Tuesday, February 9, 2010

February 9, 2010

So I had a bike workout planned today and it mentioned staying in certain HR zones. I talked to the coach about which zones I should use (there are different ways to calculate them) and he decided maybe the best thing to do is a Lactate Threshold test on the trainer today to determine my LT and set my zones for my training in the months ahead. Oh joy.

An LT test is a rather challenging and somewhat painful test to do and I was looking forward to it with mixed glee and dread. I love the challenge but I knew it was gonna hurt. I had the house to myself so I got everything set up in the living room - trainer, towel, Garmin, 2 water bottles, ipod, fan....

The workout called for a 10-15 min warmup (medium effort) and then a 25 km hard ride, as hard as I could sustain with a fairly even pace. I figured it would take me 45-50 minutes to do 25 km and it was a bit of a challenge to find a gear and cadence combination that I could maintain fairly steady for that long a time.

I had my ipod loaded with Podrunner 180 bpm techno music fairly loud. 180 bpm allowed me to regulate my cadence around 90 rpm without having to check my Garmin all the time.

So I started pedaling and sweating and pedaling, and an hour and 10 minutes later, I was done. I just LOVE the endorphin rush of a workout like that.....


Here are my stats:

Distance: 25 km (15.5 miles)

Time: 48:13

Avg Speed: 31.1 km/h (19.3 mph)

Avg HR: 170 bpm

Max HR: 182 bpm

Avg Cadence: 92 rpm


With this information, Coach set my HR zones as follows.

1 – Recovery 112 - 141
2 – Extensive Endurance 141 - 152
3 – Intensive Endurance 153 - 160
4 – Sub-Threshold 161 - 170
5a – Threshold 171 - 174
5b – Anerobic Endurance 176 - 180
5c - Power 181 - 187


My Garmin only allows 5 zones so I had to lump 5a-5c into one zone. My old Edge 305 let me create extra HR zones but I can't figure out how to do that on the 310xt. If you know how, please email me!

So now that my bike HR zones have been set, I will have a better idea on how to attack the rest of my trainer workouts this week.

Once I can run again, we will have to do the same thing for my RUN HR Zones. Your HR zones for running as usually higher than for biking. I know I have hit a max HR of 193 when running my fastest 5k (26:16) but my max HR on the bike is only about 185ish.

3 comments:

Mike Russell said...

I love knowing where my zones are. It is nice that you have a coach who knows what they are doing.

Did you listen to your iPod while riding? I just can't bring myself do listen to anything while I am riding. I have to know when cars are coming or they scare the crap out of me.

Swimming and running is a whole different thing all together. I love listening to my iPod when I do both.

Stuart said...

So now you know! It'll be fun to follow, you can create extra zones in Sports Tracks I believe but I do not know how supported on the Mac that is?

Kelownagurl said...

I never use my ipod on the bike outside. ONLY on the trainer. Riding with an ipod is just plain dumb, imo...