The crocuses are sprouting in my front yard. The weather is warming up. Daylight savings time is here. I broke out the knee warmers and took my road bike off of the wall and out onto the road for the first time. After a winter of spending more time on the trainer than I ever have before, it feels strange cranking down on the pedals and bursting forward. Somehow my body forgot that bikes are actually meant to go anywhere at all, let alone FAST and not just spin endlessly in one place.

The first ride of the spring is always the most fun because it reminds me of why I spent all that time watching movies on Hulu over and over while it is snowing outside. Going fast is FUN.

I was also reminded of another sign of spring on my 30 mile ride this afternoon that is probably unique to the Boston area. The red coats.

I stopped to say hi and watch them pass along the trail and was greeted with a friendly “Loyal subject of the King I presume?”

I ride through Lexington and Concord a lot, so I see these guys out a lot throughout the summer. It made me smile knowing that if they are out, winter is DEFINITELY over.

And on a side note. I did another CompuTrainer time trial/fitness test this weekend. It was the same course last year’s TT at the Multisport World Expo, a 10k through central park. I thought I was in worse shape than last year since I’m not teaching quad-busting spin classes twice a week anymore, but was able to crank out the exact same wattage!

Last year: 283 watts

This year: 283 watts

Both years, I tasted puke and loved it.

Maybe I’m in better cycling shape than I thought…

So I got an email the other day that went something like this…

“Hey Jamie, remember the Phonak pro cycling team?”

“Yeah! Floyd Landis is the man! What a BAMF!”

“Agreed. Well Phonak primarily makes hearing aids, but they have some pretty sick earphones. Wanna test ‘em out?”

“Heck yes I do!”

Unlike last winter when I was still teaching spinning classes a few times per week, I’ve been spending a TON more time listening to music by myself on the bike trainer (and even more once I really ramp up my running) so I thought this would be the perfect piece of new gear to review. Soon I got a nice surprise in the mail and started putting ‘em through the SwimBikeRun product testing gauntlet.

Introducing the Phonak PFEs.

PFE stands for “perfect fit earphones.”

For such tiny little earphones, they sure promised a lot (a perfect fit and and incredible sound quality – without the distraction of ambient noise) so I wasn’t really sure what to expect.  After poking around and finding some pretty impressive reviews, including this one from CNet, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I tried to stay as unbiased as I could and give ‘em a fair shake.

Giving ‘em a good sweat test on the trainer.

FIT/COMFORT TESTING:

Pretty tiny, right? The wires are held back behind your ears by these thin silicone ear guides (little plasticy tubes which can be easily taken off if you want). They are really light and comfortable, but most importantly of all, with the ear guides you don’t have to worry about the earphones jumping out of your ears while you are running.

Most people use the standard iPod earbuds that came with it, but if you listen to music at all with your iPod while working out, I’m sure you can associate with my frustrations. I’ve tried everything from wrapping the earbud wires around the sides of my sunglasses to tucking the wires into the sides of my hat to help hold them in my ears. But that doesn’t change the fact that the inside of my ears are not round little circles, but iPod earbuds are. It is no wonder they are such a pain to keep in place. Any mild jostling is going to shake them out.

The PFEs came with a three different sizes of silicone ear tips (small, medium large) and one set of Comply foam tips to help you get the right fit for your ear shape. The foam tips are by far my favorite. Think of the same type of material as earplugs. You smoosh ‘em down, place ‘em in your ears, and they expand, fill in the gaps, block out noise and give AWESOME sound quality. Plus, they basically hold themselves in place from INSIDE your ear. I am loving that. Sure, something expanding inside of your ear does sound pretty uncomfortable, but trust me on this one.

It was pretty hard to hear anything else with these on. I loved that for the sound quality, but for that reason I doubt I’d ever use these while riding my bike outside or in the car. If I’m on the bike and being overtaken by a car, I want to be able to hear it and give them plenty of room before it is right on my wheel, but everyone has different comfort levels with riding.

Okay. Fit and comfort gets an A, but let’s talk about actual sound quality.

AUDIO QUALITY TESTING:

Just by looking at their size, I wasn’t expecting huge sound quality from these little buggers, but I was pleasantly surprised. Songs that I had listened to thousands of times in my car, computer stereo and iPod earbuds (note: none of which are all that fancy, except my Harman Kardon computer speakers) sounded clearer than ever there were even all these background notes and sounds that I had never even noticed before. Some parts sounded like a brand new song, it was pretty crazy.

