As I mentioned in a previous post, I started using trainerroad.com as source for indoor cycling workouts and a way to get more information about my progression. One of the appealing aspects of the site is the myriad of workouts they have available, and the fact that they package a bunch of them up into targeted training programs. One of these such programs is a six week base building program, so I figured that since I'm relatively new to cycling, it'd probably be a good idea to start there.
The first workout in this program is called 'Gayley'. I'm not sure where they come up with the names for these workouts, but whatever - thats the one I did today. Anyway, it is composed of several minutes of low intensity warmup, followed by a few minutes of progressive intensity warmup, for about 15 minutes total. One of the things you can choose is whether to base workouts on power, or HR. I decided to go with HR, since I figure I'm far more in tune with what I can handle based on HR as opposed to power (since I don't have a power meter). While the ability to base workouts on power (which, in my case, would be a correlated value based on the publishe speed/power curve from my trainer manufacturer) might come in useful some day - for right now I am more interested in working my body at an appropriate level using primary biometrics (such as HR), as opposed to glossing over them for what I'd call secondary (power output) metrics.
Anyhow - the program initially wanted my peak HR to be 150, which correlated with what it thinks my LTHR is. However, I knew I'd be able to hold the interval times @ 150 with no problem, so I upped the intensity to 156, which you see reflected in the link above as the green line above the blue.
After the warmup, the workout consists of four 8 minute long stints at higher intensity, with 4 minute recovery interludes. The first interval I kinda had to chase things a bit because I still wasn't fully warmed up - so I went out too fast in an effort to get the HR up, but then had to back off because continuing would have pushed the HR even higher. The other three intervals were better - since I was warmed up, it was easier to progressively build up to the intensity without overshooting it.
In the end, I'm not sure that raising the intensity was such a great idea. Although I had no issue holding it for the 8 minute long intervals, since this is a base building portion, it may have been a bit too intense. However, that is carrying over rules of thumb from running - and while I assume there is a good deal of similarity, I'm not entirely certain.
(Oh, the other thing to mention is that yesterday, before Yoga, I was able to squeeze in some one legged drills. Five minute quick spin warmup followed by 2 x 5 minute drills on each leg. Once again, lowest intensity, concentrating more on getting the motion correct with minimal fighting of the path that the crankset guides the foot around on. After only a couple sessions of those drills, I feel like I can say one of two things - either my trainer is broken and its resistance has diminishes noticably, or those drills help a lot - because I've definitely seen improvements in my cycling already. Although I'm sure a large part is due to simply cycling on a more consistent basis).
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
8 minute test - 1/29/2012
A couple weeks ago I found out about a site called trainerroad.com. It's a site that uses data collected from equipment like a HR monitor, cadence/speed sensor and power meter (if you have one) to determine metrics like LTHR (lactate threshold heart rate), FTP (functional threshold power) and other things that I'm finding are part of the cycling vernacular. All this can be useful, but the other thing the site provides is training plans, such as base building, power and endurance, etc. While I'm sure that I could make significant gains in cycling simply by piling miles on the trainer, if I can have focused workouts, it could probably go a long way to maximizing the benefit I'd receive.
For the past few weeks, as I get closer to the 24 week countdown (Feb 5) before Lake Placid, I've been formulating my training approach for that timeframe. One of the things I've been contemplating is exactly how to mix/match running with cycling - and I think the answer I've settled on is to treat cycling very similarly to running, as they are both 'build the engine' activities. One of the followup questions, then, is 'what workouts do I do?' - and that is where something like the workouts on trainerroad.com can come in.
Until I discovered the site, I was planning on mimicking run workouts on the bike - LSD, intervals, threshold, etc. While that may be effective, if I can follow workouts that do things such as basebuilding, etc that have been designed/used by other cyclists, I stand a better chance of optimizing the returns on the effort. And the best part is that trainerroad.com only costs $10/month. The downside is that I had to order an ANT+ USB stick that my equipment (HR monitor, cadence/speed sensor) was compatible with. That was an easy $30 fix, however.
So today was the first time I had a chance to actually follow a workout. I decided to start with a baseline type workout called the 8 minute test. Basically, it is a series of warmups followed by two 8 minute speed tests intended to be performed at maximum sustainable effort. Then, using some magic calculations, it comes back and tells you what it predicts your LTHR would be.
Once I got things all sorted out and fired up the workout, the first thing I noticed was that it wanted a warmup at what seemed to be a random target HR - 117 if I remember correctly. I could change the intensity of the workout, but I had no idea whether it was already going to be killer or not, so I kept it where it was. In fact, the whole routine seemed to be driven by target HR, aside form the high cadence warmup section where it was looking for a target cadence as well. I tried my best to follow the target HR's, but in some sections I was bouncing around a lot - I still tend to take a while to zero in on a specific HR, so any of the short bursts were the equivalent of a hail mary pass for hitting the target HR. For the first 8 minute test, I took things a tad conservatively, because at the end I still had more in the tank - but I've found I'd rather do that and up the intensity than overdo it and have no idea how much to lower the intensity to get it right. For the second 8 minute test, I increased intensity, but my HR was overshooting the target, so I eased up a bit to bring it back down.
In the end, it said my LTHR should be 136, as opposed to my user inputted value of 150. I decided to stay with the 150 because I've done an hour of cycling at a HR of 150, so I know 136 is low. This tells me two things - I could have pushed harder, and I shouldn't necessarily go by target HR (although that is probably workout dependant). I'd expect that over time, I'll either figure out how to compensate, or my parameters will zero in to something more accurate that represents fitness level.
For the past few weeks, as I get closer to the 24 week countdown (Feb 5) before Lake Placid, I've been formulating my training approach for that timeframe. One of the things I've been contemplating is exactly how to mix/match running with cycling - and I think the answer I've settled on is to treat cycling very similarly to running, as they are both 'build the engine' activities. One of the followup questions, then, is 'what workouts do I do?' - and that is where something like the workouts on trainerroad.com can come in.
Until I discovered the site, I was planning on mimicking run workouts on the bike - LSD, intervals, threshold, etc. While that may be effective, if I can follow workouts that do things such as basebuilding, etc that have been designed/used by other cyclists, I stand a better chance of optimizing the returns on the effort. And the best part is that trainerroad.com only costs $10/month. The downside is that I had to order an ANT+ USB stick that my equipment (HR monitor, cadence/speed sensor) was compatible with. That was an easy $30 fix, however.
So today was the first time I had a chance to actually follow a workout. I decided to start with a baseline type workout called the 8 minute test. Basically, it is a series of warmups followed by two 8 minute speed tests intended to be performed at maximum sustainable effort. Then, using some magic calculations, it comes back and tells you what it predicts your LTHR would be.
Once I got things all sorted out and fired up the workout, the first thing I noticed was that it wanted a warmup at what seemed to be a random target HR - 117 if I remember correctly. I could change the intensity of the workout, but I had no idea whether it was already going to be killer or not, so I kept it where it was. In fact, the whole routine seemed to be driven by target HR, aside form the high cadence warmup section where it was looking for a target cadence as well. I tried my best to follow the target HR's, but in some sections I was bouncing around a lot - I still tend to take a while to zero in on a specific HR, so any of the short bursts were the equivalent of a hail mary pass for hitting the target HR. For the first 8 minute test, I took things a tad conservatively, because at the end I still had more in the tank - but I've found I'd rather do that and up the intensity than overdo it and have no idea how much to lower the intensity to get it right. For the second 8 minute test, I increased intensity, but my HR was overshooting the target, so I eased up a bit to bring it back down.
In the end, it said my LTHR should be 136, as opposed to my user inputted value of 150. I decided to stay with the 150 because I've done an hour of cycling at a HR of 150, so I know 136 is low. This tells me two things - I could have pushed harder, and I shouldn't necessarily go by target HR (although that is probably workout dependant). I'd expect that over time, I'll either figure out how to compensate, or my parameters will zero in to something more accurate that represents fitness level.
17 mile LSD - 1/28/2012
This weekend I wanted to get a 17 miler in - the last long run was two weeks ago @ 15 miles, and last weekend being the Hampton half course @ 13 miles, I was all set to up the distance this weekend a notch.
It's amazing how quickly distance endurance can be lost. One might think that since I just did a full marathon in mid-October, that I should just about be able to do a full marathon again any day of the week. However, a solid month after the marathon was extremely reduced mileage on account of my right foot, and then even with a half marathon in mid-November, it was only a month and a half later that I did 11.5 miles and was glad to be done when I was, because I could feel my left knee getting 'squishy' (something I've found to be an indication that it is close to time to stop). Fortunately, the rebuild to previous distance is significantly easier the second time around - it just takes patience to not try and do it too quickly. Honestly, having the bike trainer really helps with that - allows me to do something worthwhile in lieu of running when I shouldn't otherwise be.
A few of the initial distance building runs I remember fairly vividly, but honestly I don't really remember a whole lot about the 17 miler. Looking back through my log, it looks to have been in mid-July. Oddly enough, it doesn't look like I had been taking walk breaks every mile, which really confuses me. I have no idea why that would be. Either way, my avg HR for that run was 159 and the average pace was 9:53/mile. I'm sure it being summer has something to do with it, but it gives a baseline for effort.
Compared to that, a 17 mile run now is a relative cake-walk - pace is a bit north of 9 min/miles, but the average HR was in the mid-140's. I still took walk breaks, but this time it was every two miles instead of every mile. There were two reasons for this change - I'd like to eventually cut out walk breaks if possible (although I have a feeling I'll still always benefit from them), but the more important reason is that two miles is perfect timing for refueling and rehydrating. This way, it's easy to make sure I consume calories and drink water every 15-20 minutes (as opposed to trying to remember every other break, when I'd be liable to mix something up). I also brought some of my homemade energy goop with me as well - my plan was to consume it all during the 10-11 mile loop around the local reservoir, and then refill the gel flask and water bottles at home, and then head out for the remaining several miles. However, when I got to about mile 8, I felt like I was continually refueling and rehydrating myself sufficiently that I wouldn't need a refill in order to finish what miles were remaining.
The rest of the run was pretty uneventful and done in a steady state. It turned out I had to improvise at the end a bit to tack on the last 3/4 to 1/2 mile - but I was feeling good enough to do that as opposed to skimp out on them (it can be very tempting to turn it in following the same road path you always follow when doing a common loop).
After the run, I took and ice bath for the 20 minutes, followed by a hot shower and my typical refueling meal after a long workout - a burrito from Chipotle. Later on in the evening, I hopped on the bike trainer for 30 minute easy pace spin in order to see if something like that helps with recovery (get blood moving around without the impact).
It's amazing how quickly distance endurance can be lost. One might think that since I just did a full marathon in mid-October, that I should just about be able to do a full marathon again any day of the week. However, a solid month after the marathon was extremely reduced mileage on account of my right foot, and then even with a half marathon in mid-November, it was only a month and a half later that I did 11.5 miles and was glad to be done when I was, because I could feel my left knee getting 'squishy' (something I've found to be an indication that it is close to time to stop). Fortunately, the rebuild to previous distance is significantly easier the second time around - it just takes patience to not try and do it too quickly. Honestly, having the bike trainer really helps with that - allows me to do something worthwhile in lieu of running when I shouldn't otherwise be.
A few of the initial distance building runs I remember fairly vividly, but honestly I don't really remember a whole lot about the 17 miler. Looking back through my log, it looks to have been in mid-July. Oddly enough, it doesn't look like I had been taking walk breaks every mile, which really confuses me. I have no idea why that would be. Either way, my avg HR for that run was 159 and the average pace was 9:53/mile. I'm sure it being summer has something to do with it, but it gives a baseline for effort.
Compared to that, a 17 mile run now is a relative cake-walk - pace is a bit north of 9 min/miles, but the average HR was in the mid-140's. I still took walk breaks, but this time it was every two miles instead of every mile. There were two reasons for this change - I'd like to eventually cut out walk breaks if possible (although I have a feeling I'll still always benefit from them), but the more important reason is that two miles is perfect timing for refueling and rehydrating. This way, it's easy to make sure I consume calories and drink water every 15-20 minutes (as opposed to trying to remember every other break, when I'd be liable to mix something up). I also brought some of my homemade energy goop with me as well - my plan was to consume it all during the 10-11 mile loop around the local reservoir, and then refill the gel flask and water bottles at home, and then head out for the remaining several miles. However, when I got to about mile 8, I felt like I was continually refueling and rehydrating myself sufficiently that I wouldn't need a refill in order to finish what miles were remaining.
The rest of the run was pretty uneventful and done in a steady state. It turned out I had to improvise at the end a bit to tack on the last 3/4 to 1/2 mile - but I was feeling good enough to do that as opposed to skimp out on them (it can be very tempting to turn it in following the same road path you always follow when doing a common loop).
After the run, I took and ice bath for the 20 minutes, followed by a hot shower and my typical refueling meal after a long workout - a burrito from Chipotle. Later on in the evening, I hopped on the bike trainer for 30 minute easy pace spin in order to see if something like that helps with recovery (get blood moving around without the impact).
Friday, January 27, 2012
Steady state trainer spin - 1/26/2012
After yesterdays six miles at lunch, and intervals on the trainer in the evening, I wanted a workout today that would not be terribly taxing. Especially with a 17 mile long run coming up this weekend. So I did a simple and straight forward steady state trainer spin with a target HR between 140-145.
Unlike the past couple trainer workouts, this one I wanted to hit a cadence of 90 rpm as close as possible - at least during the real workout portion. I did a two step warm up - 5 minutes at 34x19, followed by 5 minutes @ 34x16, represented by the two plateaus in the HR graph. I then went to 34x14, and found the HR settling into the 140's around the 25 minute mark. Figuring it would probably climb a bit over time, I kept the gears at that spot, aiming for the proper cadence, and kept spinning for about 70 minutes. As anticipated, the HR did increase slightly, the cadence decreased slightly, as did the speed. However, the dropoff was real minimal, so I'm pretty happy about it.
Following that, it was about five minutes of cool down spin.
