Matt's Bike Zones revisited

Considering how sick I was at the start of last week, I’m satisfied with what I managed for workouts the rest of the week.

Yoga: I can’t help but feel optimistic about the improvements I can make here. It’s kind of the new, and dare I say, "fun" thing for me. Yoga is kind of a difficult thing to measure or gauge your progress, yet I feel I’ve already decided “downward facing dog” is the yardstick. This is because I feel I would really benefit from having more flexibility in my calves, hamstrings and lower back and this pose seems to be the trifecta. I'm not in a hurry, I know it was 12 months or more that I felt I was "average" at swimming, biking or running. I don't expect yoga will be any different.

Swim: Bad week of swimming for me. I missed masters. Then felt like I sandbagged the workout with Maija and Bob on Wednesday. My only other swim was Saturday after the 9.5 mile hills run. That wasn’t much of a workout either. I eventually broke out the pull buoy figuring it would be a good arms workout.

Run: 5K easy run w/ Genine on Thursday. 9.5 mile hills run w/ Todd on Saturday. 40 degrees on Saturday morning! Wahoo!
So we have 2 hills courses, this one has about a mile loop towards the end which we have said we will add one extra loop each time we go there until we build up to 12 miles. At which point we would just run the entire course twice.
Anyhow, this hill is about 170 foot climb in .65 miles. My legs felt like lead from the start of this run. When we got to about mile 5, where we have just climbed that hill and was descending to where we could “repeat”, I say to Todd. “I’m guessing you were thinking we should run another loop”. To which he replied “3 more times in fact”.
Oh man, I knew that was the answer… I told him it would be slow but let’s keep rolling.
Once again a training partner pulls me through. Instead of only getting 6 miles in, we got 9.5 done and we are still on track with our “add a loop each time” plan.

I feel that I should credit my chiropractor with an assist for the weekend of training. I went to see him on Friday afternoon. The electrostim on the lower back.... So good.

Bike: Good bike week. An hour on the trainer on Tuesday and Friday night. Then 90 minutes on Sunday.
I was talking to Maija about how I felt I was really falling off 40-50 minutes into my “rides”. At which point she asked how hard I was pushing, what HR Zone am I riding in? Hmm, good question. I had a pretty good idea where my Threshold was but I really hadn’t been thinking zones while I was riding. I was just trying to go along with the DVD. Not a good plan.
So Maija shows up at the pool Saturday with a few triathlon books for me and I have my homework assignment. Find a Bike Zone Test and get it figured out.
I did….

Did a HR Test to determine my Zones. I’m going to say my VT is somewhere around 163-166. I’m going to err on the low side for now. 163.

Zone 1: 132 and below
Zone 2: 132-145
Zone 3: 146-152
Zone 4: 153- 162
Zone 5a: 163-166
Zone 5b: 167-172
Zone 5c: 173+

I did my 90 minute ride on Sunday keeping my HR under 145 and didn't run out of power 40-50 minutes into the ride. (Thanks Maija)

Here is the graph from my test.