Mantra.  We’ve heard the word.  We’ve all heard of the mantra “Om”. Ommmmmmmm.  A spoken mantra, or a silent mantra, is frequently used as an aid to meditation, focusing your attention.

Mantras are also useful when you’re out on the road or up on one of the Keiser M3s.

One phrase I hear every now and then at Global Ride is “Always Finish Strong“.  Dig deep, and Finish Strong.  For whatever reason, that phrase resonates with me.

You’re in minute 18 of a 20 minute power threshold test.  Your heart rate is edging close to Zone 5.  Only 2 minutes left.  Dig deep, and Finish Strong.

You’re wrapping up an outdoor workshop.  You’re almost to the top of Edgecliff (what a name for a road.  what a hill!), with your chest about to explode, but Gino is riding next to you saying “There’s always a little left in the tank.  Finish Strong.”

You’re doing Yoga and Kelly decides we’re going to do a sequence of Sun Salutations.  The arms are screaming, but we’re almost done.  Finish Strong.

You’re at King’s, and there’s an Angry Mob dessert in front of you. Finish… er, you probably don’t want to finish that one.

I’ve talked about a lot of stuff that I’ve learned during my first five months at Global Ride:

* Show up, and then keep coming back
* Be in touch with your heart
* Pay attention to your power
* Combine the indoor and the outdoor.  Combine the heart and the watt.

But all that work and application of technology has to be for some reason.  It can’t exist in a vacuum, otherwise you get bored and move on to the next shiny thing.  These are tools that exist for a reason.  It’s like collecting hammers, but never nailing anything.

Having a goal, a goal that is out of your immediate reach, is a great motivator.  It gives a direction to your activity.  I want to ride a MS 150.  I want to lose 40 pounds.  I want to climb Edgecliff.  Using these tools will get you to the goal.  It won’t happen immediately, it’ll take work, but you will get there.  The last bit is always hard.  So you have to dig deep, and Finish Strong.

And then when you Finish, it’s time to smile and take pride in your work.  Then pick the next Goal.  We wouldn’t want life to get boring.

Totally opposite, Power & Passion vs Grace & Style, but fused in friendship, making the sport better, TOGETHER!

Gino blogged his progress in the Giretto, that 415 mile ride in Italy that happened during the Giro d’Italia race.  These blogs were posted at CyclingFusion.   What is this Cycling Fusion thing?

Like most everything involving human interaction, it’s easy to form, for lack of a better term, walled communities.  The outdoor cyclists look down on the indoor folks, saying “why Spin for an hour when you can just go outside”, and the indoor folk similarly go “there’s no way I’m going outside. I don’t like  bugs or traffic.  And  I’m having way too much fun inside.  I dig the music”  *Every* community sees this.  I make animal balloons for stress-relief, I see similar schisms in the balloon twisting community.  Yeah, those clowns.

Cycling Fusion is about building a community to bridge the gap: bringing outdoor cyclists indoors for targeted training and hooking them on the fun of a high-energy indoor class. Teaching indoor riders many bike skills, such as good pedaling form, being aware of your cadence, and proper standing form, for transfer outside.  By mixing the two, you can reach your goals faster.  Getting fitter.  Going farther.  And maximizing the fun factor.

A similar schism exists in the training community.  There are heart rate proponents, many who dismiss power, and there are power proponents, many who dismiss heart-rate training.  Gino’s also working hard to help bring those two worlds together.  Ultimately, by combining the best of indoor and outdoor, and the best of heart rate and power, we’ll all be unstoppable. Or at least a lot fitter and having more fun outdoors and indoors.

How could someone not love heart zones?

Heart rate training has two main problem.  First, your heart rate lags your effort.  You turn up the resistance 5 gears and it takes several seconds for your heart rate to catch up.  You might be exerting yourself in a high Zone 5 (remember that’s where you’re generating muscle waste faster than you can clean it) and not realize it until 10-15 seconds later.