One thing of note is that I did continue to toy around with efficiency during the cycle. Having been through a couple sessions now of OLD's on each leg, I did feel like I could start to tell when the leg muscles were firing appropriately for the position around the cycle. Prior to doing the OLD's, I had no idea what it felt like - so as of this point in time, even if the OLD's haven't yet helped with actual efficiency or power, they do appear to be helping with knowing when it starts to 'feel right'. Or, maybe 'right' is too aggressive at this stage of the game. Maybe it should be more like 'not feel quite so wrong'.
Unlike the past couple trainer workouts, this one I wanted to hit a cadence of 90 rpm as close as possible - at least during the real workout portion. I did a two step warm up - 5 minutes at 34x19, followed by 5 minutes @ 34x16, represented by the two plateaus in the HR graph. I then went to 34x14, and found the HR settling into the 140's around the 25 minute mark. Figuring it would probably climb a bit over time, I kept the gears at that spot, aiming for the proper cadence, and kept spinning for about 70 minutes. As anticipated, the HR did increase slightly, the cadence decreased slightly, as did the speed. However, the dropoff was real minimal, so I'm pretty happy about it.
Following that, it was about five minutes of cool down spin.
One thing of note is that I did continue to toy around with efficiency during the cycle. Having been through a couple sessions now of OLD's on each leg, I did feel like I could start to tell when the leg muscles were firing appropriately for the position around the cycle. Prior to doing the OLD's, I had no idea what it felt like - so as of this point in time, even if the OLD's haven't yet helped with actual efficiency or power, they do appear to be helping with knowing when it starts to 'feel right'. Or, maybe 'right' is too aggressive at this stage of the game. Maybe it should be more like 'not feel quite so wrong'.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
OLDs, Yoga, Minimus shoes, lunch run and spinning intervals - 1/25/12
I seem to be making a habit of combining multiple workouts into a single entry lately.
So after Sunday's run of the Hampton half course, I found myself with a free 40 minutes or so before Yoga on Monday evening. It dawned on me that this would be a perfect time for some OLD's at the easiest resistance setting. I could do a few sets on each leg, get the benefit of that drill and not wear myself out before yoga.
Turned out it was a really really good idea! By setting the trainer to the lowest resistance, I was able to get five minutes on each leg without a problem. I could have done more if need be, but it seemed like five minutes turned out to be just about right. The cadence was not stellar - probably around 70 rpm or so - but the important part was that I was able to have an extended time with the muscles in my legs learning how to fire in coordinated fashion without tiring so quickly that benefit is lost. Kind of a carry-over concept from Total Immersion swimming - start out just getting the mechanics down first, tossing anything else performance related (speed, time, resistance) out the window. This would allow the muscles to learn how to work together instead of against each other. At least, so the theory goes. I guess time will tell.
Yoga on Monday night was nothing terribly new - but it was necessary. Even though the half course on Sunday was done at a low intensity, it was still over 2.5 hours on my feet, and throughout the day on Monday I still had some residual soreness because regardless of speed, 2.5 hours of pounding impact is 2.5 hours of pounding impact.
On Tuesday I managed to get out and pick up a pair of NB Minimus shoes. For about nine months now I've been running on Nike Free Run's, and they've been working great. However, I recently found that while a typical running shoe has a heel to toe drop of around 10-12 mm, the Free Run's that I have are around 7 mm. So that explains why they ended up being a good compromise between what I was used to (Air Pegasus) and the sandles I was using in the spring (0 mm drop) that turned out to be too aggressive. So, when I found out that the Minimus shoes have a drop of about 4 mm, it seemed like the next logical step. They are by no means minimalist shoes, but they do accomplish the goal of forefoot striking and make it even harder than the Free's to heel strike.
Anyway, I wanted to give them a shot, but I didn't want to take them out on too long a run. So I grabbed the dogs and did a quick short run of just under three miles. They felt pretty good, but the jury is still out on them - they have a bit of a hump mid-foot towards the outside. I feel like it might be there to 'encourage' forefoot striking, but I'm not positive. I'll have to run in them a few more times to really start making up my mind.
After the run, I hit the bike trainer again for some more OLD's. I felt like Monday's workout of five minute repeats of each leg at minimal resistance was really helpful, so I repeated it. After a five minute warmup at easy pace, I did three sets for each leg, alternating, at five minutes per set. I could tell by the end of the workout that it was getting easier, in a subtle way. To be sure, the legs were getting fatigued, so there was extra effort from that. But outside of that I could tell that the mechanics were getting a little more efficient. It's hard to describe, but even as the muscles got fatigued, they were less herky-jerky about going through the entire cycle. Also, the cadence wasn't fast - again, around 70 - but that is/was not my primary concern.
At lunch today I decided to head out for a run. First of all, at 45F it was nice weather. Second, I'm going to be entering a base building phase in the next week or so, and to make that work I'm going to have to be running 2-3x per week, I figure. So doing a quick 5-6 miles a couple times during the week at lunch when I can will make it that much easier, because then I'll have more flexibility for hitting the bike trainer in the evenings.
Finally, with a run out of the way for the day, I hit the bike trainer in the evening. I decided to try a high cadence workout with a few intervals. To be honest, I have no idea whether it's a good workout or not - but I have seen people talk about not just usefulness of one leg drills, but also high cadence stuff, low cadence stuff (high resistance, to build power), etc. So I figured I'd throw something together and see what would happen. I started on 34x19 for about five minutes, then moved to 34x17 for five minutes, then 34x16 for five minutes, and then 34x15 for five minutes. By that time, my HR was touching 160, so I figured that was a good top limit. After the five minutes was up, I went back down to 34x19 for five minutes as recovery, until my HR got back down into the 140's. I repeated that three times, followed by a few minutes back at 34x19 as cool down. It is too soon to tell definitively, but I do feel as though the OLD's did provide some benefit, as power seemed to be better balanced throughout the entire cycle. Still got a ways to go, but it at least seemed better. Who knows if it was or not!
So after Sunday's run of the Hampton half course, I found myself with a free 40 minutes or so before Yoga on Monday evening. It dawned on me that this would be a perfect time for some OLD's at the easiest resistance setting. I could do a few sets on each leg, get the benefit of that drill and not wear myself out before yoga.
Turned out it was a really really good idea! By setting the trainer to the lowest resistance, I was able to get five minutes on each leg without a problem. I could have done more if need be, but it seemed like five minutes turned out to be just about right. The cadence was not stellar - probably around 70 rpm or so - but the important part was that I was able to have an extended time with the muscles in my legs learning how to fire in coordinated fashion without tiring so quickly that benefit is lost. Kind of a carry-over concept from Total Immersion swimming - start out just getting the mechanics down first, tossing anything else performance related (speed, time, resistance) out the window. This would allow the muscles to learn how to work together instead of against each other. At least, so the theory goes. I guess time will tell.
Yoga on Monday night was nothing terribly new - but it was necessary. Even though the half course on Sunday was done at a low intensity, it was still over 2.5 hours on my feet, and throughout the day on Monday I still had some residual soreness because regardless of speed, 2.5 hours of pounding impact is 2.5 hours of pounding impact.
On Tuesday I managed to get out and pick up a pair of NB Minimus shoes. For about nine months now I've been running on Nike Free Run's, and they've been working great. However, I recently found that while a typical running shoe has a heel to toe drop of around 10-12 mm, the Free Run's that I have are around 7 mm. So that explains why they ended up being a good compromise between what I was used to (Air Pegasus) and the sandles I was using in the spring (0 mm drop) that turned out to be too aggressive. So, when I found out that the Minimus shoes have a drop of about 4 mm, it seemed like the next logical step. They are by no means minimalist shoes, but they do accomplish the goal of forefoot striking and make it even harder than the Free's to heel strike.
Anyway, I wanted to give them a shot, but I didn't want to take them out on too long a run. So I grabbed the dogs and did a quick short run of just under three miles. They felt pretty good, but the jury is still out on them - they have a bit of a hump mid-foot towards the outside. I feel like it might be there to 'encourage' forefoot striking, but I'm not positive. I'll have to run in them a few more times to really start making up my mind.
After the run, I hit the bike trainer again for some more OLD's. I felt like Monday's workout of five minute repeats of each leg at minimal resistance was really helpful, so I repeated it. After a five minute warmup at easy pace, I did three sets for each leg, alternating, at five minutes per set. I could tell by the end of the workout that it was getting easier, in a subtle way. To be sure, the legs were getting fatigued, so there was extra effort from that. But outside of that I could tell that the mechanics were getting a little more efficient. It's hard to describe, but even as the muscles got fatigued, they were less herky-jerky about going through the entire cycle. Also, the cadence wasn't fast - again, around 70 - but that is/was not my primary concern.
At lunch today I decided to head out for a run. First of all, at 45F it was nice weather. Second, I'm going to be entering a base building phase in the next week or so, and to make that work I'm going to have to be running 2-3x per week, I figure. So doing a quick 5-6 miles a couple times during the week at lunch when I can will make it that much easier, because then I'll have more flexibility for hitting the bike trainer in the evenings.
Finally, with a run out of the way for the day, I hit the bike trainer in the evening. I decided to try a high cadence workout with a few intervals. To be honest, I have no idea whether it's a good workout or not - but I have seen people talk about not just usefulness of one leg drills, but also high cadence stuff, low cadence stuff (high resistance, to build power), etc. So I figured I'd throw something together and see what would happen. I started on 34x19 for about five minutes, then moved to 34x17 for five minutes, then 34x16 for five minutes, and then 34x15 for five minutes. By that time, my HR was touching 160, so I figured that was a good top limit. After the five minutes was up, I went back down to 34x19 for five minutes as recovery, until my HR got back down into the 140's. I repeated that three times, followed by a few minutes back at 34x19 as cool down. It is too soon to tell definitively, but I do feel as though the OLD's did provide some benefit, as power seemed to be better balanced throughout the entire cycle. Still got a ways to go, but it at least seemed better. Who knows if it was or not!
Monday, January 23, 2012
Strength workout and Hampton Half course trial - 1/23/2012
Got a little bit of catching up to do...
Friday turned out to be a rest day because I had plans in the evening after work, so not much to say there, except that I repeated the plank hold routine (1 minute front & 1 minute each side, two sets)
Saturday I originally had plans to do my weight training circuit and then spend some time on the bike, but I wasn't sure whether to do a long session on the bike, one legged drills, or what. So I ended up letting things just happen as they would.
This was my second time through my own personalized circuit, and it was as much of an ass kicker as it was the first time. Maybe more-so. If you look at the results, many of the numbers were the same (although the lunges and squats did go up) - but there was less rest in between because I had the weights all sorted out ahead of time. I got through the first set pretty smoothly - take a couple quick breaks, but for the most part knocked in out in 10-15 minutes. The second set I slowed down a bit, took breaks that were a little longer, but for the most part still managed to come out on the other side in pretty good shape. I want to say the first two sets took me around 25 minutes combined. The third set kicked my ass something fierce. It took me just about as long to get through the third set as it did the first two combined. I had to take much longer breaks in between each exercise, and after the one arm balance pushups, I just collapsed on the floor for a good couple minutes before I even got up to write down the number of reps. After I was done, I stumbled on the stairs a bit on my way out of the basement, and once I had my glass of chocolate milk and was on the living room couch, I actually took a quick cat nap.
It occured to me that perhaps the reason why was because I woke up that morning, had my normal breakfast of a nutrition bar (clif bar, on this day) & chocolate milk. Or maybe I had waffles - I know I had waffles at some point during the weekend, and it wasn't on Sunday - but I don't remember whether I only had waffles on saturday, or whether I had the bar and milk earlier in the morning and had the waffles a few hours later. Either way, I took the dogs for a walk for over an hour, and did the routine after that. So by that time, it was 4:30pm or so and I had very little to eat. So I was pretty underfueled, and used everything I had on the routine and bonked at the end. Any aspirations of doing anything on the trainer went out the window as well.
On Sunday I met up with my sister to run the Hampton Half marathon course. It'd be her first time doing anything over 10 miles, and while I did about 15 last weekend, I was just as happy to have a lower mileage weekend because the time spent on the ground would make up for it. It turned out to be a real good example of how you can still have a good workout without it being one that makes your lungs really work. Average HR was in the low 120's, which was interesting because it highlighted what seems to be a pretty consistent trend - 1 min/mile for every 10 bpm:
125 bpm - 11:30 min/miles
135 bpm - 10:30 min/miles
145 bpm - 9:30 min/miles
155 bpm - 8:30 min/miles
165 bpm - 7:30 min/miles (monson half)
170 bpm - 7 min/miles (thanksgiving and freezer five races)
Outside of that, it was the longest time spent pounding the pavement since the marathon - a little over 2.5 hours. So regardless of pace, that still counts for something - I still had to stretch out a couple times, I still felt mild soreness on Sunday evening after sitting for a period of time, etc. It was, as it turns out, a really good way to continue with base building. Instead of combining structural/skeletal base building with aerobic, it was almost exclusively structural - which I'd think would be a valuable thing to be able to work at a time of year when I'd be able to continue working the aerobic systems via the bike trainer, but would have limited opportunity to work the structural stuff.
Friday turned out to be a rest day because I had plans in the evening after work, so not much to say there, except that I repeated the plank hold routine (1 minute front & 1 minute each side, two sets)
Saturday I originally had plans to do my weight training circuit and then spend some time on the bike, but I wasn't sure whether to do a long session on the bike, one legged drills, or what. So I ended up letting things just happen as they would.
This was my second time through my own personalized circuit, and it was as much of an ass kicker as it was the first time. Maybe more-so. If you look at the results, many of the numbers were the same (although the lunges and squats did go up) - but there was less rest in between because I had the weights all sorted out ahead of time. I got through the first set pretty smoothly - take a couple quick breaks, but for the most part knocked in out in 10-15 minutes. The second set I slowed down a bit, took breaks that were a little longer, but for the most part still managed to come out on the other side in pretty good shape. I want to say the first two sets took me around 25 minutes combined. The third set kicked my ass something fierce. It took me just about as long to get through the third set as it did the first two combined. I had to take much longer breaks in between each exercise, and after the one arm balance pushups, I just collapsed on the floor for a good couple minutes before I even got up to write down the number of reps. After I was done, I stumbled on the stairs a bit on my way out of the basement, and once I had my glass of chocolate milk and was on the living room couch, I actually took a quick cat nap.
