20-minute ride on my bike trainer. Notice the high-intensity intervals. avg heart rate 129bpm, max 165bpm. This is the typical cardio exercise I was doing 3 times a week since starting Body-for-Life in January.
Red line shows heart rate, brown line shows altitude. Very difficult ride from Lake Jennings campground down the hill to El Monte Park on my Trek 7500 hybrid bike and back up. Notice the heart rate line rising dramatically as the climbing starts! Even with the very low gearing I hit a heart rate of 174bpm! As you can see I was up close to 170 for several minutes. This was one of the first rides outdoors since starting Body-For-Life. Man! That hill was tough!
12.7 mile ride on the Trek 7500 hybrid from Lake Jennings campground to the Alpine city limits and back. The ride to Alpine is almost all climbing (as shown by the brown altitude line) and was a real workout even with my low gearing. Avg heart rate 142bpm, max 174bpm.
Woodside loop, 8.0 mile ride. One of the first rides on my Trek 2200 road bike in years. Speed was a slow 14.3 mph avg and heart rate was a high 135bpm for such a low intensity ride. Blue line shows bike speed.
Home -> Mission Trails Park and back on my Trek 2200 road bike. A slow average speed of 14.6mph and high average heart rate of 142bpm showed that my conditioning still had a long way to go and that my excess weight was really making bike riding a challenge!
This was my first ride along the coast since my comeback began in January. I rode 22.8 miles: from Carlsbad to Cardiff and back on my old Trek 2200 road bike. On the last mile or so I put the pedal-to-the-metal and pushed my heart rate to 184bpm! That's the highest I've seen on my HRM and I have been using 185bpm as an estimated max to base my workouts on although my true max is probably closer to 190bpm.
This was my first 30-mile ride since my comeback began. It also had a lot of climbing - 2139ft. I rode it on my Trek 2200 road bike and it was significant mainly because it convinced me that I would be able to do endurance riding even with my illness - pituitary failure. It made my goal of doing the upcoming 50-mile July 4th ride seem much more possible...
22 miles of aerobic interval training. Notice several peaks of about 90% of my max heart rate followed by recovery. This was the first time-trial training session on my Rocketwing. Heart rate peaked at about 165bpm during each interval. Max heart rate reached was 171bpm. Max speed for each interval was usually about 27mph.
41.3 miles ride on the Rocketwing. Cardiff -> Torrey Pines -> Carlsbad -> Cardiff. This was the kind of riding I bought the Rocketwing for back in 1999. Only took 6 years to ride it on the coast for the first time! The dramatic rise in altitude as indicated by the brown line is when I was climbing up the Torrey Pines hill - about 2 miles at a 6% grade.
12.4 mile ride was a lot faster this time than the last time on the hybrid bike. The first time I rode this route I averaged 10.5mph. This time was much faster at 15.5mph on the Rocketwing. That shows how much my conditioning had improved and the effect of the additional weight loss. As indicated by the brown altitude line, it was all uphill going to Alpine!
This was the training ride that convinced me that I was ready to take on the July 4th 50-mile ride. This ride followed much of the same route and had about the same amount of climbing. 2400 ft of climbing, 149bpm avg heart rate, avg speed of 14.8mph. Follow the brown altitude line and you'll see that it was one climb after another!
This was my big goal! For years, I dreamed of someday being well-enough and light-enough to ride my Rocketwing in the 4th of July 50-mile ride. The ride had 2600 ft of climbing but I finished it in good shape with a decent avg speed of 17.3mph. My heart rate averaged 150bpm which is exactly how I planned it... Notice the dramatic peaks in the bike speed (blue line). There were several places where I put the pedal-to-the-metal and in one downhill I reached 51.4mph!