Also, heart rate is very sensitive to your overall body condition.  Depending on your mood, life stress, recent diet, and overall training load, you may be doing less work but still be in higher heart rate zones.  It’s not an ideal way to measure effort.

How could someone not love power zones?

Similarly, the main problem with power has been the difficulty of measurement.  Power measurement in scientific labs is complicated.  You can equip your bike with expensive gadgets to directly measure power output on the road.  Even the Keiser bikes don’t actually measure your power output, but instead calculate it using the power formula based on your current gear and cadence.  Power only measures the energy being put into the pedals.  There is no direct connection between the power being produced, and the condition of the person generating it.  The display may say 200 watts, but it doesn’t show whether you’re whistling along with the music or drenched in sweat gasping for oxygen.

So which one is better?  Yes!

Rather than arguing about which is better, why not combine them?  That’s where true awesomeness lies. Huh?  How is that awesome?  Your power tells you your performance.  Your heart rate tells you how your body is reacting to generating that power.

Let’s say you weigh 180 pounds, and you want to ride outside in western PA.  You’ll need to generate that 1 watt/lb.  You come to an indoor class, and start cranking 180 watts (after warmup).  If you’re hanging out in heart Zone 3, you’re good to go.  You know you’re replenishing your muscle’s fuel from your fat stores.  If you notice your heart rate climbing, and climbing, and eventually hitting Zone 5, then you know your body is just not generating power efficiently enough. You need to work on your fitness awhile before you try again.

Similarly, you can track your fitness by seeing what wattage you can generate while staying in a particular heart zone.  Say Zone 3.  One week it may be 140 watts.  The next week it might be 150.  You can track your average wattage and see your fitness improving.  And if you notice your heart rate is higher than it has been, or you’re generating fewer watts in a certain heart zone, then you know you may be getting sick (take a rest!) or overtraining (take a rest!).  There’s no shame in spending a class in an easy recovery mode.

We’re almost to the end of my little series of articles, and you’ll see how it finishes next time.  Stay tuned.

Come dear, we need our power workout now.

July 1 was a huge day for Global Ride.  All of the first generation Spinning® bikes were retired and replaced by those fancy Keiser M3 bikes with Power.  Since then, you’ve probably heard a lot about power, and some of us have been invited (subjected) to participate in various power tests during classes.  Power power power!

But what *is* this power thing?

Power is how much energy your muscles are applying to the pedals of the bike, making them go around and around.  That’s pretty simple.  It’s measured in watts.  You’ve heard of watts, in terms of light bulbs and heaters.  It’s the same thing.  It’s a measure of energy

In physics classes, they teach the “power formula”, which is “work x distance”.  For the Keiser bikes this means “gear x cadence”.  Keep the same gear and increase your cadence, you increase your power.  Keep the same cadence and increase your gear, you increase your power.  It’s possible to reduce your gear and increase your cadence and stay at the same power output.

Ok, great, we now have yet another new number to look at on the bike computer.  What good is it?  There are two ways to use your power reading:

* Track your progress over time
* Give yourself a goal.

Let’s look at that first one.  As you get fitter, your muscles can generate more power before tiring.  Your muscles will complain if you try to generate too much power, usually by burning and eventually refusing to work.   During classes you can find your comfort zone for power, and then push that envelope to develop strength.  Before you know it you can crank out higher wattages.  You can see your improvement by recording your average watt numbers after each workout. To see your average wattage, stop pedaling for 5 seconds and then look at the bike computer.  It’ll blink the average watts on the display.  Record it and watch it over time.

The much more interesting tool, at least for me, is using power for goal-setting.  Gino has calculated that for doing outside riding on the Western Pennsylvania hills (not rail-trails), you need to be able to produce, and sustain, at least one watt per pound of body weight (plus weight of your bike, tools, water, snacks, jewelry, small dogs, etc).  This will give you enough power to lift you and the bike against the force of gravity.

I have a ways to go before I can sustain one watt per pound.  The ways to address this is to lose weight, so I have less to lug up hills, and also to generate more power.   I’m working on both of these.