It occured to me that perhaps the reason why was because I woke up that morning, had my normal breakfast of a nutrition bar (clif bar, on this day) & chocolate milk. Or maybe I had waffles - I know I had waffles at some point during the weekend, and it wasn't on Sunday - but I don't remember whether I only had waffles on saturday, or whether I had the bar and milk earlier in the morning and had the waffles a few hours later. Either way, I took the dogs for a walk for over an hour, and did the routine after that. So by that time, it was 4:30pm or so and I had very little to eat. So I was pretty underfueled, and used everything I had on the routine and bonked at the end. Any aspirations of doing anything on the trainer went out the window as well.
On Sunday I met up with my sister to run the Hampton Half marathon course. It'd be her first time doing anything over 10 miles, and while I did about 15 last weekend, I was just as happy to have a lower mileage weekend because the time spent on the ground would make up for it. It turned out to be a real good example of how you can still have a good workout without it being one that makes your lungs really work. Average HR was in the low 120's, which was interesting because it highlighted what seems to be a pretty consistent trend - 1 min/mile for every 10 bpm:
125 bpm - 11:30 min/miles
135 bpm - 10:30 min/miles
145 bpm - 9:30 min/miles
155 bpm - 8:30 min/miles
165 bpm - 7:30 min/miles (monson half)
170 bpm - 7 min/miles (thanksgiving and freezer five races)
Outside of that, it was the longest time spent pounding the pavement since the marathon - a little over 2.5 hours. So regardless of pace, that still counts for something - I still had to stretch out a couple times, I still felt mild soreness on Sunday evening after sitting for a period of time, etc. It was, as it turns out, a really good way to continue with base building. Instead of combining structural/skeletal base building with aerobic, it was almost exclusively structural - which I'd think would be a valuable thing to be able to work at a time of year when I'd be able to continue working the aerobic systems via the bike trainer, but would have limited opportunity to work the structural stuff.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Short run, OLD drill and plank holds - 1/19/12
Today was a mix of activities. First, I took the dogs on a run for about 3.1 miles, which was not a distance PR for them, but it was a time PR of 28:46 (which included two potty breaks for them). The few other runs I had done with them a few weeks ago were more in the 9:30 - 10 min/mile range. Todays run was probably about the fastest they can do at the moment - the were dragging behind a bit the entire time. My original intention was to do 5 miles, but after about 2.5 miles, girl dog was really starting to lag.
Once I got home, I hit the trainer for a quick spin session because I wanted to try the one legged drills again. Since I was already warmed up from the run, I did about 10 minutes of cycling warmup, followed by 7 x (right leg 1 min, 1 min both legs, left leg 1 min, 1 min both legs).
Here's the profile from SportTracks:
So you can see the first ten minutes is pretty much steady state. The first OLD set was at my typical warmup speed/resistance of 15 - 15.5 mph - but I found that to still be too much. It was fine for the first 15-20 seconds, and I was able to keep a fairly smooth and even cycle stroke, but I found that the back-up-forward motion really started to fall off the table at that point. At this point, I found I instinctively pushed harder on the down stroke to maintain cadence - but by then it was spiraling out of control - the harder I pushed, the more awkward and disjointed the whole entire cycle sequence became. After one set on each leg at that speed, I clearly needed to make an adjustment. So on the next set, I dropped the resistance a bit - I dont remember whether it was one gear or two. I think it was one.
Over the next several sets, I refined my process a bit each time. I found that I had to consciously keep myself from pushing downward so hard, and put more emphasis on keeping even pressure throughout the entire cycle. Part of the problem was that initially, I found I was subconsciously peddling faster, I think because I was trying so desperately to keep cadence. What I didn't realize initially was that it was unnecessary - it was like I was trying to fit a mental rhythm I have in my head for two feet into cycling with one foot. So once I concentrated more on other other parts of the cycle, and less on the down portion, things evened out. However, I found that my hip flexors were tiring rather quickly - having to move my foot through the entire cycle was exhausting. After about 30 seconds, form started to get sloppy, and often by 50 seconds, the muscles were so tired they didn't know how to fire in a coordinated manner anymore. It was very bizarre - it was like one muscle was trying to pull up while another was trying to extend my foot forward while yet another was still trying to pull my foot back.
In the end, as the graph shows, I ended up dropping the resistance again in an attempt to be able to maintain form and muscle firing coordination for the entire minute. It definitely helped, but it is also obvious that practice is needed.
All in all, though - it was pretty eye opening. I didn't realize just how much of a 'free ride' my leg was getting on its path through the cycle. Obviously, this means that part of my power generation is being robbed - not only am I fighting resistance from the road and wind and elevation, but I'm also constantly fighting myself while cycling - clearly a holdover from the years of riding a bike as a kid without clipless pedals. So I'll definitely be incorporating some of these drills into my routine - I'm not sure how yet, though - I may just throw some in during certain spins, I may keep one spin/week dedicated to repeating the drill several times, or I may put heavy emphasis on it as sort of a 'break down a rebuild' exercise.
Oh, for the last activity of the day, I did two sets of three way one minute plank holds. One minute forward plank on the elbows, one minute left side, one minute right side and repeat (with rest where necessary). My thinking is that something like this might be a good way to get core workouts in multiple times during the week - because they are something I can do quickly while watching TV.
Once I got home, I hit the trainer for a quick spin session because I wanted to try the one legged drills again. Since I was already warmed up from the run, I did about 10 minutes of cycling warmup, followed by 7 x (right leg 1 min, 1 min both legs, left leg 1 min, 1 min both legs).
Here's the profile from SportTracks:
So you can see the first ten minutes is pretty much steady state. The first OLD set was at my typical warmup speed/resistance of 15 - 15.5 mph - but I found that to still be too much. It was fine for the first 15-20 seconds, and I was able to keep a fairly smooth and even cycle stroke, but I found that the back-up-forward motion really started to fall off the table at that point. At this point, I found I instinctively pushed harder on the down stroke to maintain cadence - but by then it was spiraling out of control - the harder I pushed, the more awkward and disjointed the whole entire cycle sequence became. After one set on each leg at that speed, I clearly needed to make an adjustment. So on the next set, I dropped the resistance a bit - I dont remember whether it was one gear or two. I think it was one.
Over the next several sets, I refined my process a bit each time. I found that I had to consciously keep myself from pushing downward so hard, and put more emphasis on keeping even pressure throughout the entire cycle. Part of the problem was that initially, I found I was subconsciously peddling faster, I think because I was trying so desperately to keep cadence. What I didn't realize initially was that it was unnecessary - it was like I was trying to fit a mental rhythm I have in my head for two feet into cycling with one foot. So once I concentrated more on other other parts of the cycle, and less on the down portion, things evened out. However, I found that my hip flexors were tiring rather quickly - having to move my foot through the entire cycle was exhausting. After about 30 seconds, form started to get sloppy, and often by 50 seconds, the muscles were so tired they didn't know how to fire in a coordinated manner anymore. It was very bizarre - it was like one muscle was trying to pull up while another was trying to extend my foot forward while yet another was still trying to pull my foot back.
In the end, as the graph shows, I ended up dropping the resistance again in an attempt to be able to maintain form and muscle firing coordination for the entire minute. It definitely helped, but it is also obvious that practice is needed.
All in all, though - it was pretty eye opening. I didn't realize just how much of a 'free ride' my leg was getting on its path through the cycle. Obviously, this means that part of my power generation is being robbed - not only am I fighting resistance from the road and wind and elevation, but I'm also constantly fighting myself while cycling - clearly a holdover from the years of riding a bike as a kid without clipless pedals. So I'll definitely be incorporating some of these drills into my routine - I'm not sure how yet, though - I may just throw some in during certain spins, I may keep one spin/week dedicated to repeating the drill several times, or I may put heavy emphasis on it as sort of a 'break down a rebuild' exercise.
Oh, for the last activity of the day, I did two sets of three way one minute plank holds. One minute forward plank on the elbows, one minute left side, one minute right side and repeat (with rest where necessary). My thinking is that something like this might be a good way to get core workouts in multiple times during the week - because they are something I can do quickly while watching TV.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
45 min trainer spin with OLD and intervals - 1/18/2012
After yesterday's trainer spin where I spent some time trying to improve form via circular motion instead of up/down, one of my DM (Daily Mile) friends mentioned one leg spin drills as a way to improve that. I always figured one legged drills (OLD) were just to improve strength in a leg, but when I looked into it, I found indications that it might be helpful for form as well. So I decided to give it a shot during tonights session.
After a 20 minute warmup at about 16-16.5 mph (I finally got smart and wore a sweatshirt that I took off. I cycle in a 50-53F basement, but since I know I'm going to get warm, I have a fan on. Since I dont want to stop and dismount to turn on the fan, I turn it on at the beginning - but as I'm not warmed up at that point, having a fan on me blowing 50F air gets chilly. So today I actually used the ole noggin and put an extra shirt on to keep from getting too cold initially), I gave the OLD a shot. I started off with 30 seconds on the right leg, and found it pretty easy and straightforward for the first 10-15 seconds. After that, I ended up reverting to more of a pumping up and down motion, and I think it was more to keep the cadence up. So it ended up being a very uneven-powered cycle - and as a result, tension on the chain and gears was not consistent. By the time I hit 25 seconds, it was pretty atrocious - so that is why I ended up at 30 seconds. After the first leg, my HR was up near 160. So I clipped back in, and gave myself a couple minutes to see if the HR would come down a bit. I repeated the exercise on the other leg, rested, and did the two-leg set a second time.
After that, I decided I was done with that for the evening - I'd have to reassess and re-evaluate my approach before trying it again. Since my HR was already raised, I decided to make it a shorter spinning session and do a couple quick intervals. So after about 5-6 minutes of rest from the OLD's, I increased intensity to 18-18.5 mpg range for one minute, followed by a minute rest, and did four total interval sets.
You can see the online garmin results here, but it is rather pointless. For some dumb reason, Garmin has decided to really expand the HR scale, so you can't see squat on it. And of course the speed is all messed up, thinking I was going at either 15.6 or 23.4 mph - nothing in between. Of course, SportTracks renders the data much more nicely, as shown below:
So you can see the 20 minute warmup with the HR steadily rising (although it did flatten out a bit in the low 140's from 15-20 minutes), followed by the four sharp rises in HR at 20, 23, 24.5 and 27 minutes. Speed dropped as the cadence dropped slightly. Then there was the speed from from 27 to about 33 because I lowered the gear. The intervals were at about 35, 37, 40 and 42 minutes.
In the end, I'm going to try the OLD drills again - but I think my mistake this time was doing them with a resistance that was too hard. I think I ended up having to really power through the downstroke to maintain cadence, but was unable to maintain that power and speed throughout the whole cycle. With a lower resistance, hopefully I'll be able to keep the motion more even throughout the entire cycle. Ultimately I'd like to be smoother throughout the whole cycle with resistance, but at first I think the main objective is going to be more about training the muscles how/when to fire in a coordinated effort - and then once they learn that, then I can try to have them generate more power.
After a 20 minute warmup at about 16-16.5 mph (I finally got smart and wore a sweatshirt that I took off. I cycle in a 50-53F basement, but since I know I'm going to get warm, I have a fan on. Since I dont want to stop and dismount to turn on the fan, I turn it on at the beginning - but as I'm not warmed up at that point, having a fan on me blowing 50F air gets chilly. So today I actually used the ole noggin and put an extra shirt on to keep from getting too cold initially), I gave the OLD a shot. I started off with 30 seconds on the right leg, and found it pretty easy and straightforward for the first 10-15 seconds. After that, I ended up reverting to more of a pumping up and down motion, and I think it was more to keep the cadence up. So it ended up being a very uneven-powered cycle - and as a result, tension on the chain and gears was not consistent. By the time I hit 25 seconds, it was pretty atrocious - so that is why I ended up at 30 seconds. After the first leg, my HR was up near 160. So I clipped back in, and gave myself a couple minutes to see if the HR would come down a bit. I repeated the exercise on the other leg, rested, and did the two-leg set a second time.
After that, I decided I was done with that for the evening - I'd have to reassess and re-evaluate my approach before trying it again. Since my HR was already raised, I decided to make it a shorter spinning session and do a couple quick intervals. So after about 5-6 minutes of rest from the OLD's, I increased intensity to 18-18.5 mpg range for one minute, followed by a minute rest, and did four total interval sets.
You can see the online garmin results here, but it is rather pointless. For some dumb reason, Garmin has decided to really expand the HR scale, so you can't see squat on it. And of course the speed is all messed up, thinking I was going at either 15.6 or 23.4 mph - nothing in between. Of course, SportTracks renders the data much more nicely, as shown below:
So you can see the 20 minute warmup with the HR steadily rising (although it did flatten out a bit in the low 140's from 15-20 minutes), followed by the four sharp rises in HR at 20, 23, 24.5 and 27 minutes. Speed dropped as the cadence dropped slightly. Then there was the speed from from 27 to about 33 because I lowered the gear. The intervals were at about 35, 37, 40 and 42 minutes.
In the end, I'm going to try the OLD drills again - but I think my mistake this time was doing them with a resistance that was too hard. I think I ended up having to really power through the downstroke to maintain cadence, but was unable to maintain that power and speed throughout the whole cycle. With a lower resistance, hopefully I'll be able to keep the motion more even throughout the entire cycle. Ultimately I'd like to be smoother throughout the whole cycle with resistance, but at first I think the main objective is going to be more about training the muscles how/when to fire in a coordinated effort - and then once they learn that, then I can try to have them generate more power.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
23 mile trainer spin - 1/17/2012
Today's workout was the length of two '24' episodes - a couple minutes shy of 90 minutes. The goal was basically to do a steady state session with the HR getting into the 130's. After Sunday's spin where the HR stayed in the 120's, I wanted to bump up resistance a notch - but I wanted to have it be a shorter session just in case it got a bit too arduous at the end. If all went well, then perhaps the LSD sessions on the weekends could be brought up to the same intensity.
