Longest Bike Ride

This was one of the perfect weekends in the Seattle area. Tempatures in the mid 60's and lots of sunshine. I arranged to spend Sunday doing a long bike ride and it finished up being just over 53 miles.

it was good to be out on a long ride. Time is starting to run out on my 70 Mile Tour de Cure ride in May.

I also added in a 'big ass' hill to get over which you can see below at as the near vertical black line. This is Lakemont blvd starting at the end of W. Lake Sammamish and ending at the Newcastle Golf Course. My buddy John has done this ride a couple of times and he's told me about how tough it is. After my recent success with Bell-Red road (see below) I thought I'd be able to tackle this hill with no problems. Good grief, I couldn't have been more incorrect.

The hill feels like it never ends. It's a couple of miles long and is severly elevated. At one point I had to stop and walk the bike up for a couple of hundred yards. It was so steep at the point I was walking that my heart-rate was still in the mid 150's! This will be my new test ride that I will come back to every couple of weeks. Besides increasing my physical fitness to handle this hill, I need to really think about either adding a 3rd front gear or at least getting a compact crank which changes my gearing so that on severe hills I can spin away without coming off the bike.

Aside from the hill, I didn't have many other problems. My wrists started getting sore around the 40 mile mark. I was having to change hand positions often to keep them from getting numb.

I did make a big mistake in my liquids that I took with me. I had read that salt loss is the biggest thing that saps energy and performance on longer distance training, and even gatorade doesn't provide as much as you need, so I decided to add some table salt to the gatorades I took with me (and in my Camelbak). I got the mixture all wrong and it tasted like I was downing salt-water the whole ride. It was just annoying enough to anger me, but wasn't so bad that I felt compelled to stop and change out all the water bottles. In hindsight now I think the first gas station I went by I should've switched the stuff out.

Quick Stats: 53.2 miles, 14.1 mph average, heart-rate 152bpm average for 3:54 minutes. 4256 Calories total

Toughest Spin Class Yet

Now that I'm tracking insane amounts of data on all my work-outs I can make a statement like "this was the toughest workout ever" and know its an accurate remark.

On Wednesday when doing my strength training with Emily I had a really bad shooting pain in my right leg when doing leg-presses and squats. This freaked me out a bit, as I'm six months into this training and haven't had any physical problems at all. I took it easy on Thursday (played 9 holes of golf in the morning) and by Friday morning my knee was feeling much better.

In Friday's Spin class I wanted to see if the knee would hold up, especially since I'm planning to do a tough outdoor ride on Sunday. The knee felt fine!

After about 10 mins of warming up, I decided to push my zone-4/zone-5 efforts as long as I could. It started by getting my heart-rate 165 by coming out of the saddle. I decided to stay off the seat as long as I could. I managed to remain 'climbing' for the next 33 mins straight. I also kept my heart rate bouncing between the high 160's and into the 170's. The thing that was making me want to stop was my feet.... 30 mins out of the saddle is a lot of pressure on the balls of my feet.

I averaged 166bpm for 55 mins and burned >1200 calories.

Last Dietician appt

On Monday I had my last dietician appointment. I also weighed in and had only lost a single pound for the previous two weeks. This was dissapointing.

We walked through my meal tracker and found a number of items in the last few days that were pretty high in sodium and she thought it may be a factor in the reduced weight loss (retaining water). I had worked out 5 days each of the previous two weeks. Her advice was to watch the sodium and keep going, and the weight loss would continue.

She also talked to me about NOT sticking to an abstinence only policy when it comes to 'trigger' type foods. For example I've completly avoided foods like ice cream, or cakes for the last six months. She asked me what I would do if I found myself craving something like that or at a birthday party. My policy for the last six months has been to avoid them. Going forward FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE, she explained this is not practical.

