Category: Cycling

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Cycling Running Swimming Triathlon

New Watts tough to hold

This week was the first week back on the CompuTrainer after taking the CP30 test last Saturday. Tuesday was not a good morning. I couldn’t even hold the new 108% of CP30 for the first 6 minute interval. I don’t know if it was because my legs were tired from the test or what, but it was just too much. Thursday was better and I was able to hold the 2 x 20 interval and the prescribed watts. So, this week I’m going to try for 104% of my current CP30 and do the test again.

In the pool I’ve had a couple of good workouts. On Friday at the Beverly Y I was able to do 10 x 100 on 1:25. That’s the first time I was able to do that. Now I have to do it again to prove it wasn’t a fluke! This morning when I hit the pool I did 5 x 100s on 1:30 and followed that up with 5 x 100 at 1:14/1:18/1:18/1:19/1:19 on 2:00. I felt pretty good about that, but I would really like them all under 1:15. That will be tough at the Danvers pool where I seem to be slower.

This was a good week on the weight front. I was able to hold under 160 for most of the week and this morning weight in at 157.5

Weight 157.5

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Cycling Running Swimming Triathlon

CP30 Watts up but Weight loss slows

It’s been a tough week on the weight loss front. It doesn’t help having ice cream cake, birthday parties with cake and ice cream and not too mention the junk food around when friends come over. I’m going to have to get a little bit more focused in the next couple of weeks to get down to my goal.

Swimming

I had a good swim session this morning, well, at least I thought it was good. I managed to go under 1:20 on the 100s again. I did have more rest for each one, but it was good to know that I can actually swim that fast. I need to start pushing myself more like that. The first 200s were tough though. We were supposed to do them descending, but I’m pretty sure my second was slower than the first.

Cycling

I had a good day on the CompuTrainer Saturday morning when doing my Critical Power test for 30 minutes. I was able to hold 257 Watts for 30 minutes. I started out around 250 and actually built up to 257 by the end of the 30 minutes. I don’t like to start too hard and then fade. The bad news is that my Tuesday workouts are going to be insanely hard. The 6 minute intervals will now be at 278, that is going to be pretty tough to hold for 6 minutes, 6 times! That’s a 108% of my CP30 score.

Running

I managed to get in two days of running this week. Wednesday morning was outside and I felt pretty good on the 7 mile run. Comfortably held a 7:30 pace doing negative splits. Last mile came in just under 7 minutes. Then on Sunday it was so cold I headed indoors and jumped on the Treadmill. Ran for an hour and made sure to do negative splits there as well.

Weight: 159.5

Categories
Cycling Running Swimming

The training update

After being sick the previous week, this past week has been much better.

At the Pool

Starting to do more kicking at the pool. Last Friday I managed to go over 4000 yards for the first time this year. In large part that was due to a lot of kicking at the end. Fred said we were going to do 5 x 100s. That is probably the most consecutive kicking I have ever done. It took everything I had just to keep from getting lapped. I’m going to have to ask for tips on some of the kicking drills rather than just using the kick board all the time. The dolphin kick looks pretty cool.

On the road

This past week Heidi finally showed up to run on Wednesday morning. It’s good when she shows up because she pushes me, at least early on in the run. She tends to start at a much faster pace than I normally would. I usually go out just a little over 8 minute miles and then bring it down. I think we did our first mile at 7:45 and went down from there. For the 7 miles I felt pretty good holding the 7:25 average.

On the trainer

Last week was the final week of the 4 week build. The Tuesday and Thursday rides were pretty tough. Sometimes I wonder if it is harder mentally or physically. The 6×6 minutes on Tuesday are definitely a physical challenge as I’m at 108% of FTP. The Thursday 2 x 20 minutes are just a mental grind.

The weight is still coming off, but more slowly. Partly because I’ve been eating a little more and we hit the Texas Roadhouse for my sons birthday. The “Peanut Place” is his favorite place. It’s one of mine too, but I know I’m going to gain a few pounds just from the salt content.

Weight: 160

Categories
Cycling Technology

Something new on the CompuTrainer

This week my friend Mike decided we need to try out the Team Time Trial at Breakaway Computraining. He put a team of four together and we went over to check it out. They have a very nice facility with eight CompuTrainers setup facing two very large screens. Each team sets up on one side of the room or the other. The course that was selected is one that the local TriFury triathlon club uses outside, a little over 13 miles. One of the cool things was that you can actually draft off of your teammates. That is a skill that I have to work on, I either seemed to be too close or too far back. The winner is determined by the 3rd rider over the finish line. That encourages you to really work as a team.

I thought it was a lot of fun and definitely want to try it again. It is definitely a challenge to figure out how to ride with a group on the CompuTrainers. Looking back on it now I know I wasn’t working hard enough when I was leading. I felt like I could have done the entire ride at the Watts I was holding while leading. For me that means I needed to be working probably another 20% harder. I also wasn’t always in the best draft position, but the few times I got there I can see that it would be easy to recover and then take the lead and ride hard again. Especially with working with four riders. I heard the first groups say they were going to switch every 15 seconds. I think that would be way to fast for me until I had a few more rides under my belt. I’d prefer to pull hard for 2 or 3 minutes at a time and then rest for 6 to 9 drafting the other 3 riders. Then repeat. Do that four times, race is over.

If you have never done it, I highly recommend checking it out. Definitely a lot of fun!

