Finally getting the hang of things ... I think
Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2007 8:58 am
Had an interesting ride last night. Dropped the lad at soccer training, then headed off along the Linear Park towards the beach (I'm going to miss daylight saving). The Linear Park follows the Torrens River and the lad's soccer is in the city, so it's essentially a down hill run to the sea. Because the track follows the river, it's all twists and turns and ups and downs. A beautiful ride
I got to the mouth of the river, turned north and started riding along the beach. Up past Henley jetty, then turned around to go back ... and realised why the run along the beach had been so easy - I'd had a massive tail wind which was now a decent head wind
Okay, down through the gears, plug along, then back up the Torrens, essentially a slight uphill run all the way.
Now's where it gets interesting from a training point of view. I've recently reworked my training zones based on my observed max HR of 185. According to the percentages (and the Polar website), my aerobic range finishes at 150 (yes, I know, guess work and generalisations).
For this ride, I'd been aiming to run my HR in the 140's and, of course, had pushed it into the 150's and kept it there At about the 26km mark, my legs started to feel tired. Not painful, just that tired feeling. Interesting enough to have me thinking about it, then I realised that that tired feeling was lactic acid in the muscles. So I dropped a few gears, backed off the pace and let my HR drop below 130. After a few km, that tired feeling was gone, but I kept my HR below 140 for the rest of the ride (30km total so it wasn't that far).
Based on that I'd say the HR zones are about right for me - isn't the lactic threshold (or whatever they call it) about the point where you go anaerobic? Whatever, there's no doubt that when working in the 150's, I feel like I'm working (though not stressed by any means, I have to get into the 170s to feel stressed) and when in the 140's I'm ticking along nicely. For the time being at least, I'll be using 150 as a 'dividing line' between endurance type workouts and more strength orientated workouts.
And it's nice to know I can recover on the bike
Today? No tiredness, no muscle weariness. I feel great ... yes, yes, you should always finish a ride with a warm down run on the last ten minutes or so, but who's that responsible?
Richard
I got to the mouth of the river, turned north and started riding along the beach. Up past Henley jetty, then turned around to go back ... and realised why the run along the beach had been so easy - I'd had a massive tail wind which was now a decent head wind
Okay, down through the gears, plug along, then back up the Torrens, essentially a slight uphill run all the way.
Now's where it gets interesting from a training point of view. I've recently reworked my training zones based on my observed max HR of 185. According to the percentages (and the Polar website), my aerobic range finishes at 150 (yes, I know, guess work and generalisations).
For this ride, I'd been aiming to run my HR in the 140's and, of course, had pushed it into the 150's and kept it there At about the 26km mark, my legs started to feel tired. Not painful, just that tired feeling. Interesting enough to have me thinking about it, then I realised that that tired feeling was lactic acid in the muscles. So I dropped a few gears, backed off the pace and let my HR drop below 130. After a few km, that tired feeling was gone, but I kept my HR below 140 for the rest of the ride (30km total so it wasn't that far).
Based on that I'd say the HR zones are about right for me - isn't the lactic threshold (or whatever they call it) about the point where you go anaerobic? Whatever, there's no doubt that when working in the 150's, I feel like I'm working (though not stressed by any means, I have to get into the 170s to feel stressed) and when in the 140's I'm ticking along nicely. For the time being at least, I'll be using 150 as a 'dividing line' between endurance type workouts and more strength orientated workouts.
And it's nice to know I can recover on the bike
Today? No tiredness, no muscle weariness. I feel great ... yes, yes, you should always finish a ride with a warm down run on the last ten minutes or so, but who's that responsible?
Richard