Performance Update

On January 10th I started using 155 as my target HR. It's getting closer to the racing season, and I feel I need to start ramping up my training. My first ride was a 30 mile flat ride. It's the same one that I've been doing for 2 months. My legs defiantly felt the new pace. It wasn't agonizing pain like a hill climb, just a mild burn. My legs just weren't used to the pace. As I progress in the training I will be bumping my target HR again, and I'm sure my legs will feel it again. I did get 1-1.5 miles an hour faster at the higher HR. 

My second ride was a 54 mile ride. It took about 3 hours and 50 minutes. After about 2 and a half to 3 hours my pace really slowed down. Hopefully with a bit more training at these long rides my pace will stay higher for longer.

I'm not sure of the overall benefits of using the low HR of 145 bpm. I did this for quite a few rides, and was expecting to see my pace increase. I used my iPhone 4 with the Allsport GPS app to track my rides. I went back through my rides and graphed the average  speeds in excel. I expected to see a general trend upwards. I did not. I next graphed the  time of each ride, and I did notice that longer rides produced slower average speeds. That's not unexpected. Perhaps there are other unseen benefits that training at this level has. On the positive side, there are benefits that I can see.

1. I am more able to keep to a certain HR when riding. There defiantly is a learning curve to keeping  my HR at 145. It is a skill to be learned.
2. I was able to get in long 4+ hour rides. I don't know if my leg muscles would have been able to handle a 4 hour ride at a higher HR. 
3. I burned calories. I didn't burn a ton of calories per hour, but I did burn some.

I defiantly take a positive approach to this dilemma. Even if it didn't do any good to my performance, I still learned a lot. I don't know if I will do this type of training next year, but this year it's over. 

I will now spend about 6 weeks doing long base training rides at 155 bpm. I hope to see a general trend of increasing average speeds. 

Last week (Jan 15-21) there was a series of snow storms that mother nature sent our way which made it difficult to get out on a ride. I finally broke down and switched my tire to my Continental home trainer tire and set up the bike indoors. One of the workouts I wanted to try was one legged pedaling. I figured I would just do 10 minutes on each leg and that would be a good start. Ha!Ha! After a warmup I pulled one leg off and set it on the step stool next to my bike. After 2 minutes my leg was screaming! It appears there is a major flaw in my technique. If I could build this technique I could potentially lay down huge power increases. I have ordered a complete wheel to mount the trainer tire to so I can easily switch out the wheels and set my bike on my trainer. I will be doing these one legged workouts once a week to try to build up that technique. Hopefully I can increase my watts output by training these muscles.

Thats all for now kids.