Threshold training

Quick update tonight.  Just finished a workout.  I want to get to bed, so I can get up and ride to work in the morning.

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days.  I haven't really done much interesting, so there really wasn't anything to say.  I did a couple rides this weekend, but haven't ridden this week, until this evening.

Last week was great.  I rode to work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  Then on Saturday, I did a fun ride with the kiddos.  I pulled Connor on the trail-a-bike, and Caitlin rode her own bike.  We did about 12 miles, with a playground stop in the middle.  Then on Saturday, I got in a good 40-mile ride with the Lifetime Fitness cycle club.  Technically, it's a club ride, but the last few times, it's basically been me and one other guy jumping ahead and riding by ourselves the whole time.  We don't talk much, but he seems to be right at about my level of riding, and we push each other pretty well.  This weekend, we did a 40 mile route with an average speed of a little over 20 mph, which is pretty good for me.  Looks like the rest of the group averaged about 17 mph.

Planning to ride to work tomorrow, but will have to drive again on Friday.  Not sure what I'm going to be able to do this weekend.  We have a lot of stuff planned, between swimming lessons, football equipment pickup, and a gymnastics show, plus getting ready to send the kids on vacation back to Ohio.  Hoping I can squeeze in some riding.

Here is some stuff I've done since my last post:

• Thursday - ride to work.  27 mile round trip.
• Friday - ride to work.  27 mile round trip
• Friday - quick run around the school.  I was going to have Connor with me for the first lap, Caitlin for the first couple laps, and keep running by myself for a while, while they played on the playground.  But Connor saw one of his friends at baseball practice, and only did about 1/2-lap.  And Caitlin ended up doing about 1 lap.  Then I just did one more by myself, and we all went home.

• Saturday - 1,400 meters in the lap pool at Lifetime Fitness.
• Saturday - 12 mile ride with the kids

• Sunday - 40 mile ride with Lifetime Fitness

• Today - Ride on the trainer after dinner.  Spinervals 32.0 - Extreme Threshold Training.  Looks like I've only done this workout once before, back in February.  My results were about the same today as they were then.  I could have done better, but my left calf started cramping up pretty bad about 3/4 of the way through the workout, so I had to take it easy for about the last 10-15 minutes.  I need to read up on what causes that kind of cramping, and see what I can do to prevent it in the future.  This is a seriously hard workout.  Really high heart rate, and lot of power.  A really good workout for raising your anaerobic threshold, and to prepare for something like a time trial.

And finally, a big congratulations to local pro Taylor Phinney, for rocking Stage 4 of the Tour of Poland!  A time trial specialist, this was his first road race win as a professional.  And he did it in stunning fashion.  That was pretty awesome.

Another ride to work, and more P90X

Rode to work again today.  Nice day for it.  I was worried about rain tonight, but it never came.  And the ride home was really fast.  I'd like to think I just had a lot of power and energy today, but I think I just had a good tailwind.

Also decided to do another P90X workout tonight.  Opted for Cardio X.  I'd never done this workout before, because it's not part of the regular P90X regimen that I did last year.  It was ok.  It's basically a bunch of exercises from other P90X workouts, like some Kenpo stuff, some Plyometrics stuff, and some core stuff, with a long yoga warm-up and a quick cool-down.  I didn't wear a heart-rate monitor, so I don't really know how hard I was working, but I was definitely sweating.

Exercise:

• Ride to work
• 30-minute walk at lunch
• Ride home from work
• P90X - Cardio X

Today's weigh-in:  173.2, again.

Ride to work, and a little P90X

Not much to say today.  I rode my bike to work, which was nice.  But after last night's hill-climbing Spinervals workout, my legs were pretty dead today.  I just didn't have any kick in my ride.

Since I rode my bike to and from work today, about 40-45 minutes each way, I didn't think I really needed to be on the trainer tonight.  But I didn't really feel like sitting around and watching TV after dinner, so I decided to burn some more calories by cranking through a P90X workout.  I chose Kenpo X.  It's not the greatest workout, but it's really a pure cardio routine, which I really wanted.  I wasn't in the mood for a weight workout tonight, so some cardio did the trick.  It burns calories, and that's what really counts.  I make it a little more difficult by doing the entire routine while holding some light weights.  I used a couple 2-pound weights today.  I feel like adding weights adds an extra element to the workout.

