did turn left. We rode together that summer day for about an hour. Truth be known, I was in dreadful shape at the time and was killing myself to keep up, while at the same time trying to look relaxed and carry on a conversation, as we rode over the roads of the Holland Marsh - a hard thing to do!

We parted ways and I went home and recovered( !!), but I was smitten. I followed up with her, did some telephone tag and then their was a first date - lunch at the Soho Bistro on Yonge St. And it grew from their. The timing was good but not great for the both of us. We had both been through a lot in the few previous years, and neither of us was looking for something else - just friendship. However it quickly went way beyond that and a love bloomed that I think caught both of us by surprise, but it was a powerful force that we came to realize was important to us. Together we were better!

I really do love her. Paolina has been such a wonderful and amazing influence in my life and I feel lucky and grateful every day that we are together.

Happy Valentine's Day Darling - I love you!

Today's "Training"

Forty-five minutes on the rollers this morning. Most of it, spinning in the 53/12 gear. Legs felt good. Then did the mini core routine afterwards.

I had been getting very excited about the prospects of some outdoor riding this weekend after a week of spring like weather here in Southern Ontario ( snow is almost completely gone), but we are back in the deep-freeze with a temp of -10C this morning and only slightly warmer weather forcast for the weekend. Maybe xc skiing. Have not been skiing in over a month now. Should be icey and fast at either Hardwood Hills or Horseshoe Valley

Call me a wimp but my lower threshold for outdoor riding is around 0C. If it's below that, I am indoors on the trainer or rollers - as boring as it is, it's a far better use of the time.