Dirk's Junkie group - CLOSED (Page 24)

Wednesday weight in - down to from 13 to 11.

Got a small bike workout in today (not sure whether I said that already!). Not much as I was tired from yesterday's hill repeats and in the spirit of everyone else, I was also feeling a little funky this morning. A little rest and I'm all better now though!

Dirk - I hope you're still doing okay through all your struggles. It sounds like you deserve some peace and quiet!

Everyone else - I hope those of you feeling sick are gradually getting better!

John

Wed weigh in - well......I'm even......no weight loss this week. (I made a nice pot roast tonight)

Dirk - will prat for your wife. Nothing worse than leaving due to work - and crises at home.

Wed weigh in - well......I'm even......no weight loss this week. (I made a nice pot roast tonight)

Dirk - will prat for your wife. Nothing worse than leaving due to work - and crises at home.

I'm glad to see Stan and Curtis back.  Hopefully you guys will be back into the rhythm soon and the training break will allow your body to respond from the break with fire.

I'll weigh in at the line barn sometime today but I think I'm going to be even once it's done. 

Matt, I think you should trade hair-do's with your son then you can have the Bieber-fever too.  Me?  I haven't got the hairline for that.  I keep getting a little more forehead all the time.

So I'm really not good at this resting thing. I can't walk the dog this morning because it is raining here. Do you think the elliptical at the gym in low impact enough? I teach toddler gym today so I'll be at the Y anyway.  I really hate not doing anything at all.....

I can walk on the treadmill at home I guess but if you think running on the treadmill is boring walking is a nightmare!

Have a great day everyone!

I'm reading this again,  don't mean to go back to yesterdays discussion. This jumped out at me today though and makes me wonder if when I tried to up my resistance I went too hard and that is why my knees would hurt. I would guess I was well below 80 RPMs.

Interesting discussion. I need to get my bike computer back up and running so I can see some numbers!

I have wondered about body type also. My training friend is short and stocky. She pops out of her seat and powers up hills like nobody's business. I am better at sprinting on the flats. Don't get me wrong, she could wipe the floor with me any day of the week! 

I can't be sure about anything over the internet but I will toss out some speculation.  First off, you have no reason to ever turn less than 80 rpms if you can help it.  Under 80 rpms and you'd be out of the saddle out on the road.  Or you'd shift.  So only on big hills when you have run out of gearing. 

I won't say you have no business training this way, but if you do it should only be for 15-30 second blasts with intervals of light spinning in between and you consider it a 'strength' session.  As in pure leg muscle strength.

Now that would certainly be hard on the knees DEPENDING on your angle of attack on the pedals.  I don't exactly know how to tell you to do this, but you can pedal the bike using mostly quads and very little glutes, or you can use mostly glutes and very little quads.  The difference can be determined by you consciously if you have great body awareness.  One trick that often helps most people is to be told to drop their heels lower than their toes.  Voila! no more knee strain.

I will often show this to people using squats in the weight room.  We cyclists with strong quads, weak glutes tend to do squats with the weight on our toes (ball of the feet).  This puts a lot of load on the lower quads and therefore strain on the quad tendon just above the kneecap.  I will have them do some squats while watching, then I have them do them again with my fingers under the toes of their shoes.  I tell them to do it again without crushing my fingers.  All the weight goes back to the heels and now the load is being lifted primarily with glutes.  I tell them to pedal their bikes like that.

Your hip and torso angle play a part in this too on the bike as well as your cleat position and other small things like pelvis tilt and ankle angle...so seeing a fitter can be helpful...Or posting us some pictures here of you riding your bike on a trainer.

Well, heart rate zones vary for each person so any numbers we've been throwing out here are either hypotheticals or our own specific numbers.  It's possible that your number is higher.  The zones can be determined either by knowing your maximum heart rate or your heart rate at lactate threshold.  A 5k running race is a great way to get this information.  If you race a 5k and pace it well enough and put your best effort in to it, you should find both your LT and Max heart rates.  The average HR over the entire race is a good approximation of your LT heartrate and the maximum HR you see (usually after a hard sprint to the finish, then 5-10 seconds after you stop) is a decent approximation of your maximum HR.

