Scenic Route

Last week was my first 150 mile week of the year.

I also turned over 1,000 and 1,100 miles on the year.

I rolled over 2,000 miles on the Portland.

On a day when I wasn’t even trying, I set a new personal best speed on the long loop to work. 17.4 MPH average. Amazingly, I wasn’t winded or sweaty. It felt like a nice, easy ride.

Based on that, Saturday morning I left a few minutes early and rode the long loop club-dub 12” extended remix to work. Turned two miles into 20½. At 17.1 MPH average for the whole trip. Again, not even trying. I’d even stopped to take photos along the way.

A year ago to the day, on the shorter 13 mile version of the long loop to work, my average was 14.2 MPH. That was my last long loop commute on the Giant Cypress DX. The following week, on the same route but on my first long loop commute with Yellow Bike, my average was 15.5.

So what they say is true. For the first few years of cycling, you just keep improving.

More than just the speed, what I find infinitely more satisfying is that these recent rides seem so easy. I remember last year really pushing to get that first 15.5 MPH run on Yellow Bike. It was also on Yellow Bike last week that I did the same ride at 17.4 at what seemed like a recovery pace.

Since the weather broke, hills don’t seem as steep or as long either. The other day I was heading north on Winton Rd coming up on Cobbs Hill. Looking at it I was puzzled by how short it was, and how gentle the slope. I rode up and over easily.

Something has changed and everything seems easy.

This is confirmed by a new toy. I bought a new cyclometer recently. In addition to the usual speed and cadence numbers, it also measures altitude to track climbing, and heart rate to measure effort.

The HRM is used in training to set a particular level of effort for whatever ride or phase of a ride you’re on. I’m still finding baselines and measuring against perceived effort. After a while, I’ll know what my training “zones” are and will use it as a training tool.

The hard part is finding your maximum heart rate. The true test is actual measurement, but to start, I’ve opted for one of the formulas. I started conservatively, using the formula that yielded the lowest number, 169. In my case, that converted to training zones that were just too easy. I wasn’t breaking a sweat or even breathing heavily where it said I was in a zone where I should really be feeling it.

I messed around with other formulas and am now using one that set my maximum heart rate at 181. This seems a little closer to the mark when I calculate the training zones from it, although I suspect it’s still a little low.

I ride along just fine with a heart rate of 146. That seems to be my typical, just cruising along rate. It puts me in a high, aerobic development zone. If I try to ride in a recovery zone, I can’t do it. It seems much to slow and easy. Then best I can do is the lower 130s.

Now this also confirms what I suspected all along, that I ride too hard too often. Instead of how most people use HRMs—to train harder in the upper ranges, I’ll be using it on recovery rides to keep my effort down.

It also explains why I’m having such a hard time losing this gut, despite the amount of riding I do. It seems that above a certain zone, the body burns carbs preferentially. In order for it to burn fat preferentially, I have to ride much, much easier than I have been.

The other thing I’m learning from the HRM is that my in-ride recovery rate is very, very good. Meaning that after a harder stretch—a climb or sprint for instance—my heart rate settles right down in under a minute. At a long stoplight, it can drop into the double-digits. This, apparently, is an indicator of overall cardiac heath. I gots it.

The altimeter is interesting too. This one isn’t a precision instrument, but it is helpful for measuring things in general. Cyclists are usually interested in how much climbing was done in a given ride, and what the slope is of any given hill.

That part of Cobbs Hill I mentioned before is between 3% and 4% grade northbound. Southbound, it’s between 6% and 7%. And even that’s not making me want to collapse in a heap at the top any more—which is good, because that ride in Colorado is 6% to 7% average for a whole 30 miles.

So a training regimen for this summer is slowly taking shape in my head. It won’t be perfectly balanced, given my commuting, but I hope to achieve a better balance between climbing days, hard days, LSD (long, steady distance) days and recovery days.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 9:51 am EDT and is filed under Bike. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.