I started out with a warmup of about 15 minutes or so in an easy gear (about 15.5 mph), and then increased resistance to one higher than Sunday, resulting in a speed of about 16.5 mph. After a little while, I decided to try playing around with mechanics a bit - trying to not make such an up and down motion that uses primarily the quads for power, and instead make it more circular, which may pull other muscles into the power generation. I noticed that when I did that, the cadence dropped a bit - from the mid-90's to somewhere between 88-92. So as a result, the speed dropped a tad as well, closer to about 16 mph. However, I may end up being ok with that - the cadence is still in the optimal range, and if I can get my legs used to that sort of motion, it may pay efficiency dividends later on in the future. For now, though - I found that when I paid attention to it, I could maintain it, but time moved slowly. When I allowed myself to get distracted by watching TV, time moved more quickly but I tended to fall out of that new mechanic. So I'm hoping that over time, it'll start getting more into muscle memory and I won't have to think about it.
I started out with a warmup of about 15 minutes or so in an easy gear (about 15.5 mph), and then increased resistance to one higher than Sunday, resulting in a speed of about 16.5 mph. After a little while, I decided to try playing around with mechanics a bit - trying to not make such an up and down motion that uses primarily the quads for power, and instead make it more circular, which may pull other muscles into the power generation. I noticed that when I did that, the cadence dropped a bit - from the mid-90's to somewhere between 88-92. So as a result, the speed dropped a tad as well, closer to about 16 mph. However, I may end up being ok with that - the cadence is still in the optimal range, and if I can get my legs used to that sort of motion, it may pay efficiency dividends later on in the future. For now, though - I found that when I paid attention to it, I could maintain it, but time moved slowly. When I allowed myself to get distracted by watching TV, time moved more quickly but I tended to fall out of that new mechanic. So I'm hoping that over time, it'll start getting more into muscle memory and I won't have to think about it.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
30 miles trainer spin - 1/15/2012
Two out of three aint bad. I had grand visions of doing a swimming, weight training and cycling session today - but when I got to the pool, more lanes were being used than anticipated for other purposes, leaving only two lap lanes available. At the time I thought I'd come back later in the day, but then I decided that since January and February are pretty busy times at the pool, and my swimming isn't going to improve by much at all in that time, I mine as well punt on swimming for the most part until at least March. I think I'll still try to go like twice a month just to keep from regressing, but my time would be better spent on the trainer in the end.
So anyway, that meant that I only did two of the three originally intended workouts - which I'm still happy about. The second workout today was about a two hour trainer spin at low intensity. For some reason, once again the speed graph on the Garmin is rendered incorrectly - it says I peaked at a speed of 23.4 mph, meanwhile when I check my Forerunner 305, it says my peak speed was sub 18 mph. So here is the SportTracks graph:
At first I didn't worry about the HR being a bit low - I've started to see a trend where it takes about 20 minutes for it to settle into a steady-state range. However, after an hour, I was still seeing the HR in the 120's - and while my goal was an easy spin, I didn't know if maybe the resistance was still a little low. So at 1:10:00 I went to one higher gear, which brought the HR up - but I wasn't sure I'd be able to sustain that without the HR creeping close to 140, so I opted to go back down. I'm still kinda figuring out my HR ranges on the bike - while I know that it seems my HR is often 10 bpm lower on the bike for similar RPE as compared to running, that is entirely based on feel. Until a have a better idea of what my cycling legs feel like, for these longer spins I'm thinking I'll err on the side of easier. I'll leave the possibility of more intense workouts for something like hour-long sessions during the week.
However, in comparing this weeks two hour session with last week - the average speed was virtually identical at 15.4 mph, but this weeks avg HR was a full 10 bpm lower.
So anyway, that meant that I only did two of the three originally intended workouts - which I'm still happy about. The second workout today was about a two hour trainer spin at low intensity. For some reason, once again the speed graph on the Garmin is rendered incorrectly - it says I peaked at a speed of 23.4 mph, meanwhile when I check my Forerunner 305, it says my peak speed was sub 18 mph. So here is the SportTracks graph:
However, in comparing this weeks two hour session with last week - the average speed was virtually identical at 15.4 mph, but this weeks avg HR was a full 10 bpm lower.
1/15/12 - Strength training circuit 1 trial
I've obviously been laxing on the P90X recently - ever since getting the trainer and having that option available, having 3x per week to dedicate an hour and a half to strength training has been a tad too much. I had considered just sticking witht he Legs & Back routine, due to the benefits of the leg workout, but I didn't want to completely abandon the upper body. So that was why I recently tried out the Spartacus workout - which has some aspects I liked, and some I did not.
What I ended up deciding to try was to compile a list of all the P90X exercises, sorted by what section it works, and come up with my own circuit type workout (mimicking the Spartacus workout in that respect). I liked the fact that Spartacus did the routines three times around, but I also like how P90X varies things up a bit. So I combined the two concepts together, picking three exercises from each portion of the body worked by P90X, and creating a three set routine out of it. My thinking is that I can then do this one workout, once per week, and that'd be my primary strength training.
I ended up with the following:
Set 1
- Wide front pull ups, max reps
- Balance lunges, 1 minute each side
- Standard pushups, max reps
- One arm cross body curls, max reps
- Weighted circles (30 seconds each direction with 5 seconds of rest in between), max time
- Overhead tri extension, max reps
Set 2
- Reverse grip chin ups, max reps
- Dead lift squats, 1 minute each side
- Slow motion pushups (4 seconds down, 4 seconds up), to max
- Static arm curl, max reps
- Shoulder press, max reps
- Front to back tri extension, max reps
Set 3
- Close grip overhand pullups, max reps
- Single leg wall squat, 15 seconds each side alternating to 90 seconds total
- One arm balance pushups, max reps
- Curl up hammer down, max reps
- Pour fly's, max reps
- Lying tri extention, max reps
So in general, the muscle groups worked are in this order:
1) back
2) legs
3) chest/tri
4) biceps
5) shoulders
6) triceps
My goal was to obviously hit every major section once each set, but it's almost unavoidable to work the chest without also working the triceps - so I split them up as best I could to give the triceps a little bit of a break between station 3 and station 6. The other nice thing is that this is just an example - there are enough exercises in P90X that I could probably come up with 3-4 of these circuits, so I'm not doing all of the exact same exercises every week.
Overall, I found the workout to be a very good start, but I think there needs to be some minor modifications. First off, I feel like the legs should maybe see a little more attention - I may have underestimated their ability to perform with little rest in between what is otherwise exhausting sets. That said, in both the balance lunges and dead lift squats, I definitely felt the gluteus medius being worked on the last several reps - and that is one of the primary muscles I'd like to see targeted in a legs routine due to its roll in hip stability (according to PT). So we'll see over the next couple days whether the legs really do need more attention, or whether it is sufficient. Second, it does end up being a workout that focuses primarily on the upper body. Not the worst thing in the world, and if I decide to add more legs, that would obviously help balance things out. Third, there is no core stuff in here. I'm not sure exactly how to approach that, because not only would I like to work core more than once per week, but I also know I mentally tap out of a strength workout after about an hour. So I may have to end up doing a core/ab workout during the week - at the moment I'm thinking of just doing something like Ab Ripper-X - but we'll see.
Back to this workout, though, it is an exhausting routine, and it does take up the ideal amount of time for me - about 45 minutes, excluding warmup and stretching. Since each exercise is done to max reps, or trying to get as many reps in as possible during a specified time, it definitely elicits heavy breathing. In fact, halfway through the third set, after writing down what I had done, I collapsed on the floor for a minute to catch my breath. Unlike a normal P90X routine where you are exhausting a single section of the body, this was exhausting my entire body, leaving me with little to draw on to hold myself up. Also, I did find that the progression from one body part to another was real nice - after fatiguing myself at one station, I was looking forward to the next one and giving the just-worked muscles a much needed break.
You can find the results of todays workout in the 'P90X Progress - Winter 2011' section above, under 'Circuit 1'.
What I ended up deciding to try was to compile a list of all the P90X exercises, sorted by what section it works, and come up with my own circuit type workout (mimicking the Spartacus workout in that respect). I liked the fact that Spartacus did the routines three times around, but I also like how P90X varies things up a bit. So I combined the two concepts together, picking three exercises from each portion of the body worked by P90X, and creating a three set routine out of it. My thinking is that I can then do this one workout, once per week, and that'd be my primary strength training.
I ended up with the following:
Set 1
- Wide front pull ups, max reps
- Balance lunges, 1 minute each side
- Standard pushups, max reps
- One arm cross body curls, max reps
- Weighted circles (30 seconds each direction with 5 seconds of rest in between), max time
- Overhead tri extension, max reps
Set 2
- Reverse grip chin ups, max reps
- Dead lift squats, 1 minute each side
- Slow motion pushups (4 seconds down, 4 seconds up), to max
- Static arm curl, max reps
- Shoulder press, max reps
- Front to back tri extension, max reps
Set 3
- Close grip overhand pullups, max reps
- Single leg wall squat, 15 seconds each side alternating to 90 seconds total
- One arm balance pushups, max reps
- Curl up hammer down, max reps
- Pour fly's, max reps
- Lying tri extention, max reps
So in general, the muscle groups worked are in this order:
1) back
2) legs
3) chest/tri
4) biceps
5) shoulders
6) triceps
My goal was to obviously hit every major section once each set, but it's almost unavoidable to work the chest without also working the triceps - so I split them up as best I could to give the triceps a little bit of a break between station 3 and station 6. The other nice thing is that this is just an example - there are enough exercises in P90X that I could probably come up with 3-4 of these circuits, so I'm not doing all of the exact same exercises every week.
Overall, I found the workout to be a very good start, but I think there needs to be some minor modifications. First off, I feel like the legs should maybe see a little more attention - I may have underestimated their ability to perform with little rest in between what is otherwise exhausting sets. That said, in both the balance lunges and dead lift squats, I definitely felt the gluteus medius being worked on the last several reps - and that is one of the primary muscles I'd like to see targeted in a legs routine due to its roll in hip stability (according to PT). So we'll see over the next couple days whether the legs really do need more attention, or whether it is sufficient. Second, it does end up being a workout that focuses primarily on the upper body. Not the worst thing in the world, and if I decide to add more legs, that would obviously help balance things out. Third, there is no core stuff in here. I'm not sure exactly how to approach that, because not only would I like to work core more than once per week, but I also know I mentally tap out of a strength workout after about an hour. So I may have to end up doing a core/ab workout during the week - at the moment I'm thinking of just doing something like Ab Ripper-X - but we'll see.
Back to this workout, though, it is an exhausting routine, and it does take up the ideal amount of time for me - about 45 minutes, excluding warmup and stretching. Since each exercise is done to max reps, or trying to get as many reps in as possible during a specified time, it definitely elicits heavy breathing. In fact, halfway through the third set, after writing down what I had done, I collapsed on the floor for a minute to catch my breath. Unlike a normal P90X routine where you are exhausting a single section of the body, this was exhausting my entire body, leaving me with little to draw on to hold myself up. Also, I did find that the progression from one body part to another was real nice - after fatiguing myself at one station, I was looking forward to the next one and giving the just-worked muscles a much needed break.
You can find the results of todays workout in the 'P90X Progress - Winter 2011' section above, under 'Circuit 1'.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
14.5 mile LSD run - 1/14/12
Since today was forecast to be the nicer day of the two this weekend, I decided to go for my long run today, saving the trainer workout for tomorrow.
The last couple LSD runs have been just a hair under 12 miles, and I haven't run anything longer then that since the Monson half in November. Part of the reason was that my right foot had its tendonitis issue, and then I only recently got over some runners knee symptoms in the left knee after overdoing it mileage-wise a few weeks ago. Since neither have been bothing me for over a week now, I figured something in the 15ish range would be good for today.
Right away I could tell that this was going to be a perfect example of running before not fully recovering from a previous workout. After I got off the trainer yesterday, I could tell it was a good workout because my legs were feeling a little fatigued. I only ended up having a glass of chocolate milk and a banana for dinner before going to bed. Then this morning I had another glass of chocolate milk and a zone bar for breakfast before setting out on my run. So the combination of a quick turnaround, plus not having eaten anything substantial means that my muscles were still a tad tight from yesterday, and my energy stores were lower than usual for a Saturday long workout. I didn't get 20 feet down the road before I could tell I didn't have as much spring in my step as normal. I debated whether I should actually go for the full intended distance or not, but decided to press on, knowing I could call it later on if I needed to. Fortunately, within a couple miles, I was able to tell things had loosened up a bit, removing pretty much any extra concern for a problem to develop.
So while that was good news, the 'bad' (if you really want to call it that) was that it was also apparent that my HR was going to be a bit higher than normal for this pace. Whereas last weeks run was at an 8:42 min/mile pace and the HR was in the low 140's, today was going to be closer to 9 min/miles and the HR around 150. I was ok with that, though, since I had a good reason - the quick turnaround and lack relative lack of food since the last workout. Logging miles in the appropriate HR range was more important than pace or whereabouts in that range I ended up.
One of the things I did last season on every long run was take a walk break every mile. While I'm still an advocate for that strategy, I'm trying to save it for only my longest runs or an actual marathon - and at this point 15 miles isn't a distance-extending run, so I limited the walk/stretch breaks to two - one at 7.5 miles, and one at 10 miles. In both cases, the reason for stopping was less because I felt like it was needed energy-wise, but because I felt like things were tightening up enough to justify a quick stretch to avoid further complications. I figured that was a good compromise for doing todays distance on muscles that started out tight.
The last couple LSD runs have been just a hair under 12 miles, and I haven't run anything longer then that since the Monson half in November. Part of the reason was that my right foot had its tendonitis issue, and then I only recently got over some runners knee symptoms in the left knee after overdoing it mileage-wise a few weeks ago. Since neither have been bothing me for over a week now, I figured something in the 15ish range would be good for today.
Right away I could tell that this was going to be a perfect example of running before not fully recovering from a previous workout. After I got off the trainer yesterday, I could tell it was a good workout because my legs were feeling a little fatigued. I only ended up having a glass of chocolate milk and a banana for dinner before going to bed. Then this morning I had another glass of chocolate milk and a zone bar for breakfast before setting out on my run. So the combination of a quick turnaround, plus not having eaten anything substantial means that my muscles were still a tad tight from yesterday, and my energy stores were lower than usual for a Saturday long workout. I didn't get 20 feet down the road before I could tell I didn't have as much spring in my step as normal. I debated whether I should actually go for the full intended distance or not, but decided to press on, knowing I could call it later on if I needed to. Fortunately, within a couple miles, I was able to tell things had loosened up a bit, removing pretty much any extra concern for a problem to develop.
