I headed out the door mid-afternoon yesterday for a fast ride down to Discovery Park with the goal of timing my ride while on the American River Parkway Trail - excluding the segment of the ride on the hills getting to and from it. Unfortunately, I forgot to hit the lap button on the Garmin when I got to William Pond, but I did get a nice reading on this flat stretch coming back from Discovery from CSUS to William Pond.
The trace is shown above. I am really liking my results on this section of ride as everything is completely locked in. My average HR is 153 - very close to my max here of 156, and as you can see, I was pretty much glued to 153 this whole segment. The speed is also very consistent, as is my rather slow cadence.
The slow cadence was intentional, as I haven't ridden at a low cadence in about a year, and wanted to see how it affected my breathing, power, speed, and fatigue. I'll say for the record, this ride HURT. Pushing tall gears does save some cardio, but wow does it ever create muscle fatigue. Of course, the blistering pace did it's fair share of damage too.
The entire ride was done solo - IE: zero drafting time. The winds seemed a little unfavorable too. I must have passed a dozen riders on this stretch, and nobody even tried to jump on my wheel. It's a pretty good indicator of how challenging the speed was with the prevailing winds. I'm going to keep at this ride, perhaps once a week, and see what happens. My legs are still sore, 24 hours later.
3 comments:
So your legs are singing a bit from the beating. high gears with a high pace is a nice cocktail to get them wasted.
Love all of the data you get from your rides. one day I may take the leap and spend the $$ but for now HR is my level of speed :))
That's a good heart rate, isn't it!? I don't know that much about it but it seems low.
I got my full-up Garmin 305 for $250 from Amazon, so they are getting cheaper. Need it for my bent ticker, but hard to train without one.
Normal HR max is 220-age. Lactic acid threshold (threshold power point) is at 147-152 for me, or perhaps a bit more now, as my heart and I are stronger now.
I completely burned through my liver glycogen right at the end of this trace and struggled at the start of the ride home. The PowerBar I ate at Discovery was like matches thrown into a forest fire. Whoooooooof - gone!
Post a Comment