Remember the Zone talk from last time?  There are Zones for power stuff too.  This is new exciting stuff that Gino is building here at Global Ride, taking the Heart Zones principles and applying them to power.  He’s come up with three zones, called Sustainability, Climbing and Explosive.   The Sustainable Power Zone is what you should be able to maintain for 20 minutes or more.  The Climbing Zone is what you can sustain for about 5 minutes, and the Explosive Zone is for really working yourself hard.   As you progress through these power zones, generating more power, you can handle more outdoor cycling situations.  You can track your progress from flats, to rail-trail, small hills, rollers, and so on.

Periodically some of Gene’s regular classes  become “threshold tests”. These help identify where your current fitness lies in the Power Zones.  You start with a 20 minute warmup, then choose a target wattage and see if you can sustain it for an amount of time.  It’s no fun doing math in your head (so what is 60% of 1 watt per pound of your particular weight), so there are little printouts that show the actual wattage numbers for each Power Zone for your weight.  There are also little clipboards to hold the printouts, and little lights to help you see the little clipboards.

Taken independently, the heart zones and power training are pretty powerful.  But when you combine them…  Well, that’s the subject for next time.  Stay tuned.

Last time I  mentioned losing about 12 pounds, increasing my fitness, and that I am actually becoming able to ride non-trivial distances on rail-trails.  So, how’d I do it?

Aside from just plain work, that is?  Tools.

When writing commercial software, there comes a time where you need to optimize your code.  You need to figure out why it’s slow.  Long experience has taught me you can never trust your gut instinct, since it will be wrong. You have to take measurements.  You use tools to isolate the problem (and it’s always a surprise).  Then you fix it, and then measure again.

Likewise, I knew that getting reconditioned would require some tools.

You may have seen the the Heart Zones Training logo in the Cycling Room.  I’d seen the wall charts filled with numbers, having no idea what any of it meant.  Then I saw the Sally Edwards “Heart Zones Training For Cyclists” book lying around the Smoothie Bar and flipped through it.  I saw something interesting on every page.  So I went to Borders up in The Mills and got a copy for myself. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I’m an information sponge. I love learning new stuff.  Especially if it’s nerdy.

Global Ride offers a “Threshold Heart Rate Testing” workshop.  It condenses the book and makes the Heart Zones concepts very approachable.  It’s nice being able to ask questions and get immediate answers.

It requires a heart rate monitor.  But I like electronic toys, so this was a good excuse to get a new one.  You can borrow a heart rate strap and see the display on the Keiser bike’s display.  I have a Garmin unit that talks to a wristwatch.  I put the watch on the handlebars so I can keep track of my heart rate.

So, having devoured that book I knew what to expect from the workshop. It takes about 2 hours. You start with a half hour going over the basics of Heart Zones training, then an on-bike “threshold test”, which involves a warmup, then reciting some text, increasing your heart rate, reciting the text again, until you can’t recite it any more because you’re breathing too hard.  Sounds weird, but it works.  Afterwards, you take the numbers from that test and figure out what your Heart Zones are.

OK, so what *is* this heart zone stuff?  It all about how your muscles are  fueled.

huh?

Your muscles basically run on sugar.  There is a finite amount of sugar that’s actually stored inside of your muscles, going by the scary name of “muscle glycogen”.  You burn this fuel when you turn the cranks of the bike.   As you exert yourself, body fat gets converted into glycogen and replenishes what you burn.  You can conceivably continue indefinitely,  converting fat to glycogen and burning that in your muscles.

As you work your muscles harder, though, there comes a tipping point where you’re burning the muscle glycogen faster than you can replace it.  Once you run out of that stuff, you “bonk”, and just can’t go forward.

Also, our bodies are not 100% efficient systems.  Biological processes generate waste products.  In this case, “lactic acid” (another scary name).  Your bloodstream carries away this waste.

