Day 235

As planned, tried to increase my effort on some 20min intervals.  If I average all 3, then I'm at about the 210W I was trying for on each.  Unfortunately I lost some ground on the first one due to traffic lights, but "made up for it" on the second one.  The second one was a little harder than I meant for, but, since I still managed the 3rd, I guess it's not an issue.  It was very windy today, especially out at Iona, which makes for a funny graph if you look at speed.  At the turn it jumps from around 29km/h up to around 43km/h at the same output.  It might have been the hard intervals last night, but pushing 210 today felt much harder than 205 a few days ago.  We'll have to wait and see if I can keep adding 5W per session for much longer.  For today, 60.21km in 2:06:34 for an avg speed of 28.6km/h and an avg output of 169W (186W normalized).  Overall that's one km/h slower than the last time, and I don't think it's from the wind.  I really made an effort today to keep my slow riding slower than before.  To be honest, there weren't too many people out and nobody past me while I was riding slow, which is usually what leads to me speeding up... gotta try and leave my ego out of it.

Day 234

Group ride/skills session.  The skills part involved riding slowly while intentionally rubbing the wheels of the rider in front.  It's sort of surprising, but I couldn't even feel it when my wheel was being hit, but when I was doing the rubbing I was dragged of balance a bit.  Kind of fun in the end.  Then after some more sitting around we all rode in pace lines around the UBC crit course for a bit, then played a little game where one person goes off the front and a group of 3 or 4 has to catch him.  That led to some hard efforts, but they were pretty short.  Actually, those were my hardest efforts so far this year, and my lack of conditioning in the area was immediately apparent.  In the end, the whole ride last about 2 hours, but with around 30-40min of rest.  39.75km in 2:06:35, for an avg speed of 22.8km/h, and avg power of 141 (218W normalized).  That large gap in normalized power goes to show how hard those short efforts were.  It means the effort was equivalent to riding for that duration at 218W. 

Day 233

This is for Wednesday.  A day full of wasting away watching movies and nursing a hangover.

Day 232

Woops.  Game 7 sort of threw a wrench into my routine.  I forgot to say what I did Tuesday, and yesterday I thought about it several times but couldn't muster the focus needed to add so much as an I.O.U. 

So on Tuesday, before the game and ensuing celebrations, I went out to Iona and back.  The plan was to do more 20min intervals, at a slightly higher intensity.  I went about an avg of 5W harder each time, so that all worked out just fine.  It doesn't sound like much, but if I can add about 5W every 3 days or so, then I'll be adding about 100W in the next 2 months.  That would seem to me like a lot, but I'm no expert.  If I'm right though, these workouts are gonna become really difficult, and probably sooner than later.  For the entire ride, I did 57.28km in 1:56:02, for an avg speed of 29.6km/h and avg power of 178W (186W normalized).  I'm heading out for a group ride this evening, so I guess I'll try and raise the 20min bar again tomorrow.

Day 231

Monday = Rest day. 

Day 230

Rainy day, but spring rain, not that malicious winter rain.  Winter rain likes to sting me through my spandies, but this spring rain is nice and refreshing.  I really enjoyed it today.  But maybe that's partly because I was only out for about 45min... I slept through my alarm and only had time for a quick ride.  19.01km in 43:57, for an avg speed of 26.0km/h and an avg output of 149W (153W normalized).  My legs were pretty heavy from yesterday, so it's probably just as well that I took it easy today.

Day 229

Well, that was supposed to be a little easier... the 4000ft of climbing kind of snuck up on me.  But I have no complaints, that was a great ride.  The weather was great, and with rain forecast for the next week, I figured it was a good day to put in a longer ride.  Went out along Marine Drive in West Van to Horseshoe Bay, then hopped on the Sea to Sky and rode up to Brittania Beach (photo below).  There's a great coffee shop there so I had a nice latte before heading back. 