So while that was good news, the 'bad' (if you really want to call it that) was that it was also apparent that my HR was going to be a bit higher than normal for this pace. Whereas last weeks run was at an 8:42 min/mile pace and the HR was in the low 140's, today was going to be closer to 9 min/miles and the HR around 150. I was ok with that, though, since I had a good reason - the quick turnaround and lack relative lack of food since the last workout. Logging miles in the appropriate HR range was more important than pace or whereabouts in that range I ended up.
One of the things I did last season on every long run was take a walk break every mile. While I'm still an advocate for that strategy, I'm trying to save it for only my longest runs or an actual marathon - and at this point 15 miles isn't a distance-extending run, so I limited the walk/stretch breaks to two - one at 7.5 miles, and one at 10 miles. In both cases, the reason for stopping was less because I felt like it was needed energy-wise, but because I felt like things were tightening up enough to justify a quick stretch to avoid further complications. I figured that was a good compromise for doing todays distance on muscles that started out tight.
Friday, January 13, 2012
75 minutes on trainer - 1/13/12
Today I picked up a replacement steel skewer for the rear wheel on my bike. I had noticed that trainers come with skewers, and I never quite understood why. Then the other day when I dismounted the bike from the trainer to move it, I noticed two good size gouges in the handle. Presumably the handle is made of aluminum, and since it is softer than the steel piece of the trainer that locks onto the bike - well, the softer piece gave way. So rather than incur more damage, I spent the $11 for a steel skewer that won't get worn out.
I wanted to do something over an hour, but as I still wasn't sure what my plans for the weekend would be, I didn't want to do anything too much and wear myself out. But I couldn't resist making things a tad interesting by varying the resistance throughout the session. I started out in an easy gear, and every 10 minutes went to a higher gear to increase resistance. When I got to one that resulted in a HR in the 155-160 range, I found that that was a pretty decent workout - sustainable for 10 minutes, but I was glad for it to be over. Then a five minute rest period to bring the HR down and recover a bit, followed by another 10 minutes at this new 'threshold' intensity, and then a 10 minute cooldown.
Unfortunately, the Garmin Connect website really kinda screws up the speed graph for this, and I have no idea why. Fortunately, SportTracks renders the data really well (further confusing the issue because they both get their data from the same source!)
Even though I've been using the trial/free version of SportTracks, I think I might actually donate to it - the data manipulation capabilities are far superior to anything in the Training Center that comes with the Garmin, and while the online data is kinda cool, it is still pretty limited - there is no way to get the kind of data representation you see above with the Garmin stuff.
Oh! The other exciting thing - about 1:10 into it, the power went out. I was down in the basement, so it was pitch dark. I figured that with only having a few minutes left, I mine as well continue - so thats what I did. Made me think that one benefit of a mag trainer vs fluid is that you could maybe rig up some wires to it to power a couple lights in case of a power outtage. Then I consider that I probably only put out about 200W of power - and considering the effort it takes, and realizing that it's only enough to power two light bulbs - well, thats sort of sobering.
I wanted to do something over an hour, but as I still wasn't sure what my plans for the weekend would be, I didn't want to do anything too much and wear myself out. But I couldn't resist making things a tad interesting by varying the resistance throughout the session. I started out in an easy gear, and every 10 minutes went to a higher gear to increase resistance. When I got to one that resulted in a HR in the 155-160 range, I found that that was a pretty decent workout - sustainable for 10 minutes, but I was glad for it to be over. Then a five minute rest period to bring the HR down and recover a bit, followed by another 10 minutes at this new 'threshold' intensity, and then a 10 minute cooldown.
Unfortunately, the Garmin Connect website really kinda screws up the speed graph for this, and I have no idea why. Fortunately, SportTracks renders the data really well (further confusing the issue because they both get their data from the same source!)
Even though I've been using the trial/free version of SportTracks, I think I might actually donate to it - the data manipulation capabilities are far superior to anything in the Training Center that comes with the Garmin, and while the online data is kinda cool, it is still pretty limited - there is no way to get the kind of data representation you see above with the Garmin stuff.
Oh! The other exciting thing - about 1:10 into it, the power went out. I was down in the basement, so it was pitch dark. I figured that with only having a few minutes left, I mine as well continue - so thats what I did. Made me think that one benefit of a mag trainer vs fluid is that you could maybe rig up some wires to it to power a couple lights in case of a power outtage. Then I consider that I probably only put out about 200W of power - and considering the effort it takes, and realizing that it's only enough to power two light bulbs - well, thats sort of sobering.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Spartacus workout - 1/11/12
Over the summer, I was talking with a coworker about strength workouts, and I mentioned that I was planning on doing P90X over the winter. He agreed that P90X is an effective routine (you look at him and know he's a fit guy), but his main problem with it was that it was an every day thing. While I obviously haven't been doing P90X every day - I have been finding that with the mild winter and the acquisition of the trainer, my desire to do the P90X stuff has been lacking. However, I've seen huge improvements in upper body strength, and I feel that the leg workouts are absolutely worthwhile. So one of the things in the back of my mind has been how to maintain when full training time hits - I simply wont have enough time to be training for running, biking and swimming as well as yoga and strength training, with strength training being 3x per week.
Anyhow, this coworker mentioned a thing called the Spartacus workout, and the nice thing about it is that you do it 3x per week and it's a more full-body workout than any of the P90X sessions. So I was thinking that once P90X is done (or, at least, when I'm done with it) - it might be an option for maintenance.
I decided that today would be a good day to give it a shot and test its viability - I needed to get a leg workout in this week, and in looking at some of the portions of the routine, there are some squats and lunges and such.
The entire workout calls for going through each of the 10 stations three times. However, in going from one station to the next, it gets quite exhausting - I was definitely sweating more than during any P90X workout. After two rounds, I decided that it wasn't ultimately going to work for me. There were certainly some stations that I think are beneficial, but some of them I'm not so sure about.
The major issue I had was on some of the ones where you do a pushup with the dumbbells in your hands - I found that having all my weight on my hands like that was tweaky. Also, for at least one of them, I don't have a heavy enough dumbbell in hex shape - and it has to be hex shape to keep it from rolling.
I'm thinking that what I'm ultimately going to aim for is listing out each of the exercises that P90X does for each section - chest, shoulders, triceps, back, biceps and legs - and then mix and match them to hit every portion in a single workout. With so much variety in the exercises for P90X - I think I should be able to get at least two fairly unique workout routines from it - and then each week I can designate a day for strength training and hit everything. I won't do as many sets for a particular group each time - for example during Legs & Back day you hit pullups eight times - but doing each of the four major types of pullups should still be enough to provide overall benefit.
Anyhow, this coworker mentioned a thing called the Spartacus workout, and the nice thing about it is that you do it 3x per week and it's a more full-body workout than any of the P90X sessions. So I was thinking that once P90X is done (or, at least, when I'm done with it) - it might be an option for maintenance.
I decided that today would be a good day to give it a shot and test its viability - I needed to get a leg workout in this week, and in looking at some of the portions of the routine, there are some squats and lunges and such.
The entire workout calls for going through each of the 10 stations three times. However, in going from one station to the next, it gets quite exhausting - I was definitely sweating more than during any P90X workout. After two rounds, I decided that it wasn't ultimately going to work for me. There were certainly some stations that I think are beneficial, but some of them I'm not so sure about.
The major issue I had was on some of the ones where you do a pushup with the dumbbells in your hands - I found that having all my weight on my hands like that was tweaky. Also, for at least one of them, I don't have a heavy enough dumbbell in hex shape - and it has to be hex shape to keep it from rolling.
I'm thinking that what I'm ultimately going to aim for is listing out each of the exercises that P90X does for each section - chest, shoulders, triceps, back, biceps and legs - and then mix and match them to hit every portion in a single workout. With so much variety in the exercises for P90X - I think I should be able to get at least two fairly unique workout routines from it - and then each week I can designate a day for strength training and hit everything. I won't do as many sets for a particular group each time - for example during Legs & Back day you hit pullups eight times - but doing each of the four major types of pullups should still be enough to provide overall benefit.
1 hr trainer spin - 1/10/12
Making this entry a day late..
One of my coworkers often sends me an Amazon gift certificate for $40 around the holidays. I usually spend a couple weeks trying to figure out what to spend it on - something I wouldn't necessarily buy on my own, unless there is something really pressing that we need. So in this way I try to make it a treat to myself. It had recently occured to me that with having the trainer over the winter, it'd be a good time to improve my cycling fundamentals, and one of the ways I hear that is best done is to make sure that cadence is at the right speed - around 90 rpm. So in browsing around the other day, I stumbled across the fact that Garmin makes an accessory that is compatible with my HR monitor that measures cadence. And that accessory was on Amazon for $40. Perfect!
I received the sensor yesterday, so I was excited to install it and give it a whirl. Turns out it measures speed as well - while I already have a cyclometer and my HR monitor with its GPS functionality gives me speed on the road - it doesn't provide speed on a trainer. My cyclometer does, but having a speed profile from the Garmin is nice because then it provides a complete picture - speed, distance, time, HR, cadence, etc.
While I'm not yet at the official start of my base building phase, I'm taking the next couple weeks to iron out some scheduling and logistics for my training in the 24 remaining weeks before Lake Placid - and that 24 week countdown starts on Feb 5. So I'm hoping to have all these kinks worked out so that I can concentrate on training at that time - my work schedule with travelling will present enough of a scheduling and logistic challenge as it is.
Thats a long winded way of saying that this was the perfect time to give it a test ride. I decided on an hour, partially because thats how much movie I had left after the two hours on the trainer on Saturday, and it's long enough to get some workout without going overboard. And wouldn't you know - I immediately hit a cadence in the mid-90's - just about where I need to be. So thats good news - because I have a good sense and feel for that speed, and at least now I know it's the proper speed as well. However, I think the real value of the sensor will come when riding on the real road - those are the times when it will be much more varied.
One of my coworkers often sends me an Amazon gift certificate for $40 around the holidays. I usually spend a couple weeks trying to figure out what to spend it on - something I wouldn't necessarily buy on my own, unless there is something really pressing that we need. So in this way I try to make it a treat to myself. It had recently occured to me that with having the trainer over the winter, it'd be a good time to improve my cycling fundamentals, and one of the ways I hear that is best done is to make sure that cadence is at the right speed - around 90 rpm. So in browsing around the other day, I stumbled across the fact that Garmin makes an accessory that is compatible with my HR monitor that measures cadence. And that accessory was on Amazon for $40. Perfect!
I received the sensor yesterday, so I was excited to install it and give it a whirl. Turns out it measures speed as well - while I already have a cyclometer and my HR monitor with its GPS functionality gives me speed on the road - it doesn't provide speed on a trainer. My cyclometer does, but having a speed profile from the Garmin is nice because then it provides a complete picture - speed, distance, time, HR, cadence, etc.
While I'm not yet at the official start of my base building phase, I'm taking the next couple weeks to iron out some scheduling and logistics for my training in the 24 remaining weeks before Lake Placid - and that 24 week countdown starts on Feb 5. So I'm hoping to have all these kinks worked out so that I can concentrate on training at that time - my work schedule with travelling will present enough of a scheduling and logistic challenge as it is.
Thats a long winded way of saying that this was the perfect time to give it a test ride. I decided on an hour, partially because thats how much movie I had left after the two hours on the trainer on Saturday, and it's long enough to get some workout without going overboard. And wouldn't you know - I immediately hit a cadence in the mid-90's - just about where I need to be. So thats good news - because I have a good sense and feel for that speed, and at least now I know it's the proper speed as well. However, I think the real value of the sensor will come when riding on the real road - those are the times when it will be much more varied.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
12 mile LSD - 1/8/2012
Instead of hopping back on the trainer today, I decided to go for a run to take advantage of the continued nice weather. I had been avoiding running all this past week due to my left knee, but the past couple days it hadn't been giving me any grief, so I thought I might give it a test-go. It was a little odd - it had largely gone away by Wednesday, but then on Thursday it came back a little bit, which I attributed to the legs workout from Tuesday.
I decided on a medium length run - I certainly didn't want to do a long run on a just-healed knee, plus it has been two and a half months since I've done a long run, so I'd likely have to build up to it again. I also figured that I'd probably be spending most of the week on the trainer - so I'd not be running anyway, and if the run did aggrevate the knee at all, it'd have time to heal. Plus, tomorrow is yoga day, so that'll help.
The other thing of note is that I tried my invert sugar-based homemade energy gel. Although it did thicken up a bit, it was nowhere near as tough to deal with as honey from the last time. Also, it turns out that the flask I got (which is not a Fuel Belt brand) actually was able to be kept in one of the holsters on my fuel belt without falling off. Not a perfect fit, but it was enough. Ultimately, I'd like to get a fuel belt brand one just to ensure that it wouldn't ever fall out.
Other than that, the whole point was to keep the HR relatively low. I'm starting off with a new base-building phase, which I'll be following for several weeks, which means lots of low intensity workouts. So for now, the threshold, tempo and intervals will be few and far between.
I decided on a medium length run - I certainly didn't want to do a long run on a just-healed knee, plus it has been two and a half months since I've done a long run, so I'd likely have to build up to it again. I also figured that I'd probably be spending most of the week on the trainer - so I'd not be running anyway, and if the run did aggrevate the knee at all, it'd have time to heal. Plus, tomorrow is yoga day, so that'll help.
The other thing of note is that I tried my invert sugar-based homemade energy gel. Although it did thicken up a bit, it was nowhere near as tough to deal with as honey from the last time. Also, it turns out that the flask I got (which is not a Fuel Belt brand) actually was able to be kept in one of the holsters on my fuel belt without falling off. Not a perfect fit, but it was enough. Ultimately, I'd like to get a fuel belt brand one just to ensure that it wouldn't ever fall out.
