John Simons

Riding, Mar. 4 - Lake Weir

I was out on my bike today, on real roads for the first time this year.

I rode south, down around Lake Weir. I then rode out to my grandfather’s house for dinner, where the rest of the family met me. The total ride was 31.86 miles. I had jerry-rigged my Garmin GPS to track the bike ride. Sadly, the batteries died around mile 25. Here is a map of the route, until the GPS died:

Here is the profile of the route, again up until the GPS died:

These imaages are both from GPS Visualizer.

The goal of the ride was to build endurance, with a few hills. I tried to stay within the Aerobic Pace. I did some riding at Tempo pace. On a couple of hills, my HR got way to high. Towards the end, I was struggling to keep my HR below lactate threshold, and had some burning in the legs.

So, here are the stats:

Distance: 31.86
Time: 2:22:09
Avg. HR: 146
Max. HR: 229
Avg. Spd.: 13.4
Max. Spd.: 33.6

Overall, it was a good ride. I definitely need to ride along the east and south edges of Lake Weir again as I train for BRAG. The hills are good, but probably not as big as I will face in Georgia. I still need to work on my endurance and my power.

Tags: training, bicycle, cycling, bike, Lake Weir, hills, BRAG, GPS

What do I look for in a church

I put a post on my training blog last night about a sermon from Mars Hill Church that I listened to while training. In that post, I commented about expository preaching, and that I should post an entry about why I like expository preaching. I am not ready to compose that post yet. I need to gather some information first, and organize my thoughts. You can expect to see a post in the next week or so on that subject.

In the mean time, I want to post an entry about what is important to me in a church. As I have previously posted, I am involved in starting a new church in my home town: Christ Community Church. With so many churches in town, why would a group of nine families come together to start yet another new church. Is there a need for another church? We obviously think that there is a need if we are putting all of the time and energy in that it takes to start a church from the ground up, especially since we do not have a pastor yet.

So, the two questions are linked: What do I look for in a church? and, Why do I think we need a new church in town? In truth, there are a lot of answers.
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Koine Greek - 3/2/2006

Several weeks ago, I put up a brief New Testament passage in Koine Greek. It actually got two comments from the outside world, which is a first for me. Only one of the comments tried to decipher the verse, but was off by several verses. Ian quoted 1 John 3:1. I had put in the greek text of 1 John 3:16:

We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us;
and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. (NASB)

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Training, Mar. 2 — Mars Hill Church

I worked on endurance tonight. I rode for one hour at Aerobic Pace (131-145 HR). Avg. HR was 136 for the hour. I spent 55:10 in the target zone.

During the ride I listened to a sermon from Mars Hill Church in Seattle. I listened primarily out of curiousity. I have heard the name of the church several times lately, primarily in the blogs. I also found two other connections. I have been brushing up on my NT Greek. I have been doing this in part on the website zhubert.com. While checking out the site, I saw a reference that the creator of the site not only attends Mars Hill but is teaching New Testament Greek classes at the church. Now, I had thought that the church was probably like a lot of new churches, seeker sensitive and light on teaching. But, a church light on teaching wouldn’t be likely to teach its members Greek.

The other place that I found it was when I set up a podcast for my church, Christ Community Church. Having found their podcast, I downloaded some sermons. I saw that the sermons were from 1 Corinthians and seemed to work sequentially through the book, which is a good sign for expository preaching, one of the best systems of good Biblical teaching.

So I listened to the sermon and I am initially impressed. I have one more sermon on my mp3 player, that I need to listen to on my next ride. I will post more about it.

Tags: training, bicycle, cycling, bike, Mars Hill Church, Mark Driscoll, 1 Corinthians, sermon, Christianity

Training, Mar. 1

I finally got back on the bike this morning. I had a better offer last night, so I didn’t ride. Instead, I got up early this morning to ride for a little while. I have been trying to wake up earlier over the last two weeks with the hope that I would be able to start training some in the morning, since evenings are so busy in my life right now. This morning it paid off.

I rode on the trainer for 40 minutes. I worked on riding at a Tempo pace. According to Friel, this is 89-93% of Lactate Threshold HR. This translates into a HR range of 146-153. This is one notch up from the Aerobic pace (82-88% LTHR; HR 131-145).

I did 10 minutes of warm up at Aerobic pace. (131 Avg HR)
I did 10 minutes at Tempo pace (150 Avg HR)
2 minutes Aerobic (137 Avg HR)
10 minutes Tempo (149 Avg HR)
8 minutes Aerobic to cool down (137 Avg HR).

I could have ridden longer if time permitted, but work does beckon.

Tags: training, cycling, bicycle, Cyclist’s Training Bible, Friel, Tempo