Stoney Creek Paddle

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I had been hoping to get out for one more paddle this season, so I was happy I was able to make it happen this morning. I decided to check out another new-to-me launch, namely Green Haven Wharf in Pasadena. This is about 20-25 minutes from home (depending on traffic) and provides access to Stoney Creek. Last year, as part of a larger improvement project, Anne Arundel County added a nice car-top boat launch. Before that, it looks like there was an unofficial launch that was a short carry from parking. It is free to launch here, and there is parking for several vehicles, but no bathroom facilities. With air temperatures in the mid 50s and water temperatures in the upper 50s to low 60s, I opted to wear my wet suit. I hit the water at around 9:00am, and was out for two hours. The day started off overcast, but the clouds burned off while I was out, and I finished the paddle in bright sunshine. While it was a beautiful day to be on the water, it was definitely on the windy side. I started out by checking out a couple of small coves just upstream of the launch, but soon ran out of real estate and turned back downstream. My initial goal was to paddle all the way out to the Fort Smallwood Rd bridge, but I ended up turning around a little bit short of it, because the water was getting choppy and I was fighting against the wind. With the wind at my back, I headed back in the direction of the launch, and checked out a couple of smaller coves along the way. The water was fairly calm here, and it was quite enjoyable. I saw a couple of kayak fishermen out at one point, but other than that, I had the water entirely to myself. All in all, I covered around 5 miles.

I’m pretty sure this was the latest in the season that I have ever paddled. I’d lay odds on this being my last paddle of the season, but you never know. In any case, I really enjoy being out on the water this time of year, and I could see myself eventually buying a dry suit and getting into year-round paddling. Probably not this year, though.

Zeke’s Harvest Moon AeroPress

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I had not used my AP in a couple of months, so I decided to dust it off today:

  • Beans: “Harvest Moon” medium roast (Indonesia/South Asia)
    • Roaster: Zeke’s Coffee (Baltimore, MD)
    • Roast date: 10/30/2023
  • JX: 2 turns (Grind setting 20)
  • 96°C water
  • 15 grams coffee / 200 grams water (1:13.3)
  • Two paper filters, pre-moistened
  • Recipe: An AeroPress Recipe by Tim Wendelboe
  1. Set AeroPress up in standard orientation and rinse filters
  2. Add 200g water to AeroPress
  3. Stir 3 times back to front
  4. Insert plunger and pull up to stop dripping
  5. Steep for 60 seconds
  6. Remove plunger and stir 3 times back to front again
  7. Insert plunger and press slowly

This recipe is actually very similar to one I tried back in September with a different batch of medium-roasted beans. According to my notes, that cup tasted “thin bodied”. Today’s cup, however, was pretty good. Here are the main differences:

  • 95°C water in Sept., vs 96° today
  • One paper filter in Sept., vs 2 today
  • Grind setting 18 in Sept., vs 20 today — September’s was slightly finer
  • Beans 10.5 weeks past roast date (vs 2.5 weeks)

The single biggest difference here was bean freshness. It’s possible that September’s beans may have been starting to get a little stale. Anyhow, I’ll probably try another cup using these beans with this recipe, and see if it turns out similarly to today’s.

I’m hoping to work the AP back into my “rotation” a little bit more frequently, as I’m considering using it as an option for making coffee while traveling. The idea would be to dial a recipe in for a light to medium roast, figure out the quantities of water and coffee used (to eliminate the need for a scale), and pre-grind enough beans for my trip. Then I would pack the AeroPress and ground coffee, and in theory, all I’d need at my destination would be a way to boil water.

11/22: After a slightly bitter cup a couple of days ago, I dropped the water temperature to 90° today and the resulting cup wasn’t bad. Setting 20 is on the coarse side of the “AeroPress range” on the 1Zpresso grind chart, so I might try it a little bit finer next time, just to see what happens.

11/25: I’m currently still at 90°, which seems to work well. Yesterday, I used grind setting 19, and today I tried 18, both of which have been good, with today’s maybe slightly better, although the difference is subtle, and as I’m tasting the cups 24 hours apart, also could be somewhat subjective. I think I’ll just keep nudging it finer and finer until it starts to taste over-extracted, at which point I’ll know it’s making a difference. 😀 I do think that I should probably start using an insulated mug when brewing at lower temperatures this time of year, as today’s cup cooled off very quickly in my ceramic mug, in spite of my having preheated it.

