Mike's Bike Blog

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

For a January 7th it was a warm day, 79 degrees! But it sure was windy and overcast. Coming to Austin Texas from Salt Lake City, Utah and Laramie, Wyoming before that I never experienced a ride this warm this time of year. In Utah I only road during the summer. In Wyoming I road year round but only as a way to get around the University of Wyoming campus during the snow of the winter and then would hit the trails of Vedauwoo or the Snowy Range. Now the wind is something I'm familiar with as well. Living in Rock Springs, Wyoming when I first started riding back in junior high I had a Centurion LeMans road bike there were no hills to speak of except 1 (College Hill) but what it lacks in hills it makes up with the amount of wind. Even as windy as it was today in Austin, it doesn't compare to the average wind that Rock Springs get.

Anyway I digress... Today I did the Wells Fargo ride the particulars:

Duration: 1:02:36, Distance: 15.59, Avg. Speed: 14.9, Max Speed: 41.1, Calories: 1195, Avg Heart Rate: 147bpm, Max Heart Rate: 172bpm, Ascent: 1086ft, Decent: 1128ft, Cadence: 74, Max Cadence: 132 

Lap 1
4:48   14.1/21.3   148/168bpm

Lap 2
3:58    15.7/21   148/159bpm

Lap 3
4:03    15.4/19.6    147/162bpm

Lap 4
4:04    15.3/21.5    148/156bpm

Lap 5
4:31    14.1/19.9    131/160

Lap 6
4:16    14.3/21.8    144/155bpm

Lap 7
3:50    16.2/21.9    151/163

I remembered I have a photo of the Limecreek hill in my photo gallery.

The photo is at the top of the hill looking down. From the sign you can see that it is a curvy hill, the sign at the very top is the warning sign for trucks about the steepness. At the base of the hill I did noticed the grade on my forerunner said 13% 

One of my goals for 2008 is to increase my climbing ability, which is a broad statement so I've narrowed it down a bit. The Volente ride has one of the nastiest hills I've come across. It's only .55 miles long and 271 ft. of pure hell. I'm not sure what the exact grade is but you know it's steep when the cement trucks driving up steep inclines tend to slop their loads, there's at least such slops along the road. My baseline for the hill is 5:02, my average speed was 6.6 mph, average heart rate was 171, max heart rate was 178.

The entire 10.13 mile ride took 39:05
Speed: 15.5/37.6
HRM: 154/178
Cadence: 75/121

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: