37

I turned 37 this week. Most people my age (maybe the more mature ones) start to think they are getting older. I thought "let's see what I can do".

I started off the day with a one hour tempo workout on the trainer. It's a long, uncomfortable workout that usually ends with my legs pretty beat up. This particular time, I felt great at the end, so I did a couple sprints. What can I say, I'm just not a sprinter. I could only hit 1050 watts. (a good sprinter in my category would beat that by 50% or so)

That night, I went to the gym and got on my favorite machine: the incline leg press. Once I got a decent warm up in, I did:

• 3 sets of 5 reps at 850 pounds
• 3 sets of 4 reps at 1030 pounds
• 3 sets of 10 reps at 580 pounds (at maximum speed on the way out so the weights actually left my feet for a split second)
  

Not so bad for an old guy ;-)

Racing Sim

Today I tried something new: An ErgVideo race.

ErgVideo is software that runs on my CompuTrainer, so it's yet another way to control my trainer through my laptop. The neat thing about them is that they use video of actual bike races (or group rides) and tie the intensity that you feel from the trainer to the race. Even better, the software records all the data from the ride so that I can analyze it with my WKO+ software just like I would any other ride.

Today's ride was a simple 4-corner criterium, so every time the group sped up, I felt more resistance. Whenever the group slowed down, it got easier. Like most crits, you pedal like crazy in the straights and coast through the corners. Once in a while someone would attack and I had to go after them.

The shock to me was that it felt REAL. Just like a real race, your goal is to pedal easily and as little as you possibly can, saving your effort for when it matters. From the download, the most common power during this race was 130 to 140 watts, which is my common wattage for an easy Sunday ride. My average for the day was 201 watts (240 normalized), so you can imagine the intensity I must have been going the rest of the time to raise the average so much. I had portions at 520+ watts for a thirty seconds or so, 400+ watts minute or so, and 300+ watts for two or three minutes at a time.I could never really find a rhythm. It was constantly changing from hard to easy to hard to medium to very hard to hard to medium, and on and on for an hour and ten minutes.

I did a thirty minute warm up and a twenty minute cool down giving me a total of two hours on the trainer today.

Considering how much I liked this ErgVideo, I'll probably pick up a few more. They are not cheap, at $45 each, but they offer race-like training that's hard to find any other way when there's snow and ice all over the place.

Tomorrow's ride will be two hours again, but MUCH easier, with a goal of an average of 140 watts or so.

My weight this morning was 185.6, bringing me down from 190 in four weeks. I'm aiming to be 182 or less by the end of my next four-week training cycle ending Feb 19.

Annual Goal Post

It's just not a new year without a bunch of stuff on goal setting. Of course, the whole point of this blog is to keep me on track for my goals, so I have to list mine for the year!

To set the stage, in 2009, I dropped from 198 to 174 pounds. Over 2010, I drifted back up to 190 (with a little 5-pound burst between Thanksgiving and Christmas). As I write this, I'm back down to 186.4.

I have a wide range of goals:

• be down to 180 pounds in time for the first crit on March 6
• finish 6 crits (note: FINISH, not start ;-) )
• Get in the breakaway in at least one of them
  
• be down to 170 in time for the time trial June 4
  
• finish a West River Time Trial (8.35 miles) in less than 19:42 (25.4 mph)
• finish a 42K TT in less than 1:05:00 (24.2 mph)
• finish my season (August 6) at 165 pounds (probably around 12 to 14% body fat)
  
• keep my weight at or below 170 for the foreseeable future
  

The weight loss ones are not that major. Losing 6 pounds in 7 weeks, 10 more pounds in 12 weeks, and then 5 pounds in 12 weeks. It's the maintenance that I'm more interested in. I don't want to have to go through all this again!

One of the biggest ingredients that I lost in 2010 was weight lifting. I was riding and getting pretty fit, but my weight was not staying off. I found that just in the last few weeks, most of my success came from being back in then gym. I've been debating getting adjustable dumbbells so that I can do more weight workouts at home.

Another ingredient is intensity. I spent most of 2009 and 2010 doing tempo and threshold rides. I did very little VO2max, anaerobic endurance training, and sprint training. I've already started doing a little of that this winter so that I'm not caught off-guard in the early crits like I was last year.

Somewhere in there, I'd like to fit into my 34-inch waist jeans again :-)

Wish me luck! (and of course, support me along the way!!!)

New Year

It's a new year and here we are again: me complaining about losing weight :-)

I can't really complain about my fitness. I'm doing very well on the CompuTrainer ((3) 3x3:00 @ 280 watts) and I'm pushing major weights in the gym (12 reps at 850 pounds). For January, that's more than I could hope for. It's still 8 weeks until my first training race of the year.

Of course, I'm complaining about my weight. When I got back from Christmas, I was up to 190 pounds. All the candy and snacks while I was back in Erie added a few pounds onto me (and I was already complaining about my weight!)

For the last 6 days, I've been training like crazy. I've been on the trainer every day, trying out each of the workouts from my favorite workout menu. I've been to the gym twice and spent one night doing balance work on the Bosu. In the process, I've dropped one of those pounds already. Hopefully I can keep losing weight at that rate until I'm back where I want to be (at or around 170 pounds).