Thursday, August 1, 2024

Medium difficulty bike climb

I put out a little more today, and had acceptable HR readings.  I think the ridiculously high HR I experienced Monday was because of sprinting early in the climb and never taking time to recover on the few flats on the way up.  It became cumulative and a function of not being in great shape without the track training.  Today wasn't really much slower, only 34 sec slower but a world of difference in HR.  It was about the same weather, heat index low 90ºs.

Roark's cove rd. bike climb - 23:54

Max HR - 174

HR over 170 - 4:03

Avg HR - 154

Avg speed - 5.95 mph

 It's really more about pacing, gears, and not letting the cumulative effort mount because the more time I spend over 170, the longer it takes to recover.  This was a whopping 19 bps slower avg HR through the entire session.  That's a lot.  Also, this was almost 6mph avg.  My PR on this course of 18:40 would be about 7.45 mph for comparison.

11 comments:

  1. 7.5 mph is reasonable for that grade and about what would be expected for someone with your training focus and running background. I still say you may see significant improvement if you right sized your cranks. 155mm seems about right. What is your crank length? It should be stamped on the inside close to where you screw in the pedal.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Look on the inside of your crank arm. It should be stamped. If not you can measure it from the center of the pedal spindle to the center of the bottom bracket. It is an important variable in cycling.

      Delete
    2. You need this bike, it's only $130,000. https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/japan-unveils-new-olympic-track-bike-with-left-sided-drivetrain

      Delete
  2. 172.5 is way too long for you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I just moved my seat forward 1.5" and it feels better

      Delete
    2. That’s a big adjustment. It will put you closer to the bottom bracket resulting in greater knee angles and more stress on the knees. Suggest to adjust height so that your distance to BB does not change. To do that, put it back to the original position. Then measure from the center of the BB to the seat. Take the measurement about where it narrows down (not on the nose and not on the tail). The exact position doesn’t matter as long as you are consistent. You can look up how to measure it online also. Then move the seat back to your new more forward position and adjust the seat height to match the original position. It will probably go up a quarter or half an inch.

      Delete
  3. Probably only fractionally faster. That position would kill my lower back.

    ReplyDelete
  4. That is over a 10k track bike

    ReplyDelete