Exercise:

• Ride to work, and . . . 
• . . . ride home from work
• 1-hour P90X workout - Kenpo X

Today's weigh-in:  173.2.  That's more like it!

Took a little break, now I'm back

After the Triple Bypass last weekend, I took most of the week off.  I was able to ride to work one day last week, did one ride on the trainer, and swam some laps one evening, but that was really it.  It was just a pretty hectic week, and difficult to find the time.  I really wanted to do some riding over the weekend, but ended up with too much going on.

Most of this weekend was taken over by stupid stuff, like changing the headlight in my car.  Incidentally, I'd love to speak with the engineer at Chevy who decided that in order to change a headlight in a 2009 Malibu, you needed to remove the bumper.  That's just bonkers.

But one fun thing I did this weekend was watch my almost-9-year-old daughter compete in her first triathlon!  She did great for her first time.  Her bike and run times were pretty much right there with the other kids in her age group, but she needs to work on her swimming a bit.  She just recently got to the point where she can swim a full lap in the pool, so she's still learning.  And her transitions were a little slow, but that's to be expected with her first time.

 

 

She did an awesome job and we're really proud of her.  Unfortunately, it looks like this is pretty much the end of triathlon season, so we may have to wait until next year to try another one.

It looks like I'll be riding the bike to work for the rest of the week, and maybe get in some trainer sessions in the evening.  Another thing I might try in the evenings, instead of getting on the trainer, is getting back into P90X.  I don't necessarily plan on doing the full 12-week session, but might try to figure out a way to get in some weight workouts on days when I ride to work.  Kind of make up my own workout schedule.  We'll see.

Today's workouts:




Today's weigh-in:  175.4.  I took some time off, so that's understandable.  But I'm still working toward my goal of 165.

Triple Bypass photo

I broke down and decided to buy one of the pro photos from the Triple Bypass.  I've never bought one before, because they are ridiculously expensive, but decided I needed a good picture of me on the bike.  Besides, I thought the view was really nice in this shot.  This is the ride up Vail Pass.

Fun's over . . . back to training

I've spend a lot of time over the last few months doing weekend rides, and sporadically riding the trainer, while squeezing in some running and swimming when I could.  I've been focusing a lot on losing weight, and not as much on cycling training.  Riding is great, and time on the bike is always good, but it's not necessarily training.  Sometimes riding is just riding.  I guess it depends on what I'm doing.

I am a member of Spinervals.com, as mentioned here before.  I pay for the download-of-the-month membership, where for a small monthly fee, I get to select one video.  Today was the day for a new video.  I'm running out of Spinervals videos that I don't already own, but I was able to find one.  The one I selected today was Spinervals 35.0 - Cycling Technique Focus.

I just did the workout in my garage, right before I sat down to write this post.  The video was pretty nice.  It was pretty low-intensity, which is good sometimes.  Rather than the super-high-intensity workouts like the climbing intervals or threshold intervals I sometimes do, this was more focused on bike position, leg motion and relaxation.  The first set consisted of some high-speed spinning drills, spinning at a high speed while focusing on upper-body relaxation and smooth pedal strokes.  Next was a set of one-leg drills.  These drills have you clip out of the pedals with one foot and pedal with the other, concentrating again on a smooth pedal stroke all the way around.  You really need to think about putting pressure on the pedals in a circle, not just pushing down.  After doing one leg for 30 seconds, we'd switch to the other leg and do the same thing.  The third set involved quickly switching between sitting and standing, and keeping a smooth cadence throughout.  Finally, we did a another super-high-cadence set, really thinking about keeping the upper body still and not bouncing around on the saddle.

Oh, and I rode to work today.  Great day for it.  It's much cooler this week than it has been lately, so the afternoon ride home was actually pretty pleasant.

Food:

• Breakfast:  Fruit / protein smoothie
• Lunch:  Ridiculous.  I went for a walk during lunch, thinking I was doing the right thing, and somehow I walked right into a Qdoba.  Got a pork burrito.
• Dinner:  A mango jalapeno sausage with peppers and onions.

