Went for the first outdoor ride around here yesterday. It was BEAUTIFUL! 52km of sunshine and low winds. (Headwinds all the way, but only at 10km/hr, I could pretend that it wasn't there.) The temp was around 10C. This morning there's a fresh 3 or 4 inches of snow on the ground. YUCK! It'll be another week before I'm able to get back outside for a ride!
I also did a little run - only 3km - just to make sure that I got some running time in. Weight loss did not do so well this last week. My body must be making some changes or something, 'cause my min goal was 184, and I only hit 184.36 - so we'll see what happens this next week. Hopefully it's a better week!
Today is the dreaded Sunday lag - so I'm going to be extra diligent on my eating today and hope that I can break this poor eating pattern.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Weekend troubles
The weekend continues to give me troubles. Not as bad this time, but my eating on Sunday was really bad. I followed it up with a not-great Monday. I did, however, get some swimming time in on Monday, and I really enjoyed drowning - I mean, swimming again! My weightt is up from Saturdays, but still coming down over-all. If I can just get rid of the Sunday "jump" I think I could have a really big weight loss week!
My family has been selected to participate in a study regarding the activity of Canadians. As part of that, they sent us pedometers for each of the kids. We've been doing it for 3 days now (we do it for one week.) Some of the patterns I've already seen developing from this have been very interesting.
We all know that kids seem to have an easier time eating tons of food that's not great for them, but not putting weight on. (I've got twin boys that can pound back a gallon of ice cream and not put a single pound on.) - well, the pedometer is answering some of those questions already. My kids, so far, on an average day, without any "excercise" are taking 2, 3, and sometimes 4 times as many steps every day than I do. Add that up over a year and you're talking about a significant difference in activity levels. When the week is done I'll post the day by day numbers and you can see what I mean. The numbers do include excercise time, so when you see my numbers catch up to the kids, it's from going on a 10k run or something.
I'm seriously thinking of continuing this study for my family - the kids all seem to be getting a kick out of it, and the patterns that this information is already beginning to show could be life-changing.
We've gotta get out of our cars people! We live in a small town, we need to slow down and WALK a few more places rather than drive everywhere.
There's a lady that lives just around the corner from me that has lost aLOT of weight - and she's done it with a two-pronged attack. Of course, she's watching what she's eating, but she's WALKED everywhere. I rarely see her driving. I thought it was all a bunch of, well, you know. But, I now realize that something as simple as WALKING can make a very significant difference.
I'm not saying we need to never drive again - but we sure drive alot more than we need to. I'm going to talk to my family some more about this, but I really think we can cut back on the gas-bill, save some repairs to the vehicles, and get a little healthier while we're at it.
My family has been selected to participate in a study regarding the activity of Canadians. As part of that, they sent us pedometers for each of the kids. We've been doing it for 3 days now (we do it for one week.) Some of the patterns I've already seen developing from this have been very interesting.
We all know that kids seem to have an easier time eating tons of food that's not great for them, but not putting weight on. (I've got twin boys that can pound back a gallon of ice cream and not put a single pound on.) - well, the pedometer is answering some of those questions already. My kids, so far, on an average day, without any "excercise" are taking 2, 3, and sometimes 4 times as many steps every day than I do. Add that up over a year and you're talking about a significant difference in activity levels. When the week is done I'll post the day by day numbers and you can see what I mean. The numbers do include excercise time, so when you see my numbers catch up to the kids, it's from going on a 10k run or something.
I'm seriously thinking of continuing this study for my family - the kids all seem to be getting a kick out of it, and the patterns that this information is already beginning to show could be life-changing.
We've gotta get out of our cars people! We live in a small town, we need to slow down and WALK a few more places rather than drive everywhere.
There's a lady that lives just around the corner from me that has lost aLOT of weight - and she's done it with a two-pronged attack. Of course, she's watching what she's eating, but she's WALKED everywhere. I rarely see her driving. I thought it was all a bunch of, well, you know. But, I now realize that something as simple as WALKING can make a very significant difference.
