Monday & Tuesday running

Two running workouts; Steven's Creek Trail on Monday for 30 mins, and a run around shoreline before work on tuesday. The tuesday workout didn't go so well; after about 25 mins I had pain in my left knee so I switched to walking. Its been twanging on and off for the rest of the day. Lots of different advice from people; I suspect I probably need to work on my technique, and not ramp up so quickly. I'll take a couple of days off and then try it again next week.

Saturday day off; Sunday Old La Honda/West Alpine

Feeling tired on saturday so stayed away from doing exercise. Sunday I went with another google, Ryan, up Old La Honda, down to La Honda, and back up Alpine and down Page Mill. This was during one of those nice summer california heatwaves so it was damn hot - my bike thermometer read 102 at the top of alpine.

Respectable (for me) OLH time of 28:06 or so - 30 seconds off my best, but it was hot - and took 5 minutes off my alpine climb time - only the second time I've done this climb, and definitely easier chasing someone. I also set a new pb for power for 60 seconds (not sure what it was). The garmin 705 was acting up again though - it claims my max power was 20 megawatts or something - insane - and the capture from it is very gappy - definitely dropping data. Its just a pain to reboot it while I'm going - I can tell when its going wrong because it stops reporting the instantaneous gradient.

Afterwards I was pretty tired. I had a nap and watched a boring movie.

Ran around shoreline lake

I failed (again) to get up early this morning so I went for a run in the afternoon anyway - I needed to clear my head after a day full of meetings! I ran around shoreline lake and tried doing some resting via walking, and then some higher sped intervals on the way back. Quite fun really. I scored a 77.1 TSS - not my highest - but with some good pace numbers. Then I went back to the gym and played around with my new friend, the foam roller (although its a bit love/hate right now). I grabbed one at the store on the way home, lots more pain in store!

My minimal pace curve now claims I can run a mile in 8:36 or so - I guess I must have done it - but has a very STEEP wall at 57 minutes, probably because thats the longest I've run.

And more running at the gym

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/7567957 (elevation profile is of course off). Ran to the gym, then did some interval style stuff up and down the hills.

I then tried calibrating the 405 to my footpod using the gps. It says "calibration successful", but I did jog on the spot for a bit. We'll see...

5am start, and up Montebello Road

Finally got out of bed this morning at an early enough time to go ride for a reasonable distance - I left at 5:41am for the up montebello rd & down page mill route. It started off with some high clouds, but there was a definite boundary and I could see the sunrise to the east over the clouds. Unfortuntely while climbing I never got to go through the fog as it was just hanging in the valley - it did look as though there was a sea of cloud above the hills. Not much wildlife out today, just some bunnies.

The power/HR data shows that I didn't try hard though. I was 14W down from my average power, and my average HR for the climb was 153 vs 167. This translated into 3:17 slower! Need to try harder next time.

Small bright spot - set a new record for max power with 964W. Got home in time to shower and get to 9am meeting too.

Need to go do more intervals, don't I....

Tuesday; 30 minute run

Just a short run along Steven's Creek Trail in the morning; got up late because I forgot to set the alarm. New tracking device, so need to get calibrated.

Monday; bike to work and Page Mill loop again

Two rides and a gym visit today. Nothing particularly spectacular though.

In the morning, I biked to work

Gym was mostly machines - hamstrings, abductors, lateral pulldowns, leg press, and some core..

After work I did the same route as friday, but was 63s faster climbing Page Mill. Wasn't trying /that/ hard either.

WKO+ gives me improved maximal powers too, so clearly I was going harder.

TSS score for the week so far: 147

Sunday longer run

5.6 miles, 52:46, 9:22 pace, 145 bpm. Along Steven's Creek Trail but further this time.

I definitely ran slower - my best pace is 8:36. I also noticed my heart rate was much slower - the average is down from 153 on the last run. This could be because I went slower, or also possibly because I didn't drink coffee before I went. Or maybe I'm just fitter.

Got a new toy for fathers day - a garmin 405 - I should be able to get more accurate speeds out of this since it'll calibrate with my footpod correctly - and I'll have GPS tracks for running.

TSS score for this week: 629 - best since the century. My CTL is up to 66.5, have been steady in the 60s range since 6/7 with slight upticks. I might be hard pressed to get it higher unless I exercise every day or do some longer rides.

Rode a normal route backwards

My average power was down a bit in buckets, but thats probably a function of only climbing for about 15 minutes. My 5 second power was up from recently, which is probably from sprinting up hills.After work yesterday I cycled from Google to Page Mill via Arastradero and then down Moody - which is a fairly normal cycling route for me except I did it backwards! Somewhat interesting to ride in the opposite way to that which I do normally; the road certainly looks different in the other direction and I saw things that I don't normally. My average power outputs were a bit lower, but since I usually push harder climbing and the only climb here was Page Mill for 18 minutes thats not really that unexpected (although if I use the "look for the drop in power" method my FTP is higher; too short a ride to tell, must go ride Monetebello Road). This was with the new firmware for the edge 705; didn't really notice any difference though.

Today I'll go for a ~30 minute run. I weighed in at 183lbs, a new low!

Biking to work

Since everyone else in my family is out today, I biked to work. Not a particularly fast time, but I sustained 300W+ for a minute because I can't abide going slowly. I doubt this sets any kind of record for me. After work I'll go bike up a hill I think since its a nice Friday.

Thursday I went to the gym and I wore my heart rate monitor. The plot shows when we were doing intervals running up hills and so on, and you can totally see when I was on the eliptical machine warming up at the beginning because my heart rate is very consistent.

Morning run

Ran 3.6 miles along the Steven's creek trail, turning around when I hit the 15 minute mark, which was at the gate that starts to go under highway 101. I tried to concentrate more on mechanics of running; landing on the ball of my foot as in the Pose Method. I think this is roughly how I run anyway.

This seems to have made my pace slightly faster. Note that the big change is when I switched from using my bike GPS to my watch fitness monitor, which has a different sampling frequency, plus I may not have the distance completely calibrated at the moment since it is only coming from the foot pod.

Weekly total so far: 11.5 miles. I'm not doing so well at slowly increasing my distance (its 3, 6.4, 11.5 now) but this is fairly arbitrary depending on what you call a "week", and I already have a higher base level of fitness from cycling.

Off to the gym this afternoon.

Today: 40 miles biking

Up Old La Honda in 26:23, a new fastest time. 257.2W, 3.05 W/kg.

Up Moody Road in 5:26, fairly close to fastest. 305.6W, VO2 = 46.77

5x 5 minute intervals on Foothill Expressway on the way home. Need to create a real training plan.

Its almost a year since I started seriously getting fit biking, yet only 2 weeks into running. Suprising how early I can get up really.

Tomorrow: Run 30 mins/3 miles in the morning, and go to the gym in the afternoon.