LT Threshold Update

Just did another ride out past Frenchman's Bar. Oh, and rode hard enough for the middle 10 miles to turn my legs into jelly.

10-mile Time Trial	7/2009	8/2009	6/2010	5/2012	4/2013	5/2013 (today)
Time	29m 21s	29m 18s	28m 40s	28m 20s	28m 10s	27m 25s
Average Moving Speed	20.44 mph	20.48 mph	20.93 mph	21.18 mph	21.30 mph	21.88 mph
Average Heart Rate (entire 10 miles)	156 bpm	158 bpm	160.9 bpm	159.7 bpm	162.8 bpm	165.8 bpm
Est. Lactate Threshold (average heart rate last 20 minutes)	n/a	n/a	165.9 bpm	162.1 bpm	164.6 bpm	166.9 bpm

10-Mile Time Trial: Another Lactate Threshold Test

I have neglected to post about any of our rides so far this year. I think it is mostly because they've all been training rides around our house. Same ol' stuff. We're racking up the miles, already over 1,000 for the year. And every single ride has started from home. Including today. I had to write up today, though, because it isn't your ordinary every day ride like all the rest. Today we did a (self-timed) 10-mile time trial so that we could get an approximation of our current Lactate Threshold heart rate.

10-mile Time Trial	7/2009	8/2009	6/2010	5/2012	4/2013 (today)
Time	29m 21s	29m 18s	28m 40s	28m 20s	28m 10s
Average Moving Speed	20.44 mph	20.48 mph	20.93 mph	21.18 mph	21.30 mph
Average Heart Rate (entire 10 miles)	156 bpm	158 bpm	160.9 bpm	159.7 bpm	162.8 bpm
Est. Lactate Threshold (average heart rate last 20 minutes)	n/a	n/a	165.9 bpm	162.1 bpm	164.6 bpm

10-Mile Time Trial: More with Less

After watching the guys in the Tour of California suffer through their Time Trials yesterday I decided it was time to do another Lactate Threshold test, which for me is a 10-mile Time Trial. Didn't take long to remember why I never got around to doing one last year: they're bloody hard!

10-mile Time Trial	7/2009	8/2009	6/2010	5/2012 (today)
Time	29m 21s	29m 18s	28m 40s	28m 20s
Average Moving Speed	20.44 mph	20.48 mph	20.93 mph	21.18 mph
Average Heart Rate (entire 10 miles)	156 bpm	158 bpm	160.9 bpm	159.7 bpm
Est. Lactate Threshold (average heart rate last 20 minutes)	n/a	n/a	165.9 bpm	162.1 bpm

Ring of Fire, 12-hour Time Trial

QUICK STATS	This Ride	2010 Cumulative
Distance	158.33 miles	4352 miles
Elevation Gain	10,913 feet	47.49 miles
Average Moving Speed	14.18 mph	15.04 mph
Dog Bites	0	1

Where to begin...

I guess at the beginning.

Lactate Threshold (Frenchman OB)

QUICK STATS	This Ride	2010 Cumulative
Distance	23.66 miles	2422 miles
Elevation Gain	718 feet	24.24 miles
Average Moving Speed	16.7 mph	15 mph
Dog Bites	0	1

This was a Lactate Threshold test ride, similar to the ones I did last year. You can find them all nicely grouped here. The Quick Stats data above includes the warm-up and cool-down. The relevant Lactate Threshold portion is the blue highlighted section of the graph linked below (and the data on the left side of the graphic is for that portion of the ride).

The difference between now and last year is that instead of doing a maximum effort 10-mile test (which for me was a little shy of 30 minutes) and using my average heart rate for the whole 10 miles, I am now doing a 30-minute test but using the average heart rate from only the last 20 minutes. Very similar. Just different. I think the current method allows your heart rate to stabilize so that the value is more reflective of reality. Or something like that. Relying on what others recommend here. Of course I myself have no clue!

The nice thing about my current iBike software is that I can still compare to my previous 10-mile time-trial tests since I have all the data...

10-mile TT	7/2009	8/2009	6/2010
Time	29m 21s	29m 18s	28m 40s
Average Moving Speed	20.44 mph	20.48 mph	20.93 mph
Average Heart Rate	156 bpm	158 bpm	160.9 bpm
Average Heart Rate (last 20 minutes)	n/a	n/a	165.9 bpm

So I have definitely improved since last year, which is nice to see. Now I just need to catch up to my dear wife!

Oh, if you're wondering what the LT is all about, you can search for it on the web and there is lots of stuff about it. I basically use it as my maximum heart rate, or the 100% value, and then have various heart rate zones that I try to stay within for specific training purposes. The Ultra Marathon Cycling Association's Heart Rate Training Zones page is a nice summary of what each zone is and under what conditions you should be in each zone.

