Tag: CompuTrainer

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Cycling Running Swimming

CompuTrainer is paying off

Cycling

I wasn’t sure if the CompuTrainer was ever going to pay off. It seemed like I just couldn’t get any faster last year. Worked all winter, then we went out and did long slow rides. Seemed liked month after month my average speed was always around 18 mph.

This winter I started fresh with the CompuTrainer and decided that I needed to do at least four rides a week. The first two workouts of the week are the hardest. Tuesday is usually a 6 x 6 minute at 100%+ of FTP and then Thursday is 2 x 20 minutes at 90% of FTP. Then there is the long endurance ride and a Tempo ride. Last year I just did the first two and the endurance ride. I think adding the Tempo ride has really helped.

Every ride so far in April has been over 19 mph. The last ride being at 20.1 mph this past Saturday for 46 miles. I’ve only been able to maintain that speed for that distance once before and that was on a much flatter course. I’m feeling much more comfortable in the aero position on the bike and I’m able to hold pace for longer periods of time. I also feel like I really haven’t even pushed it yet.

Looking forward to getting out there this weekend and seeing what I can do when we go over 50 miles.

Running

On the running front, I signed up for another half-marathon. Probably won’t be any personal bests this time. I told a friend that I would pace her son to his first half-marathon finish. He has never run more than 8 miles, but I’m sure he will do just fine.

Swimming

Swimming is slowly improving. Pond season is almost here and it will be good to get some longer swims in. I enjoy the shorter interval training though.

The weight has been pretty steady at bouncing between 155 and 157.

Weight: 156lbs

Categories
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
Triathlon

You don’t want that!

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been trying to lose weight for the upcoming season. Unfortunately things got a little bit out of control this past week when I got the stomach bug that my son managed to pick up from school. That’s a quick way to drop some serious pounds quick. Last Monday I posted that I weighed in at 162, this week the weight loss continued and I was 161. However, the last couple of days I was as low as 158. Clearly a large part of that was just being “empty” from being so sick, but also a bit dehydrated too. They always say to drink plenty of fluids, but that is easier said than done. Now that the stomach is feeling better hopefully I can continue the slower weight loss descent.

Fins

I bought some fins last week to try out in the pool and finally got to use them this morning. I was actually able to keep up when we did the kick sets today. Usually I do about half the distance everyone else is doing. Looking forward to using them more and building up my kicking strength. I should be able to hit the pool 3 times this week since the Prep will not be at the Y Wednesday morning.

CompuTrainer

I did have a few good rides on the CompuTrainer, but after being sick it was a tough weekend. I attempted to do Thursdays session on Saturday morning. That was ok and I made it through, but my heart rate was way higher than normal, topping out around 170-172. Usually for that ride it is 160-162. That left me pretty much wasted for the Sunday long ride, where I managed to eek out a mere 1 hour and 50 minutes. I’m hoping tomorrow will be a better morning. It is the last week of this 4 week build up and the hardest of the sessions I will have to do.

Also need to start picking up the running now. Great Bay half is 2 months away and I’m barely running 10 miles a week, if that!

Weight: 161

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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
Ironman Lake Placid

Two days of sun in a row!!!

Set the alarm a little bit later this morning and did a medium effort ride on the CompuTrainer. Tried to keep my heart rate between 145-155 and my cadence above 90 for the entire ride. It was a good ride to loosen up the legs again after the long run on Wednesday. I may switch my days up a little and bike on Friday and swim and run easy on Thursday. It’s good to be on the bike, but my legs are too beat up to go all out after going all out on Tuesday and following it with a long run on Wednesday. Maybe my long runs will get better and I will be able to push myself more on Thursday, will have to wait and see.

Looking forward to my first swim and run from the pond in the morning. It’s seems like this day was never going to come!

Weight: 162.4

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

60 Days….

As I’m writing this the little count down clock in the corner of my computer screen tells me that there is 60 days and 20 hours to go before the start of Ironman Lake Placid. I feel like my training so far has gone pretty well for the time that I have. Looking at the training plan that our Tri group is working from it has us training up to 13 and 14 hours at this point and going to as much as 20. Unfortunately I just don’t have that kind of time so I will have to get by with the time that I do have. Last week we were supposed to hit 16 hours, I managed a solid 11 hours.

Looking at the individual sports and breaking down the time, I usually fall far short when it comes to the swimming portion of the training program, should be at 3 hours and I’m closer to 1.5 hours. I’m not really concerned about the swim though.

Next up is the bike, currently I’m riding 3 days a week, two days on the trainer and the long weekend ride. It would be nice to get 1 of those training rides outside, but the weather is just not cooperating and I’m not riding in the rain for the fun of it. Last weekend I managed 81 miles in 4.5 hours on the long ride and felt like I could keep going so that was good. This weekend depending on the time I may try to push it to 90 miles in 5 hours. My Tuesday morning CompuTrainer ride, yup the one I did this morning, I feel like is my most important ride. It is the ride where I really push and keep the tempo high for an hour long session followed by a cooldown. This ride makes the long weekend ride feel easier or at least I feel like my heart isn’t working as hard to maintain our endurance ride pace.

Running is probably my weakest point right now. I do manage to get in my long run on Wednesday mornings, doing 12 miles. I only run 5 or 7 miles on Monday or Friday with my swimming so at most I’m only getting in 26 miles a week. With the weather getting warmer I’m hoping to be able to get to the pond early and have enough time to run afterward that I can get in maybe 8 miles on monday and friday. Maybe the weather will cooperate and this friday will be the first!

I’ve been asked quite a few times what my goals are for the Ironman and I’ve avoided answering them specifically because I didn’t have an idea of what was realistic. As we get closer though I’m starting to get a good feeling for what I will be capable of and I believe it will be under 12 hours. After Patriot and the training weekend at Lake Placid I will definitely know if that is realistic, but at this point I think it is. We will see a month from now if I revise that number up or down 🙂

Weight: 163

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Yes, it is still raining

Not much too report today. Did a 1 hour 15 minute ride on the CompuTrainer this morning. It was a recovery ride to recover from the hard ride on tuesday and long run yesterday. The goal was to keep my heart rate under 140 for the entire ride and keep the candence at 90. Really it was just about trying to spin some of the tired/soreness from my legs.

Weight: 164

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Rain and more Rain

Looks like it is going to rain all week. I had hoped to start going outside for a few of my rides during the week in the morning, but the weather is just not cooperating. Headed down to the garage again this morning and did a Tempo ride on the CompuTrainer. Pretty much had the Metal Man pace me, except for the fact that I wanted to beat him so pushed a little harder than I probably was supposed to be felt pretty good at the end. The best part of the ride today was that I felt like I kept a good cadence, I was up around 93-94 rpms for the entire ride. Heart rate was pretty high for the last half hour, right around 158-160.

Tempo Ride

Weight: 163.5

Categories
Ironman Lake Placid

Tuesday Tempo Ride

Started out the morning thinking I was going to use the coaching software and let it determine the power and intervals. Then Mackenzie walked into the garage at 5:15am upset about a Mosquito in her room 10 minutes into the ride. So I got a good warmup in!!

After getting Mackenzie back to bed, I decided to skip the coaching software and do a Tempo ride on the Kona course. So for an hour ride I held just over 230 watts with an average heart rate of 150. Turned out to be a good workout and I followed it with a 15 minute cooldown of the same course at about 150 watts or so.

Tempo Ride

Nutrition:
Ride – One bottle of gatorade
Post ride – Glass of milk with a serving of Hammer Recoverite and Hammer Whey Protein. Followed a little later by breakfast, 4 eggs, bagel and two more gatorade.

Weight: 162.6