Exercise:

• Ride to and from work.  About 27 miles total.
• Walk during lunch, but I think the stop at Qdoba canceled that out.
• 50 minute ride on the trainer.

Today's weigh-in:  174.8

Triple Bypass 2013 - Westbound

The Triple Bypass is one of the biggest organized rides of the Colorado bike season.  This very challenging rides consists of 120 miles, and 10,000+ feet of climbing.  Traditionally, the route runs east-to-west from Evergreen to Avon, Colorado, over Squaw/Juniper Pass, Loveland Pass and Vail Pass.  At some point, they added a reverse route the following day, from Avon to Evergreen.  And then, for the last couple years, they have offered the Double Triple Bypass, which includes both days of riding.  I elected to do the Saturday ride, from Evergreen to Avon.

Sign-up for this ride was in the beginning of January, and I decided early on that this was a goal I wanted to set for myself this year.  I needed to lost weight and get in shape, and I decided a great way to do that was to set a goal for myself: to train for this event that was way beyond anything I'd done before.  I set up this blog to track my progress in both my weight loss and my training.

Both weight loss and extensive training were going to be necessary to complete this ride.  In January, I'd been off the bike for a few months, so I'd lost a lot of the power that I had last fall.  And I had put back on a lot of weight.  To excel in cycling, you really need to improve your power-to-weight ratio:  how much power you can output for an extended period of time, divided by your weight.  One way to improve this number is to increase your power, which means training.  The other part of the calculation is to lose weight.  I needed to do both.

My goal was to put in extensive training throughout the year, both on the trainer and on the road, and to drop my weight from 226 lbs on January 1 to 165 lbs on July 13, the date of the Triple Bypass ride.  That would mean losing 61 lbs in 7 months.  If you've been following this blog, you've seen that I've ridden the bike . . . a lot.  To date, I've put in well over 2,800 miles this year, both on the trainer and outside.  However, I wasn't able to get my weight all the way down.  I managed to get my weight down to 172.4 for a couple days, which is a loss of 53.6 lbs.  It's not exactly where I hoped to be, but certainly nothing to sneeze at.  And I still plan to keep working at it until I can get my weight back down to 165 or less.


The Triple Bypass

As I said above, I rode the westbound route of this year's Triple Bypass.  I ended up riding with a coworker named Brian who had been on a couple training rides with me over the last few weeks.  The event organizers let riders start whenever they want, generally, but recommend starting as early as possible to avoid the inevitable afternoon storms.  We had planned to start between 6:00 and 6:30AM, but didn't end up hopping on the bikes until around 6:50AM.

It was early, but light enough that we didn't need to bring lights with us, which was nice.  What I did carry was a little food, some Skratch Labs drink mix powder, a light rain jacket, some thin liner gloves, my phone, ID and a little cash, just in case.

We headed up Squaw Pass Road, which heads up to Squaw Pass (obviously) and eventually Juniper Pass.  Essentially, they are the same, so that only counts as one pass.  The weather was nice, and the road was quiet.  The organizers had closed the road, so there were really only some support vehicles and cops driving around.  And a whole lot of cyclists.

Near the top of Juniper Pass.

I stopped for a quick photo on the way up, shortly before the first aid station.  At this point, we had climbed about 3,100 feet in 17 miles or so.  After hanging around the aid station for a bit to grab some munchies and go to the bathroom, we continued on.  Shortly after the aid station, we passed the entrance to the Mt. Evans Road and Echo Lake, and then headed down to the town of Idaho Springs, reaching a top speed of around 45 mph.  Very, very fun.  That pass took about 1:45 to climb 17 miles, and another 20 minutes or so to descend 17 miles.

After passing through Idaho Springs, we had about another 23 miles of gradual climbing up further into the mountains, passing through Georgetown (and another aid station), Silver Plume and Bakerville.  This was a kind of frustrating section of the ride.  A lot of it was in forest and on bike trails, continuously climbing without any sign of where we were going.  I like to have some visual references so I can see how much farther I have to go, but this just seemed endless.

Passing under the Georgetown Loop Railroad.

Finally, we broke out of the trees and into the open air near Loveland ski area, and a huge aid station.  Lisa and the kiddos met us here.  We hung around and had a little lunch, refilled some water bottles, and went to the bathroom.  Then it was time to climb Loveland Pass.  Truthfully, this was a little easier than I expected.  It was steep, but not unbearable, and relatively short.  Probably around 4 miles at about 5.5% grade.  And the views were incredible.