11/26: I think we are finally hitting the point of diminishing returns at grind setting 17. It was still a reasonably good cup, but with a slight hint of bitterness. So, the ideal setting would seem to be 18, or possibly one of the two positions between 18 and 17.

Two Cup French Press

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I have brewed mostly single cups of coffee in the French press, which, while it works, is better suited for something like the AeroPress. Today, I brewed a larger batch, which turned out pretty good:

  • Beans: “Harvest Moon” medium roast (Indonesia/South Asia)
    • Roaster: Zeke’s Coffee (Baltimore, MD)
    • Roast date: 10/30/2023
  • 40 grams coffee, 520 grams water (1:13 ratio)
  • French press
  • Gooseneck kettle
  1. Preheat French press
  2. Heat brew water to 95°C
  3. Coarse grind (JX setting 30, or 3 rotations)
  4. Start timer and pour at the same time
  5. Pour 100 grams or so of water and return kettle to base
  6. Swirl to get all the grounds wet, and bloom until 1:00
  7. Top up to 520 grams of water and stir slowly a few times
  8. Steep for 6 more minutes, plunge, and pour

This recipe is kind of a testament to the fact that it’s hard to screw things up with a French press. I bet it would taste good with or without a separate bloom, with or without stirring/swirling, and regardless of total steep time (within reason). 6 minutes seems to be long enough to get good extraction without letting the coffee cool down too much.

11/21: This recipe tasted a little bitter this morning. Maybe try dropping the water temperature to 90°.

Run Notes

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I took my third run in the past 4 days this morning, as I attempt to recover from my latest illness. I ran 5.35 miles at 11:09/mile, which is nowhere near 100%, but an improvement over Sunday and Monday. Of note is that instead of my usual Vibram V-Runs, I ran in Xero HFS with a pair of wool socks. The temperature was in the low 40s, and this combination seemed to keep my feet a little bit warmer. On the flip side, my cadence was slightly down (177spm) and the front of the toe box got “hung up” a few times — not really enough to trip me up, but something I’m going to have to keep an eye on as I start take more runs in colder weather. It may be that my Xero Terraflex trail shoes, which are more rigid but fit my feet a little bit better, end up being better winter running shoes than the HFS. We’ll see.

Also today, I went back to using my Polar heart rate monitor. I had stopped using it because I was starting to have difficulty getting it to pair with my Apple Watch. I put a fresh CR2025 battery in it last night, after which it paired easily, so I’m hoping that was the problem. The watch’s built-in HRM had been working OK for me in lieu of the Polar, but more recently, for some reason, it has been flaky at the beginnings of my runs. It seems to take anywhere between 10-20 minutes before it registers an accurate heart rate, and during that time, it either registers no heart rate at all, or gives an inaccurately high reading (usually 175-180bpm). Oddly enough, this only seems to happen during running workouts; I have no issues with cycling workouts, walks, or the periodic readings the watch takes throughout the day. It eventually will correct itself and give an accurate reading for the rest of the run, but the initial flakiness was enough to get me to switch back to the Polar, which worked great for me today.

Random notes

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I’m fighting my way through my second cold in as many months. This latest one has been worse than last month’s. I think I picked it up at the Ravens/Seahawks game a couple of weekends ago. It has featured the worst cough I’ve had in probably several years. In fact, the cough was the initial symptom — I never got a sore throat. Sinus impacts have also been minimal — I had a stuffy nose for maybe 2 or 3 nights. It laid me up for a couple of days with fever, chills, and cold sweats, to where I thought it might be flu, but I think the fever went away too quickly for it to have been flu. Then again, maybe it was flu, but the flu shot I got in September reduced the severity. I do know that it wasn’t COVID, unless the test I took gave me a false negative. The main story has been the cough. In the beginning, it was wheezy and unproductive, but it has become productive in the past day or two, which has me crossing my fingers that it’s finally on its way out.

The other thing this cold has done is to completely sap my energy. After spending last Thursday and Friday lying around doing nothing, I managed to get the swimming pool winterized on Saturday, over the course of the entire day, with frequent breaks. Sunday, I tried running, and struggled to complete 3 miles at 12:30/mile. Monday (yesterday), I ran again, with only slight improvement: I was exhausted after 3 miles, but managed a pace of 11:30. The silver lining was that my form and cadence seemed pretty good both days, which tells me that my running biomechanics are improving, as I’m no longer sacrificing form for less important things like pace.

