On Tuesday my group rode out to the end of Redwood Retreat road and back (to the Southwest of Morgan Hill). I did a long warm-up before meeting them, turning this into a 3 hour ride for me. The weather was a little on the cold and foggy side at first but it got nicer … Continue reading Relaxing Long Group Ride →

https://www.cyclingnews.com/features/wrist-vs-chest-strap-heart-rate-monitor-which-is-better-for-you/ This article has a good discussion of accuracy ot wrist (also called optical) measurements. They even mention that freckles can throw off the results. Guess what! I have freckles on my wrist. Devices that monitor our heart rates based on a measurement at the wrist are pretty prevalent nowadays, including Fitbit, Garmin watches, and … Continue reading Reliability of Wrist Heart Rate Monitors →

I finished up my round of antibiotics and have been asymptomatic for a few days now, so the last couple for days I've been able to workout for longer and with higher intensity and it felt great. Yesterday I went on a brisk long cruise of just under three hours. The only problem was it … Continue reading Finally Well Again →

http://www.Amazon.com/books I just read an excellent book The Beck Diet Solution by Dr. Judith Beck. I was looking for a book applying cognitive behavioral therapy to weight loss, and came up with this one in a search on Amazon. CBT is excellent for improving negative thought patterns that affect our behavior. I personally notice negative … Continue reading Psychological Techniques For Weight Loss →

The illness I referred to as a cold in my last post is persisting. By last Wednesday I had not had .fever symptoms in 3 days so I went on a long ride with intervals thrown in, and it felt great I did have a stye in my left eye that was getting redder, however, … Continue reading Still Muddling… →

I have finally gotten my recumbent back on the road in electric-assist mode. This turned out to be quite an odyssey. I pursued two parallel approaches. First I tried to fix the wheel with broken spokes It turns out you can get custom spoke lengths online so I got replacements in 228 mm. Then I … Continue reading Electric Recumbent Adventure Continues →

I got some good rides in early last week. I especially enjoyed our challenging group ride on Tuesday up in the hills East of Gilroy. This doesn't have any really long climbs, just lots of them. I was getting tied towards the end, with electric assist (on my upright). So I was impressed by those … Continue reading Muddling Through a Cold →

On Friday I was out for a long ride on my recumbent and I happened to look down at my front wheel and noticed a broken spoke. The wheel appeared in good enough shape, not too badly "out of true", and was still ride-able. So I headed home and switched bikes, completing the ride on … Continue reading Non-Electric Recumbent For a Few Days →

I am back to being able to do longer rides as long as long as I don't overdo the intensity. I think what went wrong that led to my recent sciatica flare-up was that I had combined long rides with hard riding, including sprints and intervals on the same day. Now I'm keeping the pace … Continue reading Back To Longer Rides →

http://www.amazon.com/books I just read the book Ultra-processed People, by Chris van Tulleken, about the large amount of highly processed food in our modern diets, which I recommend. I'd always known about obvious kinds of processing like turning wheat into white flour by removing the germ and bran and then grinding up the rest. But the … Continue reading Reducing Dietary Junk →