Me and the kiddos at the Loveland aid station.

Near the top of Loveland Pass.

Finally, Loveland Pass, the Continental Divide, and the highest point on the ride at 11,990 feet.  What a great climb, and you really can't beat the views.

At the top of Loveland Pass.

After Loveland Pass, we headed down into Keystone, another screaming fast descent.  Once in Keystone, we took a turn and headed over Swan Mountain, one of the great climbs on the 2011 USA Pro Challenge race, where a massive amount of fans showed up to cheer on the race.  If you search YouTube for "usa pro challenge swan mountain", you'll see what I'm talking about.

After descending Swan Mountain, we headed into Breckenridge and another aid station.  After a quick bite and refilling the water bottles again, we were just getting on the bikes when it started to rain a bit.  It wasn't much, but enough for me to don the rain jacket I had stuffed in my back pocket.  We hit the road (actually a trail at that point) and started moving.  After about 2 minutes, the rain stopped and the sun came out, and I was roasting inside my rain jacket.  I didn't feel like stopping to take it off, so I just unzipped it and kept moving.  That's probably for the best, because about 15 minutes later, the skies opened up and we got dumped it.  It was a lot of rain.  I mean, a. lot. of. rain.  That lasted pretty much until we got to Copper Mountain.  I think about 30 minutes or so.  I was completely drenched.  My jacket was fine, but I didn't have rain pants or shoe covers or anything.

We quickly road through Copper Mountain, then hit another bike trail at the end of town, and started heading up to Vail Pass.  This section of the ride was all on bike trail.  It was a little crowded, but not too bad.  And I think I posed for a pretty good picture from the professional photographer parked on the side of the trail.  I assume I'll see those photos in a few days or so.  At about mile 93 we got to Vail Pass and the final aid station.  The was absolutely the best aid station, because they had tons of watermelon.  After seen just oranges and bananas at all the previous aid stations, eating a bunch of watermelon was pretty awesome.

After leaving Vail Pass, it was basically all downhill.  We hauled ass downhill for about 5 miles on a narrow bike trail, occasionally riding basically on the shoulder of I-70, which was interesting, before eventually crossing under the highway to a somewhat wooded section, and then onto old Route 6, which is now just a giant bike lane.  This has been the site of the uphill time trials in the 1st and 3rd editions of the USA Pro Challenge, and the old Coors Classic.  Fortunately, we were going down it, not up.  The grade was still generally downhill all the way through Vail, riding through town and along some frontage roads.  Eventually, we left Vail, continuing our ride pretty much alongside I-70 all the way to Avon, before finally turning into the town of Avon and the finish line.

I mustered up a last bit of energy and rode hard into the finish, where Lisa and the kids were waiting.  I grabbed my finish line medal as I rode by, tossed down the bike and fell in a heap.  That was a long, long day.  Overall, it was basically 8 hours or riding time, and about 10 1/2 hours overall.  I really needed to cut down my aid station time.  That was pretty ridiculous.

At the finish.

Brian and me.  Brian is sporting one of our awesome Davis Partnership jerseys our company ordered for a big ride last year.

I wasn't feeling very good, and needed to lay down for a minute.

We stumbled our way over to the finish line festivities and grabbed some lemonade and eventually some dinner before just relaxing for a bit.  Then, a quick shower at the local rec center, and hopped back in the car for the long, long ride home.  (That was a pretty epic drive, but it is probably a story for another time).

Note:  For more photos, the Triple Bypass website has some great shots that really show off the scenery on this ride.  It was really pretty amazing, and these shots show it off a lot more than my crappy cell-phone pics.  Check them out HERE.


Exercise:

• Triple Bypass, duh.  118 miles, 12,200 feet of elevation gain.  Strava report HERE, Garmin Connect below.
• That was Saturday.  I took yesterday off, watched the Tour de France, and did some work from home.  But today, I went for another 4-mile run while my daughter was in her gymnastics class.