Ok, enough with the anatomy 101.  What’s this heart zone stuff?  With the threshold test you took earlier, you can calculate a series of ranges of heart rate.  These ranges, also known as zones, are numbered, and have definite behavior:

Zone 1 is an easy, low-intensity zone, handy for warming up.  Working out in this zone helps reduce stress, improve your blood pressure, and gives your hair that healthy glow.  You’re burning your muscle glycogen, and it’s getting replaced by converting fat.

Zone 2 is more intense, but still fundamentally easy.  This is a good recovery zone if you hammered yourself recently.  Similarly, you’re burning your muscle glycogen and it’s getting replaced by converting fat.

Zone 3 is where you start getting aerobic improvement.  You’re still burning fat, but you’re training your body to burn more of it.  It also helps your circulatory system, causing it to grow more capillaries and improve the efficiency of what you have.  You could work out for months in just Zone 3 and see vast improvements in overall health.

Zone 4 is where it starts to get interesting. You’re working harder.  This is where you start to build cardiovascular strength.  You’re burning fat, but you’re also burning more muscle glycogen than you can replenish, but you can still sustain this Zone for an hour or two. You’re generating lactic acid, “feeling the burn”, but it gets cleaned out pretty efficiently.  You’re burning a lot of calories here.

Before we get to Zone 5,  let’s talk about waste a bit.  Those of you with kids at home (or live with a kid-at-heart) know that sometimes mess can be generated faster than you can clean it up.  Likewise, as you work your muscles harder, these biological waste products build up and can’t be cleared fast enough.

Zone 5 is on the other side of your “threshold”.  This threshold is the point where your circulation cannot clear out the metabolic slag from your muscles fast enough, so it builds up.  As the waste builds up, your heart beats faster to try to clear it out. You can’t sustain Zone 5.  Eventually you’ll either fill up with lactic acid, or your cardiovascular system will cry Uncle and force you to take some recovery time.  That said, time in Zone 5 can really improve your cardiovascular fitness.

If you’re really deconditioned, you’ll want to spend a lot of time in Zone 1 and Zone 2. Build up a good fitness base. As you get in better shape, you’ll want to spend more time in Zone 3 to improve your aerobic capacity and teach your body to burn fat faster.  Spend time in Zone 4 to get stronger, and teach your body to clear out the lactic acid more efficiently.  Spend time in Zone 5 for maximal strength, and to build endurance.  And, frankly, to teach your psyche to endure exertion.  I won’t mention the term “suffering” (oops, I said it) but you know what I mean.

This is how I use the heart zones.  If I’m in a recovery mode, I stay in Zone 2 or 3, even if everyone around me is working really really hard.  But I’m also working on my overall strength so I can climb hills, so I spend more time in Zone 4 and occasionally Zone 5 to improve both leg strength and cardio capacity.

In addition to using  zones to direct your training, you can also use these zones to make sure that you’re being honest during your workouts.  If Lorraine says during a class “you should be working pretty hard now”, and you’re in Zone 1, then you’re probably just slacking off.  You should push yourself to Zone 3 or 4, either by increasing your gear, or cadence, or both, or doing some standing.  Likewise, if she says “this is a recovery song”, and you’re still up in Zone 4, then you need to ease off on the gear or cadence until you get down to mid Zone 3 or high Zone 2.

You can also use the zones to judge your improvement over time.  You may be in Zone 4 while pushing Gear 10 at 90 rpm, and then the next month, you’re in Zone 3 pushing Gear 10 at 90 rpm.  Congratulations! You’re now fitter, and can generate power more efficiently.

Power?  Did I say Power?  Yes!  That’s what I’ll talk about next time.  Stay tuned.

Please check out Global Ride’s online store here. Our virtual cycling training DVDs kick the pants off the competitors. Literally. Try one, see what happens to the pants of the other DVDs you have. Try one in a class setting and pants will be flying every which way. Virtual cycling DVDs will never be the same, oh no – not after the quality we offer.

