Tag: CompuTrainer

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Ironman Lake Placid

Last 12 Miles of Lake Placid

I did my endurance ride this morning on the CompuTrainer and started the Lake Placid real course video in Keene, so about a 41.5 mile ride. It was the first time that I did the last 12 miles where the three bears are. The CompuTrainer said that the grade was between 2% and 6%. I think most of the time it was between 2-3%. I actually think the beginning of the course is harder than the ending, but I haven’t riden the actual course yet so I don’t know. My only reference is the CompuTrainer real course video. The reason I think it is easier is because while it is a hill, you tend to stay in the same gearing and spin. The hills or hill really is just very long and not extremely steep. I did ride the entire time in the big chainring, I will be curious to see if that is possible on the real course.

Weight: 167

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Ironman Lake Placid

Snow day

I didn’t make it out to run yesterday. The weather has not been very cooperative on my run days so far it is either zero out or snowing. Starting on Tuesday it pretty much snowed right through yesterday afternoon. I wouldn’t mind so much going out for a run in the snow, but I’m a littl leary of being hit by a car or snow plow. The only working out I ended up doing was snow blowing, shoveling and carrying wood from the wood pile over to my back deck. I think I did that for the majority of the day!

This morning I did get my workout in and it was a pretty good one. Spent an hour on the CompuTrainer using the 3D software. I road the Ironman Kona course, because it allows you to stay in one gear for longer periods of time as the grade changes or more gradual. It was good for the Tempo ride that I needed to do. I was able to keep a nice steady cadence. My average heart rate was 151 and never went over 160. After doing that for an hour I reset the course and then do a 15 minute cool down. I keep track of all my running and biking data in Training Peaks software. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to include the cooldown performance in with the other data or not. At this point I have just been putting everything in.

Weight: 168.8

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Ironman Lake Placid

Are you mentally ready?

This morning I was on the CompuTrainer once again and doing intervals. If you recall from the last time I did this half way through the second set I just fell apart. The last 10 minute interval was even worse, probably made it 3 minutes into it before I just couldn’t keep pace. All week I’ve been thinking about that, a lot of thoughts running through my head. Was the CompuTrainer not calibrated right for the test that set the interval peaks? Did I really lose that much over vacation by not being on the bike and eating poorly? Was it just a bad day? Not hydrated?

Anyway, lots of things to think about over the course of the week. The one thing I wanted to be for this morning was mentally ready to ride. I kept going over the session in my head, thinking about the cadence I wanted to keep. I absolutely was not going to let my cadence drop because that would be sure failure, it is just to hard to bring it back up. Your mental attitude has a lot to do with what you are able to accomplish, if you don’t believe, it won’t happen for you.

I started out the session gradually building up to around a 65% effort and then there are 5 short intervals, 30 seconds hard, 30 seconds easy. Then the first 10 minute interval starts and I knew I would make it through it. It certainly wasn’t going to be easy, but I knew I could last 10 minutes and I watched my HR climb to 163 by the end of it. Then an easy 5 minutes and my HR recovered to 141 before the next interval started. Let me tell you, that was a long 10 minutes. I just kept thinking keep the cadence up. This time the HR climbed to 168 and the recovery 5 minutes had it back down to 145. Finally the last 10 minute interval, about 7 minutes in my legs were really starting to burn but I was keeping the cadence right around 88-90. I learned from the last time if I let it drop my legs wouldn’t have enough keep going. That last 3 minutes seemed to last forever, my HR went to 170 (Not sure what Coach/Nutritionist Melinda will think of that 🙂 ) and my legs were seriously hurting for the last minute. Never so happy to just spin my legs for 20 minutes after that.

So the difference between this week and last week was an average of 14 Watts or about 8%. Did my body change that much over the course of a week? I doubt it, I think I was just better mentally prepared for the session.