This morning, I took the new hard-tail mountain bike back out. It was my first time on a bike in a week. While I was slower than usual, and got winded more easily, it was not a bad ride overall. It was more enjoyable than either of this week’s runs, but that’s not saying much. I have to say that I’m really impressed with how well this bike performs on technical climbs. There’s a trail in the PVSP Avalon Area called “Water Bars”, which is a rocky ascent straight up the river bank, with a few wooden erosion barriers along the way (the namesake “water bars”). I’ve struggled for years to get all the way up this trail on my full suspension bike without stopping or putting my foot down, but I have never quite succeeded. Today, I tried it for the first time with the hard tail, and rode right up it. It didn’t even seem very difficult, and this was in spite of my being under the weather. I’ll still take full suspension any day for descents, but the hard-tail is the clear winner when it comes to going uphill. I just need to get back to the point where I can do it without getting winded!

Rough Run & New Bike

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I had a really bad run yesterday. I went just under 6 miles, but both my pace and cadence were plodding, and I struggled almost the entire way. My right leg and calf were tightening up as I finished. Overall, it was not an enjoyable run. I think the main reasons were a lack of sleep the previous night, and possibly lack of hydration. I had run 10+ miles 48 hours earlier, but I don’t think that was an issue. I’m drinking more water today, and I slept better last night, but still am operating on a deficit over the past two nights. The elephant in the room is that I also have this weird dry cough today, which I’m hoping doesn’t mean I’m getting another cold. If I am, though, that might be another explanation for dragging yesterday. I felt fine climbing last night, though, and also on my bike ride this morning. I feel a little tired this afternoon, but OK otherwise. Maybe I just need a nap…

Over the weekend, we traded in my son’s 3-year-old mountain bike, a 27″ Norco Storm. He rode it a lot during COVID, particularly over at the Rockburn Skills Park, but he had outgrown it, and it had sat unused for the past year or so. The new bike is a Devinci Kobain 12S, which is a 29er hardtail. It has a size large frame, and should accommodate all 3 male members of our household. This morning, I took it out for a spin at PVSP, hitting a whole bunch of trails on the Howard County side of the Avalon/Orange Grove Area. Compared to my full-suspension Devinci Troy, the ride and handling felt similar, which wasn’t all that surprising, given that the frame geometries are similar. Also as expected, it felt more efficient on steep/technical climbs, at the cost of a rougher ride over rocks, roots, logs, drops, etc. I’m not sure how often my kids will ride it, but I plan on putting some miles on it myself for sure. For commuting, I’m thinking that a large custom-made frame bag, coupled with my lumbar pack, might be enough to haul all of my gear. I’m happy to see the Norco potentially go to someone who will ride it again, and I’m even happier to have another bike that multiple members of our household can ride.

Saturday Run

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I set another distance PR this morning, running 10.77 miles at a pace of 10:34/mile. This is the same distance as a lap around the BWI Trail, so I’m hoping to head over there soon to cross that off my bucket list. First, though, I want to get one more run of at least 10.5 miles under my belt. This was a really good run overall — I started and finished strong, and it seemed like I maintained pretty good form throughout. My watch reported my average cadence at 185 steps/minute. The temperature started out in the low 40s, and ended up in the low 50s. I drank about 16oz of water over the entire run, and ate a fruit and nut granola bar at mile 6. Troy Park, which I run through frequently, and is usually busy with youth sports on weekends, was empty this morning. I am guessing that the fall soccer season must have ended. I wonder if any other sports will come in to pick up the slack in November and December.

I guess I need to come up with a new running goal. 13.1 miles is starting to look like it might eventually be doable. Practically speaking, that’s about as far as I can see myself running on a regular (e.g. weekly) basis.

