Week 4 training - Barry

Surprisingsimilarities

Saturday morning saw a surprising test ofmotivation.  Richard was comparing a Fetefollowing his Stella performance as Barbara the bingo caller and Mike had goneoverseas for some hot weather conditioning in Spain.  Would I really make it out on the bike bymyself?

Waking up and looking at the mixed weatherdidn't help but I knew I had to do it so took the bullet between the teeth andheaded out.  Being alone on the bike wasa relatively new experience on a reasonably long ride and Having missed spinthe previous night I decided I would see how easy it was to replicate a spinclass on the road.

What people may or may not know is that inmy BFS days (bigger, faster , stronger.. But other interpretations of the acronym are no doubt possible) I used to play American football. During thecourse of my ride I was thinking a lot about this and the similarities betweencycling and American football.

1. You wear helmets for both to protect your head from collisions

2. You wear gloves in both to help with grip and keep hands warm ininclement weather

3.  You make use of padding to protect keyareas.  Admittedly American footballconsiders pretty much the whole body key in this respect.

4.  You wear skin tight clothing and inparticular trousers that you would not really want to be seen in anywhere else.

5.  Preparation is key to the success of both; and (the point that got mestarted on this train of thought)

6.  How both rely on CADENCE.

Which is which?

Cadence is not really a very commonly usedword but get cadence wrong in both. American football and cycling and theresults are not good. 

So what is cadence in Americanfootball?  If I ask you to imagine anAmerican football player, most of you will see the shoulder pads etc and startshouting random numbers, like a bingo caller with tourette's syndrome before shouting"hike" or "hut". That signal given by the quarterback isthe cadence.  For those who want anexample find Queens football fight scene from Flash Gordon (probably on youtube) and he demonstrates (in his own manner) what I mean.

The numbers and other ramblings quite oftenmean nothing but on occasion actually tell all eleven offensive players thatthey have to run a different play from that called in the huddle.  When I say eleven there is normally one ortwo who after forty five minutes of running into people at great speed miss, thepoint and still do the original thing often with comical results. 

The most important part of cadence isAllowing all of the offence to start at the same time whilst the defence are still wondering what "chocolate helicopter" actuallymeans.  American football is a bit likenewton's law in that  the offence's action has a defensive reaction and afraction of a second headstart can be vital in trying to make it not entirely equal.

What happens when it goes wrong?   If the ball is passed too early to anunsuspecting quarterback this tends to lead to a variety of ways in which thedefensive team gets the ball back.  If theball is snapped after the other ten people have moved this is a penalty and theoffence move back five yards.  It doesalso give the offensive lineman a chance to get a pretty good hit on a defenderwho is watching the ball and has not moved but that is in no way a legitimatetactic.  

In cycling, cadence refers to the number ofrevolutions your pedals do in a minute. This is a key aspect of spin classes where the cadence and your heartrate are managed to ensure you get the right type of workout.  An endurance ride typically has a cadence ofaround 80-90 whilst maintaining your heart rate at round 75-80%of yourmaximum.  Try it the next time you gopast an exercise bike in the gym. Then imagine somebody telling you that yourbody should be able to just keep going like this for eight or so hours.  Laugh? I nearly cry every time. 

Start going too fast in cadence andsprinting may well result in quick gains at the start but seven hours later will be achallenge.  Use a high gear and have youlegs moving too slowly and you are effectively pushing extremely hard likerunning up a hill which again saps the muscles. What I am finding is that using the gears to try and maintain the 80-90is best if I can.  However, as yo willsee below not always possible.

Classes

I struggled with classes this week due tobeing away with work but made one spin class but sadly no boot camp or othersessions.

As there was no football I was able toconcentrate a bit more in spin winch is probably what got me going on the ride.

Ride

So as I set out my mission was to pedal ataround 90 Rpm and maintain my heart rate at around 150 in the endurancezone.    I decided to ride out tocardenpark which is a lovely de vere hotel probably described as Chester although itis more accurately nearly whitchurch and not far from crewe :-).

