joereger.com

20 Min Ride

Joe Reger, Jr. — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 07:28:00 GMT

Quick indoor ride to just get some blood flowing through the legs. Didn't feel horrible. Hopefully the rest is helping the leg sticks.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Joe Reger, Jr. — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:49:51 GMT

Miserable 8.5 Miles

Joe Reger, Jr. — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:36:00 GMT

Too hot and my legs are still way out of it. Somewhat surprised how bad they are right now. Guess the weekend still taking its toll. Glad I didn't run this morning... would have been very frustrating. Got out there this afternoon and it was a little over 90 degrees. Thought I was fine the first few miles, although sore. Then the wheels came off. For no apparent reason. Lots of leg pain. Just total stiffness. Oh well... hobbled in, am blogging it and will forget it.

30 Min CompuTrainer

Joe Reger, Jr. — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:21:00 GMT

First CompuTrainer ride in a while. Saw that Paul's back on his so, you know, had to be done. It had been upstairs. Now it's downstairs. Put the tri bike on it today. Nothing major. 187 avg watts, no heart rate. Hoping to run tomorrow morning but my legs aren't feeling fresh at all.

Adidas Shoe Mystery Solved

Joe Reger, Jr. — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:14:00 GMT

Thanks to Matt Silva of Phidippides who solved my Adidas Supernova Control mystery. He's running the Vermont 100 in a few weeks, has known about my blog for a while and saw the Adidas mystery. Turns out Adidas renamed them to the Adidas Supernova Sequence. The second version of said shoe will be out in early July at Phidippides. I'll be grabbing a pair. Thanks for the sleuthing Matt!

Mellow Mushroom with the Fam

Joe Reger, Jr. — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 06:10:00 GMT

Enjoyed it! Ava and Knox went nuts. Then Emme minimelted and we, as usual, bolted.

6 Mile Run

Joe Reger, Jr. — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:26:00 GMT

Ran on the trails behind the house. Then the comet to kendy's. Hot and my legs felt like absolute crap.

My First Story for Ava

Joe Reger, Jr. — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:40:00 GMT

Ava asked me to tell her a story tonight. This is the first such request and I'm fairly certain my story about a blue dinosaur who went to Wal-Mart to buy Bitzel a birthday present wasn't the best premise. But she seemed to enjoy it. And then she told me a story about a little girl who draws pictures and covers a wall with them. She started it with "once upon a time." It was just too cute. I've got some story telling learning to do.

Cartersville Century 2009: I Hate this Ride with a Burning Passion

Joe Reger, Jr. — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 06:09:00 GMT

Ah, the Cartersville Century. A yearly ride. That I hate. But always seem to talk myself back into the next year.

Day started with me getting there about an hour too early.

Then I realized I had a flat tire. Have I mentioned that the Cartersville Century never goes well for me?

Hung with the lead pack for the first 50 miles which was what I did a few years ago. Actually, I held on longer this time and felt better but absolutely needed water at the bank rest stop.

Overdid the salt. Accelerade in the bottles. Salt tabs pre-ride. PowerGels with 4x sodium. My stomach shut down at about mile 30 and without water to dilute my innards I knew things wouldn't get better. Mark and I bit the bullet and grabbed some water while Linenberg and a now much smaller posse kept going.

Saw Keith at the bank but Marc and I were quick stopping it. Ended up leaving the stop in about two minutes. But now with only one other dude. About seven miles later my stomach gave up. Actually, that's not right... a second group did form and I rode with them for a bit but just didn't have the stomach. I wasn't processing water and was dehydrating.

So I backed off. And then I got lost. I thought I was following the CC markings but suddenly I found myself at the Bud Plant and the end of the ride! Except... it was the end of the wrong ride... I guess Beautiful Backroads. Suck.

Lots of shifting issues today. Rear was perfect. Front had problems. Could go to small chain ring no problem but going back up was a lot of work. I put my chain over and onto my pedal about twenty times. Saved it every time though. Just dramatic with all of the rollers.

In the end I was pretty close to the numerically pretty but overall irrelevant average speed of 20 mph. I didn't slow to a crawl. But I did have to slow to let my stomach settle. Unfortunately since I was off course I didn't get any more cold water. Suck part deux.

When I overheat I feel like my skin is on fire and like my body is about to explode. It's just that hot. Even though it was only about 88 or 90 out. It was humid and I was dehydrating.

Bonky eyes for the final ten miles. Lots of wrong turns through town but I eventually random walk algorithmed myself back to the car.

Did not feel good. Didn't barf but had the impulse. Bonky eyes. Way overheated. So I turned on the a/c and did what comes naturally.

Sent an inappropriate message to twitter, facebook and about 40 other social networks. Sorry ladies. The phrase "my va***a is broken" isn't appropriate in any context.

Grabbed some sprite and made my way home. Zoned out for a good while. Nice headache now. Unable to sleep... kinda that restless awake/nodding off feeling.

