Mike's Bike Blog

It's starting to look like Hurricane Ike is going to be wreaking havoc this weekend, thus it might put a damper on the Tour de Florence. I don't mind riding in the rain, in fact when the news first came out that we would get rain from Ike I was excited and wasn't throwing in the towel. I love to ride in the rain. As for the wind, growing up in Wyoming riding in the wind was something you had to deal with if you wanted to ride your bike. Normal wind was around 20 miles an hour while it could get breezy at 40 mph. However, the news is now calling for 75 to 100 mph wind along with tornados.

If the Tour de Florence is a bust I'll be throwing in the 1999 Tour De France DVD and see if I can put in at least 3 hours on the trainer. If anybody wants to join in let me know, all you'll need is your bike, your trainer/rollers and maybe a fan.

I hear/read how others hate riding rollers or on a trainer. I don't mind it, I look forward to my evening rides on my spin bike. Of course I don't put in a lot of miles on it, I just suppliment my outside workouts. I typically ride 1 hour on the spin bike per session, I have went as much as 1:30 to 2 hours but that's a rarity. I bet those that hate the trainer so much are those that can't get out at all during the winter. I've been eying some of the new fangled trainer workouts that hook a computer up to the trainer that will allow you to simulate courses. Hopefully when it becomes more mainstream in a few years I can afford such a system. I was thinking of building my own and I might if I ever get a camera mount for my helmet.

In the meantime I've come up with my own poor-man's version. I've started using Ascent  to download my rides from my Garmin Forerunner to my desktop. Ascent is really great, I've been real happy with it so far and have imported in my rides for 2008. My favorite feature is the ability to playback a ride in realtime. The animation playback will show the route on the map as well as the elevation. In the elevation playback you can also show all your stats, heart rate, cadence, speed and gradient. I set my laptop up right infront of the spin bike and started to play one of my previous road rides. I did a simulation of riding on 360 going to 2222 and back. On the hills I set the resistance accordingly and tried my best to make it feel like the real ride. I had a blast and will be doing this for a lot more workouts.

 

Monday was a rest day after the Hill Hopper and Tuesday was Class 5 of my Carmichael Training regime. Class 5 is 3 10 minute Steady State efforts with 4 minutes of recovery in between.  Wow this effort really was difficult, I had nothing in the tank on the 3rd set. At least class 6 went a lot better on Thursday. "This workout's main feature is one 32-minute Tempo interval that contains two 6-minute surges at Steady State intensity, mimicking the power demands cyclists often face in local group rides and events." I had a lot more steam for this workout compared to Tuesdays. I was able to keep up with the intensity. I also did a few other rides around my house this week, nothing of great importance. I'm of to pack up my gear and get everything ready for tomorrow's Pedal Thru The Pines in Bastrop.

I can't believe how fast the 16 sessions went by. The finalie was a Field Test to see what improvements were gained over the term of the course. I felt really good, I had a complete rest day yesterday I kept my cadence around 95 and my MPH around 19-20 for both efforts. I plugged my numbers into the Field Test calculator and here are my new numbers:

Tempo: 144-149
Steady State: 151-156
Climbing Repeat: 156-161

 Better than my initial test, I can see the improvements transferring to the road. My times for Volente and my 360 rides have all increased.

Before I get into the session I had a couple rides before this one. For lunch I road out to the top of Limecreek which is 3 miles and then I road through my neigborhood. Total ride was 8.6 miles, I averaged 17.1 mph. Here's the route, I think I found a mile loop around the block that I might try. I've been looking for a relatively flat mile loop close to home since I'm no longer riding the Wells Fargo loop. The other ride today was a 3.79 mile ride with my boys. We road down to Milburn park to ride the trails there. At the back of the park there are some neat trails. There is a 3.8 mile paved loop that Jack did in 2:39, he averaged 8.5 mph and his top speed was 9.9 mph. He's really getting the hang of his mountain bike, I heard him shifting several times as we would hit hills and then he would shift to go down. Here's the route we took.

