Despite the horrendous weather we had a good MTB ride last night.
Dave, John, Myles and I were greeted by driving rain and 50 mph winds in the car park at Pendam but we soon set off along the track in our waterproof jackets and shorts ready for a ride around the MBR Killer Loop. Myles had just got back from the Alps so the weather was a bit of a shock to him, but it was to all of us as it’s been a while since we’d been out in typical Welsh conditions.
I was suffering with sore ribs after my windsurfing session earlier in the day. Breathing hurt, as did any form of bending, twisting or bumping over bumpy things – Maybe Mountain Biking wasn’t the best idea! The ride out to and along the Bont Goch descent went pretty much without incident, there was one point when Dave, John and i went around what we knew to be a particularly deep puddle whilst Myles ploughed through it at full speed created a huge wall of water and disappearing from sight. He just made it through the water which was up to the top of his forks.
Somehow the wind seemed to be in our faces the whole way around. When we set off it was SW which would have given us a helping hand up the big climb back up to Nant y Moch, but by the time we got there the wind had swung to the SE and seemed to be in our faces for much of the climb.
Myles and I had quite a battle going up the climb. I was on the limit and my ribs were killing me, but Myles was sat right behind me and sometimes alongside me. I could tell he was suffering with the pace too though so couldn’t ease up and had to keep pushing on. It was hard work but good as it kept us both working hard.
We met Andrew going the other way just over the top of the climb – (he was out for some secret training on his own!) but we might get him to join us soon. The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful, some good descents along the MX trails up towards Angler’s Retreat and then back up towards Sidewinder, along the trails to Syfyddrin and then up to Hippity Hop. I think my windsurf and turbo trainer session earlier in the day had taken it out of me a little though as I was feeling tired come the end. Mind you, Myles was as well so maybe it was the hard climb earlier in the ride.
It was a good ride though with a good group of people and once riding the weather wasn’t really a problem – It just goes to show, you’ve just got to get out there and do it.
Before heading off on todays lunchtime ride I had told myself that the plan was for a nice easy ‘recovery’ ride. I had done a hard 25 mile ride yesterday, I have circuits and Swimfit to go to this evening and a long MTB ride planned for tomorrow, so and easy ride was on the cards.
Once I got going though I couldn’t hold back and ended up hammering out a hard fast ride. Hard enough for it to feel like a good Time Trial effort and fast enough to beat my personal best on the course by just over 1 minute. I think I might suffer at circuits and Swimfit tonight!
It gives me a good excuse to show you one of the cool features of Ascent, my GPS and exercise tracking application though. Ascent allows you to compare up to four different sessions. The video below shows a comparison between two sessions. The yellow dot and upper topo graph is me on the course today compared to the blue dot (and lower topo graph) which was my previous best on the course a few weeks ago.
The movie is a a little stuttery but that is down to the screen capture program I’m using. It is obviously much clearer at full size too, but I’ve had to reduce it for display on the web. Hopefully you can just about make out the blue and yellow dots and get the general idea. You can see where on the map you were, where you were faster or slower and from the topography and heart rate graph you can see where you were trying hard and where you weren’t. Pretty handy hey! Click this link for more info on Ascent, and other Mac software for GPS and fitness training.
Here’s the route on Garmin Connect.
Working from home means that I can’t commute to work on my bike. Well, I could but it wouldn’t do me or the hall carpet much good, so instead I went for a lunch time cycle today. Just a fast, flat blast out to Machynlleth and back and I was pleased to keep my average speed just above 20mph. Not fast compared to what I could do 20 years ago, but not too shabby either.
I’ve been doing more road biking than mountain biking recently. However, judging by this video I’ve been doing it all wrong. I can’t even do these things on my mountain bike! Mind you, when I lived in Bristol we did cycle down the big rock slab seen in the video – glad to see it’s still being used by cyclists.
I wonder how many sets of wheels they got through making this video?
I haven’t done any long bike rides for years. In fact we’re talking 20 years plus since I did anything over about 35 miles. Monday was a gorgeous day, warm, dry and sunny. I was on top of work (or didn’t have much on to be more precise) so set off on a nice little bike ride.
It turned out to be a lovely hilly 45 mile ride. Starting from home I rode into Borth and then Talybont where I started the long slog up to Nant-y-Moch. Then it was a lovely ride around the reservoir on smooth roads – although the cattle grids are a bit annoying. I then dropped down into Ponterwyd and avoided the main roads by heading back up to Pendam. Down into Penrhyncoch and then just to add another hill into the equation rode up to Bont Goch and back into Talybont. From there it was just an easy ride back home.
Just under 45 miles, and at a very slow pace. My legs were tired by the end of it but it was an enjoyable day out in the hills.
The nice weather continues and I’m beginning to enjoy my rides on my road bike. Not only can I cover much greater distances than on my mountain bike but I don’t need to drive to the trails and I don’t need to clean it after a ride.
Yesterdays ride was twice around a local 10 mile loop. Actually its a little over 10 miles at about 10.65 miles. First time around was OK in a time of 36:29, the final couple of miles into the wind were hard though. Next time around I pushed quite hard on the first few miles with the wind behind me, but then struggled a little over the hills in the middle and against the wind at the end. My time for the second loop was however 2 seconds faster at 36:27.
The triathlon looms ever closer and Jay, Brad, Matt and Beale all seem to be doing loads of secret training, so I thought I’d better get out there on my road bike again to get used to it.
Last time I went out on the road bike it was OK, but I didn’t feel that confortbale or confident on it and when I reached any hills I felt as though I needed more gears. So yesterday I decided to do a longer ride that took in a proper hill.
I headed out from home, into Borth and then along Glanfred lane to Talybont, from there I took the mountain road to Nant y Moch. Not the steepest hill around but in the glorious sunshine with the road snaking up the hill in front of me it felt like my own private little Alp D’Huez.
