Day 176

Starting a rest week off on the right foot with a second rest day in a row today!  Due to the snow and falling behind a bit at school, I've decided to throw in a rest week this week.  The plan is to try and get out for an hour or so each day, at my usual easy pace... so it's more of a reduced volume week.

Day 175

Snow on the roads, so rest day today.  At least it's raining now, so hopefully the snow's gone soon.

Day 174

430am: get home from work; 5am-9am: sleep; 10am: see snow falling while eating breakfast; 10:15am: out the door to try and get a ride in before the snow starts to stick.  I planned last night to ride around 10ish with the forecast for snow in the afternoon, but I got rushed out the door a bit.  Then once I was out there, I realized it wasn't snowing hard enough to keep me from a ride longer than an hour, as I first thought it was.  Luckily I still turned around out of habit, as the water remaining in my water bottle was turning to slush within an hour.  My toes were grateful.  Next time I'll be testing how well these cheap plastic bottles handle hot water...

In an effort to keep warm (not easy in a pair of spandex shorts), I picked up the pace a little early on.  I think it was partly from a hard session at the gym yesterday, but I could only keep the effort up for about 20min before my legs were too weak to stay above a zone 2 effort.  28.52km in 1:04:50, for an avg speed of 26.4km/h and avg of 167W (173 normalized).  It's still snowing out, so it looks like tomorrow's gonna be a rest day.  Hoping for rain, soon... otherwise I'm going to be forced to catch up on my school work!

Day 173

Spent an hour in the gym today.  Finally found a pad for the bar for squats... my bony neck is very thankful.

Day 172

Went for a short little romp out around UBC and back.  Beautiful afternoon... lots of wind, but sunny and a nice fresh smell off the ocean at low tide.  30.34km in 1:10:17 for an avg speed of 25.9km/h, at an avg of 158W (normalized 162W).  I was able to keep the effort nice and easy, roughly about 80% zone 2.  In part because I didn't see anyone else out, so my ego never go the best of me, and also because I was pretty tired after putting in a pretty hard workout in the gym yesterday.  Hopefully I'll be rested up by tomorrow for another day in the gym between classes. 

Day 171

Spent one hour in the gym today between classes.  Gradually increasing the weights, but I'm a little paranoid about injuries, so it's a slow process.

Day 170

Went for a ride out to Steveston with Julian this morning.  Julian's a much more experienced and stronger rider than me, so his idea of an easy day was actually pretty hard on me at times.  But I figured I'd just go at whatever pace he felt was appropriate and deal with sore legs later.  I switched my computer off in Steveston while Julian used the washroom and forgot to turn it on for about 20min, so my data's a little off.  Based on Julian's data, it should read something like 75km in 2:45:00, avg speed about 27km/h, avg 163W (normalized 186W).  I should be spending most of my time in zone 2 these days, but I only spent about a quarter of the ride at that mellow effort.  I spent about 30% of the ride behind Julian, which made my effort too low for a good workout, and the rest was too high for a base training ride.  It'll all work out in the end though, but I might be a little tired at the gym tomorrow.

Day 169

Rest day.  Recovering mostly from snowboarding and a fairly sleepless weekend.  I got some pretty sore muscles from riding yesterday that don't get used in the gym or on the bike.

Day 168

Went snowboarding at Mt Baker.  I guess the only real training benefit would be the effort put in by the muscles I don't usually train for riding, especially the ones that stabilize my knees! 

Day 167

Only had time for an hour and a half ride with Ben today... too bad, because the weather was great!  36.43km in 1:21:04 for an avg speed of 27km/h, avg power was up to 162W (normalized 178W) because Ben wanted to try and catch up to someone he knew that we saw going the other way.

Day 166

Had a great ride in the sun this morning, even though there was some snow in the shade.  28.38km in 1:05:47, for an avg speed of 25.9km/h, avg power 153W (158W norm).

Day 165

I realized about 20min into my ride that slowing my pace meant I didn't dress warmly enough, but it was still dry... then I saw what looked like an approaching wall of rain, and it turned out to be an approaching wall of hail.  The hail turned to snow, to rain, back to hail, and back to snow and rain for pretty much the whole time I was out.  Hail really seems to sting my face.  Snow seems to make my spandex-covered legs colder much faster than rain, and it also sticks to my glasses and fogs them up.  Rain doesn't really bother me too much, but riding without anything warming my head today, I think the rain played a role in making me really cold.  30.16km in 1:10:57, for an avg speed of 25.5km/h... most importantly I kept my effort almost all in zone 2, with an avg of 152W (156W normalized). 