Now onto session 14 of the Chris Carmichael Training Boosting SteadyState Power with Kirk Nordgren:

"Four eight-minute SteadyState intervals gives athletes of all ability levels a solid 32 minutes at the intensity guaranteed to make you a faster athlete. Do yourself, and your sustainable power, a big favor and keep this workout in your training arsenal all year long." As the description says there were 4 SteadyState intervals, 8 minutes each. On the first effort I seemed to have a hard time keeping my cadence between 90 - 95 rpm. Not sure why that was, but on the other 3 efforts I only caught myself falling below 90 a few times. On the last effort I had very few if any lapses in my cadence. Since I'm only working with heart rate my SteadyState computed HR is 138-144. Now keeping it at 144 was another story, I averaged 152, 150, 150, 144 bpm for each of the 4 intervals. Only 2 more sessions left.

I'm having problems with my Blackburn Delphi 3 again. Last week it stopped working, only the cadence was working. I changed the battery and it worked, well at the end of the last interval the speedometer started wigging out, it would go from 18 mph down to 2 and then up to 50. It was gong all over the place, it says I hit a top speed of 99 mph. I know I'm getting faster using the Carmichael training sessions but I never expected results like 99 mph. Not sure what's going on with the device. 

This past Tuesday and Thursday was classes 10 and 11 of Carmichael Training Systems classes.

Class 10: Time Trial Intervals with Jane Rynbrandt after the warm up there are 3 6 minute time trial efforts and then power intervals.

ncrease your maximum sustainable power

Class 11: PowerInterval Ladder with Abby Ruby after the warm up this class power intervals up the ladder 2 sets and then more power intervals before cooling down.

Both of these classes were great, both classes are similar to the work and effort it seemed like.  Both are good for increasing your maximum sustainable power and will increase your VO2 Max. Both classes are taylored for riders with power meters. I really need to pick one up but will have to save

I've been looking forward to this workout since Tuesday might when I completed class 8 and downloaded 9. This class was awesome. It was power intervals at max effort one after another with a short recovery between each. It really pushes you hard. My only gripe with the workout was the production values of the video. I download the videos to my iPhone and then attach the iPhone to the handle bars of my spin bike and watch the video that way while I do the workout. Normally I just have the audio go through the speakers of the iPhone so I don't have to wear headphones. The audio was muffled making it really hard to hear the instructors. I ended up having to stop the video and go find my headphones.

This class consists of a 6 minute Tempo internal that then rolls into a 4 minute steady state interval with a 2 minute recovery. There are 3 sets total. The total workout lasts one hour. Keeping in my target heart rate ranges and pedaling at the prescribed cadence wasn't too hard and it felt pretty good. Although Carrie kept making a reference about future classes, that this workout was easy compared to what's yet to come.

This is a great workout, simulates a real ride as it goes from tempo to steady state back to tempo and then back to steady state before the cool down. This is the first workout on my modified spin bike. I hooked up a blackburn delphi 3 cycle computer to it so I can get my speed, cadence and milage.

 Speed: 17.5/24.7mph
Distance: 18.75 miles
Cadence: 88/124
HR: 124/154 bpm
Total time: 1:03:54

Video

WarmUp	10:00
Fast Pedal	02:00
Recovery	01:30
Fast Pedal	02:00
Recovery	02:00
Tempo	08:00
Steady State	06:00
Tempo	10:00
SteadyState	06:00
CoolDown	10:00
Total Time	1:03:00

This morning I did the verification workout of the Field Test. The Steady State heart rate was calculated at 129-134 using the field test calculator on the trainright.com site. I was running the numbers myself when I was writing this post that it seemed low. I went back to the calculator and reentered my 2 heart rates (147 & 151). Not sure what I did but today's the SteadyState numbers were computed at 139-144. I'm not sure what I did when I originally entered my numbers but the Tempo and Climbing Repeats numbers were off by 10. I've updated my Field Test numbers to reflect that. The verification backs up the higher numbers:

• SteadyState 1: 128/139
• SteadyState 2: 136/142
• SteadyState 3: 144/153

This week I'll redo this verification to make sure that I'm tracking for the new range. Here's what this workout entails:

WarmUp	10:00
PowerInterval	01:00
Recovery	01:00
PowerInterval	01:00
Recovery	04:00
Steady State	10:00
Recovery	07:00
Steady State + 10-15W	10:00
Recovery	07:00
Steady State + 20-25W	10:00
CoolDown	10:00
Total Video Time	1:12:41