Weight: 169.2

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Ironman Lake Placid

Vacations are bad

Yup, that’s right, vacations are bad. It doesn’t take much to lose any gains in fitness and vacations seem to accelerate those loses. Probably for two reasons, poor diet on vacation and less exercise. Sure, you will get physical activity in walking around Disney and you might even get out for a run, but most likely you will not put in the hours that you would have training if you were not on vacation. But hey, that is what vacations are for, being lazy.

I was on the CompuTrainer this morning for my Tempo ride. It was a much better ride than on Tuesday when I pretty much died on the thing. My heart rate was higher than it was two weeks ago when I did the same ride at pretty much the same power output. So, yeah, I’m still feeling the effects of vacation. It felt good to be able to sustain the effort for the entire workout today though and not have to back off. I can really feel it in my legs right now and since we had another 10 inches of snow drop last night I really felt it in my legs while snow blowing. After my rides now I’ve started taking a product from Hammer Nutrition called Recoverite. I will give it a try over the next month or two and see if I feel like it makes any difference in my recovery after my rides. During the rides I always use Perpetuem, another Hammer product, to keep hydrated and replace some of the calories being burned. I was going to use Gatorade but figured since I’m going to use Perpetuem on race day I might as well use it all through my training. Today I actually had two bottles of Perpetuem even though the ride was just over an hour, the second was after an hour of snow blowing. Maybe snow blowing will replace swimming as an event in Triathlon.

Weight: 168.8

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Ironman Lake Placid

Too Much Ice Cream

Well, today was the first day back working out since the trip to Florida. I really paid the price this morning for not having been on the CompuTrainer in 12 days. I had already decided before I left that I would repeat the week 6 workout for the PIG program. It was a good thing I did because next weeks interval session is harder than this weeks. Two weeks ago when I did this session I made it to the third interval of the main set before I started to fade. This time around I made it halfway through the second interval and just had nothing. I ended up doing 30 seconds hard and resting for the rest of the second interval and then made it 5 minutes into the third before I had to do the same there. Obviously I had too much ice cream on vacation and I’m now fat and out of shape. The good thing is there are no more vacations between now and Ironman.

I did change one thing with the CompuTrainer, instead of using my old bike on the trainer I put the bike I will be riding in the Ironman, my Specialized Transition Expert, on the trainer. The geometry of the bikes is different, even though I have tried to set them up the same, one is a road bike and the other a Tri bike. It felt good to be on the Specialized, the shifting is smoother and I’m able to stay in the aero position longer. The bad thing about changing the bikes is I did not have a water bottle cage on this one so I set my water bottle on the car. Well, after the workout I forgot to bring the water bottle upstairs with me and now it is out on Route 133. So, if you see a nice insulated water bottle on 133, that would be mine.

Weight: 170.2 (Too much ice cream!!! Back to salad 🙁 )

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Ironman Lake Placid

The Big Snow

Yesterday we had a big snow storm come through and drop 20 inches of snow. That put a little kink in my workout plans. I had planned on running, but when I woke up there was already a foot of snow on the ground and none of the plows had gone by. My workout ended up being blowing snow and shoveling. I probably spent over 3 hours cleaning up the driveway between the three or four times I was out there. Never did get out for that run.

This morning I had no excuse though as the CompuTrainer sits down in the garage, so I was down there at 4:45 this morning for my Tempo ride. I was able to hold 215 watts for an hour and felt good the entire time. That was followed up by a 15 minute cooldown.

Weight: 168.6

Snow Storm
Snow Storm
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Ironman Lake Placid

CompuTrainer – Intervals

I was back on the CompuTrainer this morning. This is the first Session since the Test Set that I did last thursday that recalibrated my wattage for the coming weeks. I knew I should have slacked off on that Test!!! On the Interval training day I use the coaching software for my workout. Using a text editor on the computer you simply enter in the load/resistance that you want the trainer to be at and the duration. The first ten minutes is usually building up to about 70% of your test wattage or what they refer to as CP30. Then for 5 minutes you go 30 seconds at 100% 30 seconds at 50%. Once that is done the main set starts and today it was 3 10 minute intervals of 105% with 5 minutes of rest in between at 50% followed by a cool down of 15 minutes at 50%.

