Scott Adcox

Filed under “Experiments With Bodily Functions”

I’ve been riding the spin bike a lot lately. I had some self-induced mechanical issues with my TT bike for a while. And it was hot. And I usually don’t get a chance to ride until after 10 pm anyway. So it’s been really convenient. But I’ve noticed that I have a really hard time getting my heart rate up on the spin bike. I’ve done some interval workout videos where the folks on the video are working in the mid to high 160s, while I’m at a perceived effort level of 4/5 and not getting over 140. And the averages for these rides are always in the 120s. I know what pushing feels like, and I “feel” like that’s what I’m doing, but the HRM doesn’t show this work I’m feeling. And when I’m just spinning at a perceived level of 1/5, I’m lucky to break 110.

Yesterday I went out on my TT bike for the first time in a looong time. Weird, but no problem getting my heart rate up there. I was sustaining ~160 on 3 minute intervals, and averaged 144 for the 20 mile ride. During the cool down portion of the ride, my heart rate was ~133, and that was with a perceived effort level of 1. I could have sung opera (if I could sing).

The one major difference between riding the spin bike inside and riding a real bike outside is temperature and humidity. With the spin bike, I ‘m sitting directly beneath an air conditioning vent and a ceiling fan. But still, riding in a cool and humidity-free environment couldn’t have that much effect. Or could it?

I must employ the scientific method to find out for sure–had to collect some data.

During lunch today, I put on my my HRM and sat in the floor, leaning against the sofa for one minute. I then started a split and collected HR for one minute, and got an average rate of 52.

Then I went out to the driveway and sat down, leaning against the car. I waited for 5 minutes…just long enough that my feet were no longer cool and I felt like I was about to start sweating. Another minute with my HRM, and I got an average rate of 67.

So it takes me 15 more beats per minute to do nothing in the heat than it does to do nothing in the cool! And it was only in the mid-80s today!

One thing I’m not exactly sure about is how I can accurately extrapolate that data based on temperature though. Do I use a constant change of ~15 bpm when comparing hot weather workouts to cold weather workouts, or do I use a percentage (30%?!?!) difference. I’m leaning towards the first option, but I probably need to collect more data.

That means more spin bike. Outside. In the heat.

Torture.

I first started running in 2003. Not that I didn’t run before that, but that’s when I became “a runner” (arguably). That’s when I started running with running performance as the end goal instead of running with rugby as the end goal. The first thing I did was seek out some people who were already runners and drain their brains of whatever info I could. One of the best pieces of advice I got was to keep a training log. Back then, lots of people who logged their training did so in a hand-written training diary, but I was lucky that I was beginning at a time when CoolRunning was already available. This meant I could have all of my training logged online without having to go back and re-enter old information.

CoolRunning was great–nice analysis tools, kept up with miles on shoes, etc. But then they sold out to Active, and I didn’t like the interface as much. So I started trying other sites like MapMyRun and Livestrong. It’s great to have the ability to map training courses, but they are all lacking something. There are either too many ads, not enough analysis tools, whatever. As a result, I have training data spread out across multiple logging sites, and what I really want is one place to keep all of my data.

Now I’m the one who has to re-enter old information when I find a logging tool I like.

I recently started using DailyMile, and I like it a lot. Sure, there are a couple of issues with it too. The analysis tools and interface are great. It’s also social–sort of like the “Facebook for training”. But you can’t go back and do analysis on lifetime data (yet). It’s also difficult to import old data. They have an API, and some guys have started a Java client library, but there’s still a lot of going back to the sites I used before and collecting the data.

What I’ve been doing is entering my new workouts as I do them, then going back and entering the data from the same date on previous years. If I have time, I’ll go back and enter some other old workouts as well. This seems like a hassle and something that would be best to do automatically.

But there’s an upside to doing it manually too. As I’m going back, I’m actually reading my old training logs and doing mental analysis on them. It’s helping with my current training. For instance, it’s encouraging to see how far I’ve come in the swim compared to the first swims I logged back in 2005. And holy crap…I was on a training tear in the summer of 2004. And while I feel like I’m so much slower right now than I was when I was marathon training in 2003, it’s nice to see that my times and splits are comparable to what they were then.  I’ve also noticed that I was much more negative about my training back in 2003 (maybe pressing too hard?). I expected every outing to be a PR and to feel great all the time. That’s funny to me now, knowing how “normal” it is to go out and have crappy training days every once in a while.