I'm not saying we need to never drive again - but we sure drive alot more than we need to. I'm going to talk to my family some more about this, but I really think we can cut back on the gas-bill, save some repairs to the vehicles, and get a little healthier while we're at it.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Humbled
My little girl helped put things into perspective for me this week. In her school class her teacher has her write in a journal. Every month or two she sends all the journals home for the parents to read. One day, this was her entry:
"I like my parents because they help me. My mom is cool. My dad is old."
Keisha is always good for a laugh or two. Like today she had a friend over to play. We generally try to keep them pretty active when the kids have friends over, so when it was discovered that they were in the basement watching TV my wife went down to see if she could get them to do something a little more active.
"But we're playing!" Keisha cried.
Just exactly what were they playing?
"We're playing that we're supermodels - but we're just lazy supermodels so all we do is sit around and watch tv."
On to my work-outs - it's been tough. Wed I missed my bike time, as I had a full day of work/travel. (Which also made eating tough.) Today I was supposed to do a T-max interval and then some easy spinning, but my legs were tired, so I bagged the T-max and just did some high-cadence spinning for an hour.
Tomorrow I'm going to do a 10km run BEFORE I do any biking just to get a baseline of what kind of a 10k time I can turn in. That'll be somewhere around an hour of running, and then I'll spend two hours on the bike. Gonna be a hard day. I'm HOPING that after the run it'll be warm enough outside to be able to get outside for the bike! (snow is melted off the highways, so if it's not too cold it could be fun.)
"I like my parents because they help me. My mom is cool. My dad is old."
Keisha is always good for a laugh or two. Like today she had a friend over to play. We generally try to keep them pretty active when the kids have friends over, so when it was discovered that they were in the basement watching TV my wife went down to see if she could get them to do something a little more active.
"But we're playing!" Keisha cried.
Just exactly what were they playing?
"We're playing that we're supermodels - but we're just lazy supermodels so all we do is sit around and watch tv."
On to my work-outs - it's been tough. Wed I missed my bike time, as I had a full day of work/travel. (Which also made eating tough.) Today I was supposed to do a T-max interval and then some easy spinning, but my legs were tired, so I bagged the T-max and just did some high-cadence spinning for an hour.
Tomorrow I'm going to do a 10km run BEFORE I do any biking just to get a baseline of what kind of a 10k time I can turn in. That'll be somewhere around an hour of running, and then I'll spend two hours on the bike. Gonna be a hard day. I'm HOPING that after the run it'll be warm enough outside to be able to get outside for the bike! (snow is melted off the highways, so if it's not too cold it could be fun.)
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Saturday
My eating program continues to stay more or less on track. Yesterday was a bit of a step out - we went to the Rotary Dine and Dance last night, so it was a roast beef dinner. I thought I did pretty good by limiting my beef to just one slice and potatoes to just two spoonfuls. The rest was all salad and veggies. I splurged and allowed myself some of the ice cream with strawberries. My big weakness came latter in the evening while waiting for my kids to get home. I ended up eating a sandwhich and a couple of mugs of Hot Chocolate. Definitely not over-the-top like I would've done before, but not exactly "on program."
Today was my "long slow" day. So, I did a couple of hours on the computrainer - ended up a little over 67 km - and then went to the gymn and did an hour at a slow 5.5 pace. Good thing. It's been awhile since I've run much, and my knees were feeling a little sore. I may have to make sure and limit some of the running intervals for the first week or so and get some more running base miles in. Then I did some core excercises (amazing how little time those take!) and I'm done for the day. Just need to do some more stretching this afternoon.
The weight continues to come off right now. It's exciting to see it falling. I'm getting more and more optimistic that by May my weight will be down to a range that will make me competitive on the bike.
Today was my "long slow" day. So, I did a couple of hours on the computrainer - ended up a little over 67 km - and then went to the gymn and did an hour at a slow 5.5 pace. Good thing. It's been awhile since I've run much, and my knees were feeling a little sore. I may have to make sure and limit some of the running intervals for the first week or so and get some more running base miles in. Then I did some core excercises (amazing how little time those take!) and I'm done for the day. Just need to do some more stretching this afternoon.
The weight continues to come off right now. It's exciting to see it falling. I'm getting more and more optimistic that by May my weight will be down to a range that will make me competitive on the bike.
