Cycling – Just getting warmed up

Last November I purchased a basic Specialized road bike from Aggieland Cyclingcycling and restarted my cycling hobby after a 18 yr break. While I still had my 1990 vintage Schwinn Criss Cross…. It was time to shed some weight and pick up my pace from 10mph.

Well, after some trials and tribulations I went to Bike Barn and paid for Joe Treanor to do a formal fitting. Yes, it cost some money, yes I replaced my seat and bars, YES IT MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE.

My ultimate goal is to complete a MS 150 – perhaps even the 2016 ride. I’m going slow and steady in my training as someone over 50 yrs old should.

Right now I’m up to 15 mph on a 32 mile ride but I’m not much good for part of the day after… Which is an improvement from the last time I did a 32 mile ride – I was wiped for a day and half. The difference is the fitting and new seat. My heart rate is down, my neck and “sitting parts” are sore but not like they used to be.

This weekend was magnificent weather so I did notice my toes getting a bit cold again. Last winter I experimented with wool liners and shoe covers. Those helped but didn’t quite do the trick. I now have SmartWool cycling socks which for the summer are magnificent (I also love their hiking socks). Some research led me to this blog entry:
http://allseasonscyclist.com/2013/10/22/winter-cycling-how-to-keep-your-feet-warm/

Good stuff.

My next post will be some polite observations on the (lack of) social interactions on group rides.

ITIL Certification Training

I just completed QuickCert’s ITIL v3 Foundations Training Course. It included about 25 hrs of video instruction, a book, and online testing tools with a certification simulator.

Overall, I have to say that I’m not too impressed. The video presentation was incomplete and the presenter went off on tangents every hour or so. He was trying to make a point, but alas would “push” onto the “stack” two, three or even four segways before returning to the ITIL point he was trying to make.

The video was lacking in charts, and I would have appreciated getting soft copies of the three to five key illustrations in addition to the book.

The book, an “official” ITIL publication, was ok to read and study.

When I started the online assessments, I found my knowledge had holes, due in some part to the QuickCert materials. I then accessed IEEE’s material’s (provided by Element-K) and some general web content, to fill in the holes. I then was able to work through the assessments and make a 91% on the certification simulator.

With that I went to take the exam for real. The bottom line was I made a 90% but let me tell you, if I hadn’t been working with v2 of ITIL for about eight years, I would NOT have made that score.

Of the questions asked, 50% were similar to the QuickCert, 25% were similar to the Element-K (or other materials) and 25% where from the bowels of the official books (which I do NOT have).

Thus, if you don’t have a lot of experience with ITIL, you may need to use more online resources and/or buy the official ITIL books. Using just QuickCert probably won’t cut it unless you have LOTS of experience.

I tried to share this feedback with QuickCert but they have yet to respond to my email nor a phone message.

They don’t offer PMP training, which is fine, I have this expectation that the vendor should seek feedback. This could be naive on my part.