Other than that, the whole point was to keep the HR relatively low. I'm starting off with a new base-building phase, which I'll be following for several weeks, which means lots of low intensity workouts. So for now, the threshold, tempo and intervals will be few and far between.
Fueling for endurance events - Part 3
In the second part of this series, I took a quick look at various energy gels out on the market and got an idea of what type of sugar they use, and how the ones commonly used (maltodextrin, glucose, and fructose) all differ from one another.
The problem with the commercial energy gels is the expense. At typically over a buck per serving, and the suggested use rate of one every 15-20 minutes - it really doesn't take long for a long steady distance training session to end up costing 10 dollars or more. For an occasional race, spending the money may be fine - but I've always been too cheap to always just fork over money for something I can do myself. It's why I started doing my own car work.
Anyway, so that led to the question of how I can make my own energy gel. When I googled, I came across this page, which I've found to be referenced many times in forums, blogs, and what-not. Essentially, it has a recipe for using honey as an energy gel, with some blackstrap molasses thrown in for potassium, and a pinch of salt for the sodium. A couple weeks ago I made the recipe, and had decent results with it - but I used it for an outdoor run and found it got very thick at cold temperatures. When I'd squeeze some into my mouth, it was basically chewy. Not unpleasant - but by far the most unpleasant aspect was trying to actually squeeze it out of the flask. To combat that, all I could think of was adding water, but I wasn't sure about doing that to honey, since bacteria is in honey (just inactive due to low water content).
I also looked into honey to find out what kind of sugars it contains. Based on the wikipedia entry, it has approximately equal ratios of fructose and glucose (about 38 and 31% respectively). While some sources say that optimal fructose absorption occurs with a 1:1 ratio of those two sugars, that doesn't necessarily mean that optimal overall absorption of fuel is with that ratio. Additionally, from what I've seen (and posted in the last section), the commercially available energy gels generally have significantly less fructose than glucose/maltodextrin. So there might be some room for improvement.
Then, it occured to me that we are having a bit of a honeybee crisis in the US here, so the price of honey has actually gone up quite a bit. So while using it as the base for an energy gel may still be cheaper than commercially available product, I started trying to think of another option.
Then it hit me - invert sugar! Invert sugar is simply sugar (sucrose - which is one fructose and one glucose molecule bonded together) that has the sugar molecules separated via heat. If you were to dissolve sugar into water and use that as an energy source, your body would have to break the sugar into its separate components first. However, if that can be done ahead of time, you'd end up with an energy gel recipe that can be used more quickly by the body. Furthermore, once sucrose is broken down - you have your equal ratio of fructose and glucose - so right away you are starting at a point very similar to honey. And far cheaper as well. Electrolytes could be added by adding salt for sodium, and some molasses for potassium. You could also add in salt substitute (potassium chloride) as the potassium source as well - but the molasses adds a touch of flavor.
So in the end, I tried the following recipe:
Additionally, I tried looking for a source of maltodextrin. All I came across was Carbogain, which is available at a local shop, but in a big-ass tub. I may end up doing it, but at the time I didn't want to buy a huge quantity. Anyway, I was looking for maltodextrin because that would provide a way to decrease the ratio of fructose. Effectively, I could make my own C2MAX by adding maltodextrin until I had the fructose percentage down to 33%, while the maltodextrin and glucose would make up the remaining 66%. It would also likely thicken the resulting product, but by how much I don't know.
For a nutritional analysis:
Calories: 1568 (1548 for two cups of sugar + 20 for 1 tsp molasses)
Carbs: 392g
Sodium: 1120 mg (1 tsp = 3g kosher salt)
Potassium: 700 mg (1/4 tsp salt substitute)
For the sake of convenience, each fluid ounce (4 fl oz = 1/2 cup) has:
112 Calories (28g carbs)
80 mg sodium
50 mg potassium
Although I feel like this is a start of an improvement over the honey-based recipe (for me, anyway), I have to acknowledge that article on active.com as the inspiration for this. Also, the list on that page of other things that can be added - kool-aid for flavor, chia seeds, soy protein, etc - applies to the recipe above as well, and are also some good ideas.
EDIT: See this post for what I believe will end up being my final base recipe I'll be using.
The problem with the commercial energy gels is the expense. At typically over a buck per serving, and the suggested use rate of one every 15-20 minutes - it really doesn't take long for a long steady distance training session to end up costing 10 dollars or more. For an occasional race, spending the money may be fine - but I've always been too cheap to always just fork over money for something I can do myself. It's why I started doing my own car work.
Anyway, so that led to the question of how I can make my own energy gel. When I googled, I came across this page, which I've found to be referenced many times in forums, blogs, and what-not. Essentially, it has a recipe for using honey as an energy gel, with some blackstrap molasses thrown in for potassium, and a pinch of salt for the sodium. A couple weeks ago I made the recipe, and had decent results with it - but I used it for an outdoor run and found it got very thick at cold temperatures. When I'd squeeze some into my mouth, it was basically chewy. Not unpleasant - but by far the most unpleasant aspect was trying to actually squeeze it out of the flask. To combat that, all I could think of was adding water, but I wasn't sure about doing that to honey, since bacteria is in honey (just inactive due to low water content).
I also looked into honey to find out what kind of sugars it contains. Based on the wikipedia entry, it has approximately equal ratios of fructose and glucose (about 38 and 31% respectively). While some sources say that optimal fructose absorption occurs with a 1:1 ratio of those two sugars, that doesn't necessarily mean that optimal overall absorption of fuel is with that ratio. Additionally, from what I've seen (and posted in the last section), the commercially available energy gels generally have significantly less fructose than glucose/maltodextrin. So there might be some room for improvement.
Then, it occured to me that we are having a bit of a honeybee crisis in the US here, so the price of honey has actually gone up quite a bit. So while using it as the base for an energy gel may still be cheaper than commercially available product, I started trying to think of another option.
Then it hit me - invert sugar! Invert sugar is simply sugar (sucrose - which is one fructose and one glucose molecule bonded together) that has the sugar molecules separated via heat. If you were to dissolve sugar into water and use that as an energy source, your body would have to break the sugar into its separate components first. However, if that can be done ahead of time, you'd end up with an energy gel recipe that can be used more quickly by the body. Furthermore, once sucrose is broken down - you have your equal ratio of fructose and glucose - so right away you are starting at a point very similar to honey. And far cheaper as well. Electrolytes could be added by adding salt for sodium, and some molasses for potassium. You could also add in salt substitute (potassium chloride) as the potassium source as well - but the molasses adds a touch of flavor.
So in the end, I tried the following recipe:
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 cup water
- 1 TBSP lemon juice (acid required to catalyse the reaction that breaks sucrose into fructose and glucose)
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp molasses (I would have gone with blackstrap, but didn't see any at the store)
- 1/4 tsp salt substitute
Put water, sugar and acid in sauce pan. Heat to simmering, cover, and let simmer for 20 minutes. Pour into container, add salt, molasses, and salt substitute.
The resulting product is about 1 3/4 cups of viscous liquid that is pourable even at freezer temperatures. Not surprisingly, very much like pancake syrup (since, really - thats all syrup is anyway).
Additionally, I tried looking for a source of maltodextrin. All I came across was Carbogain, which is available at a local shop, but in a big-ass tub. I may end up doing it, but at the time I didn't want to buy a huge quantity. Anyway, I was looking for maltodextrin because that would provide a way to decrease the ratio of fructose. Effectively, I could make my own C2MAX by adding maltodextrin until I had the fructose percentage down to 33%, while the maltodextrin and glucose would make up the remaining 66%. It would also likely thicken the resulting product, but by how much I don't know.
For a nutritional analysis:
Calories: 1568 (1548 for two cups of sugar + 20 for 1 tsp molasses)
Carbs: 392g
Sodium: 1120 mg (1 tsp = 3g kosher salt)
Potassium: 700 mg (1/4 tsp salt substitute)
For the sake of convenience, each fluid ounce (4 fl oz = 1/2 cup) has:
112 Calories (28g carbs)
80 mg sodium
50 mg potassium
Although I feel like this is a start of an improvement over the honey-based recipe (for me, anyway), I have to acknowledge that article on active.com as the inspiration for this. Also, the list on that page of other things that can be added - kool-aid for flavor, chia seeds, soy protein, etc - applies to the recipe above as well, and are also some good ideas.
EDIT: See this post for what I believe will end up being my final base recipe I'll be using.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
2 hrs on trainer - 1/7/12
As I mentioned in my last cycling trainer post, I've been thinking about the best way to approach using the bike trainer in order to maximize results in the amount of time I have. While some sort of interval training is certainly in the cards, I've decided that I'm going to go with the idea that cycling is very similar to running in terms of how to approach creating improvement. As an example - with swimming, there is far less point to building up strength and aerobic capacity, and it is more beneficial to concentrate on form improvement, since swimming requires moving through something 1000x more dense than air. However, cycling, like running, is all about moving your own weight horizontally, albeit the mechanics are different.
With that in mind, and applying the concepts from Daniels Running Formula to cycling, the first phase would be a base building phase. In a future post, once I've got the plan more ironed out, I'll go into more detail into what the base building and it's purpose is - but for now the important part is that it is comprised of long steady distance. No need for getting the HR elevated in crazy fashion, nothing that'll induce too much soreness - just plain ole' getting the HR up into the aerobic zone and hanging out there for a good long time.
So today's workout was just a matter of putting a movie in (I chose the first LoTR movie), sitting back , and peddling. I was originally thinking I'd go for the full three hours, but ended up opting for two. Dinner logistics intervened, going from one to three hours would be quite a jump (just in case there'd be something to get conditioned to), and the fact that I have plenty of time to build up made me decide that two hours would be enough for today.
My primary focus was on cadence and keeping the HR in the mid-130's. I tried my best to stick to what I thought was close to a 90 rpm speed at a gear that provided just enough resistance to keep my HR in the goal range. Interestingly enough, the garmin connect page shows my avg HR at 127, but SportTracks on my local computer shows an average in the 130's. No matter, just one of the few times I've seen a difference, and just odd because they both get data from the same HR unit.
Initially, I figured I'd do the whole workout with just water (without it being intense, I figured it'd be a good opportunity for some fat burning, since carb requirements would be low). But after an hour I started feeling myself lagging a tad, so I ended up grabbing some of my homemade energy goop (the recipe for which I'm still experimenting with) for the last half.
Having something to watch was definitely nice, but I'm not sure my movie choice was the best. Sometimes the story plods along kinda slowly - so I might have to try for some more action-type movies. I almost went with The Dark Knight, but I can always pick that one some other time. And wouldn't it figure - the two hours came up during the fight scene with the orcs and cave troll.
With that in mind, and applying the concepts from Daniels Running Formula to cycling, the first phase would be a base building phase. In a future post, once I've got the plan more ironed out, I'll go into more detail into what the base building and it's purpose is - but for now the important part is that it is comprised of long steady distance. No need for getting the HR elevated in crazy fashion, nothing that'll induce too much soreness - just plain ole' getting the HR up into the aerobic zone and hanging out there for a good long time.
So today's workout was just a matter of putting a movie in (I chose the first LoTR movie), sitting back , and peddling. I was originally thinking I'd go for the full three hours, but ended up opting for two. Dinner logistics intervened, going from one to three hours would be quite a jump (just in case there'd be something to get conditioned to), and the fact that I have plenty of time to build up made me decide that two hours would be enough for today.
My primary focus was on cadence and keeping the HR in the mid-130's. I tried my best to stick to what I thought was close to a 90 rpm speed at a gear that provided just enough resistance to keep my HR in the goal range. Interestingly enough, the garmin connect page shows my avg HR at 127, but SportTracks on my local computer shows an average in the 130's. No matter, just one of the few times I've seen a difference, and just odd because they both get data from the same HR unit.
Initially, I figured I'd do the whole workout with just water (without it being intense, I figured it'd be a good opportunity for some fat burning, since carb requirements would be low). But after an hour I started feeling myself lagging a tad, so I ended up grabbing some of my homemade energy goop (the recipe for which I'm still experimenting with) for the last half.
Having something to watch was definitely nice, but I'm not sure my movie choice was the best. Sometimes the story plods along kinda slowly - so I might have to try for some more action-type movies. I almost went with The Dark Knight, but I can always pick that one some other time. And wouldn't it figure - the two hours came up during the fight scene with the orcs and cave troll.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Day 60 - 16 x 100 plus 600 yd - 1/5/12
It's been a while, just about a month, since my last pool visit. That last one was a series of 100 yd sets to try and increase efficiency by trying to reduce the number of strokes per lap. At that time, I found I was between 15.5-16.5, depending on whether it was the first 25 yds, or the final 25 yds. When I decided to hit the pool again today, I wasn't sure what to do - since it had been a month, should I just go for a mile and a half, since I likely forgot some of the nuances from the last session, or should I repeat that effort?
I ended up going with repeating the attempt to increase streamlining. In a sense, it'd be more necessary now with a layoff than before. Plus, unless I had something to work from on a long swim, it'd likely not see any improvement.
I ended up doing 16 x 100 yd sets today, and found myself in the same 15.5-16.5 ballpark. The resultant times were pretty consistently under 44 seconds per lap, but I usually lost anywhere from 1/4 to 3/4 of a second on the second set of 50. This is information I didn't have the first time around, so having an idea of how much is lost is kinda nice. Not sure what to do with that data, but at least I have it.
After about nine sets, when the stroke count started to climb consistently to the 16-16.5 range, I decided to try extending the glide even more - knowing it would slow me down a bit, but maybe there'd be benefit to feeling the glide stretched out. My times went up to the 44-47 seconds per lap range, but many of those sessions did bring the number of strokes back down to the 15.5 to 16 range. Again, possibly something that is nice to know, but not sure what to do with that information yet.
At sixteen sets, I decided to see what, if any, difference I could sense by doing a continuous swim. I ended up doing an additional 600 yds, knowing my stroke count would increase, but maybe the times would improve slightly. For those 12 laps, the average time was 50.58, and if I recall correctly, I was typically in the 18-19.5 strokes per lap range. My last long swim had an average time of 50.18 seconds per lap - but that was over a total of 54 laps, whereas these laps today were after 1600 yds of more intense swimming. So I suppose some drop off is expected.