What I’m getting at is that it’s great to keep a training log, but it also may be worth your time to go back and review it periodically so you can see your growth and improvement. That isn’t always going to show up in the calculated pace from the workouts. A big part of it will show up in the notes you kept. Even if you have hand-written training logs, it may be a good idea to spend a few minutes each day going back and reviewing your logs from the previous years on that exact date, just to help keep things in perspective.

Keeping a training log is a good tip. I’d say reading your training log is a good tip too.

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Ok…I like seeing the improvement. This is the exact same workout I did a few of weeks ago, but the 100s were all faster and most of the kicks were faster. The only thing slower in the Devil Workout this time around was the swim down.

I think it’s supposed to be that way.

Warmup: 10:04

• 300
• 100kick
• 100

Meat

• 100 – 1:34
• 50kick – 1:16
• 50kick – 1:45

• 100 – 1:37
• 50kick – 1:23
• 50kick – 1:29

• 100 – 1:39
• 50kick – 1:26
• 50kick – 1:25

• 100 – 1:38
• 50kick – 1:20
• 50kick – 1:28

• 100 – 1:40
• 50kick – 1:25
• 50kick – 1:25

Swimdown

• 250 – 5:01

If you want a real playlist to run to, you don’t need anything but 13 Songs.

You can’t be what you were
So you better start being 
just what you are
You can’t be what you were
the time is now is running out 
is running out 
is running running running out
You can’t be what you were
So you better start living the life
That you’re talking about
You can’t be what you were
The no movement, the no movement, the no movement
In a bad mouth
It betrays a bad mind

I don’t really have a problem with eating healthy. In fact, I have a very healthy appetite. That’s the problem.

So while we generally eat pretty healthy food, my issue is with portion size. And no matter the portion size, if Going Back For Seconds was an Olympic event, there would be investigations into my use of performance enhancers due to my consistent domination of the sport.

So I’ve been pulling a little trick on myself I call “Psychological Seconds”. Pretty simple–I make my first serving of everything a little smaller. And I still have seconds, but now Seconds means the rest of the food that would have normally been on my plate for Firsts. I’m estimating I’ve reduced my caloric intake at meals by ~10-15% by doing this. I’m probably making up the calories throughout the day with snacking, but that’s ok since it probably keeps my metabolism more steady, which means they are probably burning off more efficiently.

At 204 today. My Clydesdale days are numbered.

By the way, if you try this and it works for you, feel free to send me a Little Debbie. They are delicious. “Little Debbie–Unwrap a Smile!”

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I was chatting over email today with an old rugby buddy of mine about the benefits of spin class. One of the ones he pointed out was that “mean” instructor who you love. In his case, it’s a South African who reminds him a lot of our former rugby coach from SA. This guy was a real jerk. His name was Eugene. I don’t think I ever knew his last name. None of us liked him at all–at least not as a friend.

But we loved him as a coach. He squeezed more out of us as a team and individually than we could ever have imagined. We lived out of our comfort zone for the duration of every training session, and it made us better. We never knew from day to day what kind of crazy fitness drills he’d have us do or what new and creative way he’d contrived to expose our weaknesses and punish us for them.

Two of the things I really like about spin classes are that I never know what’s coming next, and there’s a little bit of an extra push implied just because someone else is telling me how to ride and what to do. So I was thinking, if I could create the ultimate spin class, what would it be like?

A lot like Fight Club.

1. You do not talk about this class. It’s not on “the schedule”. You have to ride your way in and be invited to attend. (This probably keeps me out of the class, thankfully)
2. Bikes are arranged in a circle, so everybody can see everybody else. That turns the level of competition up about two notches automatically.
3. No verbal cues. The class is too hard for that. The instructor is too gassed to tell you what to do. You just have to watch and follow.
4. Better yet, there isn’t even an instructor. The lead moves around the circle with each person trying to kill the group more than the last person did.
5. The lights are on. Again, everybody can see what everybody else is doing…or not doing. (Plus I like to be able to see my HRM).
6. The door is locked. Can’t hang? Get off your bike and stand in the middle of the circle until the session is over. Oh, and the first one to quit has to clean up everyone’s bike when it’s over.
7. Class will go on as long as it has to.

Some of these are obviously a joke, but I think there’s some actual merit to an idea like this. If a gym offered a two hour class that you had to ride your way into and was super tough, there are plenty of people who’d be happy to subject themselves to that kind of suffering. Unfortunately, the gym I go to has a high population of older folks, and there probably wouldn’t be much of a market for it, but I can honestly say I’d pay by the class for a chance at that kind of punishment.

