Travelling workouts - 2/16/12

A few workouts to update on - 

Since I was travelling again this week, my workout load was once again reduced.  As I may have mentioned before, though - I was in need of a break after several weeks of upping the workout volume.  Monday was a rest day after Saturday's half marathon pace test and Sundays cycling trainer workout.  While I didn't do yoga in the hotel room again, I did do some general stretching.

On Tuesday I hit the treadmill in the hotel.  You'd think that with all the land Ohio has, it wouldn't have been a problem finding some place to run outside.  However, I happened to be staying at a hotel that was near the crossroads of an interstate and a state road, so there was no option I could see for getting to a good running area without risking life and limb in getting out of the congestion.  I even drove around for a while after work looking for a place, and considered running along the paths of a local cemetary - but even that would have been difficult to get to with the lack of shoulders.  Plus, it was cold and rainy out - so I decided to give up on the outdoor idea and just hit the treadmill.  I ended up doing 45 minutes, but I'm not sure of the distance.  The treadmill registered about 4.6 miles, and claimed a pace of almost 10 minute miles - but I've always found treadmills to be off.  Regardless, the idea was to get my HR into the easy pace zone (140's) for about 45-50 minutes.  At the 45 minute mark, I decided that was enough.  Treadmills bore me to death.

On Wednesday I did the P90x legs & back routine (minus the back) in the hotel room.  I didn't have a chance to do my circuit training during the weekend, and I want to be really good about hitting the legs on a regular basis not only to increase the power/weight ratio, but also to balance the muscle development to keep everything... balanced.  Since many running and cycling injuries come about due to an imbalance, where something gets pulled in one direction or the other due to overdeveloped muscles in one area - it seems like a lot of running injury PT is based on addressing that imbalance.  Over the summer I had been working on the legs on a regular basis, and it never seemed to hinder me, and I stayed uninjured - so I don't want to mess with success.  The nice thing about the P90X legs stuff is that there is no equipment needed - just all variations on lunges and squats.

Due to getting home early today (Thursday), I was able to squeeze a couple workouts in, which was a nice surprise.  The next bike trainer workout was called Ericsson, and was basically another interval-type workout.  After some spin-up for warm up, it goes through 4 x 8 minute intervals at a tad below FTP.  So in this case, it was about 200W (or, at least what registered as 200W based on the published power curve for my trainer).  The description for the workout also mentioned six minutes of ILT (isolated leg training), but there were no instructions as to where that was.  After the workout was over, I realized there was six minutes of downtime between each interval - so that would have been a good time to do one minute of ILT for each leg.  Oops - next time, I suppose.  Although the TR link above doesn't show it, the cadence varied quite a bit because the power targets changed ever so slightly, so it was easier to adjust cadence to match as opposed to fidgeting with finding another gear ratio.  Actually, the garmin link shows the cadence a bit better.

Since I had most all afternoon, I also decided to throw a brick run in after the bike session.  I initially wanted to do around six miles, but I brought the dogs with me to get them some exercise, and they started lagging behind at about two miles.  I made them go one more round for a total of about three and a quarter miles.  Although it wasn't as long as I initially wanted, I still got the benefit of doing a brick run (always good in itself), and I was thinking at the time that it left open the possibility of a six miler tomorrow during the day.  However, my legs are starting to feel pretty sore from the legs workout yesterday - so depending on how things go, a run tomorrow might be out.  We'll see.