The title says it all! Did an easy 90 minutes on the computrainer this morning. Just spinning along - average wattage was only 135, so you can tell that I really wasn't doing much. Watched last night's "Numbers" and "Battlestar Galactica" while spinning. Man, that's a great way to not just sit there and waste time watching a show! (By fast-forwarding through the commercials each 1hr show only takes about 45 minutes to watch.)
My weight is up about half a pound from yesterday, but I'm guessing it's mostly water weight as I didn't eat badly yesterday, but I was thirsty all day so drank a ton.
I'm hoping my back will start to really feel better soon so that I can start throwing a few runs in every week.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
40km
For the first time today, I did a forty km computrainer ride. I did the imn_forty. It's got about 161 meters of climbing in it, and I don't do any drafting (kind of defeats the purpose of the training ride.)
It took me 1:12 to complete it - gonna be alot of hard work between now and June to get that time down to hour! I was only able to average 190watts, and my HR averaged 168. My cadence was a little slower, too. That says to me that today wasn't a particularly strong day. HR high, but not able to push it (legs felt a little tired.) and wattage was down as was cadence.
I was originally planning on doing intervals, but I couldn't find the program that I'd written for it, so rather than waste time looking for it, I decided to do a 40km test as a baseline to see where I'm at.
My weight was down again today, and my diet this last week has been pretty good. The challenge will be to stay motivated as I exceed my 2 pounds/week goal and still not get carried away. I've lost the weight before - and in some cases done it very quickly. What I want to do is lose it steadily in the hopes that this time it will stay off. So far, so good.
Now, as bad as the ride felt this morning, I still had a watts/kg of 2.6.
I know that I've got to fit some upper-body /core work-outs into my schedule. Don't know exactly WHAT I'm going to do yet, but I know I've gotta get something put together!
It took me 1:12 to complete it - gonna be alot of hard work between now and June to get that time down to hour! I was only able to average 190watts, and my HR averaged 168. My cadence was a little slower, too. That says to me that today wasn't a particularly strong day. HR high, but not able to push it (legs felt a little tired.) and wattage was down as was cadence.
I was originally planning on doing intervals, but I couldn't find the program that I'd written for it, so rather than waste time looking for it, I decided to do a 40km test as a baseline to see where I'm at.
My weight was down again today, and my diet this last week has been pretty good. The challenge will be to stay motivated as I exceed my 2 pounds/week goal and still not get carried away. I've lost the weight before - and in some cases done it very quickly. What I want to do is lose it steadily in the hopes that this time it will stay off. So far, so good.
Now, as bad as the ride felt this morning, I still had a watts/kg of 2.6.
I know that I've got to fit some upper-body /core work-outs into my schedule. Don't know exactly WHAT I'm going to do yet, but I know I've gotta get something put together!
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
20 Minutes of pain
Well, I did it. OUCH!
I started off with a good 18 minute warm-up, and then let my HR drop for a couple of minutes. Then it was time. After 5 minutes I was really wondering if I could hold this pace for another 15! As it turns out - I couldn't. I dropped off a fair bit over the next 5 minutes.
I ended up averaging 231 watts for the 20 minutes. At 86kg, that gives me a watts /kg of 2.67. That puts me as a middle of the pack cat 5 racer. Not what I'll need to be able to win. Interestingly - by hitting my weight goal, without increasing my wattage output, I can boost that to 3.07 - middle of the pack cat 4. That should be enough to win some races and get boosted up to cat 4. Hopefully I'll be able to increase my wattage output, as well.
Average HR for the test was 174, and I maxed out at 186. I never felt like I was "sprinting" - so I could've probably pushed my max HR another few points higher, but I don't think I'd have been able to hold it long enough to have any impact on my average wattage. (Max wattage for the test was 471). Average Cadence was 92. Over-all, a good work-out.
So, the baseline has been laid down. I think I'll try and test myself once/month to see what kind of progress I'm making. Tomorrow will be a recovery ride for one hour - Friday will be a hard interval session - I'm thinking of trying the intervals that John and I built last year. That'll hurt, but I should see rapid growth doing those a couple of times / week. Saturday will be a long recovery ride.
The real challenge is going to continue to be the food intake. My weight has gotta fall.
I started off with a good 18 minute warm-up, and then let my HR drop for a couple of minutes. Then it was time. After 5 minutes I was really wondering if I could hold this pace for another 15! As it turns out - I couldn't. I dropped off a fair bit over the next 5 minutes.
I ended up averaging 231 watts for the 20 minutes. At 86kg, that gives me a watts /kg of 2.67. That puts me as a middle of the pack cat 5 racer. Not what I'll need to be able to win. Interestingly - by hitting my weight goal, without increasing my wattage output, I can boost that to 3.07 - middle of the pack cat 4. That should be enough to win some races and get boosted up to cat 4. Hopefully I'll be able to increase my wattage output, as well.
Average HR for the test was 174, and I maxed out at 186. I never felt like I was "sprinting" - so I could've probably pushed my max HR another few points higher, but I don't think I'd have been able to hold it long enough to have any impact on my average wattage. (Max wattage for the test was 471). Average Cadence was 92. Over-all, a good work-out.
