July 2: Did a ride with Judy and Laurie today where we went from Hudson into Kent just past Towner’s Woods park. And again, I felt slightly better in all facets of riding. Right now I’m kind of the “governor” with respect to our speed in that I’m trying to stay within this 118-132 HR zone. My hope was that this restriction would not prove to be too slow for Judy and Laurie. Now as far as monitoring my HR, I’m still finding that by palpating my radial artery on the right wrist. Understand that with me just measuring for 6 seconds and multiplying that number X 10, there’s a lot of room for error. I mean just missing one beat can put you off by 10bpm, so I’m aware that my accuracy is not nearly lab quality. BUT, I did order a HR monitor chest strap yesterday, so I’m hoping it’s here for the holiday riding.
As I’d mentioned in past blogs, I have like 3 old Polar HR monitors that go back about 20 years. I also have a small box full of expired chest straps and their sending units. So what with my Garmin 810 and its HR monitoring capability, all I had to do was get the corresponding chest strap and sending unit. Got it from REI, and with my points from purchases last year, hell, I only had to pay about $1.43 for a $75 dollar chest strap.
So anyway, I did this ride with the radial artery palpitation method as we rode along. I’d really just do it on occasion on the flats, and more than anything, at the top of any climb. Still noted that I was over my high end on the HR with a climb like the one on Hudson Rd, just right of the bike and hike trail. But the ride was better than the previous, so I guess things are progressing. My only hesitation is that I’m probably going a bit longer than my doc had intended, this since my monitored workout on Friday was about 45 min to 1 hr total. Today’s ride was about 2:15 hrs total.
Later in the day we took pop to Westbranch State Park for a little picnic with Judy’s sister and relatives. My biggest challenge that day was not eating all the cake, pie, chips and sugar goodies before dinner, and then not putting butter and salt on my potatos, corn and chicken. Made it through, but it’s still hard laying off all those items. Still not grooving on the Mediterranean diet!
Came back home where Kim was dog sitting her dogs and our dog Pepper. She cooked up this really awesome fish stew dish from a cookbook a patient of hers had given her. It’s on HEALTHY Chinese cooking. Amazing that such a book even exits, but tell you what, that stew dish is crazy good, so we’ve one keeper so far. We’ll be experimenting with that puppy for the rest of the summer!
July 3: Well, first ride with the HR monitor and wow, what a difference than what I’d been doing. Now I’d first thought the zones doc had drawn up for me might be a bit too mellow, but what a difference when you’re not palpitating the radial artery for 6 seconds. What I had been doing on the flats was just too easy when not using the HR monitor, and what I’d been doing on the climbs was a bit too aggressive.
So I got my 810 on the front bars, strapped on the chest strap and off I went for a ride with Judy on the bike trail. Noticed that I could really get in a pretty good workout on the flats in the 118-132 area I was supposed to be in. I tried to stay around 129-132 most of that time, and then when I came to a climb, like the one out of the Brandywine Valley area, I had to back off and to out of the saddle and kind of do this slow motion pedaling - this because of the fixie. On that climb I hit 137, but that was when I topped out and got seated. It was a short stint above my high end. From there I just tried to keep it pegged within about 2bpm of my 132 top zone.
Did this for a full 2 hours and just felt great. I mean I actually was feeling like I was in the cruise mode, with a nice steady state pacing and HR. Shit, it’s been over 16 years since I had used a HR monitor. Like the day I quit racing, that very day was my last day of every caring again about what HR zone I was in. From then forward I just put all my HR monitor stuff in my desk drawer and that was the end of that. After that last race I did not want to every use one of those buggers again. Just didn’t care. I’ve used perceived exertion from 2000 onward. Until today! So now that I have these prescribed zones to rehab, (let’s call it training instead) I really need to dial it in more. And judging by my palpitation method of the past several days, I was off of where I needed to be.
And I was actually happy that I had to ride harder with the HR monitor. Made me feel like I was doing something. Only downer was the climbing where I had to dial it back. Only problem there is that it’s pretty hard to dial it back on a fixie. I mean the only thing to do is to either slow the pedaling way down…or walk the bike! So far I’ve been able to make the climbs doing the 40-50 rpm thing and only go over my HR top end by 3-5 bpm. I’m sure that if I had to climb something like Truxell Rd I’d be in a shit bit of trouble with respect to the HR. I’ll wait on the bigger climbs until I can pick up another HR zone above where I’m at right now.
And that’s my big hope here: being able to eventually work into the Z4 realm. Though I don’t train or race, I still love to venture into Z4 when climbing or when I “pretend” to do some TTing on the flats. I have a stress echo test on the 28th of this month, and on my wish list is being given the go ahead to get up into the next zone. Now my current zones may change a bit just because my heart is adapting again to harder work and because my efficiency on the bike is improving, so they might in fact have to be revamped. But whatever the case I’m really looking towards getting into the higher zones so I can climb bigger climbs without having to dial it back.
Anyway, I did the bike trail to it’s end out at Alexander Rd, then flipped it and headed back - right into a headwind. And man, that dude just worked me hard on the fixie. I was doing an overgear for a solid hour. Kept the HR at the upper end of my prescribed zone the whole way back. And when I got home by God I really felt like I’d gotten a workout!
Did a dog walk with Kim - NOT a hike! But we still got in like 1:15 hrs of walking. So shoot, that was a total of 3:15 hrs of PT for me, a guy 6 weeks off the operating table. Felt really stoked about that.