So anyway, I missed a day of Spinning thanks to the fantastic stomach flu that paraded around in my body for a while. It caused me quite a lot of grief, caused me to vomit at the table of one of the nicest restaurants in Pittsburgh and caused my girlfriend to catch it from me. That’s a lot of cause. The effect is when I did return to the old stiff saddle yesterday, I wasn’t quite as rigorous as the few days before it. Unfortunately for you, that means this post is over.

The only thing more difficult than an out of shape person Spinning is an out of shape, inhumanly inflexible person following Spinning with a heaping dose of ball class. Attempting to keep balance and stretch out on stability balls is something I originally didn’t want to try, but the persistent ladies of the MWF Spin class forced me into it. Thanks to their nagging, I can say I don’t regret it, and will be back next week.

Some things were harder than others, obviously. I should include a picture of this, because it’s hard to explain, as my previous adjective “inhuman” is fairly accurate. When I sit, or position myself on my back, I can hardly stick my leg out straight because of my super tight hamstrings. Attempting to lift my leg in the air to any degree results in a bend at the knee. The further I attempt to raise, the further it bends, until it’s past a 90 degree angle. I’ll have to get some pictures up here for sure, because I need you to really see what I’m talking about. All this inflexibility made the ball class surprisingly challenging, but I can see how it will provide future rewards if I stick with it as an after-Spin routine.

Today was the day of reckoning. Actually, that’s ridiculously overdramatic. It was just a day where I decided to push the limits of what I normally do during class. To date I have been maintaining a heart rate of a modest 125ish during my training. My response to this is that things have been a bit boring. It’s exceptionally easy for a deconditioned person to achieve a heart rate of 125, and I haven’t been able to participate with the rest of the group during the standing climbs, runs, and all that other good stuff that keeps your mental and physical momentum going. With Gene out of town for the past week and a half, I haven’t remembered to ask if it was suitable for me to up my heart rate a bit more and actually do some exercise.

So, I just took the liberty of doing so. Hopefully that’s cool, Gene. If not… tough, I guess. I can’t un-exercise. Well, I suppose I could go get a Double Whopper or something. That’d do it.

Therefore I rode with the team. I stood on the climbs. I kept my cadence where I was told to. I certainly assume my resistance isn’t as high as the other people, but my little rickets are far from handling high levels of resistance. But I did feel better after today’s session than I had after any other. I sweat profusely during class, and while I once said I’d rather be covered in a gallon of warm tobacco chewer’s spit than covered in sweat, it was indicative of my effort. I’m ready to keep going.

I suppose that’s all she wrote at the moment, so stay tuned for tomorrow.

I’ve been slacking this week as far as updates go. I should be dragged out back and beaten with a reed. The reason is valid enough, however, as I’ve been very focused and rooted in getting Cycling Fusion up and running. We launched more of the site yesterday, and things are continuing to progress. There is still a very long road ahead in getting everything together, but at least now we’re seeing the route more clearly. A few great people have already been commenting and expressing their interest in helping with our mission, and that is splendiffertastic.

So back on track – two classes have come and gone so far this week. The first one was monday morning, and as far as my personal workout and progress go, there wasn’t really anything of note to mention. I performed and felt about the same as my first class. We rode to the bellowing sounds of musicals (each day has a theme around here), so that was enjoyable – even though in a 30-minute class there were two songs from Grease.

I’m a great lover of musicals, but let it be noted: I hate Grease.

Today’s class was the rip roaring sounds of Barry Manilow. How is that cycling music, you may ask? So may I. But it did the trick, as I amped up the effort a bit and still managed to keep my heart rate around the target range from the first two easier classes. A few drops of perspiration even formed on my neck for a second. I still haven’t gotten used to the tight diaper shorts, but hey… one bridge at a time.

Imagine sitting on a stone-hard seat of iron, hypodermic needles stabbing you in the forearms, a 40-pound plastic suit covering your entire body as you are forced to work, your head completely enclosed in a space helmet, the smell of stink and rot blowing against you, and a hairy-backed dungeon master clubbing you in the shins with an iron mace.

