Randomness

Lots of randomness for today. First, my favorite thing ever (almost) is The Daily Plate (dot com), or rather, the daily plate when I actually use the thing. See I was annoyed last week and going "okay, I managed to lose a bunch consistently last summer, what the heck was I doing differently?" Thankfully one thing was tracking my weight, intake, and exercise religiously through TDP. So now I'm back to eating almost exactly what I was then (I just ran out of oatmeal packets, so I'll need to make a store run to pick up some old-fashioned oats again), and riding about as much as I was then.

It's really a great tool, just gotta use it. I try not to get too terribly hung up on stats, but they do help to consistently track what's going on - lately I've been also tracking my heart rate during rides, as well as the duration of the ride. Mileage? Once or twice, just to make sure my average speed is where it was a year ago (it's a little higher, whee).

Next up is heat. We've been inundated with rain lately, and right after it stops the sun comes out and shoots the heat up into the mid/high 90's. Pretty brutal, but what I've noticed is just like in winter, I quickly acclimate to it. Yeah, it's going to suck royally for the first couple rides out there - no doubt about that - but keep rolling. It gets better to the point of tolerable. For an hour. Maybe two. :)

Speaking of ride stats, I've been doing good about posting them to facebook and Twitter, as that's all I seem to have time for anymore. Here are linky-dinks:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bdinger/

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/bdinger/

Having a "unique" last name helps, yaknow.

Finally, the heart rate monitor is the best training tool, ever. Hands down. It helps me in every cycling situation to evaluate better what I should and shouldn't be doing. "Rabbitt" up ahead that I really want to go after, but my HR is already at a 160? Probably should hang back. Hill coming up and I'm lounging around listening to Seger at a 120? Select a new playlist and rock it. Previously I alternated between running at a 11 and running at a 5 all the time - which makes little sense in the grand scheme of things. I'd attack things when I was already at a 10, then push way too far.

Now I've got it figured out. My favorite zone for an hour long ride where I want to get a good workout in is 145-155. Above that, I'm pushing it too hard and it takes too long to recover from. I can go from 160 to 180 pretty quickly (within a couple minutes), with not much to benefit from it, and it takes forever to recover. When I'm in the 145-155 range I can drop down to 125, which I've deemed my ideal "attack" rate, then dial it up reasonably and for a long period of time. I've only been doing this for about two weeks, but in that time I feel better about getting a more reasonable ride in.

One last thought, finally have gotten back to my "summer schedule" for sleeping, I think. I like sleeping 10p-6a, then being at work by 7 - so I can leave around 4:30. It's been a struggle to get back into it, but I think I finally have it down. Those nice cool 6:30am rides are something in the summer.