I started off pretty well but I knew by the time I got to that third 10 minutes I was going to be hurting. Looking back at the workout now in the coaching software I can see that I was able to keep my cadence steady for the first and second 10 minute intervals. The heart rate would shoot up to around 165-169 and come back to around 140 in between. The last 10 minute interval was when I fell apart, at about 7 minutes into it. On the chart I can see my cadence dropping off and picking up and finally just drops and I had to grind out the last 2 minutes standing up. I can see I will be working much harder after that last Test upped the wattage. Hopefully this will all pay off this summer.

Weight: 169.5

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Ironman Lake Placid

The Endurance Ride

Sunday is the long ride, this week the plan called for only an hour and a half ride. I think it was because of the Test Set on Thursday. The other reason is because the program has you build up over 4-5 weeks and then drop back and build again. Today I loaded up a course from my Garmin into the CompuTrainer. It is a ride that we had done a couple times at the end of the year and I was curious to see how it felt on the Trainer. My average speed was a little faster than when we were riding, but I think that is understandable since the last time we were riding the course it was between 30-40 degrees outside.

The ride goes from Boxford up to Newburyport and back down through West Newbury and Georgetown. While the 3D course is interesting to watch, it was more interesting to watch the course profile and see where I was along the course and remember what it was like being on the section of the ride outdoors. The hills certainly felt pretty realistic! In the time I had I did a little over 28 miles of the 40 mile ride. My average Watts were 195, HR 147, MPH 19, Cadence 87. Julie came and rode her bike on the Cyclops Fluid Trainer that I have following along the Lake Placid video.

Weight: 168.8

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Ironman Lake Placid

CompuTrainer Test Set

This morning was test day for the CompuTrainer P.I.G. program. The last time I did this test I had just setup the trainer and didn’t really understand what I was doing. I was probably paying a little too much attention to the mph value and the Metal Man I was racing and average 209 watts for the 30 minute test. This time I was a more focused and did 248.6 watts for the test with an average heart rate of 159.2. I’m not sure if this was a good thing or bad thing yet, because the next 4-5 weeks training is going to be based off of this new average watts number. I’m happy with the improvement and I don’t expect there to be such a dramatic jump for the next test. I’m definitely looking forward to the warmer weather to see how this all translates to actually riding on the road.

Before the 30 minute test you are supposed to ride progressively up to 90% of your current maximum wattage between the 20-25 minute mark, from there you just spin easy and start the test. Watching my numbers and seeing how my legs felt during the warmup I was thinking I might be able to average 230-235 watts. I was concerned about being able to keep up the effort for the entire 10 mile course or 30 minute ride. As it turned out I was comfortable keeping the pace around 240 and then on the uphills going up to around 270-285 for short periods of time. I did start to fade over the last 3 or 4 minutes though, proably averaged around 230, just couldn’t keep the RPMs up.

Ride stats:
Watts: 248
MPH: 21.5
HR: 159
Cadence: 87
Overall SpinScan: 57 – that needs some work

Weight: 169

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Ironman Lake Placid

Active Recovery Ride

Up early and on the CompuTrainer this morning. Today was an Active Recovery ride, meaning about 60% effort for an hour. Usually tuesday is an interval based training day, but the scheduled called for the recovery ride because the week five re-test is coming up. On Thursday I’ll be doing the same test that I did at the start of the program to see if I’ve improved at all and to use that score for the basis of the next four weeks training.

Average power over the course of the ride was 170 watts and my average heart rate was 119 with a max of 128. Since I knew that I wasn’t going to be exerting a lot of effort for the ride today I tried to focus on my Spinscan numbers. Spinscan is a way to measure the efficiency of your pedal stroke. They say that the average road cyclist is between 70 and 80, mine is usually 60 and today it was 65.

Weight: 171