The one and only part where these earphones fall flat a little is the bass, and unfortunately this failing is pretty obvious. Highs and mids sound amazing, but on hardcore spin fest intervals where I was trying to tear my legs off and blast some beats to keep me pushing hard, the music couldn’t keep up. Now, it wasn’t awful, and I may not have even noticed if everything else didn’t sound so great, but even at low volume the lack of bass thumb-ability was pretty obvious, even when listening to acoustic stuff. It wasn’t only noticeable when listening to techno or rap either, but for such tiny earphones this is forgivable given how clear everything else sounds.

Sound quality: B+

SIDE NOTES:

The version I tested also has a microphone built in to the wire that is compatible with the iPhone. It was great for taking calls while on the trainer and not having to get up, pause my workout and hope that it is actually someone important. I haven’t tested the microphone quality as much yet, but was pretty impressed with how much it picked up and I didn’t feel like I had to talk awkwardly loud just to be heard over the background noise from my bike trainer. Plus, the microphone button works to pause the music so you don’t have to worry about your sweaty hands all over your iPhone. Happy camper.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

All together, I was pretty impressed with the Phonak PFEs. They definitely have a reason why they are named “perfect fit earphones.” If you spend a good portion of your training time listening to music, these would be a good choice of upgrades from just about anything else that you are plugging in to your MP3 player and sticking in the side of your head.

They aren’t super cheap at $139 for the regular model and $159 with the microphone, but the quality definitely justifies the price. Plus, let’s be honest. I’m sure you have spent a lot more money on more frivolous training gear that barely got any use. Lets just say that after reviewing these over the last two weeks, I’m not sure if I’m ever going to use those junky standard round earbuds from Apple anymore.

If you want to check ‘em out and get your own pair, start here: http://www.audeoworld.com

Disclosure: These earphones were provided to me by Phonak to review. Phonak had no part in contributing to the content of this review.

Right now, I’m stuck in one of those “other” parts.

It is only January! I feel like I’m in a slump before I even started! My training has been struggling to take off. Between the freezing cold, and being dark when I leave for work and when I get home, I’m in a funk. F-U-N-K. Funk.

I have even been having trouble sleeping lately. Normally, I’m a sleeping champion. Like the kind of sleeper whose head hits the pillow and immediately dozes off into dream land? Now, not so much. Waking up in the middle of the night to stress about random things that don’t deserve losing sleep over is NOT something that I’m used to.

But the thing is that when I do get myself out and training, I feel great. I’m hitting my zones, feeling strong and just cruising. I even had fun during a 1:30 trainer session and 1 mile brick run this weekend. I have no idea why, but it was probably the most fun I’ve ever had on the trainer. Now If I can just figure out how to keep it up, I’ll be SOLID come spring.

So I guess my main problem is just getting off my lazy rump and getting my shoes on and working up a sweat. Once I am there, I’m golden. At least The days are getting warmer and longer from here on out. (or at least that is what the calendar tells me…)

Even though my training was pretty light in December, with the craziness of the holidays I feel like Sam and I have had barely time to just sit and talk and figure out how each other is doing. We talked about how I got addicted to triathlons (a story I will share here once I have the corresponding embarrassing pics from high school to truly tell it well), career plans, speedos vs jammers vs trishorts, vacation ideas… all the good stuff.

On a separate note, Sam and I threw a killer New Year’s Eve bash at our apartment this weekend. This picture pretty much sums up my night.

We also figured out that we have a magic refrigerator. We somehow woke up the next morning with a ton of empty bottles of champagne, but the refrigerator had even more beer than when the party started the night before. MAGIC!

Who can say “Another Party At Jamie’s House?!”

Gotta enjoy that off season while it lasts…

(I was interviewed for a story on Boston’s NPR affiliate, WBUR for a story on all the layoffs today. It should air this Friday, if you want to hear it, email me and I’ll send you a link if they put it online.)

With some extra time yesterday, I made a new spin mix that I was looking forward to testing out in class last night. Despite only two people showing up to class (even though every single treadmill was taken), I still rocked it and started out really hard. The two people in class were regulars and already pretty fit and I knew that they could take it.

That was until the girl started dropping off of the sprint sets and just slowly pedaling along.

