Stephanie’s Fitness Blog

I did it!! There was a fair bit of pain, blood, sweat, and nearly tears … but I did it!

I did a detailed write-up on my personal blog, so I’ll just send any curious readers there …

Workout:

• Type: Cycle
• Date: 06/15/2008
• Time: 09:00:00
• Total Time: 7:10:40.00
• Average Heart rate: 166
• Max Heart rate: 187
• Calories: 5615
• Distance: 48.16 miles
• Average Speed: 6.71 mph
• Max Speed: 31.7 mph
• Ascent: 8,102 ft
• Descent: 8,002 ft

Day before the big race, easy spin. Wasn’t quite the ride I’d hoped it would be.

Workout:

• Type: Cycle
• Date: 06/14/2008
• Time: 14:40:00
• Total Time: 1:06:00.00
• Distance: 16.06 miles
• Average Speed: 14.6 mph
• Max Speed: 27.4 mph
• Ascent: 522 ft
• Descent: 505 ft

I’ve been icing and elevating like crazy, and the knee’s still really painful. Today’s ride is an easy road ride, and a test to see how the knee’s doing.

The knee failed! I took a pretty flat route, and tried as much as possible to keep spinning lightly and keep the stress off the knee. Every pedal stroke is hurting. And I’ve got a gigantic race in days?! This is no good. So I’m off to see the doctor tomorrow.

Workout:

• Type: Cycle
• Date: 06/11/2008
• Time: 18:30:00
• Total Time: 1:14:00.00
• Average Heart rate: 155
• Max Heart rate: 169
• Calories: 826
• Distance: 17.6 miles
• Average Speed: 14.27 mph
• Max Speed: 24.3 mph
• Ascent: 552 ft
• Descent: 598 ft

I’m still learning to do HR interval rides using my Garmin. And I still have difficulty keeping my HR precisely where I want it. I have trouble watching both the road and my HR monitor, so usually either my HR will dip somewhere, or I’ll run off the road while staring at my monitor.

Today’s ride was cadence intervals. Now I don’t actually have a cadence meter. Toward the beginning of a road ride I just count my knee rotations, and make sure I’m somewhere in the 75 - 90 range. I pretty much stay there for the ride. I know it might be aerobically in my favor to let it drop once in a while, but I find that the higher cadence is a sweet spot for my knees, and if I let it get too low for too long my knees start acting up again.

Today was two-minute intervals at 105. Two minutes isn’t realistically enough time for me to count and adjust, so I was lucky that Melissa was able to come out with me. She’s got all the cool roadie gear. So I followed a little behind her on the ‘on’ intervals, and tried to mimic her cadence. That worked pretty well. But I’d decided to take a more interesting route, since I didn’t think the hills would really matter. Turns out they do matter a little, and I was also forgetting about all the stop signs that popped up in the middle of my intervals. If cadence is something I’m going to start incorporating into my training, I’m going to need the proper tools, and I’ll have to stick with my standard boring, flat, straight out and back interval ride.

It was great having some company tonight though!

Workout:

• Type: Cycle
• Date: 06/10/2008
• Time: 17:30:00
• Total Time: 1:11:00.00
• Average Heart rate: 145
• Max Heart rate: 180
• Calories: 772
• Distance: 16.27 miles
• Average Speed: 13.75 mph
• Max Speed: 26.6 mph
• Ascent: 745 ft
• Descent: 778 ft

My ‘good’ knee has been aching recently, and started getting pretty painful on yesterday’s ride, so I was trying to take it super-duper easy today. Still, by the end of two hours of easy spinning it was hurting with every pedal stroke. Time to take a day off, and do more icing/elevating/drugging (Ibuprofen). Otherwise, it was a beautiful day. Got home in time to shower and get ready to sing with my choir at the Strawbery Festival in nearby Lebanon. I love small town festivals. A really cool day all the way around.

Workout:

• Type: Cycle
• Date: 06/08/2008
• Time: 10:30:00
• Total Time: 1:53:00.00
• Average Heart rate: 142
• Max Heart rate: 162
• Calories: 1425
• Distance: 27.51 miles
• Average Speed: 14.61 mph
• Max Speed: 19.7 mph
• Ascent: 641 ft
• Descent: 682 ft

That was a lot of work for 25 miles.

The recent rains have made things a little muddy out there … and recent logging activity has torn up some of the course with Cat tracks. The subsequent mud was so thick that it packed up the tires, and the bike wouldn’t roll anymore. We finally used twigs to poke mud out of the bike, and beat on the bikes a bit more to get enough mud out that we could carry them the rest of that stretch. Ugh. I’m guessing we lost about 15 minutes dealing with that. There was also some more blow-down and other Cat damage that we spent a little time clearing up.

