Beer Drinker Appreciation Society (BDAS) - Open (Page 27)

And out of curiosity, what possessed you to do a MAX EFFORT 4+ mile run??? 

I have one of these and I love it.  I wear it on my wrist, which gives some weird readings once in a while but to me HR is a lagging indicator anyway.  I might move it up to the bicep area at some point.  WAY better than those chest straps which were useless for me the first 10-15 min of a workout, even with wetting it or electrode gel, etc.

And the LEDs are cool, too. 

Wait...WHAT?? You own a vineyard?  How cool!!!

I think it's channel 34 on Sirius/XM, 9934 on Dish Network.

It doesn't matter what the brand of the bike is or whether the shop deals in that particular brand. BBs are fairly universal, at least in the sense that there are no brand proprietary BBs. BBs are mostly determined by crank and almost all bikes will take a multitude of different BBs and cranks. You should really use the same crank length for both bikes though. Switching can really mess with your pedal stroke. 

As for PM on training or racing bike. In bike racing, a PM on a race bike isn't as important as it is to have it on the training bike (unless they're both the same like me, then it doesn't matter). But in triathlon, a PM is an invaluable tool for pacing, so it's very handy to have it on your TT bike. It might cost a little bit (new BB and crank for at least one bike) to get both the same but it would be well worth it. 

Otherwise, a good work around is the new Garmin vector single pedal power. It's half the cost of the two pedal version (duh) and works really well. It's actually easier to swap the vectors because, well, for one pedals are easier to swap in general, but with the Stages you have to get the torque right on the bolts when you put the arm on, this is not the case with vector. 

In my experience the brand doesn't matter so much as the mixture. When it comes to carb drinks, I use PowerBar's Perform mix. The key is to make sure that your ratio of mix to water is right. It takes about a litre of fluid to properly digest 30g of carbs. So if you put too much mix into the bottle, you'll end up feeling bloated and crampy. And a lot of times drink mixes recommend much more than that. The Perform I use, for example, wants me to mix 1 scoop (34g of carbs) for every half litre of water. Way too much. 

In races where I just use an electrolyte drink, I usually just mix a bit of salt and lemon juice with my water (not enough to make the water overly sour or salty tasting but enough to get what I need. (In fact, a lot of professional bike teams just go to McDonald's and swipe packets of salt to use in their bottles). When I did IMMT, I kept two bottles on my bike (one was just water, and the other was whatever sport drink they hand out at the aid stations). For every mouthful of sport drink, I took a sip of water. I used gels on the bike only because I couldn't carry anything else (no pockets in a tri-suit). On the run I ate a quarter of a Banana (which is how they hand them to you) at every aid station, took a cup of water and a cup of whatever sport drink they were offering. I had a water belt but never used it because there were so many aid stations. I regret wearing that stupid thing and unless I go for a very long training run (more than 12km) in the country where there are no stores or drinking fountains, I will never wear a water belt ever again. 

There's so much marketing in the athletic supplement/performance mix industry that its really hard to get around it. Even Ironman itself aids in the marketing of these products and makes huge dollars off of it. In reality, all these drinks amount to very little in actual performance improvement. No matter what supplement you use, regardless of its clever marketing, all sport drink mixes/gels are basically just salt and flavoured corn syrup. 

Like I said in my HR post, your max HR and work rate HR is largely determined by genetics. You both are perfect examples why the whole 220 minus age thing doesn't work. Some people have naturally high HRs. Frankly I surprised that you (novaboy) have such a high HR and such a low resting HR. That means you have a massive HR reserve, which theoretically is very good. I know I said before that HR work rates vary by person and are not objective, but generally, the lower the working HR, the more fit you are. But this is relative of course to your natural rhythm. A lower working HR means your heart pumps more efficiently. Chris Froome's HR at his functional threshold (about 420watts) is only in the mid 140s. That's insanely low but his max HR is probably only 170-175.

If you're (moonrocket) hitting 180 and still having a chat, that makes me think you have a high natural HR, and with quality training you'd probably see yourself running the same pace (and effort) with a lower HR (maybe 170) but you'll never be Chris Froome low (which says nothing about potential, just emphasizing the point about genetics). Have you ever been tested or told you have tachycardia? If your resting HR is high (90s-100s) you might have that. I'm the opposite. I have bradycardia, a naturally very low HR. Resting is around 34-38 and max is about 185 even when I was untrained. I would start using an HRM more often though because 180 seems a tad excessive and maybe your strap was malfunctioning or something. The highest Ive ever seen someone's zone 2 endurance HR was 160.