Friday, March 06, 2009
To The Pain!
I hurt. I hurt all over, but especially my legs.
Yesterday I did a nice recovery ride. Kept my HR down and just spun along. I didn't let myself get sucked into a race against the computer guy - I just drafted him and kept my HR under 135.
Then, last night, I met with Corey - a local personal trainer. He got me set up on a workout routine that would help me deal with a big weakness of mine - my core and upper-body.
This morning I did my first work-out. Ran for 1 mile (warm-up) - then did the work-out Corey gave me. That took about 40 minutes - parts of it I simply wasn't able to complete 'cause I'm just not strong enough yet. Then I did a 1 mile cool-down run. Head for home.
Jump on the bike and did 4 T-max intervals. The last 2 of those were pretty sloppy. I couldn't do all 6. My calves were cramping a bit, and I was just plain TIRED!
Tomorrow is a "long, slow" day. I'll probably do 90 minutes on the bike and then maybe another hour running. Will make sure not to push it hard, but I think that running will really help get the weight off.
Eating has been good - I was surprised yesterday. Got to the end of the day and still had another carb and a half to eat, but had no appetite to eat anymore. Weight has started to come off again - hopefully this week will fire that up and help me stay on track for my weight loss goals (right now I'm about 1/2 pound ahead of my goals.)
I'll probably go for a light spin again later this afternoon just to loosen the legs up a little. Won't be a very long one, that's for sure!
Yesterday I did a nice recovery ride. Kept my HR down and just spun along. I didn't let myself get sucked into a race against the computer guy - I just drafted him and kept my HR under 135.
Then, last night, I met with Corey - a local personal trainer. He got me set up on a workout routine that would help me deal with a big weakness of mine - my core and upper-body.
This morning I did my first work-out. Ran for 1 mile (warm-up) - then did the work-out Corey gave me. That took about 40 minutes - parts of it I simply wasn't able to complete 'cause I'm just not strong enough yet. Then I did a 1 mile cool-down run. Head for home.
Jump on the bike and did 4 T-max intervals. The last 2 of those were pretty sloppy. I couldn't do all 6. My calves were cramping a bit, and I was just plain TIRED!
Tomorrow is a "long, slow" day. I'll probably do 90 minutes on the bike and then maybe another hour running. Will make sure not to push it hard, but I think that running will really help get the weight off.
Eating has been good - I was surprised yesterday. Got to the end of the day and still had another carb and a half to eat, but had no appetite to eat anymore. Weight has started to come off again - hopefully this week will fire that up and help me stay on track for my weight loss goals (right now I'm about 1/2 pound ahead of my goals.)
I'll probably go for a light spin again later this afternoon just to loosen the legs up a little. Won't be a very long one, that's for sure!
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Stick to the plan?
Today was supposed to be a recovery ride. So, to keep my competitive juices from pushing me harder than I'm supposed to, I set the little computer guy to 150 watts. I figured that'd keep my HR nice and low. And it worked - for awhile.
Okay, I'll admit it. I got bored. I was spinning along nicely at 130-150 watts and listening to last night's American Idol. (my way of not really wasting time watching it - I'm working out!) Maybe it was the American Idol. I don't know, but I was feeling a little bored so I decided to do a little sprint. Nothing really tough, just see how quickly I could open a gap on my 150 watt pace friend.
I didn't pound it hard - in fact I only put out about 325 watts for that 10 or 15 seconds (I was watching my HR a little, you know.) But suddenly there was this gap of 30 lengths. And my legs still weren't really warmed up, so I didn't want to push it hard, but it was so boring just spinning! So I kicked the pace up a little.
When I'm time trialing I tend to do some "mental math" games in my head - if I can hold this speed for 10 more minutes, how much will that shave off my over-all time? Stuff like that. I started doing that. Before I knew it I was holding 300 watts for 2 or 3 minutes intervals, and then only letting it drop to 225 or so for recovery. The gap started to widen on my 150watt man.
Then I said to myself, "self, what's the biggest gap you've ever had on watt-man?" Realizing that number was only about 1km - mostly 'cause I don't usually give myself such an easy target of 150 watts, but that didn't matter this morning. I decided to CRUSH 150watt man!
