Sunday, May 31, 2009

Fri & Sat: bike rides

I'll keep this one short. [Photo: my oldest son riding out back ... trying to scratch his itch to ride. A few more acres sure would be nice, but I'm thankful for what we have.]

Friday's exercise was a bike ride over the lunch hour with two others. It was nice to ride again and to ride together. The ride was relational, with the exception of what has become kind of traditional - the last sprint to the finish. That's where my HR saw a max of 182 and my lungs continued to gasp for air even after having to back off for breathing reasons...

Saturday was a full day and my chance for a ride came at 7 PM - with roughly 90 minutes before the sun goes down. It was the first chance to ride with a minimum or goal HR. I was aiming for an avg of 150 - which I think I was close to, but not certain as I forgot to stop my HRM when I stopped to adjust my seat and handle bar. My HRM also erroneously registered a max HR of 237 - I'm certain that was an error. (It's always disappointing when that happens as it messes up my numbers. This time it happened on me Polar - which doesn't normally get those bad numbers.) The ride was just under 2 hrs and had an avg of just over 19 mph.

As I've been thinking about what the next goals should be - I've kind of settled on a Fall 5 hr century and marathon: both will be firsts for me. I still have a good bit of improving to do if I am to seriously try to do a century ride with an avg speed of 20+ mph. And I'd like to try to get my pace to around 8min/mi for the marathon. Both goals will require me to work on my speed and work on exercising at higher HR's. So that's what my training goals are now: tempo training... (fun stuff - I'm kidding).

My thoughts after a few training sessions running and riding now with the HR as the focus: I've been training at a low intensity level. :-( But, now that I know that I am working on it. Rather than just adding more miles I'm trying to work harder. I hope to run and ride a couple times this week and will continue on the HR min goal: 145 when running and 150 when on the bike - are the planed minimum avg hr values for the week.

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