That was the longest ride of the season so far, and I had no issues on the ride, but I'm pretty bagged now.  116.26km in 4:24:31, for an avg speed of 26.4km/h and avg power of 155W (168W normalized).  I was trying to keep my effort at around 160W, but there were too many hills.  Most of the hills along Marine Dr. in West Van are between 8-10% too, to I just tried to keep the effort as low as possible.  I tried picking up the pace a couple of times near the end to see how my legs were, and even though I didn't push very hard, I was able pick it up without issues.  5 hours of riding in the sunshine without leaving the coast, with the snow-capped mountains all around... pretty solid day.

Day 228

There's an election coming in Canada, and that's had me thinking about transparency lately (just don't ask me what that has to do with politics...).  So I figured I'd come clean and publicly admit that probably about 1/3 to 1/2 of the times I spit when riding it ends up all over me.  Humiliating, right?  Sometimes it's my shoulder that takes a hit.  Other times, when the consistency is a little thicker, it gets hung up a little and the wind wraps it around to the back of my neck.  The worst is when it gets in my ear.  I've been riding for about a year now and I just can't seem to get past this embarrassing inadequacy... even though it only took me a few rides to stop falling over at traffic lights.  I'm not too proud to try any tips you have, so post them in the comments (and by "you" I mean any of the 6 people I know that read this, but in particular the three of you that ride a bike).

Phew!  Felt great to get that off my conscience.  And extra good seeing as I just had a great ride around sunny Vancouver.  As planned, I did three 20min intervals at a pace slightly higher than my usual slow pace, with the rest of the 2 hours being taken up by my slow pace.  Hopefully I can gradually increase the number of these intervals and the power of each, but for today I aimed at 200W, with the rest sitting around 160W.  60.25km in 2:03:15, for an avg speed of 29.3km/h, avg power of 179W (185W normalized).  It felt like a good workout and didn't leave me very exhausted, so I'm going to keep this kind of ride up and alternate with slow rides.  Hopefully it works out. 

Day 227

Thursday was set aside for last minute studying, then writing my last final, then heading straight to work.  So that makes two days off in a row and 4 in the last 5.  It's not an ideal recovery "week", but that's how I'm going to treat it.  I'm hoping to get some good rides in over the weekend, then get back to my Monday=rest day routine.  Starting with today's ride, the focus will be on improving aerobic endurance as much as I can before I leave for France, so the shorter intervals will be avoided for now.  I'm thinking of to include lots of 20 minute intervals, with low intensity recovery in between, in my longer rides for the next few weeks and see if that results in more adaptation than just the usual long slow rides.  Each of these harder days will be alternated with some traditional long slow rides.  Otherwise, I'll be spending the next month or so cramming for the MCAT when I'm not riding, or working, so that means I've got lots of sitting at my desk time to recover between rides. 

Day 226

Took the day off on Wednesday to focus on cramming for finals.  Things got pretty hectic for a couple days, which explains why I forgot to post.

Day 225

Didn't really have time for a ride, but I didn't want to have 5 full days off.  I'm pretty busy with exams, but figured a short ride to split p my days off would be worth the trouble.  Went for a short 18.82km in 43:08 for an avg speed of 26.2km/h and 162W (220W normalized).  The high normalized power is from a couple of short 3 minute intervals I did, which didn't feel very good.  I'm not sure what the cause is, maybe just a bad day, but my legs weren't feeling great and I almost felt like I was coming down with a cold or something after those two short intervals.   On the bright side, I've now got two days off for more final exams, so I'm resting either way.

Day 224

Had to take the day off to focus on studying.  Final exams this week, so I'll be taking a things easy on the bike.

Day 223

Going to walk the 10km Sun Run this morning with my mom.  I always have a good time with her.  We'll be going to slow for this to count as a workout, but I won't have time to ride after spending a few hours of my precious study/cramming time out walking this morning.  So this will be sort of a recovery day, and the walk should be good for stretching out my legs.  I was surprised and happy to wake up with plenty of energy and fresh feeling legs this morning.  I didn't eat or drink nearly as much as I should have on the ride yesterday and I thought it might have caught up to me this morning.  Even at such a low effort for the first few hours, I would have liked to have had at least 1000 or so calories and a couple more bottles of water.  I even had the chance to fill up my bottles, but I didn't realize we had so much time left in our ride and I decided not to bother... lesson learned. 