Now there are some instructors that get really peeved when the class breaks away from the routine, but as long as you aren’t taking away from the energy of the class, or standing when everyone is sitting right up in the front row, I don’t really care. I was just surprised that this girl was bowing out.

All of a sudden, she grabs her stomach, stops pedaling, and gives me the hand across the throat “no more” sign. As she grabs her towel and water bottle and heads towards the door while I continue on leading class, she lets it fly. But unfortunately she doesn’t make it to the bathroom or nearest trash can.

I help her out the door, dodging the splattered puke on my way, and was left sitting there wondering WTF to do next. Not wanting to continue on class while the room fills with the stink of sweat and puke, I decide to call it a day and have the guy at the front desk mop it up. Heck, I was just glad that I didn’t have to do it!

I asked the other guy left in class if I should take it personally that someone puked  25 minutes into my new workout and music mix, but he assured me that I should take it as a matter of pride and consider it as official spinning class street cred.

HELLS YEAH!

So if anyone wants a fun, fast workout that may make you puke your brains out, let me know.

I just hope that she isn’t too embarrassed and never comes back. But she is pretty hardcore for sticking it out so long, so I’m sure I’ll see her again.

Since today was the first full week of 2009, just like clockwork, it happened again. One of my coworkers even tweeted, dreading the flood of the resolutioners at the gym tonight. You can definitely tell who the regulars are by the dirty looks they are flashing all the strangers who are stealing all the treadmills.

I’m usually really optimistic and I love seeing people take ownership over their health, but I’m fully prepared to see them all disappear back to wherever they came from  in a few weeks.

I especially love seeing new people join my spin class, but I was glad to see that all of my regulars planned ahead  and grabbed all the spin bikes before any resolutioners stole their spots. I’m not some spinning elitist, but there is something to be said about taking care of the people that take care of you. They even saved me a bike so that I didn’t have to teach off the bike! I love my spin peeps. They treat me so good (even when I show up at the eleventh hour).

So for all you peeps reading this (you aren’t a resolutioner, even if your offseason hasn’t started yet, don’t worry), hold tight. Try not to give too many dirty looks, and maybe try to take one of the resolutioners under your wing. Maybe you can find yourself a new workout buddy to help you out when you need some extra motivation later on this year.

With a little help with from my twitter friends for some new songs, here is my latest workout that I designed. It is a “race simulation” workout, so it has an extra long and easy warmup, but then a kick-ass 40 minute pain fest, staying above about 80% of your max for the the majority of the workout.

I tested it out on my class tonight and it seemed to go over pretty well. I saw a lot of pain in some faces.

At the end of the warmup I even had the class stop pedaling, the only time ever durring a spin class, to burst  out of the “gate” to give it more of a race feel, which was pretty fun.

Enjoy!

Warmup
Smashing Pumpkins – Cupid De Lock               Easy Spin – Warmup – 60%
After the Fire – Der Mommissar                        4x :30 sprint @ 75% with :30 rest  1:00 soft pedal
Race Start
Muse – Map of the Problematique                     2x :60 @ 85% w/ :60 rest
Red Hot Chili Peppers – Hard to concentrate     4 x (:30 seated climb – :30 standing climb)
Foo FIghters – Breakout                                    3x (:15 rest :45 sprint) @ 80%
Speed Up                                                          3x (:30 rest :30 sprint) @ 90%
Jimmy Eat World – Bleed American                    :60 standing climb :60 rest :60 standing climb
Britney Spears – Break the Ice                            3 x (:30 easy, :30 medium :30 hard)
Third Eye Blind – Tattoo of the Sun                   1:30 flat – :60 running – 1:30 flat
Imogen Heap – Whatever                                  1:30 sprint – :45 rest – 1:30 sprint
Finger Eleven – Paralyzer                                  climb – :30 sit – 1:00 stand – :30 sit – 1:30 stand
Black Eyed Peas – Anxiety                                :60 sprint – :30 rest 1:30 sprint
Arcade Fire – Keep the car running                   5 x :20 sprints all out – :20 rest
Race End
Cool Down
John Mayer – Gravity                                        3x (:30 sprint @ 75% – :60 rest)
The one that you love                                     Cool Down
Incubus – Aqueous Transmission                      Stretch – Clean Up

I figure the very least I could do for the one driven girl who consistently shows up is to recruit some new faces to keep her company during my class. I was going to make some fliers around the gym with stupid/funny sayings to see who I could convince to join me. Here are some of the ones I came up with  so far. Vote for your favorite or let me know if you’ve got your own.