Ring of Fire, 12-hour Time Trial

Distance: 112 miles
Elevation Gain: 9,520 feet
Average Moving Speed: 12.95 mph

Well, I had a lot of fun for the first 6 or 7 hours. So my first goal (Have Fun!) was met. Not so much fun to end the ride though. I learned that I need to deal with the heat differently on a really long hot ride. Nausea is particularly no fun when you are in the middle of nowhere...

Even in bad shape though I was able to finish the big loop, so I accomplished the second goal as well.

We won't discuss goals any further... ahem. ;)

The day started out gloriously. The drive from Madras to Maupin allowed me to watch the sunrise - food for the soul! I arrived in plenty of time to get ready to go, but not too much to twiddle my thumbs and work up some race anxiety, so the day really couldn't have started any better.

Once I started riding up out of Maupin my heart rate jumped to the top end of my target climbing range. The route to Mt. Hood is nearly all climbing, so I had it basically pegged there the whole morning. It was more than I had intended, but in the end I think it was okay, since that is what those zones are for. The problem is when I started descending it was getting hot, and I hadn't been eating enough, and things started to deteriorate.

I had read up on riding in extreme heat beforehand, but I didn't want to try something totally new on an actual race. I had ridden in the heat before and been okay. But I hadn't ever ridden this hard in the heat, nor this long. Our RAPSody ride weather was 50s, 60s and 70s all day, not 90s like that last few hours today. Live and learn.

Rode a bit with John Henry Maurice, whom Amy and I had met at RAPSody. Great guy! We were riding up the hill toward Tygh Ridge Summit and he and his support vehicle offered me a ziploc bag of ice to put on my back under my jersey. It was awesome - Thanks John Henry! Another valuable lesson learned...

Wind wasn't bad. There was a little stretch of headwind from Tygh Valley to Sherars Bridge that was pretty tough, but that was mostly tough due to heat/nausea. At the 100-mile point on this stretch my total time was a minute or two over 8 hours. I wasn't excited about the milestone at the time, but in retrospect, what with all the climbing, going 12.5 mph overall to that point was a nice achievement.

I'm pretty sure the nausea issue I was having is related to not being able to eat enough food while riding. That will be solved on future rides, hopefully. But today, it was ironically during and after the descents when I had nausea. The climbs were okay. My theory is that my stomach only had liquids in it, and the 25 to 40 mph descent speeds was enough to bump and vibrate my tummy into a very upset state.

My time-off-the-bike was minimized fairly well at the 3 rest stops. That all blew up when I had to stop at Sherars Bridge and recover from nausea for about 20 minutes. I needed cold water badly. My water was hot. No fun. Only 9 miles and it may as well have been 90 in the state I was in. Thankfully the WSU-Vancouver relay team was there. Little did they know they would be the fourth SAG stop of the day! They offered water to the pathetic schmuck who needed it very badly. And it was cool water. A major, major improvement over my hot cytomax water - makes me want to puke just writing it!

The nausea subsided so I decided I could make it another 9 miles. The WSU guys said it was flat and with a tailwind - and there'd be ice water in Maupin - SOLD! Maybe they were running short on their own water? ;)

I made it to Maupin and contemplated trying to recover and attempt a small lap, but after a few minutes I realized that was not likely to happen. At least not to the level that I'd be comfortable risking being nauseous again. Seriously not a fun thing to experience! So I thanked George and Terri, George gave me my "Ring of Fire Finisher" cap, and I called it a day.

Another learned item: a personal support vehicle on a ride like this would sure be nice. Although if I had a PSV today it wouldn't have solved my main problem - that's all on me. But the ride would have been much more enjoyable with immediate access to cold water (among other things) at all times during the race...

All in all, lots of positives in terms of lessons learned, and that was the main reason I did this race this year - so I could learn all that much more about racing if we decide to do it next year. The only question is, will we do any racing next year? Only time will tell. :)

EDIT: With further reflection I am confident that the much higher than usual physical effort for the first 6 or 7 hours, the lack of fuel intake (I tried but just couldn't ingest as much as I knew I needed), and excess heat were interrelated and as a whole are what caused my nausea-induced early finish.

10-mile Time Trial

Quick Stats
Distance: 10 miles
Elevation Gain: 0 feet
Average Moving Speed: 20.48 mph

Another time trial down on the flat toward Frenchman's Bar.

Did it in 29:18 at average heart rate of 158.

Only 3 seconds faster than prior time trial, but with heart rate 2 beats higher? Weird.

10-mile Time Trial

Quick Stats
Distance: 10 miles
Elevation Gain: 0 feet
Average Moving Speed: 20.44 mph

Did my first 10-mile time trial down on Frenchman flat in order to approximate my Lactate Threshold (LT), aka Anaerobic Threshold (AT).

29:21 time at 156 average heart rate.