Day 222

Went out for a nice group ride this morning.  The weather cooperated and I think I only got about 2 drops of rain on my face.  The ride was a little sketchy at times... not everyone is all that familiar with each other and there were a few near crashes.   Went out around UBC to Iona, then out to Steveston, across Richmond and back around UBC.  The group ride was about 3 hours, then I put in another 40min solo after to see what I had left in the tank.  I did an avg of about 200W and 31km/h for the 40min and didn't feel too bad after.  I'm pretty happy with this, since I ran out of water at around the 3 hour mark, and only brought enough calories for a 2 hour ride.  I'll be suffering the effects of that calorie deficit later, but for now I'm pretty happy with the way my training is coming along.

For the entire ride, we ended up 97.39km in 3:37:13, for an avg speed of 29.71km/h and avg power of 152W (188W normalized).  In general the group portion felt pretty mellow, and the graph shows how much energy I was saving in the slipstream.  The purple line showing the wattage shows that even when I was pedaling, it wasn't very hard.  Still, I find the cadence to be even more telling, especially when the yellow line hits the deck so often during a ride.  This is especially clear when you compare to my other rides (pretty much all solo).  Normally that yellow line hovers somewhere around the 90-100rpms, hitting zero at traffic lights only.  Today it must have spent about 20% of the group ride on the bottom.  On top of this, the yellow line shows 5 breaks, ranging from about a minute to 5 minutes.  When you factor out these stops, the avg speed for the whole ride increases about 3km/h, which I must say is pretty significant over nearly 4 hours.

Day 221

My cadence slows down when I have to pee.  I have to put in a very focused effort to both pedal and hold it in.  And that's about as exciting as my ride got today.  Nice view riding along the beach, sunny, fresh snow on the mountains.  30.69km in 1:10:02, for an avg speed of 26.3km/h, and avg power of 144W (150W normalized).  Oh, and I did manage to hold it in.

Day 220

I'm not sure if my wheels spent more time swimming or rolling!  Standing water everywhere for pretty much the whole ride.  The only problem ended up being one particular puddle that was much deeper than expected, luckily at the top of a small climb so I wasn't going to fast.  And I guess the standing water on my glasses would be an issue too, if you're one of those people who likes to see where you're going.

Snow/slush/rain... about 2 degrees out.  Not really what I expected on an April afternoon, even after reading a weather report that said all that plus thunder and lightning.  So I got a little hypothermic when I slowed the pace after one hour of pushing. 

I've been home for about 40min and my toes are still numb.  I can feel my heels now, but they tingle.  My neoprene shoe covers seem to wrap my shoes in such a way as to make them into little pails of water.  It felt like I had weights hanging off my pedals.  This could be from the weight of the water soaked into the neoprene and sitting in my shoes, or maybe just from the cold, sore muscles trying to turn them.

In any case, my goal was to see where I stood for a max 60min effort.  I don't think the conditions really permitted an accurate test, but I was able to get some idea.  I tried to keep the power above 220W, which was sort of difficult on the varying terrain.  I think I need to retry this on a long climb, maybe up Seymour.  In the end my 60min push was at an avg of 212W, but it was really all over the place, between about 190 and 260 most of the time.  It'll do as a starting point though. 

As for the overall ride, I had a 10min warmup and a 15min "cooldown!"  Basically I tried to ignore how cold I was for those last 15min.  40.82km in 1:25:50, for an avg speed of 28.6km/h and avg power of 193W (203W normalized).

Day 219

Round 2 on the 10min intervals.  Last time I managed 2 at an avg of 235W each.  Today I managed to keep both at and avg of 249W.  So I'm pretty happy about that.  I think a big part of it at this time of year is just remembering how to push myself.  I think I was able to dig a little deeper today, rather than being much stronger than last week.  As a result, this kind of improvement should taper off as I get back into the habit of pushing through.  But for now, I'm keeping up with my goal of adding 5-10W per week, and then some! 