Instead I should make allowances (in her words maybe 'a couple of times per month) where I have a small ice cream for example. Keep all the other success factors in mind (like make sure there has been proteins and fats consumed to balance the sugar/carbs). My son has his 7th birthday on May 8th, so I think I'll make that the first 'allowance' and see how it goes.

By the way a few days after this appointment, I stepped on the scale and was down 3 more pounds (to 245lbs.) This brought my total weight loss to 75lbs.

Rain, Spokes, and Cold

If you've been reading for the last month or so, you'll notice a recurring theme... I've been avoiding riding on the weekend because its been cold and wet. Yesterday (Sunday) I decided I couldn't go another weekend without getting some miles in on the bike, and I need to be training in the rain also.

My plan was to do 2 or 3 'laps' around Lake Sammamish just to get some miles under my belt and should I get too miserable I could always call home and have someone pick me up.

I left my house just before 11am (actually 10:47... the chart below is handy for information like that) and as soon as I got around the corner it started to drizzle. By 3 miles into the ride it was a solid rain. The tempature was 47 (f) and I was badly regretting my decision not to wear pants. (Silly me thought I'd warm up plenty and it wouldn't matter.....LESSON #1 for this day)

The wind chill factor when doing 15 to 20 mph, when wearing wet shorts and with a below 50 tempature is bad. My legs looked lobster-red. There wasn't necessarily any pain, so I kept going.

About 15mins into the ride I heard a 'snap'. Since I broke two spokes already on this bike I'm much more tuned into the various noises it makes. I was on a hill climbing to the end of W. Lake Sammamish and didn't want to stop on the side of the road as there was a lot of traffic, so I pushed on to the top. Once clear and on a side road I inspected the rear-wheel and found a broken spoke. Here I am 20 mins into the ride...its raining hard....and I've got a broken spoke making the wheel rub hard against the brake pads. I thought about calling home, but decided I should be able to handle something like this....I then thought about heading home, but W. Lake Sammamish has no northbound shoulder for bikes and I *really* didn't want to ride against traffic. So in the end I decided to adjust the spokes around the broken one to bring the wheel back to true and continue on around the lake. (Never leave home without a Spoke Wrench....Lesson 2 for the day)

The rest of the ride was awesome. You reach a point where you are so wet that there's nothing more to get saturated. So even if it rains harder or the road puddles up, you're so soaked it doesn't matter and you just enjoy being out on the ride. I'm really happy I went out in the morning and experienced riding in the cold-rain.

A couple of notes on the chart below. I was finally able to integrate the bike sensors into the heart-rate monitor....now I can see my speed, elevation changes and heart-rate altogether in one spot. The Blue line represents speed. The Yellow filled in areas represent my Heart-Rate. The Black line is altitude.

Where you see speed and heart-rate drop, it's most likely because of a stop-light.

One big accomplishment: you'll see a long steady climb at the end of the ride. This is where W. Lake Sammamish turns into Bell-Red road behind the Microsoft Campus. Last time I rode up this hill I had to stop three times to catch my breath. This time I was able to climb the whole thing, seated, and without stopping once. I kept my heart-rate steady the whole time, right at my Zone-4 to Zone-5 transition thus avoiding too much lactate build-up. For me getting up this hill as I did was a huge validation of the Indoor Cycling efforts I've been putting in.

When I got home and got off the bike I noticed the rear wheel was severely rubbing the brake pads again. Checking the spokes I found another broken one. I'm not sure how much energy I lost going up that damn hill with a rubbing wheel, but I do know that I'm going to get a new wheel soon that will support my hefty body better.

LifeForms

I'm a big fan of the LifeForm software to track my diet as well as my excercise history.

I've researched and tried many different tracking programs for food/meals/excercise/etc...and this one by far has the best and easiest user interface. The creators are ex-Wordperfect employees and wrote it back when WP was near the top of their game. It's unfortunate that they are no longer building updates for the program. But even in its current state I've used it daily for six months and have never had a single problem with it. I wish i could say that about all software.