I ended up going with repeating the attempt to increase streamlining. In a sense, it'd be more necessary now with a layoff than before. Plus, unless I had something to work from on a long swim, it'd likely not see any improvement.
I ended up doing 16 x 100 yd sets today, and found myself in the same 15.5-16.5 ballpark. The resultant times were pretty consistently under 44 seconds per lap, but I usually lost anywhere from 1/4 to 3/4 of a second on the second set of 50. This is information I didn't have the first time around, so having an idea of how much is lost is kinda nice. Not sure what to do with that data, but at least I have it.
After about nine sets, when the stroke count started to climb consistently to the 16-16.5 range, I decided to try extending the glide even more - knowing it would slow me down a bit, but maybe there'd be benefit to feeling the glide stretched out. My times went up to the 44-47 seconds per lap range, but many of those sessions did bring the number of strokes back down to the 15.5 to 16 range. Again, possibly something that is nice to know, but not sure what to do with that information yet.
At sixteen sets, I decided to see what, if any, difference I could sense by doing a continuous swim. I ended up doing an additional 600 yds, knowing my stroke count would increase, but maybe the times would improve slightly. For those 12 laps, the average time was 50.58, and if I recall correctly, I was typically in the 18-19.5 strokes per lap range. My last long swim had an average time of 50.18 seconds per lap - but that was over a total of 54 laps, whereas these laps today were after 1600 yds of more intense swimming. So I suppose some drop off is expected.
Day 59 - Cycling intervals - 1/4/12
Posting this a day late (seems to be a pattern).
Rather than just hit the trainer always doing the same intensity - which I figured would be like trying to finish a marathon in three hours only doing long, slow runs - I decided to experiment a little bit with some intervals on the trainer. I say experiment because I have really no clue what intervals are supposed to be like on a bike, nevermind a trainer. With running, I know there is more to consider than just 'run fast for a period of time' - there are the factors of how fast to run so that you don't overdo it, how long the interval should last so that you get maximum benefit without excess fatigue, how to know when you are recovered sufficiently for the next interval, etc. So I can only guess there are similar questions and factors to consider for cycling.
So, since I was just toying around, I decided to warm up for 20 minutes to let the HR get into some sort of steady state condition, and then bump up the intensity a bit for 5 minutes to get the HR up where I know I'm working but not killing myself, followed by a 5 minute rest to let the HR come down. Rinse and repeat a few times, and add an extra 5 minutes to the end for cooldown. I ended up at about 16 mph for the warmup and rest intervals, since that allowed my HR to settle into the 130-135 range, which is about the typical range for real road cycling for me, and then about 18 mph on the intervals, which brought the HR up to about 155. The five minute rest interval @ about 16 allowed the HR to come back down to 130-135. I have no clue whether this workout is actually beneficial or not, but I certainly felt it on the last 1:30 or so of each 5 minute interval.
Since it appears garmin connect is down, this was the resultant HR plot from SportTracks:
From what I've heard, the Spinnervals DVD's are good for indoor training - so I'm thinking I'll ultimately look into acquiring some of those. I think there's a place for straight up same intensity cycling, kinda like there's a place for long runs at an easy pace - but I'd really like to see solid improvement in my cycling, since it is my weakest area.
Rather than just hit the trainer always doing the same intensity - which I figured would be like trying to finish a marathon in three hours only doing long, slow runs - I decided to experiment a little bit with some intervals on the trainer. I say experiment because I have really no clue what intervals are supposed to be like on a bike, nevermind a trainer. With running, I know there is more to consider than just 'run fast for a period of time' - there are the factors of how fast to run so that you don't overdo it, how long the interval should last so that you get maximum benefit without excess fatigue, how to know when you are recovered sufficiently for the next interval, etc. So I can only guess there are similar questions and factors to consider for cycling.
So, since I was just toying around, I decided to warm up for 20 minutes to let the HR get into some sort of steady state condition, and then bump up the intensity a bit for 5 minutes to get the HR up where I know I'm working but not killing myself, followed by a 5 minute rest to let the HR come down. Rinse and repeat a few times, and add an extra 5 minutes to the end for cooldown. I ended up at about 16 mph for the warmup and rest intervals, since that allowed my HR to settle into the 130-135 range, which is about the typical range for real road cycling for me, and then about 18 mph on the intervals, which brought the HR up to about 155. The five minute rest interval @ about 16 allowed the HR to come back down to 130-135. I have no clue whether this workout is actually beneficial or not, but I certainly felt it on the last 1:30 or so of each 5 minute interval.
Since it appears garmin connect is down, this was the resultant HR plot from SportTracks:
From what I've heard, the Spinnervals DVD's are good for indoor training - so I'm thinking I'll ultimately look into acquiring some of those. I think there's a place for straight up same intensity cycling, kinda like there's a place for long runs at an easy pace - but I'd really like to see solid improvement in my cycling, since it is my weakest area.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Day 58 - P90X Legs & Back - 1/3/2012
I kinda had to force myself to do this workout today - I wanted to spend some time on the trainer, but as I've gotten older and mor experienced with this stuff, I also know I have to parcel out the novelty of something to keep it from getting old. Plus, while the benefits of the upper body P90X workouts are debatable, there's really no question that the legs routine is worthwhile.
Some of the numbers today are better than before (such as 13 reverse grip chinups out of the gate), but there were a few sets I had to take a break earlier. Overall, there were still 2 more than last week (76 vs 74). Actually, now that I think about it, it's starting to get impressive - inching closer to 100 pullups total. Granted, they are 8 and 10 at a time, but still.
I also upped the weight on some of the leg stuff today, going from 4 kg to 10 lb. I may feel that over the next day or two, especially in the calfs.
The only other thing of note is that there was no runners knee pain in my left knee. I had wondered whether doing this workout today would be a good idea, but after waking up with only very minor residual inflammation (my god, how many ways is Yoga going to be proving itself to be so damn healing! It's starting to border on rediculous), I figured I shouldn't have a problem with doing a bunch of lunges.
Some of the numbers today are better than before (such as 13 reverse grip chinups out of the gate), but there were a few sets I had to take a break earlier. Overall, there were still 2 more than last week (76 vs 74). Actually, now that I think about it, it's starting to get impressive - inching closer to 100 pullups total. Granted, they are 8 and 10 at a time, but still.
I also upped the weight on some of the leg stuff today, going from 4 kg to 10 lb. I may feel that over the next day or two, especially in the calfs.
The only other thing of note is that there was no runners knee pain in my left knee. I had wondered whether doing this workout today would be a good idea, but after waking up with only very minor residual inflammation (my god, how many ways is Yoga going to be proving itself to be so damn healing! It's starting to border on rediculous), I figured I shouldn't have a problem with doing a bunch of lunges.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Fueling for endurance events - Part 2
I'm finally sitting down to start writing this up. In the last post, I laid out my recent discovery of just how important it is to properly fuel the body for endurance events - something that if I had done up to this point, it was more by accident than by design.
Generally, my primary fuel during long bike rides or runs has been Gatorade. At 50 calories per 8 oz serving (about 14g of carbs), one would need to consume about 20 oz per hour to reach the 'suggested' 35g/hr of carbs as referenced on this page @ www.runningforfitness.org. Keep in mind that the 35 g/hr is on the low side - elsewhere on that page it also mentions that the average person can take up 30-60 g/hr. Also, keep that 60 g/hr figure in mind - it'll come up again later. While 20 oz per hour of Gatorade is certainly achievable (especially since many rules of thumb mention 24 oz of sports drink/hr) - in my case I tend to mix the gatorade a little light, and to be perfectly honest, I'm not always so good about keeping to that regiment. Other factors, such as not wanting to deal with a stomach full of liquid, or availability of water, come into play all to often - especially on bike rides. Thus, it may be more convenient to find additional energy sources.
Usually people migrate to some sort of energy gel for this purpose. There are a bunch of them out there, but just taking a quick look at some examples of the common ones I've come across:
Chocolate Outrage Gu:
100 calories (20g carbs)
70-80% maltodextrin
30-20% fructose
Hammer Nutrition Gel:
This one isn't so straight forward (if you check the link, there is all kinds of scientific techno-babble). But for the purpose of this post, the linked page indicates that they use a ratio of about 7% simple sugars and 93% long-chain carbohydrates. Later on they say that sucrose (table sugar - which is 50% glucose and 50% fructose) and fructose are considered simple sugars, and that maltodextrin is a multiple of sugars hooked together. The wiki page on maltodextrin corroborates this. So, for simplicity sake, we'll say the following:
90 calories (21g of carbs)
93% maltodextrin
7% fructose
Powerbar Energy Gel:
Powerbar uses their C2MAX carb mix, which they claim is a 2:1 mixture of glucose to fructose.
110 calories (27g carbs)
66% glucose
33% fructose
So at this point, two things are obvious - each manufacturer has a different idea of what is optimal, and that they all use a combination of simple sugars and more complex sugars. It may also be worth keeping in mind that perhaps each manufacturer has a different idea of the market they want to play in - for example, one may want to promote their product in shorter races (10k or whatever) and want a faster absorbing fuel. Another manufacturer may want to be strong in longer events, such as a marathon or anything beyond a sprint triathlon, and may want a fuel that isn't as 'spikey' on its energy surge.
Since I didn't know what the target market was for each, the next thing I could look at was the differences in the various fuels. For that I turned to my trusty friend, Wikipedia. I decided that for this it'd be a trustworthy source - how sugars are digested is common enough knowledge in biology circles that I'd seriously doubt there would be any major misstatements.
In looking at the entry for glucose, the following stick out:
- Primary fuel for all cells in the body
- Simple sugar (monosaccharide)
- Dextrose is another name for it
- The base carbohydrate that other carbohydrates get broken down into
- Transported via the SLC5A1 protein
- Directly transported to muscle cells, where it can be converted to glycogen for short term storage
In looking at the entry for fructose:
- Simple sugar (monosaccharide)
- Mentions that it and glucose can be absorbed directly into the bloodstream
- Metabolised in the liver, whereas glucose can pass through the liver and be metabolised directly by cells in the body
- Absorption rates vary, but some studies indicate absorption is highest when fructose and glucose are in a 1:1 ratio (ie, table sugar) due to a bottleneck in the GLUT5 transport protein, which is required for absorption of fructose.
Maltodextrin:
- Essentially X glucose molecules strung together, where X is between 2 and 20
Unfortunately there's not a lot of other information on Maltodextrin, but from what I can gather, since it is simply glucose molecules all tangled up, it almost acts like a time-release capsule of glucose.
The reason why I bothered to point out the transport proteins is to point out that different sugars apparently have different ways of getting absorbed through the intestine, so it stands to reason that it is possible to saturate one transport mechanism, while the other is idle. In other words, if all you fueled yourself with was glucose, you may saturate your body's ability to process it because there is only so much SLC5A1 protein to go around. Meanwhile, GLUT2 proteins are floating around with their figurative thumbs up their asses.
When you look at Powerbar's information on C2MAX, they claim that part of the reason why they feel their product is superior is that their researchers discovered that the previously understood limit of absorbing 1 g/min of carbohydrates (remember that 60 g/hr figure?) was only for glucose. Just because glucose has a maximum absorption rate of 60 g/hr doesn't mean significant additional absorption cannot be happening in parallel with fructose. Yes, fructose may have to detour through the liver first, but when you are talking a multi hour endurance event - there is plenty of time available for fructose to become effective. Honestly, whether you want to believe the whole idea that a specific ratio of glucose/fructose provides the 50% additional uptake in carbs that they claim or not is up to you. But it is interesting nonetheless, especially when you consider the various products, the types of carbohydrates they choose to use, and the question of what their target market is.
In the next post - homemade energy gel.
Generally, my primary fuel during long bike rides or runs has been Gatorade. At 50 calories per 8 oz serving (about 14g of carbs), one would need to consume about 20 oz per hour to reach the 'suggested' 35g/hr of carbs as referenced on this page @ www.runningforfitness.org. Keep in mind that the 35 g/hr is on the low side - elsewhere on that page it also mentions that the average person can take up 30-60 g/hr. Also, keep that 60 g/hr figure in mind - it'll come up again later. While 20 oz per hour of Gatorade is certainly achievable (especially since many rules of thumb mention 24 oz of sports drink/hr) - in my case I tend to mix the gatorade a little light, and to be perfectly honest, I'm not always so good about keeping to that regiment. Other factors, such as not wanting to deal with a stomach full of liquid, or availability of water, come into play all to often - especially on bike rides. Thus, it may be more convenient to find additional energy sources.
Usually people migrate to some sort of energy gel for this purpose. There are a bunch of them out there, but just taking a quick look at some examples of the common ones I've come across:
Chocolate Outrage Gu:
100 calories (20g carbs)
70-80% maltodextrin
30-20% fructose
Hammer Nutrition Gel:
This one isn't so straight forward (if you check the link, there is all kinds of scientific techno-babble). But for the purpose of this post, the linked page indicates that they use a ratio of about 7% simple sugars and 93% long-chain carbohydrates. Later on they say that sucrose (table sugar - which is 50% glucose and 50% fructose) and fructose are considered simple sugars, and that maltodextrin is a multiple of sugars hooked together. The wiki page on maltodextrin corroborates this. So, for simplicity sake, we'll say the following:
90 calories (21g of carbs)
93% maltodextrin
7% fructose
Powerbar Energy Gel:
Powerbar uses their C2MAX carb mix, which they claim is a 2:1 mixture of glucose to fructose.
110 calories (27g carbs)
66% glucose
33% fructose
So at this point, two things are obvious - each manufacturer has a different idea of what is optimal, and that they all use a combination of simple sugars and more complex sugars. It may also be worth keeping in mind that perhaps each manufacturer has a different idea of the market they want to play in - for example, one may want to promote their product in shorter races (10k or whatever) and want a faster absorbing fuel. Another manufacturer may want to be strong in longer events, such as a marathon or anything beyond a sprint triathlon, and may want a fuel that isn't as 'spikey' on its energy surge.
Since I didn't know what the target market was for each, the next thing I could look at was the differences in the various fuels. For that I turned to my trusty friend, Wikipedia. I decided that for this it'd be a trustworthy source - how sugars are digested is common enough knowledge in biology circles that I'd seriously doubt there would be any major misstatements.