This could be one road out and turn aroundand come straight back home and would be around 25 miles.  As I started though I developed a case ofRicharditis.  The thought of going straightto a point turning around and coming back was just not appealing.  Instead therefore I decided to head into theindustrial estate on the outskirts of Wrexham.

Wrexham to carden Park and back

This proved inspired as the roads werenewly refurbished as Europe's largest industrial estate is getting new accessroads and as it was early Saturday morning completely deserted.  As an aesthetically pleasing ride goes thiswas not great but I had other things on my mind.  As you can see from the graphs below, my planwas actually not that bad and I was staying reasonably close to my targetsuntil i overtook a mountain biker(:-)) and then started to forget my goal as Icrossed the river Dee into Cheshire.

Cadence relatively constant but heart rate up in two peaks in the first half and higher in second half.

The long straight road here is interestingas it gives you a good chance to set a steady pace whilst being slightly concerned atthe cars overtaking each other.    I was more worried for the woman heading in the other direction using only an abundance of blonde hair as a bike helmet,who seemed to be taking a lot of effort as she descended a slight hill.  

After getting to Carden park the first thing I noticed was that my Garmin 800 was now saying it had "no road routable maps".   This is a worrying message for what is in essence a sat nav device with all of Europe included in it.  After an hours worry search through various forums where this problem had apparently not been experienced before I eventually cracked the problem.  My computer had encrypted the drive last weekend when I had connected it and it would appear that once this is done the Garmin device cant read the maps.  Useful hint, that nobody else seems to have ever needed.

After turningaround I was soon to understood the reasons for the blonde lady's exertion.  Wind. Whilst performing my on road spin class experiment had been going wellwhilst deserving the hill the is Holt Road with a tail wind, ascending into aheadwind was an entirely different story.

Keeping the cadence was the easy part,using the gears on the bike results in a cadence of 80-90 being achievable withthe exception of the steepest hills now which is a real improvement.  However, the headwind resulted in the sameapparent effort moving my heart rate up by around 10bpm.   Excellent!! Endurance training on way out and strength training on the way back.

Richarditis also kicked on and instead ofheading back up Holt Road I instead headed into Farndon before crossing thestunning single lane bridge back into Holt and Wales.  The plan was to then go out to the Cheshirecountryside and take on Marford hill to round off the session.

For those of you who don't know it, Marfordhill was voted one of the top ten places to live in the UK and overlooks theCheshire plain with a stunning view. Funnily enough though I am old enough to remember when there were just a few houses on the hill. In line with tradition, every time one of these houses has become available for sale, it is instantly replaced by a few new ones depending upon the size of land available. Asa ride it is a 200 foot climb over a mile with a nice view it is also a nice workout for the legs.

Marford hill as seen on Google Streetmap

The Cheshire  lanes I would soon be overlooking were thereal surprise of the day as they were quiet smooth roads where I could enjoythe scenery.  I even found some holidayhomes I didn't know existed and a four foot wooden owl that marks the gate toanother business which made me laugh. Sadly this puts your heart rate up so I had to concentrate on unfunnytopics like Liverpool's league form. 

This set me into Rossett and like a planetaxiing (is that how you spell that?) to the runway I started my ascent from here.   Sadly, the fact that I gained altitudefollowing a relatively smooth flat run at the hill is where the analogy ends.  Thankfully jumbo jets keep gainingspeed.  However, I am finding I canclimb up the hill now at around 10 mph as opposed to the first time I tried where Iwanted to get off and walk.  I was nearly over taken by a man with his daughter in one of those carry seats which was embarrassing.  So improvements are being made.

In conclusion, replicating spin classesout on the road is not practical.  Thereare too many external factors (wind, cars, owls) that distract from the keyfactors and they can have a big impact on your heart rate in particular.  However this was still a good workout for atwenty five mile ride and I arrived home to a request to climb the horseshoe passon Sunday...that should be fun???