1. Spinning – Because we both know you didn’t order a salad for lunch
2. Tuesday Night Spin Class – Because sitting in a pool of your own sweat has never been so fun
3. Come spinning, Tuesdays at 7:30 – It won’t give you a big ass
4. OFF LIMITS – Tuesday Night Spin Class – You probably can’t handle it, so don’t even try.

Want to drop a few pounds? Bikini season coming up? Bored of the treadmill? I hear ya. Now, granted I was born with a Y chromosome, so I don’t really understand, and I’ll probably say something later in this post to either a) insult you or b) make myself look like an idiot, but for whatever reason, I feel the need to continue.

To start off, spinning is great for a lot of things: endurance, strength, fights boredom, burns a crap load of calories real fast, has lower joint stress than running,  lets you meet kick-ass instructors named Jamie…

But there are a lot of things that spinning does NOT do, especially give you a big fat ass or huge throbbing man quads. Why do you feel the need to worry about spin class giving you a big ass or big vein covered legs like some steroid soaked body builder or Tour de France rider? Please stop asking me if my spinning class will give you quads that belong on the World’s Strongest Man competition. If it did, I’d have to find a new job because I wouldn’t want to stare at a room full of fat asses all night long.

Honestly, unless you are pushing against some REALLY hard resistance for several hours a day, you’ve got nothing to worry about. And if you have some strange fear of actually having muscle tone in your legs and you are on some Olsen twin workout plan, that is a whole separate issue that I can’t even help out with.

Just had to get off my chest.

Dudes dig chicks with strong cycling muscles. Period.

“So, now that it is nicer outside, is the gym going to keep the same class schedule?”

Basically, a nice way of saying, “now that we can actually ride outside, we aren’t going to be showing up to your stupid class every week and letting you yell at us for 45 minutes straight.”

Maybe I’m just being overly sensitive, but I feel so used! Just because it is starting to get warm outside, you forget about me and all of the ass kicking I put you through all winter and toss me to the side!

Okay, well maybe I wasn’t that beat up by it, and I TOTALLY understand. I’d obviously much rather be riding outside than staring at a blank wall in front of me, but it was a little hit to my ego.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to replace my spinning buddies with my Wheelworks team mates now that we are starting to put together some group rides, one of which is tomorrow morning.

Can I actually wake up at 5:30 and get to the next town over in time to ride before work? We’ll see…

Oh, and it is about 6 weeks to Mooseman!

More updates coming soon.

-Jamie

Update: I ended up being 2 minutes late for the group ride this morning and they headed off without me. Looks like I’m continuing my bad habits from last year.

Note to self, set alarm 2 minutes earlier to 5:28 a.m.

I came in looking to lead a nice hour long endurance ride.  I know, one hour doesn’t seem like a real “endurance ride” by base training for a half IM standards, but it was longer than my usual class and we stayed in zone 1 and 2, so that counts as “endurance” to me (at least for spin class). And partially, I was just being selfish because I need to get a lot more time in zone 1 for the next few weeks of my base training until I start to kick up the volume/intensity a bit.

After doing some form work/drills and a few long easy hill sets and light sprints, we cooled down, stretched and called it a day.  Now, I’m not sure if this is just me being neurotic, but no one had that big “man I just got my ass handed to me” smile after class, and I like those smiles. They tend to make me feel like I’m actually not too bad at this spin instructor thing.

Honestly people, what part of “burn fat more efficiently” and “cardiovascular strength” don’t you understand?  That is what I told you this ride was for. Be happy. Please?

Oh well, I’m just rambling now about people that probably weren’t even upset with me. But I’m a sucker, so I’ll just have to go back to kicking their ass and handing it to them on a big sweaty platter next week.

There is a class that finishes just before mine starts, but the instructor that teaches that class asked me to sub in for her since she is sick.

I’m a pushover, and needless to say. I am taking over her class.

Now I’ve got to kick random people’s asses twice, IN A ROW?!

I should know better since I should be busy doing base training, but Oh Well! I’ve got a backpack full of PB&J, GU, Clif Bars, Nuun, my bike shorts and some kick-ass new tunes.

Here is to hoping I don’t keel over half way through the second session!