The End?
Of course not!  I'm just getting started!  This has been a great year so far, and which this might have been the craziest ride of the year, I certainly have more stuff planned.  I don't know if I have any big plans for August, bike-wise, but I am planning on a couple September rides that should be pretty good, so stay tuned.  In August, we have some vacation stuff planned, which may include some mountain biking, but probably not road riding.  Then, the kids are back to school and the USA Pro Challenge is in town, so things will be a little crazy.  Might just continue to ride with the Lifetime Fitness folks when I can.

And I'm sure I'll be doing some nice rides in October, too.  But the definite plan for October is another 5k run with Caitlin, at Red Rocks.  That should be a good one, so stay tuned!

Not sure if I'm going to keep posting the daily food and weight updates any more.  I'll probably post occassionally about my weight, just to keep tabs on how I'm going, but the July 13 date was really my goal for the year, so I'm not going to keep making boring posts about that.  I'll probably only post when I have something interesting to say, which is probably best for my readership.  We'll see.  I've been really busy with work and stuff lately, so trying to write new posts has been a little challenging.  Especially if I was feeling like I needed to write something every day.  So, keep on reading to see what I'm up to, and what my weight it down to, and follow my continuing adventures.

And for anyone who has been reading this thing all year, I'm sorry.  I'm sure you had better stuff to do, and I'm not sure this was really that exciting.  But thank you anyway.

--brent

Triple Bypass (preview)

Wanted to make a quick post to just say that I completed the Triple Bypass ride on Saturday.  120 miles, 12,000 feet of climbing.  About 8 hours of time on the bike, plus some times at the aid stations.  A great time, and I plan to write a full post about it, but I needed to do some work tonight, so didn't have time.  I'll write a full report in the next day or so.

Stay tuned . . .

Well, I'm 40 now.

So, it's finally happened. I turned 40 years old today. It seems like it should be a bigger deal, but today feels pretty much like yesterday.

I haven't been posting as much lately, partly because it was starting to seem a little pointless to write a post when there wasn't much going on, and partly because my wife has been using the laptop every night to get some work done. I can write my posts in my phone or tablet, but I can't really format them the way I like. Right now, I'm forcing her to watch Drunk History online, so she's got the laptop and I'm writing on my tablet. I'll just have to do the formatting later.

I forgot to mention the that I went back the doctor last Friday for a follow-up. It was pretty straightforward. I got the go-ahead to do whatever I wanted, with no restrictions. Which was good news, since that's basically what I'd been doing for the past few weeks anyway.

I'm basically ready for my Triple Bypass ride in a couple days. I've still been training, but I've kind of slowed down a little bit, so I'm not too tired come Saturday morning. I did ride the trainer a bit last night, and rode to work today. I was really happy with my work ride. I really had the speed cranked up. Not sure if I had a tailwind or what, but I was rockin'. I think I'm going to take Friday off just to save my energy, and make sure I have everything packed up for a really early morning on Saturday.

Food:

• Breakfast: Fruit / protein smoothie
• Lunch: Had a free lunch today at work. Subway.  I usually like Subway, but only when I decide what I eat.  Premade Subway is pretty annoying.
• Dinner:  Totally unhealthy dinner at Chili's.  It's my birthday, so whatever.  As good an excuse as any.  Cheese fries and some sliders.

Exercise:

• Rode to work today.  My Garmin report is kind of messed up because I actually rode the trainer for a bit last night with the GPS off, then went for a ride around the neighborhood to test some derailleur adjustments, then some more riding on the trainer.  Then, I actually forgot to reset the bike computer, and rode to and from work today.  So, it shows me riding last night, doing nothing for 8 hours, riding to work, doing nothing for 8 hours, then riding home, when I finally remembered to reset the computer.  It shows as a 21 hour ride.

Today's weigh-in:  177.8.  Disappointing, but expected.  I've been slacking.  I need to get back on the ball.

Last big training ride

The Triple Bypass is in a little less than a week, and I guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be.  I rode with a guy from my office and another guy who works at a local hospital, and his wife, all of whom are doing the Triple Bypass next weekend.