I laid it down. 30 minutes into the ride I realized that my legs really were a little tired from yesterday's effort, and I really could have used a recovery ride today - but it was too late. I was gonna crush 150watt-man.
2km, 3km, 2.88 (Even 150 watts is fast when going down 5.6% grades while I'm climbing 3.6% grades!), 3km, 4km, 5km... yup. 5km is what I beat him by! I ended up averaging 209 watts. No, not a monstrous number - but I also kept my Aver HR under 158 - though at the end I did hit 178 while generating 429 watts in my sprint for the line. (Hey, who knows, maybe somebody picks him up and gives him a ride to the line sprint?! Always go hard for line sprints!!)
On a completely unrelated note - I've begun to put together a list of people in the area who would be interested in riding so that we can get some group rides together. Should be a fun year on the bike!
On a sadder note - no weight loss today. I'm thinking I must be eating stuff that I'm not calculating, so I've gone back to a notebook and will record everything I eat - and when. This weight MUST leave this year!
Okay, I'll admit it. I got bored. I was spinning along nicely at 130-150 watts and listening to last night's American Idol. (my way of not really wasting time watching it - I'm working out!) Maybe it was the American Idol. I don't know, but I was feeling a little bored so I decided to do a little sprint. Nothing really tough, just see how quickly I could open a gap on my 150 watt pace friend.
I didn't pound it hard - in fact I only put out about 325 watts for that 10 or 15 seconds (I was watching my HR a little, you know.) But suddenly there was this gap of 30 lengths. And my legs still weren't really warmed up, so I didn't want to push it hard, but it was so boring just spinning! So I kicked the pace up a little.
When I'm time trialing I tend to do some "mental math" games in my head - if I can hold this speed for 10 more minutes, how much will that shave off my over-all time? Stuff like that. I started doing that. Before I knew it I was holding 300 watts for 2 or 3 minutes intervals, and then only letting it drop to 225 or so for recovery. The gap started to widen on my 150watt man.
Then I said to myself, "self, what's the biggest gap you've ever had on watt-man?" Realizing that number was only about 1km - mostly 'cause I don't usually give myself such an easy target of 150 watts, but that didn't matter this morning. I decided to CRUSH 150watt man!
I laid it down. 30 minutes into the ride I realized that my legs really were a little tired from yesterday's effort, and I really could have used a recovery ride today - but it was too late. I was gonna crush 150watt-man.
2km, 3km, 2.88 (Even 150 watts is fast when going down 5.6% grades while I'm climbing 3.6% grades!), 3km, 4km, 5km... yup. 5km is what I beat him by! I ended up averaging 209 watts. No, not a monstrous number - but I also kept my Aver HR under 158 - though at the end I did hit 178 while generating 429 watts in my sprint for the line. (Hey, who knows, maybe somebody picks him up and gives him a ride to the line sprint?! Always go hard for line sprints!!)
On a completely unrelated note - I've begun to put together a list of people in the area who would be interested in riding so that we can get some group rides together. Should be a fun year on the bike!
On a sadder note - no weight loss today. I'm thinking I must be eating stuff that I'm not calculating, so I've gone back to a notebook and will record everything I eat - and when. This weight MUST leave this year!
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
2 FER!
I didn't get anything posted yesterday, so today is a 2 for one!
The weekend came back out to get me again - I never weighed yesterday, but I felt heavier. Yuck. Did really good on Saturday again, and then Sunday let things slide a bit.
Yeterday I did my first T-max interval session. I just used the one that John and I created last year. To be honest, I didn't find it that tough. Time to re-test and recreate it. Friday might be a good day for that.
For those who are not familiar with T-max, here's the story. T-max is defined as the maximum amount of time that you can hold your peak power output without succcumbing to exhaustion. (Get out the puke-buckets folks! This one's gonna hurt!)
To create the T-max interval:
1) Determine Your Peak Power Output. Using a power-measuring device from PowerTap, Polar, SRM or CompuTrainer, begin riding at 100 watts. Increase power by 30 watts every minute until you reach exhaustion. Laursen deemed test subjects fully exhausted when they could not keep their cadence above 60 rpm. You can use that benchmark, but let's be honest, you'll know when you're done. The number of watts you produce just before collapsing is your peak power output, or PPO.