So we were out for about four and a half hours, with four hours of ride time. Not bad, considering the conditions were much tougher than the last pre-ride. Actually, the difference in ride time between last week and this week was 1 second! In a four hour ride! Freaky.

However, by the end of our first (and only) lap I wouldn’t have felt very confident starting another lap. I didn’t do as well pacing myself today … I spent a little too much time in my high zone 3, and didn’t focus enough on recovering after those efforts. I also waited too long to start fueling myself. Big, giant mistakes that I don’t want to make in the TOE next weekend!

Of course, it didn’t help much that I was navigating by GPS, and didn’t have my HR data on screen for most of the ride. Hopefully when my time and HR data is on screen I’ll be a little better about monitoring myself.

Workout:

• Type: Cycle
• Date: 06/07/2008
• Time: 12:00:00
• Total Time: 4:02:00.00
• Average Heart rate: 157
• Max Heart rate: 181
• Calories: 3161
• Distance: 25.47 miles
• Average Speed: 6.31 mph
• Max Speed: 28.5 mph
• Ascent: 4,088 ft
• Descent: 4,093 ft

Finally, an opportunity to do an after work ride with one of my old riding buddies. Actually, with the woman who taught the women’s mountain bike skills clinic that I took a couple of years ago. I didn’t do spectacularly well managing my HR and being social at the same time. Apparently I’m not that good at multi-tasking. So my HR got higher than I wanted it to be for big sections of time, and was lower than I wanted it to be at other times. But on average, it looks like I did really well.

Except, of course, that I forgot to turn on my computer for a while, and appear to have lopped off about a quarter of a mile of riding. Ah well …

Workout:

• Type: Cycle
• Date: 06/05/2008
• Time: 17:45:00
• Total Time: 1:38:00.00
• Average Heart rate: 156
• Max Heart rate: 177
• Calories: 919
• Distance: 11.45 miles
• Average Speed: 7.01 mph
• Max Speed: 31.9 mph
• Ascent: 1,513 ft
• Descent: 1,537 ft

I’m finally feeling really good again today. I was feeling pretty fatigued by the end of last week, but the one day off, and second day of easy spinning, has me ready to go again. A little bit of burn in the legs at the beginning of the intervals, but I felt full of energy and focused today. Awesome! I’m looking forward to a mountain bike ride tomorrow.

Workout:

• Type: Cycle
• Date: 06/04/2008
• Time: 18:00:00
• Total Time: 1:30:00.00
• Average Heart rate: 145
• Max Heart rate: 181
• Distance: 22.7 miles
• Average Speed: 15.13 mph
• Max Speed: 26.2 mph
• Ascent: 438 ft
• Descent: 462 ft

Had to work late today, and was running out of daylight. Since it wasn’t too hot for the garage, I decided to stay home for my easy spin. Legs started out a pretty sore, but felt really good by the end. I think Coach may have been over-selling the easy spin … it’s not quite a massage … but it did make the legs feel pretty good.

Workout:

• Type: Other
• Date: 06/03/2008
• Time: 19:00:00
• Total Time: 1:30:00.00
• Average Heart rate: 140
• Max Heart rate: 153

Gregg had a mountain bike race today up at Falls City. It’s a really cool area to ride, but I haven’t been in ages. And a short distance race with a lot of tough climbing doesn’t fit with my current goal of getting in a lot of miles/hours at a steady effort. So, since I didn’t want to race today, but I did want to watch some of the racing and meet up with some friends, I decided my road ride would take me to the race.

I should probably spend a little more time mapping new routes. When I eye-balled the route to Falls City it looked like at most a 2 hour ride (about 30 miles). I was off by about 30%. It was 39 miles, and nearly 3 hours. And the last 3 miles were the roughest “gravel road” I’ve ridden yet. Thank god I ride a tank of a ‘cross bike.

The ride was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the scenery, and once I get out a ways I have the roads almost to myself. I did start getting a little bored toward the end, but since there was nobody around as far as I could see I figured there was no harm in breaking out in song … “crazhheee …” (breath breath) “I’m crazhheee for fhhheeelin” (breath breath) “shhoo lonlhheee” (breath breath).

I learned two things. First, I’m getting tired again. I can’t get my HR very high, because I’m just beat. Feels like it’s time for another rest day. And second, as much as I love to sing, it’s best done at a lower level of effort. Oh yeah … another point learned today … take more care to map my ride when there’s a timeframe involved. Gregg was starting to get pretty worried about me by the time I showed up.

Workout:

• Type: Cycle
• Date: 06/01/2008
• Time: 09:30:00
• Total Time: 2:43:00.00
• Average Heart rate: 156
• Max Heart rate: 178
• Calories: 2144
• Distance: 38.9 miles
• Average Speed: 14.32 mph
• Max Speed: 29.6 mph
• Ascent: 1,680 ft
• Descent: 1,266 ft