We started our ride in Boulder this morning, then after a short ride through town, headed up into the foothills.  We climbed Lee Hill Dr. and Lefthand Canyon up to Ward, where we stopped for a quick drink.  That actually took care of most of the climbing for the day.  From Ward, it was a lot of downhill to Nederland, followed by some moderate up-and-down to the top of Coal Creek Canyon.  We descended Coal Creek Canyon via the same route as last weekend, which includes a nice 3-mile climb in the middle.  After that, I headed back north to Boulder, while my friend Brian headed towards Golden and eventually back to Denver and home.

Once back in Boulder, I rode past my car to get in a final climb of Flagstaff Mountain before heading back to an ice-cold Coke waiting for me in the car.  Also in the car was an ice-cold Gatorade Recovery drink.  Holy cow, that crap is disgusting.  I had it once before, and it was terrible then.  I'm not sure why I thought it might be better this time.  A good recovery drink is very helpful after a long ride, but man, that stuff is terrible.  I should have just brought a chocolate milk instead.  Seriously, Gatorade  Recover is just really, really bad.

Looking down on Boulder from the road to the Flagstaff Amphitheater.

Oh, and I haven't posted for a couple days, because I really haven't done much.  But I did swim a mile in the lap pool yesterday.  Farthest I've ever gone.  But that's more due to time constraints than anything else.  On a beautiful day, I love swimming in the outdoor lap pool at Lifetime Fitness.

Food:

• Breakfast:  Fruit / protein smoothie
• Lunch:  Grabbed a burger at Wendy's on the way home from my ride, for a really, really late lunch.  I know it's terrible for me, but I felt like I deserved it.
• Dinner:  Steak fajita, with some farmer's market steak.

Exercise:

• 70 mile bike ride, with 7,500 feet of climbing.  Awesome.

 

Today's weigh-in:  173.6

Happy 4th!

Quick post today.  Haven't posted the last couple days because I haven't really done anything.  Today was a holiday, so I was able to squeeze in a couple workouts.

This morning, I got up and ran in the Flapjacks and Firecrackers 4-mile run put on by the City of Northglenn, just down the road from us.  I ran with my daughter again, which is always fun.  And this time, she got 3rd in her age group!  And that's even more impressive because she's only eight, and the age group was from 0-17 years old!  She got beat by a 14 and 17-year-old, so I think that's pretty damn great.  She got a medal and everything!

She's awesome.

After lunch today, I got in a bike ride while the rest of the family went out to get drinks and snacks for our night out at the Thornton fireworks show.  It was close to 40 miles, and incorporated a time trial that the Lifetime Fitness cycle club does every week.  I haven't been able to ride it with them because it's on Thursday nights, and I just can't get there after work.  The Lifetime ride is about 25 miles, I think, and incorporates an 8-mile loop that they record as a time trial.  Fortunately, that loop is also a Strava segment, so I was able to compare my Strava times on that loop to previous times from the Lifetime folks.  I was pretty happy to see that my time today put me in 10th overall on that Strava segment, and 3rd out of 12 of the Lifetime riders who recorded that segment on Strava.  And considering I was dealing with kind of an ugly headwind, that's even more impressive.  Plus, I rode from home instead of from Lifetime, which meant I had to put in a longer ride just to get to the start of the time trial.

Food:

• Breakfast:  Bowl of Special K
• Lunch:  Just grabbed a protein bar before I went out for my ride.
• Dinner:  Not good.  We grabbed some dinner and took it to the fireworks tonight.  Considering it's basically a 5-hour event (the local symphony orchestra, a band, some other stuff, and the fireworks themselves), we loaded up on food.  Picked up a bucket of KFC, plus soda and snacks.  Not my best night.

Exercise:

• 4 mile run this morning.
• 40 mile bike ride this afternoon.

Today's weigh-in:  175.4

Running and riding

Went for a four-mile run during my daughter's gymnastics class, then went for a bike ride after dinner.  It got dark a little quicker than I expected, and I spent most of the ride in the dark, but I had my lights with me.  A couple roads felt a little sketchy, but Riverdale was really nice.  No traffic, and no street lights.  And nice cool temperatures.  It was really peaceful.

Food:

• Breakfast:  Fruit / protein smoothie
• Lunch:  Cheesesteak
• Dinner:  Buffalo bratwurst.  Mmmmm.....

Exercise:

• 4 mile run
• 21 mile ride in the dark

Today's weigh-in:  172.4, again