I thought about trying for a third interval, but didn't really feel up to after a bit of recovery after the second interval.  So my ride ended up being 27.23km in 57:23, for an avg speed of 28.5km/h and an avg power of 175W (204W normalized).  If you're looking at the graph/map and notice all the stops in the beginning, I was just dialing in my derailleur.  I had to stop again on the way back, but I'm pretty sure I got fixed up and shifting smoothly again. 

Day 218

Not surprising, but my power meter's new software update seems to have messed it up.  This seems to happen with every software update I download, for anything.  I don't get it... why tell me to update when it's worse than the first one? 

OK, sorry, just a bit frustrated.  Anyway, I rode the same route as a few days ago, the GPS read the same distance, but the computer managed to come up 10km short.  I adjusted it myself, and tried changing the wheel size from auto to manual.  I'll find out if that worked soon enough. 

Just went for a slow ride out to Iona today, something like 60km in 2:10:36 for something around 28km/h, avg 148W/ 152W normalized ("something like" because I had to estimate the 60km).  Hopefully my manual wheel size does the trick. 

Day 217

Went in for my 2nd 10km TT today and got my data back for both.  Pacing wasn't too bad, even though I've become a little dependent on my power meter lately.  It was hard to judge by feel alone, but I'm not sure I could have done much better.  The bike in the lab isn't ideal, but I can't see some slight changes in things like saddle position or using a cycling shoe/cleat instead of sneakers in a toe clip making too much of a difference.  My average speed and average power for both were very close, even though I started out a little harder today than the last day.  I wanted to see if I could maintain a harder gear if I tried, but I was losing strength by 3km.  I dropped down one gear and was able to settle into a pace similar to the first day.  Both days I averaged about 37km/h and 260W for 16:24 and 16:20.  I was 5 seconds faster the second day, even though my legs felt a little more tired.  These numbers aren't great, but I'm happy with them only 3 months since taking a break over the winter.  My VO2max continues to climb as well, which is also a good sign that my training is going well.  It was 57 in February, 67 two weeks ago, and it topped out at 73 on Friday.  I'll have to find someone to test it when I get back from France!  Nothing like 3500km of riding over 3 weeks to jack up your fitness! 

Day 216

Somehow I managed to forget to throw up a blog post yesterday, even though all I did was sit around all day!  I took the day off to rest before my second 10km TT test today.  I needed an easy day or a rest day and decided to just move my usual Monday rest day ahead.

Day 215

Went out to Iona with Ben today.  Started out pretty mellow, but I wanted to slip a few harder efforts in for roughly 10min at a time.  I didn't want things to be too structured, just wanted to have fun with Ben.  So I just asked him a few times if he'd be ok with us picking up the pace for a bit and it didn't bother him.  So not a very structured workout, but I felt like it was pretty hard all the same.  We also had a lot of wind, so there's that extra feeling of difficult when you're slogging along on sections that are normally much faster with much less effort.  In the end, we did 61.16km in 2:04:30, for an avg speed of 29.5km/h and avg power of 182W (202W normalized).  In the end I felt pretty good, maybe could have kept that kind of pace for another hour or so, but I needed a nap and a feed before work, so there really wasn't time.  

Day 214

Did a 10km TT in the lab today, I'll post the results when I get them after Monday's testing.

Day 213

Today I had a short recovery ride to save myself for a max effort 10km TT in the lab tomorrow.  I'm not really sure how well I'll be able to judge my effort on an ergo, with no wind, etc, let alone no power meter!  I've become a little dependent on my power meter... today was nice and sunny, but there was a strong headwind on the way out and I needed the power meter to keep me from riding to hard.  Today I rode 16.45km in 39:10 for an avg speed of 25.2km/h and avg power of 143W (149W normalized).  It was a little disappointing to have such a short ride on such a nice day, but the nerd in me figures it's worth it to get a free VO2 test (and $150 cash).  