Zeke’s Harvest Moon Pourover

lpaulriddle
  • Beans: “Harvest Moon” (Indonesia/South Asia)
    • Medium roast (5/8)
    • Roaster: Zeke’s Coffee (Baltimore, MD)
    • Roast date: 10/30/2023
  • 18g coffee / 250g water (1:13.8)
  • JX: 2 rotations (20 on the grind chart / 60 total clicks)
  • Water at 95°C
  • Recipe: A Better 1 Cup V60 Technique (see below)
  1. Preheat V60, pre-moisten filter, add coffee, and tare scale
  2. Make small indentation in center of coffee grounds
  3. 0:00: Pour 50g of water to bloom, then return kettle to base
  4. 0:10 – 0:15: Gently Swirl
  5. 0:45 – 1:00: Pour up to 100g total (40% total weight)
    • Hold kettle for the remainder of the brewing process
  6. 1:10 – 1:20: Pour up to 150g total (60% total weight)
  7. 1:30 – 1:40: Pour up to 200g total (80% total weight)
  8. 1:50 – 2:00: Pour up to 250g total (100% total weight)
  9. 2:00 – 2:05: Gently swirl
  10. Drawdown finished around 2:55

I bought this bag yesterday at the grocery store, after using up the last of my bag of Zeke’s Market Blend. While both are labeled as medium roasts, visually, these beans are not as dark as the Market Blend beans. I decided to start off with the recipe I’ve been using for light roasts, with slightly cooler water. This is the exact same recipe I used initially with the Market Blend, which was good for the first cup or two, but required tweaking thereafter. We’ll see how it goes with Harvest Moon, but this afternoon’s cup tasted perfectly fine. I think this might be the first time I have brewed with beans from Asia, and they definitely have a uniquely different flavor compared to Central/South America and Africa.

11/6: Yesterday’s cup had a very, very small tinge of bitterness, which is one of those things where it really didn’t detract from the flavor, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to see if I could eliminate it. Tried today with a slightly coarser grind (63 clicks) and while it did eliminate the slight bitter taste, it made the cup a little bit weaker. I’m going to go back to the original grind setting. If the bitterness becomes problematic, I can either try the coarser grind with a little bit more coffee (say 1:13) or bump the water temperature down 5 degrees or so.

11/7: Brewed 500g this morning using the 2-cup recipe with 36g of coffee at grind setting 20 and 65-70g initial bloom water. Turned out pretty good. Once again, I think that brewing with the larger volume of water leads to slightly better-extracted coffee. (11/9) Second batch brewed like this was good as well, but seemed on the strong side.

11/10: Brewed using my starting recipe (pre-11/6) with one modification: I used 99°C water to bloom and 90°C water to brew. Yes, I’m sick (again) and my senses of taste/smell are accordingly blunted, and yes, I also burned my tongue, but from what I could tell in spite of all that, this turned out pretty good. It had no discernible bitterness, and seemed pretty smooth and balanced. I’ll try another cup like this soon.

UMBC 10K

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I ran at UMBC this afternoon, which I had not done in a while. I rode to work this morning, and I don’t keep running clothes at the office, so I had to plan ahead and bring everything I needed with me on the bike. I wanted to run 10K without running multiple laps around the campus loop, so I planned a route that took me through parts of Arbutus. It was a nice route, although the last couple of miles were uphill. Given that my office is near the highest point of campus, I don’t see a way around that. In spite of it, I ran well, and finished strong. If I can sort out the clothing logistics, I could see myself doing this every now and then during the cooler months, as it would give me some additional flexibility in planning my activities for the week. I don’t see it as a regular option during the summer, as the afternoons are usually too hot for running, at least for me.

November Rain

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With colder weather and shorter daylight hours looming, I’m starting to fall into my wintertime routine of only going in to the office once a week. I rode my mountain bike the past two times, and as a result, today was my first commute on roads in over two weeks. It almost certainly was also my last bike commute before we set the clocks back this weekend. That, of course, means much earlier sunsets, which was a big deal back in the day, when I commuted multiple days per week and left the office later. Nowadays, I try to roll by 4:00pm in November and December, which gets me home before dark. I only ride in the dark on rare occasions when I’m delayed leaving the office, or in the mornings in early November and early March (the beginning and end of daylight time).

November is probably my favorite month of the year, but as with any other time of year in Maryland, the weather can be fickle, and this morning was exhibit A. The forecast was for a brisk, chilly day, and they got that part right. When I left the house, it was about 40ºF with a gusty breeze. Then, as I was riding through Patapsco Valley State Park, it started drizzling. I thought it might be just a few stray sprinkles, but it kept drizzling off-and-on for my entire ride. Fortunately, the rain was light enough that it didn’t soak into my clothes. Had I known it was going to rain, though, I likely would have traded my trusty REI cycling windbreaker for a rain jacket and hood. All’s well that ends well, but it does go to show that you always have to be prepared for inclement weather (and darkness) this time of year, in spite of what the weather forecast says (or doesn’t say, in this case).