Overall happy with the ride. My training's been crap so far this year and I'm glad that I was able to hang at all with the lead group. Not the century finish with the lead pack I'd have liked but I have much more perspective these days. Plenty of time to add fitness between now and November.

Shouts to Cappy, Suobs, Keith, Linenberg and everybody else out there!

I hate the Cartersville Century. But I'll do it again and so should you. It covers a beautiful part of Georgia, it's well supported and there are always great people out.

Later I heard reports from people that it was "a bloodbath" at the front with people getting pulled, puking and otherwise exploding all over the place. Heat can be dangerous. Heat plus spandex can be deadly. Careful out there peeps!

45 Min/15 Mi Ride

Joe Reger, Jr. — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 06:29:00 GMT

Quick test ride today. Yesterday I worked the SRAM Red rear derailleur... tonight I worked the front. It's not perfect... my chain's old but I'm not in the mood to get a new one. Saw Dave Stewart right at the beginning and we rode for a while. Warm out today.

Friday Fun: Giving Up Outlook

Joe Reger, Jr. — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 02:22:00 GMT

Microsoft Outlook is a big fat hairy beast of a program. It does its job well but takes up a lot of memory and cpu. Especially on a solid state disk (SSD).

So a couple weeks ago I started the process of killing Outlook. I moved my email hosting to Google Apps which essentially creates a joereger.com version of Gmail for me. Actually, I guess I began this process last year. I tried this approach in 2008 with pingFit's email and it worked well.

Once all the DNS changes were made and email was flowing to Google's servers (thanks Sr and Carlos) I set up IMAP in Outlook to see how it performed. Not bad. Not great. But not bad. Did I mention not great? I spent a couple weeks just watching it to see how Gmail/IMAP works. Each client has its own idiosyncrasies in how it handles folders, deletes, retrieval of headers, etc.

Earlier this week I started to consider the final push to completely cut the Outlook cord. I had to get my Gmail Calendar, Tasks and Contacts syncing with my phone. Not a big deal once I found GooSync.

ChatterEmail is an unsupported Palm client that supports IMAP + IDLE. This makes email work more like it does on the Blackberry... namely that email is instant. I did a test and sent an email to myself. It hit my phone in 22 seconds. Not bad.

A couple minutes ago in a lunch break from activity I decided to just pull the plug on Outlook. I'll start using the Gmail web interface from now on. I've also got Outlook running without POP3 as a backup if I need it.

What freedom, I can also use Thunderbird and any other IMAP client. The argument for IMAP in a web-connected world is that it keeps the mail on the server so there's less syncing to do. Gmail has an offline version powered by Gears which I can use when I'm on planes, etc.

As much as I wanted out of Outlook it really is a pretty good program. There will definitely be tradeoffs and challenges. ChatterEmail isn't supported and the download I've got says it'll stop working in 30 days. New email workflow to hammer out. I'm sure there'll be syncing issues. Etc, etc.

The hardest thing will be to not automatically turn on Outlook when I think about email. The best thing will be that I won't have any automatic notification about email. I've almost always got incoming email and the notification's always distracting me. Yes, I could have turned that notification off in Outlook. Yes, I can get a Gmail notifier. For now I like the silence!

I may end up going back to big O. Who knows. But after, what, fifteen years on Outlook I'm willing to experiment to see if there's a better way.

Friday, June 26, 2009

Joe Reger, Jr. — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 01:05:01 GMT

Michael Jackson Dead at 50

Joe Reger, Jr. — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:32:00 GMT

I remember the excitement of the "Thriller" video debut. You see kids, back when I was young MTV was an edgy music television station. And "Thriller" was the biggest thing on it. It had captivated the nation. I remember my parents not wanting me to watch it. But we had a baby sitter that night. So we watched it. I can still feel the excitement. Even at a young age I heard all about it for weeks prior. And this was in a time when we weren't bombarded with 5,000 commercial impressions per day. When we hadn't yet learned to tune out the cacophony. When music on television was still captivating. Those first few iconic chords. The beat. The zombies. Red leather n' curls. It was huge. That year I got my first Walkman (an old iPod, kids) and my first tape was MJ Thriller. Can't say I'm terribly sad tonight. But I am nostalgic. His music definitely captures a point in time. If he had gone on to make many albums this effect would have been diluted. And 50's too young, of course.

Ava Swim Lesson and Dinner at Matt and Kendy's

Joe Reger, Jr. — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:02:00 GMT

Enjoyed it everybody!

30 Mile Ride

Joe Reger, Jr. — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 05:30:00 GMT

Wanted to get out onto pavement with the new SRAM Red before the weekend ride. The guys at Smyrna Bicycles really cleaned up the shifting. I thought I was enjoying it on the trainer... I really enjoy it on the road. Crisp shifting. Better fit... in fact I switched to a longer and more stable stem which feels great too. Rode out to mile 15 and turned around. About 19 out and 20.4 back in. Warm but not terribly hot.