Below is a sample graph taken from this week on what my meals look like by the end of the day. In a more perfect world I think my Carbs could have been down about 5% and my proteins up about 5%. For the last month or so I've been right at these levels +/- 150 cals.

Staying in Zone 5

The other day on the internal Microsoft Bicycle alias there was a post about training for hills. One person mentioned he had been doing 30 mins every night on an indoor trainer (actually rollers) and found that when he got back on the hills he was performing much better outside. A few more people jumped in on this and the gist was for hills its important to raise your lactate threshold by spending more and more time right at it.

So this morning in Thursday's spin class I really pushed myself to spend time in Zone 5 (beyond my threshold value of 167). At the end of the class I did a very hard push of 10 straight minutes. It was tough for the first few minutes but as the time went on I felt a weird feeling of calmness, as if I could do this for a long time.

1056 calories in 52 minutes and an average heart-rate of 162bpm over that time.

My 20 Week Numbers

Last week I met with the doctor to go over my 20th week numbers. It's hard to believe I'm 5 months into this already. Just one more dietician appt. to go and a couple more weeks of working with my trainer.

Item 11/1/04 4/1/05
Age: 33 34
Height: 67 67
Weight: 320lb 249lb (-71)
Blood Pres. 116/86 112/84 (-4/-2)
Chest (inch) 54 45.4 (-8.5)
Waist 52.75 42.5 (-10.25)
Hips 56.5 48.5 (-8)
Waist/Hip Ratio .93 .88 (-0.5)
Biceps 18 15.5 (-2.5)
Thigh 34.25 25 (-9.25)
BMI 50.1 39.3 (-10.8)
%body fat 38.5% 28.3% (-10.2%)

For the 5 areas measured I've lost over 38 inches total! The doctor commented on my thighs especially, saying that may be near an all time record for 20 weeks.

My blood pressure didn't come down too much, but I also didn't have very high pressure to begin with.

I'll be weighing in for the last time on Monday (4 days from now). As has happened in previous weeks the scale hasn't shown much change from my last weigh in. I'm still hovering around 249lbs (+/- 1 or 2). I'm going to try to get out this weekend for a longer bike ride. It has really been too long since I've been out at all, so hopefully a good 60 or 70 miles will help me shed a few final pounds before the weigh-in.

-daryl welsh

Spinning at home

A few weeks ago The Pro Club got new Indoor Cycling bikes (LeMond Revmasters) and sold off 30 of the older bikes. I was able to purchase one of those for a pretty cheap price. I now have an indoor trainer for my bicycle and a 'gym quality' spinning bike. Today I decided to try the the spinning bike to workout instead of going to the gym. I normally would have just went into the gym for my cardio work but I could feel the onset of flu-symptoms building up in my throat when I woke up this morning. I didn't want to skip the excercise and I didn't want to pass on the symptoms to others so I gave it a go at home.

I plopped in a DVD (Return of the Jedi) into my laptop and set it up in front of the bike. I dragged a large fan over as well and set off for some spinning fun.

I mentioned in previous posts either here or on my STP Training log that working out alone on the trainer takes A LOT of mental energy. When you're in the class the people around you and the instructor help keep you motivated. When you are alone you can start to think of a million reasons to slow down, or reduce the tension or even just to stop early.

I was able to get a complete hour in and still maintain a 159bpm average over the hour. You can see that I pushed myself into zone 5 a number of times. This equaled 1195 calories and bucket-load of sweat. If I could do it again I think I would've rested today as I was feeling *really* weak and more sick from when I woke up. I decided to stay home from work and rest. Hopefully I'll feel better by the end of the day.

Sickness around our house

For the last couple of weeks there has been an on-going sickness running through our house. Its been passing from family member back and forth. This weekend my wife came down with a pretty severe cough and was stuck in bed.

This prevented me from going out and riding since I needed to stay and keep and eye on our kids. This was dissapointing as I was going to ride to the top of Newcastle Golf Course with my buddy John. This is a huge climb and something I will definately try to do on my own in the coming weeks.

