So, heart rate zone testing has a cool purpose-- instead of relying on your level of perceived exertion, you have actual target heart rate zones based on your athletic performance during your test for each type of workout that you should be doing (recovery, lower aerobic, upper aerobic, nozone/uptempo, and threshhold). A description and sample test results can be found here: http://www.tricoach.us/id51.html-- I will post mine as soon as I get it.
Kevin and Bruce hooked my bike up to the computrainer and I saddled up-- the computrainer is pretty cool. I was on my bike in front of a giant TV, and Kevin was controlling the program through a computer-- I was on a virtual tri-course with little virtual fans cheering for me as I tested it out. After I was ready to go, Kevin gave me a series of target wattages and I had to pedal at that wattage for a two-minute interval before he increased the wattage by 15. He was monitoring my heart rate on my Mio Alpha heart rate monitor and he would ask me to rate my level of exertion on a scale of 1 to 10. With each increase, my exertion increased pretty steadily. I will post the actual results once I get them, but the test went on for a total of 20 minutes, so 10 intervals-- starting (I think) in the 70's and moving, finally, into the early 200's. By the last interval, I was pretty sure I was going to die, but I made it!
Unfortunately, by damn heart rate monitor lost my rate, and I had to wipe off the sensor to get it back-- it was around 170 about 15 seconds after I finished the last interval. Ah, the plight of the strapless heart-rate monitor. While I love running strapless (almost sounds dirty, doesn't it hehe)-- I have experienced so many times the frustration of having my sweatiness interfere with the infrared sensor and lose my heart rate, thus ruining my stats for the workout. Kevin and Bruce recommended getting a heart rate monitor with a strap. I am very interested in the Garmin tri-watch with strap. The catch, here, is that I am also poor. So... there's that.
Kevin recommended that I come back and do the test again on the treadmill, since heart rate zones differ from biking to running. Also, I will have a better idea of what my max is, since I will have a strap then.
I have three takeaways from this adventure: 1) Kevin said my bike isn't dirty enough, and that I need to ride it more. Challenge accepted. 2) Kevin also said my pedal stroke needs some serious work and that I will put a lot of wear and tear on my bike if I don't fix it. Bruce put me through some one leg pedal drills which were clearly more challenging that I thought. I thought about keeping my feet flexed and not pointed while biking today and had some great splits and my longest ride in my shortest amount of time. 3) Was that I need to increase my cadence by about 10 strokes to get into the 90 range-- which will thus increase my efficiency-- and it definitely did today!
I had a hilarious dinner at Dogfish Head afterwards with the Thirsty Thursday crowd-- it was pizza night and I had a celebratory pizza and then a small ice cream cone out of principle on the boardwalk (the principle being that I didn't get to do it all year, so I did it Thursday).
Friday morning, Kevin took me out into the ocean and, I s--- you not, there were like 10 foot waves. The bilateral breathing is great when you're breathing shore side but not so great when you're breathing ocean side and the wave smacks you in the face. I lost a lot of my technique because the ocean was so choppy. The water was a nice temperature and the sun was just coming up as we were getting in.
All this, and I was back in time for work (yeeha) at 9:30am.
Bruce is racing at a half-ironman in Montauk this weekend (good luck, Bruce!). When I get my heart rate zones back I'll write more about the results and also about my brick workout today. I'm starting to feel a little more legit! Talk soon.
Xo,
Katie
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