Sunday, February 10, 2008

Affordable Weight Loss

Since Moab 2 weeks ago, I've been all excited to Stans my SS wheels and get rid of the 210 gram tubes. I finally got 'er done this weekend. At first blush I thought wow, no tubes, no rim strips, tubelss ready rims and tires and a big 468 gram savings. Sign me up. The reality is the savings was 71 grams per tire, 142 grams total. The next big weight saving will be in the tires.

I was not able to get the Stans rim strips to work with the Bontrager rims, so I had to buy Bont's pre-formed rim strips and separate stems. Together they work like a charm and inflated without a problem, and they've held air without leaking. I added 100 grams, 2 squirt bottles, of Stans to each tire and I'm good to go. Total cost was $28 - not bad.

What a weekend this was. Finally sun and ridable weather. I put in a hard 3.5 hours with a big group of Roadie Saturday and got my doors blown off after 1.5 hours. Man, those guys are fast! Great workout overall and great for the attitude and spirits. I rode again today and enjoyed the sun and even warmer temps. Life is good...

I'm 2 days into the second week of sucking oxygen depleted air from a compressor. All is well and I can't say I notice anything dramatic at this point in time. Breathing the air is getting a little more labored, so I know something is going on. I don't see any apprarent deformaties so I'll keep on sucking.

I also need to clarify what it is I'm doing. The process is actually intermittent hypoxic exposure, IHE and not intermittent hypoxic training, IHT. IHE is passive and involves 5-minutes exposures to altitude followed by 5 minute exposures to amibent air. IHT is done on the bike using a mask and requires significantly more airflow. IHT is more flexible and will allow you to train low and sleep high, if you so choose, giving you the best of both worlds. That sounds cool, but unfortunately that's not what I'm doing. Although I won't be sleeping at altitude, IHE should provide a noticable benefit.

As a side note, Marnie Knoop won the Utah State 5A 500-meter freestyle Championship held in Provo this weekend. Way to kick ass Marnie. She's also picked up a full ride swimming scholarship to BYU (I'll forgive you Marnie) and will be headed that way in the fall. I'm proud of you Marn's.

Enjoy the warm weather.

2 comments:

StupidBike said...

I think i saw you on the way up from old mill to Porcupine, i was starting an interval, so sorry if my wave was less than noticeable,

If you are using UST tires, use a lot less stans, if you are using non ust, well good luck with that :)

Brad Mullen said...

No problem. I'm generally somewhere else and notice nobody when I do intervals, so the fact you waved is good.

I'm using the Bont Jones ACX tubelss ready that came with the Rig. I put 2 squeeze bottles in each tire and so-far-so-good. Sounds like I'd better be careful with the Kendas or Maxxis tires.