Gary’s Fitness Blog

In my last post, Why guys need to find fitness (and life) milestones., I wrote:

What do I have in mind for my “milestone” event?

In May, I made a post titled “Help me find my new challenge“. At the time I wasn’t looking forward to my birthday, but I think that as I come up with ideas, I will. The idea of riding across Nebraska is probably out at this point - but what I have on my mind right now would actually be more challenging physically - and pretty cool (IMO).

Stayed Tuned.

I think that I’ve been hesitating on telling people what my exact plans are because I am scared of - failing to accomplish the journey, I don’t feel fit enough, etc. etc. The whole idea is to take on a challenge that feels somewhat impossible and to celebrate living.

Nikki is 100% into supporting this event, so I don’t have any reason not to try. I figure if I put it out there, it may push me out the door some of these summer days that I don’t want to get out there.

Here are the things that I want to try and accomplish:

1. On September 6th, 2008 - complete the Great Illini Full Distance triathlon
2. Take the next week and ride my bike to Winona Lake, IN (from the GIllini location)
3. On September 13, 2008 (my 30th birthday) run the Lake City Marathon

We’ll see how the planning goes for this? Right now I can honestly say that riding that much would not be possible, no matter what the intensity would be. I also need to find some locals along the route from Illiniois to Indiana to give suggestions on routes and roads to ride.

Here’s the gmap … any suggestions? [edit note: the map below is a different route than gmap show in the full frame? The full frame map does not go through Indy..]

View Larger Map

Kate just wrote a post about having troubles storing her bike. Nikki and I have had to make the decision to give one room of our two bedroom townhome almost entirely to storage of bicycles. I’d love to have a garage to store the bikes, but even more appealing would be a place to work on the bikes. Imagine Nikki’s excitement when I pull out a bike in the living room to begin work… yikes.

I do have to say that it is worth it. In addition to these bikes, we have 2 mountain bikes that are pretty much worthless at this point due to rust and poor condition due to them being on the porch at our former living space.

I had the opportunity to go to UC (University of Cincinnati) to have some metabolic testing done this past weekend. Since I’m not in training for anything, I was leary about going, but the opportunity to be in the lab again and see how another lab does their testing was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

The set up at their lab was very nice for several reasons:

1. They have standard road bikes that are available… which means you don’t have to ride those uncomfortable Monarch cycles that both the University of Kentucky and Nebraska had. (Although to be fair, I never spent time on UK’s).

2. They have the bikes set up with powertaps. I liked this because they are commonly used power meters by cyclists and triathletes on the road. I have not made the investment to start riding with power, so it was nice to get my hands on one.

3. They have four stations. Very nice when you are testing a large group of athletes. I am assuming they have a good funding source?

4. They have metabolic analyzers that are worth using. I still have questions as to the validity to the portable systems that we see at fitness centers and other various places. Maybe someone could show me that those systems have been proven reliable, but I just hear too many strange results for me to be a big believer.

The Tests:

After getting 5 minutes of resting data, I got onto the bike. (Which had my own pedals on it!) We started at 120watts and increased the power output by 20watts every three minutes. The watts were increased initially by changing the gears, then by the incline (using a Tacx trainer).

The metabolic analyzer was measuring o2 consumption, co2 output, ventilation, the powertap was measuring heart rate and power output, while an assistant (Jim was the man) was taking blood samples at the end of each 3 minute stage to measure blood lactate (using a Lactate Pro).

The protocol (3 min steps) was used in order for the rider to achieve a steady state prior to increasing to a new workload.

The Results:

I have had this done before several times on the bike, but many more times on the treadmill. What I found out was similar to past experiences: my cycling Vo2 is about 10 ml/kg/min lower than my running Vo2 max.

Here’s a link to the results: RESULTS HERE - username: gditsch01

I haven’t had much time to look through the data, but the initial things that I wanted to look at were these:

Vo2 : 56.93 ml/kg/min
Watts/kg at Lactate Threshold : approx 3.2
Watts at Lactate Threshold : 213
Heart Rate at Lactate Threshold : 176bpm

I need some more time to look through the efficiency data and the other metabolic data before I can make a more detailed comment on them.

One interesting comparison to make is looking at the watts/kg at lactate threshold. I remember reading a book on Lance Armstrong (Lance Armstrong’s War, I believe) that talked about a test he did with his coach, Ferrari. They would go to a mountain climb and ride the climb a few times. Each time increasing the intensity, until they hit his lactate threshold (they took the sample at the top of each climb). After the testing, they new Lance was ready for the Tour if he had a watts/kg result of 6.7 or above. (You might have to go check the facts, as it has been awhile since I read the book.)

I guess I am not ready to take on the Tour! But still not completely disappointing results as I have the worst fitness that I have had in several years (Fall of ‘05).

