Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Two major thunderstorms and a tornado watch, sooooooo

I rode outside. Who wouldn't? There I was at the office, cheering on the thunder and lightning and hail, hoping that it would get over and done with. That one did, then I drove into the tail end of another one coming home. These were major enough so that in some places city streets were flooded to several feet deep, leave an inch of hail in place, knock out traffic signals and produce a pretty good lightning show. This is pretty typical Calgary weather for June and July - rain like hell in the afternoon, and have a nice evening. During the drive home they announced a tornado watch. That's pretty rare here, but it does happen.

Once I got home the sun was beginning to come out and the streets were starting to dry, so I dressed and went. Today was intervals. Warmup, a strong 10 minutes, then 4 x 7 minutes hard with 3 easy after, then another strong 10 minutes, cool down. It was the perfect temp for riding, and it only rained on me a little. So little I barely noticed because I get wetter than that sweating.

Here's the average heart rates for the 4 hards: 127, 129, 124, 124. That last one ended just as I was merging back onto 22X. After the 3 easy I decided to ride strong till I got back to 37 st. With a bit of a tail wind, I was flying, and it took only 18 minutes, with average heart rate of 122. From there I did easy spin up 37 st and around the neighbourhood to fill out the 2 hours. My legs felt strong today, and I felt very comfortable on the bike. Right now I feel like I could get back on the bike and do it again. Except that I just ate supper, and it's 8:40. It would be getting well into dusk by the time I got home.

I'm a little surprised at that 3rd interval, I was going mostly uphill and mostly into the wind, so I'd have thought it would be higher. The last one doesn't surprise me, since much of that was downhill, with me  sitting up for more wind resistance and pedaling like a maniac trying to keep my heart rate up.

This is still a limited data set, but I'm beginning to suspect my long ride bike pace should be about 120 bpm. Any lower and I'm dogging it. I'll have to try that next long ride. The worst that will happen is that I will knacker myself and have to call Linda to come get me, or stop to have a nap in the shade.

Core. The key words here are "to failure". No, not the plan, me.
First set
held squat ok
plank to failure
standing rows ok
seated chest press ok
tricep dip to failure (which surprised me, normally these are pretty good.)
bicycle crunches ok

Second set
held squat barely ok
plank failure even quicker
standing rows ok
seated chest press ok but getting sloppy
tricep dip to failure, same as before
bicycle crunches ok

Third set
squat to failure
plank rapid failure
standing rows sloppy and just barely
seated chest press very tired and sloppy but just barely
tricep dip I chickened out
bicycle crunches, after a rest, powered through them

4 comments:

  1. Maybe it's just me, but I'd've thought Planet Fitness would have better weather.

    But ... rain, hail, tornadoes ... still ... that's better than Planet Hollywood.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You get tornados in Kanadia?! Wow.....

    ReplyDelete

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