So, the baseline has been laid down. I think I'll try and test myself once/month to see what kind of progress I'm making. Tomorrow will be a recovery ride for one hour - Friday will be a hard interval session - I'm thinking of trying the intervals that John and I built last year. That'll hurt, but I should see rapid growth doing those a couple of times / week. Saturday will be a long recovery ride.
The real challenge is going to continue to be the food intake. My weight has gotta fall.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
WATTS!
Well, in my workouts, I've gradually seen myself starting to get a little faster. Given that I've got some racing I want to do this year, I wanted to get a baseline of where my wattage output was going to need to be. Given my current wattage output, the fast way to get faster is going to be to get lighter.
The measurement to look for is watts/kg of body weight. Many top coaches have said that in order for a cyclist to win the Tour de France the magic number is 7. Seven watts/kg. While out looking for some more information on this, I came across a great article on it by Druber at True Sport.
Here's a link to the article Druber put up - it's got a great chart that gives some general information on what it takes. http://www.truesport.com/Bike/2007/articles/druber/druber15.html The chart shows that to be competitive at the Cat 5 level I need to be looking at generating 2.81 watts/kg
So where am I currently at? A measely 2.3 (upper end of "untrained") - but that's also for a one-hour effort, not a 20 minute one. I'm thinking that tomorrow, instead of doing my planned interval session, I'm going to do a nice little warm-up for 15-20 minutes, then do a flat-out 20 minute test to see where I'm at. This should fit in well, as today was a recovery ride. (I just rode for 1 hour with my HR around the 145 mark. I did let it climb a bit at the end.)
I also found a pdf book along with some computrainer files that I'm going to download. They're about $21.50 USD. Hopefully this will help in better developing my work-out program.
Diet is still my major issue. I seem to do well all week, but on weekends, specifically on Sundays, I do not do as well. I have managed to keep my 2 pounds/week pace going, but know it should be more like 3 or 4 and eventually this "easy" weight is going to be gone.
The measurement to look for is watts/kg of body weight. Many top coaches have said that in order for a cyclist to win the Tour de France the magic number is 7. Seven watts/kg. While out looking for some more information on this, I came across a great article on it by Druber at True Sport.
Here's a link to the article Druber put up - it's got a great chart that gives some general information on what it takes. http://www.truesport.com/Bike/2007/articles/druber/druber15.html The chart shows that to be competitive at the Cat 5 level I need to be looking at generating 2.81 watts/kg
So where am I currently at? A measely 2.3 (upper end of "untrained") - but that's also for a one-hour effort, not a 20 minute one. I'm thinking that tomorrow, instead of doing my planned interval session, I'm going to do a nice little warm-up for 15-20 minutes, then do a flat-out 20 minute test to see where I'm at. This should fit in well, as today was a recovery ride. (I just rode for 1 hour with my HR around the 145 mark. I did let it climb a bit at the end.)
I also found a pdf book along with some computrainer files that I'm going to download. They're about $21.50 USD. Hopefully this will help in better developing my work-out program.
Diet is still my major issue. I seem to do well all week, but on weekends, specifically on Sundays, I do not do as well. I have managed to keep my 2 pounds/week pace going, but know it should be more like 3 or 4 and eventually this "easy" weight is going to be gone.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Back on the bike - sort of
It's been so long since I've been riding. So, this last week I finally got my computrainer back up and running and started riding. I was shocked on Monday at how much it hurt to do just 30 minutes. Wow. Lost a lot.
Tuesday was more of the same, though I went a little faster and pushed a little harder - and went 35 minutes instead of 30.
Wed I took some heat from Johnny - he was going on about how I just wasn't cutting it. He was riding for an hour on the Canmore TT course at just shy of 200 watts and his HR at around 165. I rode for 40 minutes, averaged 180 watts and my HR was over 175 for a good chunk of the ride. I warned him to be careful, 'cause now I was gonna have to kick his butt!
Thurs was an easy spin for 45 min.
Fri was my first shot at the Canmore course - rode an hour at 204 watts and a HR of 166. Look out Johnny! I'm on my way.
Today I did 90 minutes, keeping my average HR at 150, average wattage was just 154. (I did do a little sprint where I kicked the wattage up to 700 watts and a HR of 185, but I kept that pretty short. Just trying to get some saddle time so that my butt can start handling longer rides again.
My weight continues to come off at a regular rate - nothing really fast. I'm now under 189. I'm trying to hold to 2lbs/week. So far that's doing good.
Tuesday was more of the same, though I went a little faster and pushed a little harder - and went 35 minutes instead of 30.
Wed I took some heat from Johnny - he was going on about how I just wasn't cutting it. He was riding for an hour on the Canmore TT course at just shy of 200 watts and his HR at around 165. I rode for 40 minutes, averaged 180 watts and my HR was over 175 for a good chunk of the ride. I warned him to be careful, 'cause now I was gonna have to kick his butt!
Thurs was an easy spin for 45 min.
Fri was my first shot at the Canmore course - rode an hour at 204 watts and a HR of 166. Look out Johnny! I'm on my way.
Today I did 90 minutes, keeping my average HR at 150, average wattage was just 154. (I did do a little sprint where I kicked the wattage up to 700 watts and a HR of 185, but I kept that pretty short. Just trying to get some saddle time so that my butt can start handling longer rides again.
My weight continues to come off at a regular rate - nothing really fast. I'm now under 189. I'm trying to hold to 2lbs/week. So far that's doing good.
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