It’s crazy to me that the hard and uncomfortable seat on my bike is actually much more comfortable than the cushy seats on the spin bikes. I think it has much more to do with the shape and width of the seat than the cushiness.

Butt there’s a fix. And apparently, I’m not the first one to try it out.

Let’s just say I slept like a baby last night.

I’ve been substituting my regular run scheduled for Thursday evenings with 7s rugby practice for the summer. Thursdays aren’t really long runs, so I figure I can go out and burn more calories playing rugby while having fun and getting a good run in. It’s good cross training because it works every muscle, especially core muscles. I end up spiking and recovering my heart rate instead of keeping it steady like a would in a normal training run too. It’s just fun to mix it up, and I love playing rugby.

Plus there is beer afterward.

I’ve discovered Coach Brett over at ZenTriathlon recently, and I’ve really been enjoying his podcasts. There’s some really good stuff in there about triathlon in general, and his style totally vibes with the way I like to train. One of the things he talks about are “Push/Pull Workouts” where he’ll do a 6 mile run, stopping at each mile to do pushups, squats, pullups, etc. I realized that’s exactly the kind of thing I’ve been doing at rugby practice, although the intervals of running are much shorter intervals and at a much higher intensity.

I wore my heart rate monitor for the first hour of practice last night and kept splits just to get an idea of the intensity of the non-contact drills we were doing. I averaged right at 135 bpm for the first hour of practice (that included water breaks and the dynamic stretching warmup), but I spiked it close to 180 during the two most intense periods.  I know it got at least that high later in the practice when we were scrimmaging and I had long sprints.

A bonus in disguise was that I forgot my rugby boots at home, so I trained barefoot. I haven’t been doing much barefoot running at all, and it was probably good for me to get a good two hours of action without shoes. The only part of practice I skipped was the repetitive tackling drill, but I made good use of the time, doing “Jacos” around the field during that period.

Jacos is a fitness drill we used to do in college. Many rugby teams do variations, but we called the drill “Jacos” in honor of the coach who brought it to our club. It’s a not-so-fun way to run laps.

You start in one corner at the goal line, sprint to the halfway, jog to the opposite corner, stop for exercises–pushups/situps/burpees/squats/jackknives/mountain climbers–jog across the field to the opposite corner for a different exercise, and so on. So it’s sprint, jog, exercise, jog, exercise, sprint, jog, exercise, jog, exercise….

You get the idea, right? This is a great rugby fitness drill because it simulates a lot of stuff that’s going on in a game–high intensity bursts with lower intensity recovery runs and “lifting” sprinkled in. Lots of moving your own body weight around and getting up off the ground.

Keeping my triathlon goals of getting a core workout and staying in a training zone in mind, I like to add two exercise stations at the halfway line on either side of the field and substitute the jogs and sprints with a steadier, more intense pace. I got in four laps of that (about a mile) barefoot while the tackling drill was going on. Sounds a lot like a modified Push/Pull Run, huh? That’s what fitness end of rugby training is like for the most part, and why I think it’s a good substitute for at least one of my workouts each week. It also does me a lot of good mentally because it throws a curve into my training and involves something I really love doing.

Here’s today’s workout. I picked the easier of two options.

Other than the obvious mental fatigue in the third set of the Meat, I have no idea how to look at these split times and interpret them. All I can gather from them is that my kick is really bad, which I already knew.

Warmup

• 300 – 5:32
• 100kick – 3:17
• 100 – 1:51

Meat

• 100 – 1:36
• 50kick – 1:28
• 50kick – 1:28

• 100 – 1:45
• 50kick – 1:29
• 50kick – 1:34

• 100 – 1:42
• 50kick – 1:33
• 50kick – 1:33

• 100 – 1:39
• 50kick – 1:27
• 50kick – 1:32

• 100 – 1:42
• 50kick – 1:33
• 50kick – 1:23

Swimdown

• 250 – 4:42

One of the things I miss about living in East Tennessee is being able to ride my bike on nice country roads. I don’t miss the dogs tearing through yards when they see me coming, and I don’t miss having people honk and yell, “Git off tha roawd!!!” either. But hilly, curvy country roads are definitely a plus of living in Knoxville.

