Back in the Saddle

The first knock back has now passed! I am over my cold and the chest infection has gone, all antibiotics are finished and it’s time to get back in the saddle!

I woke up on Saturday morning and for the first time in 3 weeks I actually felt like training! I still had a slight cough and it was damp outside and I was still on my tablets, so I decided that I would train indoors.

I had chatted this through with Chris and agreed that if I felt like training at the weekend then maybe I should just do some turbo work at home on Saturday and see how I get on. If that was OK then maybe go out on the road on Sunday, but stay local.

I had a late start to the day for me on Saturday and went into my ‘Elite Training Centre’ at 8am. That’s Triathlon talk for ‘My Garden Shed’!!!! Yes, I train in my shed. Well I say shed, it is a concrete pre-fabricated building that houses some gardening equipment, furniture and of course all my kit!!! 3 bikes to date!!! I dare say that will grow more over the years ahead!

Anyway, on Saturday I just did a steady 40 minutes in my base heart rate zone on my turbo trainer. A turbo trainer is a static machine that I clip my bike into and it allows me to ride my bike stationery whilst giving the back wheel some resistance. It is really good for targeted heart rate work and also for doing technique work on.

I have included a picture below.

Now I will cover heart rate zones in more detail separately, but it basically means that I needed to keep my heart rate within the range of 128-144 bpm (beats per minute) as this will target my aerobic fitness.

The problem with turbo training is that it can be quite boring without anything going on around you, so staying focused is not always easy. When you do base work it is not that demanding and does not require as much energy, or focus as say an interval session. When doing an interval session you are working so hard you don’t have time to think about your surroundings or where you are because you’re just knackered!

Base work is different on a turbo as to riding outside and takes a lot more focus to get ‘into the session’. I wear my iPod of course, but I am not a fan of base work and I prefer the more intense sessions that really challenge you! Chris would say ‘it’s like building a house Martin; you have to lay the foundations first’! It’s always a session I make myself do rather than want to do!

Sunday was a lot better though! I had decided that after Saturday’s short session I would hit the roads outside. What a glorious day! I have spent the last 2 months building my new winter bike and was desperate to give it a test run! I knew nothing about bikes so having taught myself everything by just reading books (and making a few mistakes) the sense of satisfaction to go out riding on a bike that I built was very rewarding and it stayed in one piece and got me back safely!

You just can’t beat riding on the open roads! My training plan said I should have been doing a 3 hour ride, but because I have missed a few weeks training I have not ridden that long for a while, so I decided to just do a couple of hours (how sensible am I, check me out!). The ride was a base ride again, steady away and target HR zone was 128-144 bpm again for the whole 2 hours.

Now base rides on the open road present a whole different challenge! You see you cannot control the terrain, well you can to a degree, but you can’t find a course that is completely flat when you are riding for 2 hours. This means when you hit a hill (for example) as a competitive rider your instinct is to attack it! But you can’t as that will push your heart rate really high. So you have to remain disciplined and ease back. Sometimes that means going into a really low gear and going up the hill very slowly, so against our nature, but you’ve got to stay in that heart rate zone! This ultimately means that your average pace on the ride is slower than you are used to and the distance you cover is not as far, so you can easily slip into the mindset of feeling you are going backwards in terms of the end result unless you remind yourself what phase your in and why you are doing it.

Now heart rate training with AF is also not an easy feat as at anytime the heart rate can just go scatty! Sometimes when I start the ride the HR rockets up to 220+ bpm and can take 20 mins to settle, if at all! I will go into this, and the frustrations that brings another time as thankfully this weekend it behaved itself!

On the positive side of things I am ‘back on it’ and looking forward to getting back into my training plan. Rest day on Monday and then on Tuesday I am have a swim early in the morning and a base run later in the day!

I’ll let you know how they go………….