Day 212

Well, that was a weird ride.  I went out thinking I had until about 730 before sunset, so I wanted to squeeze in as much as I could.  I was already committed to an easy ride tomorrow as lead up to a study I'm participating in on Friday, and I'll have to rest again Sunday for more testing on Monday, so I wanted to get my intensity up today.  But then Marty actually said yes to riding, and I didn't want to pass up on that.  So I figured I'd put in 30min (which turned into 40) before meeting up with Marty.  So that went fine, bombed out to UBC and back, met up with Marty, and had a nice mellow couple laps in the park.  Then I decided to try and squeeze in a little more on the second time up the hill.  In the end, I think I got a decent workout in, but none of it really makes any sense... I can't really repeat these intervals or improve on them later, so they're not really all that useful.  At least it was fun, and I put in some of my harder short efforts of the season so far.  In the end it wasn't really slow or fast, hard or easy, just 45.81km in 1:43:46, for an avg speed of 26.5km/h and avg power of 161W (202Wnormalized).

Day 211

Back in the saddle, but I wasn't feeling as well-rested as I'd hoped.  My goal for today was to find some sort of starting place for 10min intervals.  I tried for 250W, but both attempts the average was only about 235W.  I guess I figured that I'd recently done 225W for 30min, so I'd be able to put down something like 250W for 10min... but I just didn't have the legs for it today.  My diet for the past two days was probably a factor, but at least I have somewhere to start.  I committed to being rested for a 10km time trial in the lab on Friday and Monday, so I'll have to wait until next week to follow up on these intervals.  My hope is that I can gradually add more watts at the 10min duration, and on other days add more duration at the same intensity.  I'd like to add about 5-10W/week, even though I have no idea if that's realistic.  When I used to train for mountaineering, I was able to just gradually add more and more weight to what I was squatting, so hopefully this will work out the same way.  As for my ride details today: I did a windy 30.30km in 1:03:40, for an avg speed of 28.6km/h, and avg power of 176W (195W normalized). 

Day 210

Monday.  My usual rest day.  I was thinking I'd make up for the missed sessions on the weekend, but that's as far as I got.  I was struggling to sit upright in class, so maybe staying off my bike was a good plan anyway.

Day 209

Went golfing for my good friend Mark's 40th birthday.  The only thing that got a workout was my liver.

Day 208

Went for a nap and slept through my alarm.  I guess I needed the sleep more than a bike ride this afternoon.  Thankfully my body is prepared to take matters into its own hands .

Day 207

I didn't have much time between school and work for a ride, and didn't even have time to post this until the next day.  Yesterday I went to try and find a starting point for some interval training.  I'm planning to include about 1-2 days of intervals per week from now until I leave for France.  My main focus is still on long, slow rides, since that's what I'll be doing in France, but I'd also like to be a little stronger on the bike in general, and I believe this is necessary.  Some of the intervals will be long ones, in the 20-30min range, while others will be as short as 3min.  I don't think I'll work on any shorter than 3min until after I get back from France.  For now the trick is finding an ideal power to start with for these intervals.  It's a lot like going to the gym for the first time in a while and trying to figure out what you can lift.  As you can see from the attached file, I went out and tried to keep my power around 400W for the first interval, then around 350W for the second, and 300W for the third (which is all time permitted).  Actually, I had it in my head that I'd do 400W each time, until I kept coming up short!  In any case, it's sort of inevitable that you miss the mark to begin with, then eventually you fine tune it so that you can add a few watts per week to what you managed the week before, just like you would in the gym.  So I'm hoping that something in the ballpark of 5x3min at 300W will be a good place to start. 

Overall, my ride was 21.79km in 51:03, for an avg speed of 25.7km/h and power was 156W (222W normalized).  Here we can also see a good case for paying attention to normalized power.  From the 156W, one would expect the ride to have been pretty tame and mellow, but in relation to the normalized power it becomes apparent that the were some shorter, harder efforts within that overall average.  My legs were smoked by the end of it, and it sure felt more like 222W for 50min than 156W (which would be more like a short recovery ride for me).