2) Find Your T-Max. Rest for a day or two. Again using a power meter, ride at your PPO until you can no longer sustain that level of output. The amount of time you can hold your PPO is your T-Max. For most of us, that's between four and six minutes.
3) Calculate Your Ultimate Interval. Multiply your T-Max time by 0.6. This is the work phase of your interval. Double the work phase to set your recovery time between efforts.
That's it! So what I was doing wasn't exactly a full T-max - 'cause when we set it up I couldn't do it. I'm going to run the test again, and see where it puts me. Yesterday I did 6 intervals. Each interval was 2:30 long at 320 watts with a 5 minutes recovery in between (spinning at 125 watts.)
Friday will be the stage one of the test - warm up good (about 20 minutes) and then do the test. I'll keep a puke bucket close by so my wife doesn't have a mess to clean up.
Saturday will be recovery ride, Sunday completely off, and the Monday the second part of the test - riding at max PPO for as long as possible. Then I'll rebuild the program.
For the whole skinny on T-max intervals, you can read all about it at the Bicycling web site: http://www.bicycling.com/article/0,6610,s-4-41-16493-1,00.html
Today I did a hard ITT on the imn_thirty course. I managaed to average 219 watts and finished the course in just over 52 minutes. Definitely improvement!
Food today, so far, has been excellent. More control over evening eating (Khan was late coming in last night and I stayed up with him and ended up eating a bit of crap-food.)
My weight had jumped up a couple of pounds since Saturday's weigh in. Must continue to work - this week I must be below 188 by Friday.
The weekend came back out to get me again - I never weighed yesterday, but I felt heavier. Yuck. Did really good on Saturday again, and then Sunday let things slide a bit.
Yeterday I did my first T-max interval session. I just used the one that John and I created last year. To be honest, I didn't find it that tough. Time to re-test and recreate it. Friday might be a good day for that.
For those who are not familiar with T-max, here's the story. T-max is defined as the maximum amount of time that you can hold your peak power output without succcumbing to exhaustion. (Get out the puke-buckets folks! This one's gonna hurt!)
To create the T-max interval:
1) Determine Your Peak Power Output. Using a power-measuring device from PowerTap, Polar, SRM or CompuTrainer, begin riding at 100 watts. Increase power by 30 watts every minute until you reach exhaustion. Laursen deemed test subjects fully exhausted when they could not keep their cadence above 60 rpm. You can use that benchmark, but let's be honest, you'll know when you're done. The number of watts you produce just before collapsing is your peak power output, or PPO.
2) Find Your T-Max. Rest for a day or two. Again using a power meter, ride at your PPO until you can no longer sustain that level of output. The amount of time you can hold your PPO is your T-Max. For most of us, that's between four and six minutes.
3) Calculate Your Ultimate Interval. Multiply your T-Max time by 0.6. This is the work phase of your interval. Double the work phase to set your recovery time between efforts.
That's it! So what I was doing wasn't exactly a full T-max - 'cause when we set it up I couldn't do it. I'm going to run the test again, and see where it puts me. Yesterday I did 6 intervals. Each interval was 2:30 long at 320 watts with a 5 minutes recovery in between (spinning at 125 watts.)
Friday will be the stage one of the test - warm up good (about 20 minutes) and then do the test. I'll keep a puke bucket close by so my wife doesn't have a mess to clean up.
Saturday will be recovery ride, Sunday completely off, and the Monday the second part of the test - riding at max PPO for as long as possible. Then I'll rebuild the program.
For the whole skinny on T-max intervals, you can read all about it at the Bicycling web site: http://www.bicycling.com/article/0,6610,s-4-41-16493-1,00.html
Today I did a hard ITT on the imn_thirty course. I managaed to average 219 watts and finished the course in just over 52 minutes. Definitely improvement!
Food today, so far, has been excellent. More control over evening eating (Khan was late coming in last night and I stayed up with him and ended up eating a bit of crap-food.)
My weight had jumped up a couple of pounds since Saturday's weigh in. Must continue to work - this week I must be below 188 by Friday.
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