Bike sprint, resistance, diet, life change

Doing bike sprints while seated is really a difficult thing, to not stand and engage the glutes, strongest muscles in the body.  Much more of a quad workout. However, that's what I'm doing during this healing phase of my workouts.  Still doing daily resistance, 24 pullups this morning.  Becoming routine.  Situps, ab wheel, pushups, dumbells, hanging abs are my routine.  Stopped doing the slant board squats for a while.  The 2.5 mile bike sprint was a 'seated' PR.  Almost a minute slower than my regular PR. 

2.5 mile seated mountain bike sprint - Laurel Branch Trl

Time - 10:09

Avg speed - 12.8 mph

Max HR - 165

HR over 156 - 4:07

Avg HR - 150 (inc 1 min recovery at end)

Decent workout but not the real max HR sweat dripper that I'm used to.  Really helps to have the glutes to get to that intensity.

Had a swim yesterday at Scott's party.  Also ate some party food like chips and brownies, ice cream, but not a lot.  Still 142.7 for today's weigh in.  

I feel like my life has entered a major transition as I've now committed to playing full solo concerts starting in Oct.  The lifestyle of a musician that I led for so many yrs is quite different than the lifestyle I led after the pandemic pushing toward athletic championships.  It actually got a bit unhealthy during the peak as a performer in my early 40s.  Was probably 10-12+ lbs heavier, didn't watch my diet as much, exercise wasn't a priority, occasionally ate poorly, spent a lot of time sitting and practicing, up late at night and drinking too much tea and coffee, even beer, occasional light use of cannabis - (which actually is proven helpful in the interpretive and creative process).  Also, performing itself is quite stressful.  When you say you're a guitarist, usually the next question is, 'are you in a band?'   There is no more difficult, challenging, and stressful situation for a guitarist than doing hour long SOLO classical concerts in an academic or concert series situation.  Period.  

I did find a shirtless photo of myself from that era before athletics when my life was only guitar.  I looked somewhat lean, but weak.   

This is about 24-25 yrs ago, (about age 41-42ish).   I was doing some very serious hiking then, so I wasn't by any means significantly overweight.  This photo was during a boat trip with Lisa at Fontana.  At one point, we did a 25 mile day hike with a nearly 5000' vertical climb, as well as a 16 miler with a 3300' climb in the same few day trip.   I couldn't come close to doing that today.  Only maybe if my life depended on it.  

The parallels between training as a sprinter and as a concert musician are really remarkable … “trust the process” as they say.  I haven’t played a full hour solo program in almost 8 yrs I think. (Shorter programs yes).  Now concerned with hand health, but that is generally ok.   Where athletics and music training differ is in time spent. Physical adaptations for the hands seem to take more daily time than relatively brief intense track workouts, because a lot of the practice is slow and methodical, and it’s every day.  Both are long term commitments taking months, not only in learning to execute, but doing it on the spot in a performance, which is more the mental aspect.    Not that it's impossible to do both as I did in 2015, but my 2015 tour was in the fall - off season for track.

Anyway, since I started this blog 15 yrs ago, it's going to remain about training, fitness, wellness, etc... and I'm going to begin at some point, moving my discussions on music to my somewhat neglected other blog which I started nearly 20 yrs as mostly an adventure, outdoors, travel, music, and photography blog.  https://tnparadise.blogspot.com/

I'm really liking my life right now.  Have settled into a pleasant routine where I stay up late and practice, sometimes go to the cathedral, wake up early and go back to sleep, usually getting out of bed by 9 or 10am, do a few scales on the guitar, do my pullups, pushups, a brief walk, weigh in on my scale, drink a liter of water, sit in the hot tub, get out and start my daily practicing ... which will go for hours.  I have my first coffee about noon and a light snack, usually Wasa crackers with fig jam mixed with psyllium husk.  I eat my main meal which is a large salad sometimes with fish, or chick peas.  Sometimes a vegetable stew with zucchini, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, garlic, basil from my small basil tree, and whatever other vegetables I have available.   Really low carb.    These types of main meals don't have enough calories to make it and I've been snacking on walnuts and blueberries, occasionally Wasa crackers of Royo bread with sunflower butter, and dried cranberries.   When I do eat meat, it's usually flounder, salmon, organic chicken breast.  I will also occasionally eat other types of fish like cod, shrimp.  So with a relatively narrow diet, it's not out of the possibility that I may have a folate or Vit B deficiency so I'm testing for that on Friday.  Easy to remedy.  Due to my CKD, I was told to be cautious with Vit C, and I did see my collagen supplement had 100mg of Vit C.  Should be ok.  