With my 42×21 gearing there was no way I could get up it in the saddle so I was out of the saddle and going at a slow pace all the way up. It wasn’t that bad to be honest and I soon reached the top. I didn’t see any cars, but I did overtake one guy on a mountain bike. It wasn’t fast, it wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t that steep but I did at least make it!
If you click on the ‘View Details’ link in the Garmin Connect preview below you can see (unsurprisingly) more details, including the Elevation chart which does make it look quite steep!
I then headed off around the gorgeous road that follows Nant y Moch and then dropped down into Ponterwyd. Other than the mountain-biker that I passed on the climb I didn’t see a single person or car for the whole trip between Talybont and Ponterwyd. I then joined the main road for the climb up out of Ponterwyd to Nant yr Arian before dropping back down along the main road to Capel Bangor, Lovesgrove and then on through Bow Street, Llandre, Borth and back home.
A nice loop of just over 38 miles and I felt fine.
With the mini Triathlon looming – my first for 20 years – I thought it would be sensible to dust off the road bike and get out there on the road to see if I can still ride it.
I’ve been using it on the Turbo Trainer recently so I know that it was mechanically (just about) OK, although I did have to make a few adjustments to the setting as I had raised the bars for use on the Turbo Trainer and with them in that position the gear cables were too tight and wouldn’t allow the bars to turn. I guess it would have been fine as long as I didn’t have to go around any corners.
I decided to cycle from Ynyslas to Machynlleth and back which was 25 miles and relatively flat. It wasn’t long though before I decided that I needed some easier gears. The bike is ancient and the lowest gear it has is 42×21, quite a high ratio compared to modern road bikes which all seem to have a 39 tooth chain-ring up front and a cassette that goes to at least 23, sometimes 25 or 28 at the rear. As soon as the road pointed upwards I was out of the addle and struggle with the gear ratio.
I did make it though and although my knee is now a little sore, I kind of enjoyed it and didn’t completely embarrass myself by averaging 18.5mph. Plenty of room for improvement though.
I thought I’d try out Garmin Connect as well as it seems to have improved considerably of late, so here are the details.
It’s always good to mix things up a little on the Turbo Trainer. Also, I had coffee with Jon the other day, my friend who did the various tests on me at the Sports & Exercise Department at Aberystwyth University. Whilst chatting about training he said that the session to do out of the ones he’d given me were the 3:2 minute intervals. I hadn’t tried these before so I though I’d give them a go yesterday.
The idea is that after a warm up you do up to 7 repetitions of 3 minutes at a pre-determine, hard workload and then have 2 minutes rest. John had set me a target of 275 Watts for the hard 3 minutes. I can only set the power output in increments of 10 Watts on my Tacx Flow Turbo Trainer so decided to give it a go at 270 Watts. My workout therefore was:
Warm Up:
- 5 minutes @ 140 Watts
- 4 minutes @ 200 Watts
- 1 minute @ 100 Watts
Main Set
- 3 minutes @ 270 Watts, 2 minutes @ 100 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 270 Watts, 2 minutes @ 100 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 270 Watts, 2 minutes @ 100 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 270 Watts, 2 minutes @ 100 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 270 Watts, 2 minutes @ 100 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 270 Watts, 2 minutes @ 100 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 280 Watts, 2 minutes @ 100 Watts
Cool Down:
- 4 minutes @ 180 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 140 Watts
- 3 minutes @ 100 Watts
Here is my heart rate trace during the workout, peaking at 164bpm (90.6% of my maximum)
Todays Turbo Trainer Workout
As you can see although it was quite hard, I still felt OK on then final repetition and actually did it at 280 Watts rather than 270 Watts. Next time I shall have to try it at 280 Watts throughout. In fact, talking to Jon last week, he was saying that if I can do all 7 repetitions of any of these interval sessions then the idea is to up the wattage immediately as they should really be so hard that you can’t quite complete them. That sounds like torture to me but I shall start increasing the wattage until I can no longer complete the whole set.
I did enjoy this set of intervals though as they seem to be working a little on endurance as well as power. 3 minutes can actually seem like quite a long time!
I’m quite enjoying my little turbo trainer sessions at the moment. I know that’s not right, they are supposed to be boring, horrible and painful, but I’ve been doing them at lunch time and feel so much better for it afterwards.
The secret is to mix it up, doing different sessions all the time so that you don’t get bored. I also do some multi-tasking, listening to podcasts whilst I’m doing it and watching the birds on the feeders in the garden.
I’ve been doing a variety of different workouts. The tough interval sessions from Jon following my tests at the Sports and Exercise Science department at the university, some of my own making and some from the Tacx website.
Those by Jon which have been individually tailored for me are supposed to be really tough so I’m only going to do one of those a week for now. The ones I make up are usually quite tough too. The ones from Tacx seem to be about right for me as well. They have various different types, aerobic endurance workouts, interval workouts, sprint workouts and more.
Todays session was session 2 from their aerobic endurance workouts sheet:
Todays Turbo Trainer Session - Click to enlarge
I followed it to the letter and it all felt fairly easy. There is mistake in the Time column; on line 11 the time should be 4 minutes no 1 minute, which also means that the cumulative time column is incorrect and should have an extra 3 minutes added to each value from there on in which gave me something to think about. In fact, as things are constantly changing, the workout seems to fly by. A couple of minutes of one thing and then its time to change the settings, change your cadence etc. so the time flys by and before you know it you’ve been on the turbo trainer for 45 minutes.
Not a bad workout though, nothing too difficult but then an aerobic endurance workout shouldn’t be too taxing. Here’s my heart rate trace during the workout.
Heart Rate Trace - Click to enlarge