In looking at the entry for glucose, the following stick out:
- Primary fuel for all cells in the body
- Simple sugar (monosaccharide)
- Dextrose is another name for it
- The base carbohydrate that other carbohydrates get broken down into
- Transported via the SLC5A1 protein
- Directly transported to muscle cells, where it can be converted to glycogen for short term storage
In looking at the entry for fructose:
- Simple sugar (monosaccharide)
- Mentions that it and glucose can be absorbed directly into the bloodstream
- Metabolised in the liver, whereas glucose can pass through the liver and be metabolised directly by cells in the body
- Absorption rates vary, but some studies indicate absorption is highest when fructose and glucose are in a 1:1 ratio (ie, table sugar) due to a bottleneck in the GLUT5 transport protein, which is required for absorption of fructose.
Maltodextrin:
- Essentially X glucose molecules strung together, where X is between 2 and 20
Unfortunately there's not a lot of other information on Maltodextrin, but from what I can gather, since it is simply glucose molecules all tangled up, it almost acts like a time-release capsule of glucose.
The reason why I bothered to point out the transport proteins is to point out that different sugars apparently have different ways of getting absorbed through the intestine, so it stands to reason that it is possible to saturate one transport mechanism, while the other is idle. In other words, if all you fueled yourself with was glucose, you may saturate your body's ability to process it because there is only so much SLC5A1 protein to go around. Meanwhile, GLUT2 proteins are floating around with their figurative thumbs up their asses.
When you look at Powerbar's information on C2MAX, they claim that part of the reason why they feel their product is superior is that their researchers discovered that the previously understood limit of absorbing 1 g/min of carbohydrates (remember that 60 g/hr figure?) was only for glucose. Just because glucose has a maximum absorption rate of 60 g/hr doesn't mean significant additional absorption cannot be happening in parallel with fructose. Yes, fructose may have to detour through the liver first, but when you are talking a multi hour endurance event - there is plenty of time available for fructose to become effective. Honestly, whether you want to believe the whole idea that a specific ratio of glucose/fructose provides the 50% additional uptake in carbs that they claim or not is up to you. But it is interesting nonetheless, especially when you consider the various products, the types of carbohydrates they choose to use, and the question of what their target market is.
In the next post - homemade energy gel.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Day 56 - 1 hr trainer - 1/1/12
Today I picked up a trainer tire for the bike, set up the fan, and rigged the iPad so I can watch streaming video while on the trainer. So with all that, it appears my indoor training setup is complete.
After this mornings race, I wanted to hit the trainer again, but I didn't want to put any additional real stress on my quads and legs, on account of the runners knee issues. So todays spin was at a reduced effort.
What is interesting is that for only being 1 mph slower (about 16.1 vs yesterdays 17.1) - my HR dropped from 155 to about 125. It is possible that the small speed difference makes that large a difference in HR, but I suspect something else - I'm just not sure what it is. It may be that the trainer tire has a lower rolling resistance, but I wouldn't think it would be that significant. If it is, I definitely have to see about getting new tires on my bike in the spring! I think a bigger difference was probably having some cooling going on - it takes a lot of effort for the body to cool itself, and yesterday I was sweating a lot more than I did today. Until I thought of that factor, I was starting to think I'd have a hard time correlating various spins to track improvement. Realistically, however - I care less about what the speed/HR correlation is, and more about its precision from one session to the next.
After this mornings race, I wanted to hit the trainer again, but I didn't want to put any additional real stress on my quads and legs, on account of the runners knee issues. So todays spin was at a reduced effort.
What is interesting is that for only being 1 mph slower (about 16.1 vs yesterdays 17.1) - my HR dropped from 155 to about 125. It is possible that the small speed difference makes that large a difference in HR, but I suspect something else - I'm just not sure what it is. It may be that the trainer tire has a lower rolling resistance, but I wouldn't think it would be that significant. If it is, I definitely have to see about getting new tires on my bike in the spring! I think a bigger difference was probably having some cooling going on - it takes a lot of effort for the body to cool itself, and yesterday I was sweating a lot more than I did today. Until I thought of that factor, I was starting to think I'd have a hard time correlating various spins to track improvement. Realistically, however - I care less about what the speed/HR correlation is, and more about its precision from one session to the next.
Day 56 - Sterling Freezer 5 miler - 1/1/12
Today was a local race that a couple of my friends ran last year, and I joined in this time around. Last year I was still recovering from my IT band issues, so five miles was too far for me at the time.
Although I was pretty set on doing this race, a little voice in the back of my head told me I should probably skip it. After last weeks 16 threshold miles, I discovered on Thursday night that my left knee started showing symptoms of runners knee - pain behind the kneecap when weight is applied at about 30 degrees of flexion in the knee, and pain when walking up and down stairs. I woke up Friday morning with it still there, and came to peace with the idea that I'd probably be favoring it for a while until it healed. Then, on Friday afternoon while I was at work, I decided to give something a shot - I'd balance on that leg, and start squatting down just until the point of pain, and see what would happen. I found that as I slowly approached the point of pain, it went away - so I lowered myself ever so slightly more. About 15-20 seconds in, I was past the amount of flexion that resulted in pain - so I stood back and up gave it a test. Oddly enough, there was no pain. It was like inflammation was there, but I was able to squeeze it out like squeezing a tube of toothpaste. "Huh?" is right.
I ended up finding that if I sat or layed down for a period of time, the inflammation would come back - but at least now I had a way to get rid of it that seemed to be more effective than any NSAID. Since I was able to combat it, I decided I'd go ahead with this race - and then take a week off from running (especially with having just acquired the bike trainer) to give it time to heal.
I entered the race figuring there was a pretty fat chance of beating my thanksgiving day pace of 7:03 min/mile - but stranger things have happened. Afterall, that particular race had a big uphill in the beginning, and I went out way too fast. If I was lucky, pacing myself better during this race might result in an extra kick at the end and maybe I could shave a few seconds off.
This time around, I started about 1/3 of the way back - which was much better suited to how I like my starting pace to be (you know - slower than a 5 min/mile pace). About half a mile in, I started having doubts about PR'ing because I felt like I was a little winded, and my HR was already in the 170 zone. But by the time I hit thefirst mile marker, and saw my split was right around the 7 min pace, my thoughts were a bit bouyed. The next couple miles were a little touch and go - periods of sub 7 min/mile pace, periods over - mostly dependant on the hills. Halfway through, I was just about on par - if I could just maintain until mile 4.5, then I could give an extra kick at the end and shave a few seconds off my PR. Unfortunately, since it is an out and back course, a very very gradual overall downhill up to that point became a very gradual uphill. My third mile split at 7:17 pretty much erased any hope of a PR, and at mile four I had to concede that it just wasn't going to happen. Maybe if I really pushed myself I could make it happen - but it'd have to be a pretty monstrous effort - and I wasn't sure I wanted to chance it. I ended up figuring that after 16 miles of threshold miles this past week, I'd leave well enough alone and just be happy with finishing within a minute off.
Garmin results
Although I was pretty set on doing this race, a little voice in the back of my head told me I should probably skip it. After last weeks 16 threshold miles, I discovered on Thursday night that my left knee started showing symptoms of runners knee - pain behind the kneecap when weight is applied at about 30 degrees of flexion in the knee, and pain when walking up and down stairs. I woke up Friday morning with it still there, and came to peace with the idea that I'd probably be favoring it for a while until it healed. Then, on Friday afternoon while I was at work, I decided to give something a shot - I'd balance on that leg, and start squatting down just until the point of pain, and see what would happen. I found that as I slowly approached the point of pain, it went away - so I lowered myself ever so slightly more. About 15-20 seconds in, I was past the amount of flexion that resulted in pain - so I stood back and up gave it a test. Oddly enough, there was no pain. It was like inflammation was there, but I was able to squeeze it out like squeezing a tube of toothpaste. "Huh?" is right.
I ended up finding that if I sat or layed down for a period of time, the inflammation would come back - but at least now I had a way to get rid of it that seemed to be more effective than any NSAID. Since I was able to combat it, I decided I'd go ahead with this race - and then take a week off from running (especially with having just acquired the bike trainer) to give it time to heal.
I entered the race figuring there was a pretty fat chance of beating my thanksgiving day pace of 7:03 min/mile - but stranger things have happened. Afterall, that particular race had a big uphill in the beginning, and I went out way too fast. If I was lucky, pacing myself better during this race might result in an extra kick at the end and maybe I could shave a few seconds off.
This time around, I started about 1/3 of the way back - which was much better suited to how I like my starting pace to be (you know - slower than a 5 min/mile pace). About half a mile in, I started having doubts about PR'ing because I felt like I was a little winded, and my HR was already in the 170 zone. But by the time I hit thefirst mile marker, and saw my split was right around the 7 min pace, my thoughts were a bit bouyed. The next couple miles were a little touch and go - periods of sub 7 min/mile pace, periods over - mostly dependant on the hills. Halfway through, I was just about on par - if I could just maintain until mile 4.5, then I could give an extra kick at the end and shave a few seconds off my PR. Unfortunately, since it is an out and back course, a very very gradual overall downhill up to that point became a very gradual uphill. My third mile split at 7:17 pretty much erased any hope of a PR, and at mile four I had to concede that it just wasn't going to happen. Maybe if I really pushed myself I could make it happen - but it'd have to be a pretty monstrous effort - and I wasn't sure I wanted to chance it. I ended up figuring that after 16 miles of threshold miles this past week, I'd leave well enough alone and just be happy with finishing within a minute off.
Garmin results
Day 55 - 1 hr trainer ride - 12/31/11
Up until a few months ago, I had a set of rollers that could be used for indoor cycle training. I got them, instead of a magnetic or fluid trainer, because at the time, research I had done indicated that rollers were better for improving overall cycling skills. However, I found them to be lacking in resistence unless I had the headwind fan attachment. Unfortunately that created so much noise that it was difficult to watch TV without headphones on. And since I have a hard enough time keeping in-ear headphones in anyway, it was just a royal pain in the ass. Nevermind the fact that I didn't feel safe on them unless I had a helmet on, which would then bump against the ductwork in the basement. Then, when I tried to convert them to a more traditional trainer via the forkstand - it was somewhat unstable. So all in all, I ended up selling them, figuring that I'd rather eat a gun than train indoors.
Recently I started looking into the possibility of a fluid trainer, though. I had interest in continued training over the winter renewed - and with a clean slate available to me (since I had no rollers anymore), I was able to do some additional research. I ended up deciding that the CycleOps Fluid2 trainer would be the best option - all reviews were very, very good - from beginners to experienced cyclists alike. The only problem was that they are close to $400 new, or $300 online. In the midst of all this, I asked someone I know who bikes a lot what kind of trainer he had. His response? He had a fluid2, but got rollers and uses them exclusively now. To add gravy to the top, he had dropped his fluid2 during a move, busted it up, and CycleOps had replaced it free of charge. And he was looking to unload it. I asked him how much he was looking for. He replied "$200".
I jumped on it - a brand new fluid2 for $200 is about as close to a steal as one can get. Worst case scenario, I can recoup at least $150 of that if I need to. So I met him today, picked it up, and after some initial set up, I hopped on and gave it a whirl for an hour.
I think this thing has serious potential! I was able to watch TV at a reasonable volume, felt solid riding on it, and settled into a speed with a good cadence that I could maintain, but which still produced a good HR. Typically on an outdoor ride, I tend to average in the 135-145 range, but about 15 minutes into my ride today, I hit 155 and stayed right about there. I suspect a large part of that is because the real world offers opportunities to coast and incidentally give yourself mini breaks - whereas the indoor trainer does not. And to continue with numbers, based on this page from CycleOps which shows power curves for their trainers, my average speed of 17 mph appears to correlate with a power output of just about 200W. I have no idea whether thats any good or not, and I'm sure there is some +/- with that. I find it hard to believe that a power calculation that does not take into account headwind nor the combined weight of the rider and equipment can be incredibly accurate. However, as long as it is precise, then I can use it over time to track improvement.
I have a few tweaks that still need to be made such as getting a trainer tire (unless I decide to use my existing tires and get new in the spring/summer) and setting up our fan to help cool me off - but so far I'm real happy with it.
Recently I started looking into the possibility of a fluid trainer, though. I had interest in continued training over the winter renewed - and with a clean slate available to me (since I had no rollers anymore), I was able to do some additional research. I ended up deciding that the CycleOps Fluid2 trainer would be the best option - all reviews were very, very good - from beginners to experienced cyclists alike. The only problem was that they are close to $400 new, or $300 online. In the midst of all this, I asked someone I know who bikes a lot what kind of trainer he had. His response? He had a fluid2, but got rollers and uses them exclusively now. To add gravy to the top, he had dropped his fluid2 during a move, busted it up, and CycleOps had replaced it free of charge. And he was looking to unload it. I asked him how much he was looking for. He replied "$200".
I jumped on it - a brand new fluid2 for $200 is about as close to a steal as one can get. Worst case scenario, I can recoup at least $150 of that if I need to. So I met him today, picked it up, and after some initial set up, I hopped on and gave it a whirl for an hour.
I think this thing has serious potential! I was able to watch TV at a reasonable volume, felt solid riding on it, and settled into a speed with a good cadence that I could maintain, but which still produced a good HR. Typically on an outdoor ride, I tend to average in the 135-145 range, but about 15 minutes into my ride today, I hit 155 and stayed right about there. I suspect a large part of that is because the real world offers opportunities to coast and incidentally give yourself mini breaks - whereas the indoor trainer does not. And to continue with numbers, based on this page from CycleOps which shows power curves for their trainers, my average speed of 17 mph appears to correlate with a power output of just about 200W. I have no idea whether thats any good or not, and I'm sure there is some +/- with that. I find it hard to believe that a power calculation that does not take into account headwind nor the combined weight of the rider and equipment can be incredibly accurate. However, as long as it is precise, then I can use it over time to track improvement.
I have a few tweaks that still need to be made such as getting a trainer tire (unless I decide to use my existing tires and get new in the spring/summer) and setting up our fan to help cool me off - but so far I'm real happy with it.
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