Oh, crap… I gave away that was an exaggeration. The dungeon master doesn’t come in on Tuesdays.

For serious, today was the metabolic exercise test. We’ll accept the word ‘test’ in its literal form for this one, as I actually had to saddle up on the old bike and chug away while breathing through the mask and tube. (You remember, the one for people with big heads). Turns out I have big feet, too. Being a small guy, I seem to be some kind of awesome proportional mutant.

For those who have never experienced an exercise metabolic test (I hate typing that, by the way, very awkward), it’s essentially taking the getup used in the “don’t fall asleep” test from the other day and wearing it while doing some simple Spinning. The intelligent and omniscient gizmo gadgets monitor your internal functions and tell you more about yourself in ten minutes than you could ever figure out on your own, presented in full color graphs on handy 8.5″x11″ inkjet paper.

We did have to do the test twice because I accidentally overexerted myself on the first go and threw off the machine. One point for me. On the second run, I focused and concentrated, pedaled as I was told to pedal, manipulated the resistance as I was told to manipulate it, tried to stay on level, and basked in the cooling zephyr of Gene’s “imported from Hawaii” air from the plastic fan mounted on the wall. About five minutes later, I set a new Global Ride record: shortest test time! The way I interpreted it, this record could also be read as “Most out of shape person to be given an exercise metabolic test at Global Ride.”

My anaerobic threshold hit somewhere in the fourth minute, if I recall correctly. My VO2 (which I’m told is a fancy way of saying lung capacity) was somewhere around 20, and apparently it’d be nice if it were double that. My heart rate peaked in the 120s and during recovery would only decrease by 5-7 bpm, which is about 75% slower than would be good. Numbers and figures aside, the test wasn’t too physically difficult – and despite all preconceptions I had, I don’t think I’m going to wake up paralyzed tomorrow.

That might happen after the first real Spin session. This little soiree was merely a prime time trailer for the real show, with a headline of “Coming Soon.”

The other day, I came into work with no breakfast, coffee, or other metabolism-altering substances messing with my system. I put down my laptop bag, took off my coat, and waited for my metabolic test to begin.

The purpose of the metabolic test, as I understand it, is to measure the number of calories per day that my body burns basically doing nothing – that is, the calories I require just to function through my daily sedentary rituals. It also helps trainers establish when your body reaches its anaerobic thresholds, and when it changes from burning fat to burning carbs. We would be conducting the test in the lower level of our facility, with a room specifically dedicated to the purpose.

“Test” is a word that is used loosely, as my only responsibility during the 15 minute session was to lay down on a comfortable couch and not fall asleep. A heart monitor is strapped across the chest to monitor heart rate, and an elastic airtight gas mask-looking unit is strapped around the head, with a small tube coming from the mouth section to breathe through.

“You sort of have a big head,” said Gene, my boss and owner of Global Ride, as he realized the breathing unit wouldn’t fit around my head went to the supply closet to get a new one that was larger. “I’ve never had to use this one before.” Thanks, Gene.

These two devices are not the most forgiving accessories when you’re attempting to get comfortable, but with the lights down low, ambient music playing, and a big soft couch full of pillows surrounding you, it’s not terribly difficult to relax. Breathe through your mouth, not your nose, in, out, in, out, listen to the machine scribble and calculate, in, out, in, out, scribble, calculate, it’s over.

Daily calories burned: 1771
Fuel mixture: 57% fat, 43% carbs.
BMI: 23 (a.k.a. “normal weight”)

It’s not particularly bad looking as far as numbers go. But again, there’s one point to stress in this blog: being fat and being fit aren’t parallel. I guarantee there are plenty of fat people in better shape than me. Burning 1771 calories per day doing relatively nothing is quite a few. Exercising is going to pump that up higher. During a 45-minute Spin session, people can burn anywhere from 500-700 calories. That’s quite a bit, buddy.

So that’s what I learned from the metabolic test. That, and I have an unusually large head. Hell yeah.

Don’t mess with the bull, you’ll get the horns.