It’s now the end of April and I haven’t written here in the fitness category for some time.
Having the Garmin 305 creating a diary of time, distance and heart rate allows for easy tracking of training volume. SInce I started in Feb 2007, I now have 3 months of overlap. No surprise I guess that my monthly times are hovering around the same 16 to 20 hours per month. With work, travel and family obligations, I’m time constrained. I don’t expect that I’ll really be able to push the hours much higher than my current 200 or so hours a year.
I’m working harder than I was last year, in general. Those 20 minute intervals of 8 sec hard, 12 sec spin have now become on bicycle intervals. I did one 20 minute period, building to a similar intensity which was embedded in a ride of an hour and 20 minutes. I did two rides the next week with 3 x 10 minute intervals. I thought the latter was a better way to provide training load, so expect to resume next week, pushing time and possibly number of intervals. The indoor training was good preparation.
Am I more fit? I certainly am riding faster consistently compared to last April. It’s not a huge difference though, probably less than one mph. And working at higher intensity, one would expect some higher speeds. Matching ride to ride at similar average heartrates seems to show about the same speed difference.
Subjectively, I feel like I’m producing more power for a given heart rate. I’m pushing up hills in lower heart rate zones than I recall previously. My expectations are modest now that I understand where my VO2 max stands relative to the population. It will be interesting to see whether I can continuous build on this and be yet more fit next year.
Tomorrow or Friday, I’ll be doing the Carmichael Field Test. I haven’t done one since the fall, so I’ll get a direct comparison of whether I’m holding steady or doing any better.