This was a baseline 10-mile time-trial test run on Fiesta Island. It was done on the Rocketwing in 12-15mph winds. My HRM indicated an avg speed of 21.9mph but I estimate that the actual was higher because I had the wrong wheel size setting on my Polar S725. My avg heart rate was a surprisingly low 158bpm. My feeling is that my muscle endurance was not sufficient to push my heart rate high enough to take full advantage of my aerobic capacity. However, it was encouraging for my first effort.
Another aerobic intervals training session. 20 miles of riding on the Rocketwing and once again in very windy conditions of 12-14mph winds. I was able to hit higher speeds and higher heart rates than previous sessions indicating that my conditioning had improved significantly.
Carlsbad -> San Onofre and back + several miles along coast to hit 60 miles. 17.1mph avg speed. Avg heart rate was 147bpm. HRM only showed 58.9 miles but discovered wheel setting was wrong and actual distance was at least 60 miles.
2 warm-up laps followed by 5 intervals, each one consisting of 4 minutes at about 90% max heart rate and 3 minutes recovery.
Home -> Pacific Beach and back. Rode from home to the beach on the old bike - my 1994 Trek 2200. It just feels so sluggish compared to the Rocketwing - which was in the bike shop that day. 14.8mph average speed. 143bpm average heart rate. 2100 ft. of climbing.
Home -> Zion Ave. and back climbing the Mission Gorge hill on the way out and the way back in very hot weather when I felt like crap. You can really tell where the climbs were by looking at the brown altitude line. 1499 ft. of climbing is a lot for a 20-mile ride. Average heart rate was 144bpm and average speed was only 14.3mph.
Carlsbad -> UCSD and back. Very windy and hot ride on the Rocketwing. Averaged 16.8 mph, 148bpm and hit a max heart rate of 173bpm, and 1700 ft. of climbing.
Night ride on my old Trek 2200 road bike. This was an easy recovery ride so my heart rate averaged only 119bpm.
28 miles. My first training session with the San Diego Cyclovets bike club. Notice that the first segment is 4 laps of easy riding with several power-up efforts of about 30 seconds. Then there were 2 laps of ILT - where you pedal with only one leg. Finally, there were 6 intervals - each one consisted of 3 minutes at about 90% max heart rate and 2 minutes recovery.
Night ride on my old road bike. Mostly flat with some good climbs.
Saturday 9/3/05. Carlsbad -> San Clemente campground and back. Total distance was 63 miles although HRM got paused at 41.9 miles. Felt kind of cruddy before ride but OK enough to have a pretty fast ride in a stiff wind of about 12-14mph. Later that night developed flu symptoms. Average heart rate was a surprisingly low 135bpm. That indicates that my aerobic conditioning is pretty dern good!
This is the calendar display of the software that came with my Polar S725 heart rate monitor. It tracks your workouts, total miles, etc. You can generate various reports from the info.
My first time-trial! 22.7mph avg. in winds of 9mph on the Rocketwing, really pushed hard, some asthma and sinus congestion, started off in too high a gear, photos show position is much too high, actual time is about 1:30 less than shown because of starting HRM early and stopping it late. I was surprised that I was able to average such a high heart rate of 169bpm, 91% of my max.
Completed this 52.75 mile ride through North San Diego County on Oct 5, 2008. Tons of climbing and at 236 lbs I really had my work cut out for me! This was tough tough tough!!! Felt like I had a cold so that may have added to the difficulty.
40.74 mile ride from Cardiff to Oceanside and back. Felt kind of icky with the same stomach bug I've had for weeks. However, it didn't seem to hamper my workout. It was about 72 degrees and rather breezy.
Training ride near my condo. Added some climbing up Winter Gardens street to my usual Woodside Ave loop.
20.17 miles from Site 94 at Lake Jennings Campground to Alpine and back. Felt quite slow but attributed not only to all of the climbing but the effects of having been completely off of the cortisol medication since the beginning of the week.
First ride of the New Year! 13.6 miles about 63 degrees and sunny. A bit cool so I wore a cycling jacket.