Instead I was able to do a 2hr. ride on the indoor trainer. While not the same as an outdoor ride it was tough enough to exhaust me, and as a bonus I was able to watch Tiger Woods win his 4th green jack at The Masters

UPDATE: I was able to combine both charts into one, which is the first chart below.

Below are my two charts from the ride. I paused the workout at the one hour point and mistakenly hit stop instead of continue, which is why its two files instead of one. If anyone knows how to combine Polar excercise files into one, please let me know.

I averaged 155bpm for the first hour and 152bpm for the second hour. Combined calories expended was just over 2200 calories.

"Friday workouts count for Double!"

Today's workout was good. I averaged 156bpm across the 50 mins of the class, and touched into zone 5 a number of times.

Roland was back from his Triathalon in Hawaii. Class actually started late as he was busy printing out pictures of himself to tape to the walls. I guess if I did a Triathalon I'd want to brag about it some too.

One thing about Roland is he likes to do these things called "jumps" where you get out of the saddle for 4 seconds, then back in for 4, then out, then in....you get it. I'm sure they serve some purpose but I've decided to just not do these. During the Jumps I just crank up the resistance and do a hill climb. I really don't like the constant up and downs, especially when he switches them to 2 count Jumps.

Stats, Graphs and Number goodness

The heart-rate monitor I have has a way to capture the data and transfer it to a PC. This is cool because now I can monitor my work-out sessions and know how I'm doing. Below is my first cut at this.

On this graph, you'll see along the left side the heart-rate scale and the plot is of my real-time HR during the excercise.

The rainbow background shows 5 HR Zones (100% to 90%, 90% to 80%, etc). With my Max HR being 186.

Only one more dietician appointment to go...

Original Weight: 320lbs
Weight Two Weeks ago: 252.6
Current Weight: 249lbs

Total Lost: 71lbs.

Today was my next to last meeting with the dietician. I posted a few days ago that I had gotten down to 249 and was pretty excited. Between last week and yesterday I had bounced up and down a few pounds. In the end when I weighed in this morning I was through the 250 barrier (another big hurdle for me!)

I didn't workout this morning like normal. I did six days straight last week, including 30 miles on the indoor trainer this weekend which I wrote about in my STP training journal. This morning, when the alarm went off at 5:20 my body refused to move. Because of the time change it really did feel like 4-in-the-damn-its-too-early-to-get-up morning. Also I know I need to give my legs some time to recover....so I went right back to bed.

As I've been hitting these new 'lows' in my weight I'm finding myself more and more tempted to 'try' things I haven't had in a long time. The mind really starts to play around in justifying it too. "Hey you've worked this hard, you can drop by Coldstone for a small." Or "Don't worry once will never hurt." I find myself thinking about this more and so far I haven't given in to the temptation. I've gone back to check my meal planner to make sure there aren't any specific items that are trigger these thoughts, and I really can't find anything.

I think more then anything it's just been almost six months of controlled eating and needing to break free some. I'm still working to make smart choices even as the food options expand. For example, up till now all the pizza we've had has come from the Bistro, where they have 20/20 approved food. I like the Margerita Cheese pizza a lot. This weekend we tried Papa Murphy's deLite pizza. The calories were only about 150 more then the 20/20 pizza and was a good change of pace. Aside from the crust being paper-thin, I was really happy with it.

With only a few weeks left on the program I'm now starting to think about long term success. I've gone through other weightloss programs in the past and have lost a good amount of weight. The challenge now will be in keeping it off. I feel like I've been given all the tools I need and a solid set of information/education.

My short-term goal right now is to get down to 235lbs by May 21st. This is the day I'm riding in the Tour de Cure (and still looking for sponsors!). That's 7 weeks and 14 pounds to go. I'll need to average 2lbs/week, which is getting harder and harder as I lose each pound.

-daryl welsh