On the flip side, one of the really nice things about living in a small town in Florida is that you can leave right out of the house and go on long flat rides. Safely. Yeah, no hills means no chance to get stronger going up hills, but it also means there’s no opportunity for rest coming down hills. The result is a long, steady pedal in aero position. Besides, you can always go do intervals on a causeway or hit a spin class if you really want hills.

I’ve been riding loops in a nice safe residential area, but it was getting kind of boring. So last night I jumped on to MapMyRide to see if there were any rides near my house that locals have posted. I found a course that passes right by my house and picks up a nice country road about 3 miles away from home. I checked it out with streetview on Google Maps, and I couldn’t wait to get out there this morning.

It didn’t disappoint.

No hills, but it’s pretty nice when you have to keep refocusing on your ride because you’re constantly on the lookout for dolphins instead of cars. The one caveat is that I had to jump out onto US-1 for about a half a mile–traffic’s not too bad at 6:20 am, but a little more traffic on the way back at 7:30. I ended up doing two loops of Rockledge Drive this morning, only passing two cars on my first loop and maybe 6 or 7 on the second. Love riding a course where the number of cars is tripled by the number of runners and cyclists. Even better when your bike speed is the speed limit! I shot this video at 20 mph as the sun was coming up.

Ok, not the greatest video because I have a Hero and not an EVO (HD), but I shot it while my CardioTrainer app and mSpot were both running. That’s right iPhone<4 owners…I been could do that!

Needless to say, my new favorite ride.

The plan for today’s swim was to warmup with a 300sw/100kick/100sw. Then some sprints, 4×200, and a 200 swim down. The warmup was so atrocious that I changed my plan–technique was all over the place and I felt like I was kicking to stand still on the kick part of the warmup. Instead of the 4×200 I decided to do a straight 800 and try to find an even stride. I sort of zoned out for the whole middle portion of the swim, so I guess it worked.

Patience.

When I finished my 800 and was checking my HR, the lifeguard at the pool asked me, “What’s your swim goal?” He was asking because he noticed my soft kick off the side at the end of each length, and once I told him I was training for open water tris he understood why I was taking it easy on the turns. But still, it was a good question, and it gave me some things to think about and focus on during my swim down.

What are my goals, really?

• keep my heart rate at 120-130 during the race
• find someone to draft as much as possible
• make it through the swim with as few strokes possible (stay on course)

Ultimately, I would like to duplicate my best in-race swim ever if possible. The only thing I really remember about that swim was getting out of the water with a huge smile on my face and thinking, “This is really going to happen!”

You beat yourself up ’cause you love it.

Let it go. Let it go. Let it go.

I’d originally planned to do an Olympic distance triathlon locally in October, but I had a schedule conflict and decided to do one in August instead. But the idea of traveling 3 hours to race didn’t seem like a good idea, so I decided to do one a little closer to home in September. I liked that decision since I’d missed a two weeks of training due to illness and traveling. Then my schedule conflict for the October race went away, so I switched back to that one, which put me ahead of my training schedule.

So I decided to step back to the correct point in the schedule, which made my training distances shorter again. Not really a big deal for running and cycling (I’m just better rested), but I can already tell a huge difference in the swim, which is what I really wanted to concentrate on this season.

My longest swim session before stepping back was 2250 yards, and it involved a lot of kick drills. I suck at kicking, and it made the swim sessions long and brutal. But I think it made me noticeably faster. The last two days’ workouts have only been 1000 yards total. Yesterday’s workout featured a 500 yard sprint, and I swam my best 500 ever. I mean, yeah, it’s still really slow, but it’s my best one by almost 20 seconds. Today’s workout had 5×100 with 15″ rest between. I was a little bit faster than normal on the 100s, but the real noticeable change here was the consistency. I only lost 2 seconds between my first 100 and my last 100.

Also, I’ve (finally) realized that the purpose of doing sprints in the swim is to raise your individual expectations of what “taking it easy” means. I’ve never gotten that before in the swim because I’ve always jumped into the pool and just did full distance at a slow and steady speed. I’m hoping this pays off in October!

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And by “your” music, of course I mean music you ripped from CDs that you own or downloaded legally online. Also, the files have to be unencrypted.

Click over to mSpot to sign up and upload your music.

Oh, and you need an Android device to use the mobile version of the service.

The free version includes 2Gb of storage. Can’t wait until Google comes out with their own version of this service.

HT Gizmodo

I’d like to turn off time
And kill my mind