From there, certain % ranges will be your various training zones.

You can also use perceived exertion rather than heart rate.  That's up to you.

One good test is to go for a run with your HR monitor recording data, but don't look at it.  Keep it in your pocket.  Run easy enough that you feel good and your mind wanders to all sorts of topics other than how you feel.  If you are going too hard your mind will constantly be brought back to how you feel.  I would say that you can carry a conversation while running like this, but that's not universal...depends on lung capacity relative to cardiac output I think.  If you run easy like this, then the average HR that you recorded is the HR you will want to use for the bulk of your miles.

Now, to your question....when your HR was getting too high and you walked...did you welcome the walk?  Were you getting uncomfortable?  If the answer is yes, then you were either right to walk, or should have run slower.  If the answer is "no", you felt great...then you are probably going to want to revise your heartrate target.

For 2012 I'm trying to get my house completely in order bike-wise.  I'm going to tune up my position on the bike and get the last possible bit of speed out of my equipment.  Short of a $10k super bike, the only thing to do was get the best wheels I can.

(Zipp.JPG)

Ummm?  Jeff..............................................

.....................You SUCK!!!

Your wheels cost more than my bike.  One of these days I hope to own a pair of Zipps but for now I'd simply settle for a Tri bike.

I agree.  80RPM's is a pretty slow cadence and makes me think of someone at is not really training but rather riding a bike for pleasure around a park or something.  When I got into the training regimen of triathlon the first season I had a fairly low cadence and used a lot of muscle power.  This worked alright for a while but only because my rides were only 10 miles or less but after each ride my legs would be fairly fatigued.  Once I studied up and learned a little more I began to change my cadence to a higher spin and was able to ride a much longer time and expend less energy.  The key is trying to find a sweet spot between your strength and cardio fitness.  There is a balance where your legs are trashed and you can't seem to get your breath.  Find each "zone" and then  begin to dial things into the sweet spot.

(Also a cadence that has you bouncing around on the seat is way too fast.  Pedal strokes should be smooth.)

And Jeff, I totally get the squats on the balls of your feet thing.  As a power lifter I used the balls of my feet to begin driving heavy loads up from the floor on dead lifts and from the low position when squating.  BTW, I used to have a love/hate relationship with squats.  They are soooooo good for you but they hurt so bad when doing them correctly to build strength and muscle.

I agree (yet again) with Jeff but make sure if you do the HR testing using a 5k that you run the race in such a way that you feel totally blown up at the end.  The proper way to complete this test is to know for certain that you ran as fast as possible over the whole race.  This is not a sprint for 3.11 miles but it is a sufferfest.  (I run my 5k races at a hard enough pace to wish I was done with about 2.5 miles remaining in the race.  I call this distance race a "pain management" race, Meaning, how bad can I make myself hurt, from a fitness perspective, for as long as possible.

With the discussion about HR and MHR and proper testing on the run we probably ought to also begin discussing the the proper way to test HR on the bike.  I don't have time right now to do it and I can start that tonight if someone else doesn't have time to pick it up right now.

Thanks.  I take those words as a compliment. 

I wanted to give you a tri bike, but it just wasn't a fit.  Sorry about that.

Whoops! Forgot I posted that. Sometimes I get interrupted around here .

No, just resting from s/b this week until I get more input from my PT tomorrow. Already home from the Y and used the extra time around the house to put some dinner in the crock pot. My family will be shocked that I cooked something! I'll just walk on the treadmill for a while.

My resting HR when I wake up is consistently 63 or 64. I've been told in the past I have a relatively high HR, so it wouldn't surprise me if I was on the high side of the targets. I just want to make sure it's the numbers dictating the training and I'm not twisting the numbers to do what I want!