To compare the results that I got this weekend to last year’s Vo2 testing I had done on the treadmill might be of interest. You can read my post after those tests:

Here - Vo2 Max the Good Results.

Hopefully this will start a discussion, as it is much easier to be in a discussion about this information than it is to state all that seems important.

I mentioned the other day that I had surpassed the amout of swimming I had completed in 2006… well yesterday, I surpassed the amount of cycling that I did in 2006 too!

This was a pretty big surprise for me when I started looking at the numbers, mainly due to the fact that I felt like all I did last summer was cycle … little running - no swimming.

But now that I think about it, I didn’t start cycling again until May of 2006. In contrast, I have made a point to be consistent with my cycling even during the winter months (thanks to a little bit of encouragement from Dean Hewson).

Why am I so hung up on my total amounts of swimming, biking and running? Read my post - “How to pass the ’suck threshold’ in triathlon” and you’ll get an idea why. The other reason for me is that it displays a little sign of consistency in training. It can be very hard to train a lot of hours over a years time if you are taking weeks or months off.

Recently I’ve seen my swimming benefit… hopefully other improvements will be witnessed too.

In January of 2006 I had a guy come to me and say, “I would like to qualify and do PBP in France next year.” My initial reaction was one of confusion with a lot of questions:

Q. What is PBP?
A. Paris - Brest - Paris.

Q. What kind of event is Paris - Brest - Paris (I knew it was Cycling..)
A. A 1200km Brevet.

Q. Did you say 1200km? And what exactly is a Brevet?
A. Yes it is 1200km… (I kind of got ill to my stomach and lost focus)

After a little bit of contemplating the nature of such an event, the journey began as George (the one that introduced me to randonneuring) and I started putting in some miles on the bike.

To really speed up the story, I’ll create a short timeline of major events along the the way.

Major Event #1: 5/27/06 - Horsey Hundred - a 100 mile ride in Kentucky, George’s first century ride. Flickr Photo Set

Major Event #2: 7/14/06 - 200km KY Brevet Route - we didn’t do the official Brevet, but we went and tackled the course on our own later on. The ride is likely my most memberable ride in the last 3 years. (Since my ride across Iowa) It was full of unleashed-chase-you-down-the-road-dogs and one major hill climb that about put me six-feet-under. It was also my single longest ride in one day when we finished at 130 miles. Flickr Photo Set, Blog post about ride

Major Event #3: 3/31/07 - 200km KY Brevet

Major Event #4: 5/19/07 - 400km St. Louis Brevet, Blog post

Major Event #5: 5/26/07 - 300km Atlanta Brevet, a great course and ride. The ride starts on an amazing bike rail/trail called the Silver Comet Trail. While on the trail the ride is flat and stress free, but once you get into Alabama it got a little more challenging. Ok, a lot more challenging. At least we were doing the 300km and not the 600km Brevet that day because they had some bigger mountains to climb.

Major Event #6 - 6/2/07 to 6/3/07 - 600km St. Louis Brevet, George’s Big Day! I didn’t do the ride with him, for a lot of reasons: I had a wedding to attend, I didn’t want try and recover from that kind of stress, I was a little bit of a chicken….

To let you know about the length of the event, Nikki and I stayed in St. Louis Friday night. I went to the start of the ride and watched them get set up and leave. Nikki and I traveled to Nebraska, meet up with some friends, went to a wedding reception, stayed out late, spent the night in Omaha, woke up and went on a longer run with another friend, traveled back to St. Louis… and drove a little bit of the course to see if they were about done. They were not finished. We felt a little guilty talking about how tired we were of driving, only to realize that George and the others had been on the bike the entire time. (I think they had a 2 hour hotel stay during the night…?)

My take home thoughts about this past 17 months:

1. Long distance cyclists are a little crazy!

2. In every ride there comes a point of “breakthrough”. This is where you realize that the body is willing to do a little more, even though it might be uncomfortable… but the body isn’t willing to carry on unless the mind has this specific breakthrough.

3. The amount of cycling and distances have helped me reframe my perspective of the Ironman bike leg. Prior to doing these mega-rides, I thought 112 miles was hardly achieveable as a stand alone ride. Knowing that I’ve ridden over double the distance in a single day instills a great mental boost…. even if the training isn’t “Ironman specific” as some may say.

4. People are able to achieve some remarkable things when they want to. Think about it for a second. On the morning of May 27, 2006 George had never ridden more than 70 or 80 miles at one time. In 39 hours on June 2/3, 2007 he rode 373 miles.

That’s Inspiration!

Thank you George for helping me remember what is possible.

Now as he begins a recovery period and preparation period for the PBP in August, I hope that I’ll be able to transfer some of those miles into Ironman speed for myself.