Re-zoning Part Deux!

So yesterday I headed to the gym to redo my Heart Rate Zones. Same drill as before, warm up and them a 20 minutes timetrial at best effort. My HR spiked a little and then settled after half a mile and the first mile clicked by in 8:07. I started the next phase; I went out a little too fast and the backed off a little too much and finally got in the groove.

And so compared to 8 weeks ago here is some of the data

	Mile 1 Wk1	Mile 1 Wk8	Mile 2 Wk1	Mile 2 Wk8	Mile 3 Wk1	Mile 3 Wk8
Time	6:50:86	6:48:37	6:50:30	6:52:01	6:19:68	6.27:00
Avg Pace	6:51	6:48	6:50	6:52	6:59	6:34
Ave Speed	8.8mph	8.8mph	8.8mph	8.7mph	8.6mph	9.1mph
Max Speed	9.1mph	9.3mph	9.1mph	9.7mph	8.8mph	9.7mph
Ave HR	159	163	165	168	170	175
Max HR	164	172	169	173	173	181
Avg Cadence	89	88	88	87	87	89

 

I have bolded Week 8 just to make it easier to read. For Mile 3 Wk 1 I covered 0.91 of a mile and for Week 8 I covered 0.98. So here’s the takeaways, feel free to correct me.

* Overall I am faster, I covered more distance in the same time, only 0.07 more, but more nevertheless

* I have a higher top end of speed maxing out at 9.7 compared to 9.3

* I have a higher HR capacity or LT threshold topping out at 181 compared to 175

So what next, well according to Friel I can rezone to the following:

	Old	New
Zone 1	0 – 138	0 –143
Zone 2	139 – 148	144 – 154
Zone 3	149 – 156	155 – 161
Zone 4	157 –163	162 – 168
Zone 5	164+	169+

So for the next month these will be my new Zones and I’ll be spending my time in Zone 2, well as much of it as I can…then the fun really starts; hillwork!

There’s no smoke without fire…

Sunday’s ride was detoured. I was pedaling along minding my own business, multi-tasking riding to a kid’s birthday party that my wife was driving to and I saw this…

As I got a bit closer it turned into this…

Closer still…

Hmm, it seems to be in front of me now…

Ah yes…here it is!

Zoom lens…then on my right I saw this…

If you listen closely you can hear the Police saying “Go Home”…so I about faced.

I headed to the party by way of a different route, I arrived no worse for wear with a solid 43+ miles and nearly 3 hours on the clock…never a dull moment. Eight acres (8 soccer fields), 200 firefighters and 4 hours later it was out. Here’s the rest of the photos from the day including some up close ones of a group of riders that I drafted off of clicking off 3 minute miles…sweet!

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Rest ‘n’ Test!

June and July are done, that pretty much leaves one more week and I have completed the first nine weeks of this cycle. Here are the stats:

June

July

I am within 4% (actually over) of the schedule, a couple of extra rest days in July and actually some over mileage has kept me within that percentage so it’s not really a true representation of reality, when the plan says run 11 and you run 14 cos’ you’re feeling good, it’s a bit of a false economy. So I need to rein myself in a bit to make sure I don’t over do it too soon.

There are four things that I am really pleased with;

The Variety; as you can see I am really mixing things up with swimming, elliptical, cycling and weights. I have managed to set up a nice routine of running in the morning and going to the gym four days during the week at lunchtime, it makes actually make ‘eating’ lunch a bit tricky but I fit it all in somehow.

The Heart Rate Training; my average running heart rate for June was 143 for July it was 135, that’s an 8bpm drop, but that needs to be reconciled to the increase in speed, June 6.17mph a 9:43 pace and July 7.30mph an 8:13 pace, so in lay terms ( my preference) I am faster for less effort! I am, to be honest shocked at this, I was expecting an improvement but not one so large…but hey I’ll take it!

Weight Training; I was never a gym rat, lifting weights is dull, I found this book on Amazon, it’s really simple, as are the workouts, and they are effective, I have actually been using it for three weeks and can feel myself stronger, having better posture and I can even see some muscle growth! I’ll never bench press my weight but hopefully no one will be kicking sand in my face at the beach!

Weight Loss; I seem to have reached that point of slightly less that natural equilibrium where I am in a deficit and the weight is not s0 much falling off but redistributing, going up a notch on my belt without a large drop in lbs on the scale means I am putting on muscle mass and becoming leaner. Also I am no spring chicken so adding some of that lost muscle due to age is no bad thing.

This week I am having a bit of a rest week and I am, as the title alludes to retesting and reseting my HR zones. I am not sure whether to carry on as I am for another month, basically repeating July through August or whether to introduce some hill work…I am rerunning the original test tomorrow so I will make a decision after that but so far so good.