The rest of the week

The rest of the week was pretty standard. Saw some good progress in my swimming and managed to get under 1:20 for some 100s on Monday. Didn’t manage that again the rest of the week, but at least there is hope.  I definitely need to work on my kicking and ordered some fins.

The CompuTrainer rides are getting harder as each week I keep building for another two weeks. I feel like my legs are definitely getting strong and I’m glad I included some weight lifting in the program this year.

Running hasn’t been much fun, it has been cold, windy and slushy. Not exactly my kind of running weather. I managed to get out for a 10K yesterday afternoon after riding for 2 hours on the trainer. Doing those bricks is definitely something I want to do more of this season.

The weight loss continues. Weighed in at 162 lbs this morning!

Categories
Cycling Running Swimming Triathlon

Damn that Java Updater!!!!

Time for the weekly update. This morning was NOT a good morning. Well, it was an good morning for the workout, but I’m pissed because I lost all my data from the CompuTrainer workout. I was using the Coaching Software this morning, the software that was written in the 80s or maybe earlier! Anyway, I was 80 minutes into the workout and the Java updater popped up. Of course the Coaching Software can’t handle that and crashed. The entire ride was lost. You would think that they data would be saved out to the drive so in the event of a crash you could at least have the data that was recorded so far. Nope, not with CompuTrainer software.

Racermate, Inc, the company that developed the CompuTrainer and the software has been promising new software for over a year now. Last year at this time, it was “New Software coming Fall 2010”, well, here we are a year later. Still no software! They suck, to put it kindly.

As for the past week of workouts, I hit the pool for the first time this fall at the ANA Y. Had some really good workouts and could really feel the lack of swimming, or structured swimming anyway.

On Wednesday I did get on the treadmill before the swim for a few miles. It felt pretty good to be able to run 2 miles with absolutely no pain at all from the IT Band. I was kind of expecting to feel something after the first mile, but nothing and just kept on going up to 2 miles before heading to the pool. Hoping to go further this week.

On the cycling side I started up the CompuTrainer PIG program again. While I was hoping to use the new Racermate One software, I guess that isn’t going to happen. This year I do a 10 minute warm up and calibrate before I even start my workouts to make sure the power is accurate. The workouts have been good so far, and I felt like I was working pretty hard this morning before the crash. Wish I had the data to be able to compare to last week!!!!!!

Categories
Cycling Running Swimming Triathlon

No Power

No, I’m not talking about the Powermeter on my bike or the CompuTrainer. This weekend the Northeast was hit by a Nor’easter. This storm took down a lot of trees and power along with them. The heavy wet snow combined with the trees still having leaves on them had the trees snapping and falling all over the place. That left me spending most of my Sunday getting the generator running and no riding on the trainer. We are now heading towards 48 hours without power.

I did manage to get in a few swims this past week at the pool and I felt pretty good on my run Wednesday morning. Hardly felt the IT Band at all. Still looking for the new CompuTrainer software but haven’t heard a word from the company.  Looks like another long winter of battling the old software. I did ride it a few times this past week before we lost power.

This coming week I will be heading back to the pool at the ANA Ymca. Actually, I was there this morning. Tough workout, and I need to get back in swimming shape. All of these short swims at the pond has not helped my swimming. Hopefully the power comes back on for the CompuTrainer, or I will be running the generator early to get my time in on it.

Categories
Cycling Running Swimming

58 degrees and going down…

Time for the weekly training update. I’ve managed to get out and run a couple of times this week. Not very far, just the 5K loop around the Danvers Y. The good news is the IT Band is not killing me so I can run pretty good. The bad news is that I can still feel it a little bit. I know that it is there and not quite ready to push the mileage yet.

This week was also the first week of the CompuTrainer. Yup, back at it and guess what!? Still no Racermate One software. Not a big surprise really, reading the forum you can tell they have absolutely no idea how to design/develop/distribute software. It’s a good thing they don’t have competition on the hardware side or they would be out of business all together. To start out this week I did a couple of the 3D videos. Soon though I will get setup with the performance improvement program that they have and start using the coaching software as well. It feels good to be riding more than once a week again.

Only made it to the pond once this week. This morning and it was 58 degrees, but I think it is colder. I can’t remember feeling that cold doing a full 1.25 mile crossing in a wetsuit. It’s almost time to head back to the ANA Y pool. I did hit the Danvers Y pool this week for a short swim after a run and some lifting.

Speaking of lifting, my legs are feeling stronger since I started lifting again. I’ve been focusing mainly on my legs to try and build some strength back up. Also thinking about doing some P90x, have never tried it but I hear a lot of good things, so I might give it a go.

Categories
Cycling Swimming

Great weather for mid October

Sunday turned out to be a beauty of a day. Started out a little chilly on the bike in the morning, but by 8:30 it was noticeably warmer. The group took our usually ride up to Newburyport and this time we came back 1A. I don’t think I have done that ride in over a year and it was a nice change of scenery. Leaf peeping isn’t quite at it’s peak here yet, but it was still a great day for a ride. I managed to get 50 miles in and felt pretty good considering I haven’t been on the bike since the Century ride a few weeks back.

Ride Data

This morning a group of us headed down to the pond for the official “Closing Day”, although we will probably keep going since the water isn’t that cold yet and the weather is holding up. Mike K. and I did a double, water temp was 64 degrees. We think that Glacier George’s thermometer is broken as it has been reading 64 degrees for a week now!! Hopefully we will be back again on Wednesday for at least a full crossing.