Day 164

Got my power meter back today, so I decided to try and ride as though I didn't have it and see how my pacing was.  So following my heart rate, I found my pacing to be a little high at times (about 30% of the ride) and sometimes too low (about 10%).  This isn't a major issue, but it leads to problems in the long term.  By training too hard for an easy ride, but not hard enough for a hard ride (roughly that 30%), I would be lessening my ability to train hard or easy.  So I'd be too tired to ride long enough to reap the benefits of an easy ride, and not hard enough to benefit from hard intervals... Glad to be back on track, even if it means more people passing me out on the road!  Today was 30.16km in 1:07:31, for an avg speed of 26.8km/h, avg power was 166W, normalized 171W.

Day 163

Went for a mellow ride out to Iona and back this morning.  I managed to stay dry until the last 20 minutes, but the wind couldn't be avoided.  The headwind fought me so much every time I turned East that I was laughing a few times... I kept thinking that anyone watching would see this guy pedaling away and going nowhere.  Heading West out to Iona I couldn't help thinking that if I was cruising along at 40km/h with little effort and no headwind, the return trip was gonna suck!  60.62km in 2:14:53 for an avg speed 27.0km/h.  That's a pretty average speed for my low intensity rides, so the slow parts must have been offset by some faster ones, but I didn't really notice it. 

Day 162

Rest day today.

Day 161

The weather cleared and I had a nice ride in the sun this afternoon.  Lots more people out too.  Still windy though, felt like my jacket was a parachute a few times.  30.22km in 1:06:33, for an avg speed of 27.3km/h.

Day 160

Saturday afternoon, a couple of hours before it cleared up, it was raining and windy.  Good thing too, because they won't let me take my bike through the car wash and the wet roads on Friday afternoon made my bike look like I'd been offroading.  Kept the effort pretty mellow, 30.35km in 1:09:28 for an avg speed of 26.2.  There were a few times where I was actually pretty surprised how much the head wind was slowing me down, and the rain didn't help.  At least I don't have to worry about hydroplaning!  Half my ride was through standing water and mystery puddles...

Day 159

Had a nice ride between school and work, went out around UBC and back... once again, hardly anybody out riding.  30.34km in 1:08:50, for an avg speed of 26.5km/h. 

Day 158

Studied the whole day for my exam... hadn't had much sleep the night before (late to bed, early wake up), so I pretty much just crashed when I got home around 10pm after the exam. 

Day 157

Studying all day for a biochem exam on Thursday, but I managed to find an hour for the gym.  Well, not really... I could have used that hour for studying, and now I'm wishing I had!  Oh well, exam Thursday night, so taking the day off to study all day Thursday, then I have next week off of classes, so hopefully I can rack up some longer rides.

Day 156

Great weather this afternoon!  Had a nice sunny ride around UBC, surprised to see that there weren't more people out for a ride.  In any case, kept the effort at a low intensity, but had to keep the ride short because I need to study for my biochem midterm.  30.6km in 1:07:45, for an avg speed of 27.1km/h. 

I'm finding that ever since doing a VO2max test last week, every time I ride and can't help thinking about my RQ values!  I'll be riding along then notice that my effort has me above my carb burning threshold and I'll quickly dial down the pace!  Haha!  The funny thing is, I'm just going on short rides and have a few pounds of body weight to spare, so there's absolutely no need to be so picky, but I can't help it.

Day 155

Went for a short ride to see how my knee would respond.  It felt fine apart from the occasional shooting pain for most of the day, and no issues on the bike.  I tried doing some exercises after with rubber bands in hopes that the pain is from some weak stabilizers, but the bands both snapped!  So I'll buy some more and keep that up, hopefully that will help my knee, which actually felt fine on the bike.  17.75km in 19:51, for an avg speed of 26.7.  That's actually a little faster than it felt in the pouring rain and I was keeping the pace nice and slow, so I'll take it as a sign that I'm gradually getting back into shape.

Day 154

I tweaked my knee a bit at work last night and it didn't really improve over night, so I'm gonna bump my scheduled rest day from tomorrow ahead to today and hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.

Day 153

Great weather... 8 degrees is feeling balmy these days!  I this was the first time since October that I rode without a jacket and winter gloves (even though my hands got pretty cold).  I have lots of studying to do for a midterm on Monday, so I only had time for a short ride.  I'm still keeping the intensity low and probably will be for the next few months.  That's a little trickier without my power meter, so I'm hoping to have that back soon... heart rate works, but the delayed response can be a little annoying.  Today's ride was 30.5km in 1:03:21, for an average speed of 28.9km/h.  As always, you can find more details and a map by clicking the link.

Day 152

Spent an hour in the gym today between classes.

Day 151

First gym session in a while yesterday, and feeling it today... just finished my school work for the day at 11:30pm, and I was up at 4am to finish an assignment due this morning, so rather than a mellow ride to stretch these sore muscles, I'm just going to hope that an extra hour of sleep does the trick.

Day 150

Went to the gym this morning.

Day 149

Didn't ride outside today, but did some VO2max and lung capacity testing instead, so I sort of got a short ride in.

Day 148

Day off