Living in nature and getting most of my vegetables from the local organic market, the low stress job, the commitment to health and fitness I have now should help make a healthier transition back into concert performance.  Older and wiser.  

seated biking, resistance, tests

Been doing daily resistance work and my weight has been good, in the 142s last few days.  In an effort to allow my knee to recover, I've eliminated hard standing bike sprints and hill climbs.  But, I've been doing the same biking but seated and not as much.  I do think this is compromising my V02 max but at least I'm pretty strong, yesterday another PR pullup set - 26 although the last one was a bit of a kip cheater.  The remarkable thing is that I have gained a bit of lean muscle mass without eating much protein.  

The last two 2.5 mile bike sprints in which I've stayed seated have been more than a minute off my PR of 9:21 for all out standing sprints.  The first one wasn't a strong effort.

Aug 1 (seated) bike sprint:

Time - 10:48

Avg speed - 12.5 mph

Max HR - 156

Avg HR - 143

Aug 4 (seated) bike sprint:

Time - 10:32

Avg speed - 13 mph

Max HR - 172 (178 spike 50 sec afterward)

Avg HR - 161

I had that weird spike after finishing this run, (178).  I think it's actually a sign of losing fitness.  

I only plan on doing such rides 2 or max 3x / week.  Really focusing on the rest and healing of my knee.  I am getting an off-loader brace and may experiment with using it on the bike, rower, hiking, stairmaster, etc...

I was at a conference today and a music colleague asked me if I was retired from track I said probably but haven't made the decision 100% yet.   As I become more involved with preparing myself to play concerts again, I find the decision to walk away from track a bit easier.  It always tugs on me when I see colleagues racing but I am enjoying getting up in the morning with no knee pain, walking, and climbing stairs also with no pain.  If I do test the waters and try to run a little, it won't be for at least 5 to 8 weeks (late Sept/ Oct.).  I went to the track today and just stretched, no drills.  Avoided the temptation to run, although I felt I could have. 

As I am officially elderly now, I am most concerned with staying alive, well, and disease free.   Speaking of that, I had a major round of tests and with the help of Claude AI, I was able to refine some of my issues.  

Testing / wellness

I think the tests I had were a bit skewed by 2 consecutive meals of this high fiber protein fortified pasta I had not eaten previously - most affecting kidney and TriG readings.    Regarding the tests, I had the usual moderately high small molecule lipids: LDL (147), Triglycerides (162), ApoB (130), and too little HDL (40).   oxLDL was high (83), and kidney function low - GFR (58) due to high creatinine (1.36).  Also homocysteine was high (16.2).   AI suggests testing for folate and B12 insufficiency, which I plan to do next week.  That would explain these readings and be an easy fix.  I'm also going to repeat cystatin-C.  

On the plus side, my inflammation markers, and glucose / insulin handling is very good.   Both my inflammation markers hsCRP and IL-6 were optimal - below the minimum reference level - too low to measure.  Fasting glucose good (92), fasting insulin optimal (4.2), and HbA1c 5.5 - normal. 

Also, the innate lipid particle Lp(a) is optimal for me, below minimum reference level. 

So in general, a mixed bag.  I also found from my genome through Nebula Genomics, that I have a maximum (100%) polygenic tendency to develop high Apolipoprotein B.   This makes sense and is confirmed by numerous relatives with heart disease.   All of my testing, in particular my lipid fractionation tests, point to a very high risk assessment of cardio vascular disease, but fortunately not compounded by other factors such as inflammation, Lp(a), and high HbA1c.... not to mention no alcohol, no smoking, normal BP, low fat low carb diet etc...  It is very clear that animal fat is not the only issue in developing heart disease, it also is caused by sugar and carbs.  (Roya's younger brother is a vegan and had to have his heart stented due to heart disease).   

It is very likely that my 400m training over the past decade+ has kept me relatively disease free, not to mention the low carb diet.  Compared to the avg American, my diet is ridiculously clean.  About the worst things I eat are high fiber Wasa crackers with fig preserves which I mix with psyllium husk fiber, and Royo high carb bread (30 cal a slice).  Also occasional bowls of blueberries. I have a pretty big list of things I almost never eat... including common foods like pizza, chips, potatoes, butter, eggs, margarine, high fat dairy, fried food, boxed cereals, regular bread, regular rice, cookies, pies, baked goods, no beef or pork in 35 yrs.   I replaced skim milk with unsweetened almond milk.   The only fats I eat are small amounts of olive oil, walnuts, and sunflower seeds.  I use the allulose/monkfruit sweetener.  I even started filtering my espresso through paper to eliminate LDL increasing compounds like cafestol.  Low protein and occasional fish / chicken.  Sometimes go a week + vegan.  Somtetimes I will eat canned skinless boneless sardines in water.  

I will likely consider preventative medication, especially if I can get a CCTA scan to test for soft plaque and it is positive.  That is the goal of my next appt.  To make the case for a CCTA scan.  I have been resistant to drugs up until now, but now may be the time to consider it - considering my small molecule particle burden as shown by my Apolipoprotein B1/A ratio.

I'm really digging the incredible self pay pricing on Goodlabs.com test broker.   

To good health!