Friday, April 22, 2011

Z2/Z3 Ride

Brought my bike out to the park, it was windier than I thought. Did a 15 minute warm up in Z2, small ring 90-100 cadence, which took me all the way up the east side of the park. It was more difficult to maintain 90+ cadence than I thought it would be. I'm not used to riding my bike these days.

I rode up the Great Hill to start my Z3 main set. Tried to keep my heart rate between 150 and 170 for this section, coasted on some of the downhill stretches, which recovered my heart rate to around 140 a few times, but for the most part, my work was within range. I did 5 sets of 30sec one-leg drills at the Museum Mile and finished my main set just before I hit the lower loop again.

I started my cool down at the top of the lower loop and (mistakenly) did accelerations ever 5 minutes instead of every 3, but they were fun to do and it was interesting to watch my heart rate spike so quickly with such brief effort.

I feel like this was a good workout. It was hard, but I find that monitoring my heart rate zone is less irksome than monitoring my pace or my speed. I feel competitive and "not good enough" when I focus on speed, whereas looking internally, it doesn't matter how fast I'm going, just that the effort is appropriate for me and my body. I think it's a good thing to refocus on for now.

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