Frog
(Note: This was last week. I'm late in posting it)
Sitting on the train tonight I keep uttering the word "frog" over and over in my head. Of course I have no idea why this is, other than the obvious Red Flag potential in terms of triggering the early onset of some dreadfully debilitating yet colorful mental breakdown. Or it could be due to the fact that I am tired. Oh, right, that's what it is. I'm tired.
Today was the second day in a row of VO2max intervals, which in laymen's terms equals an hour of alternating between 5 minutes of hell and 5 minutes of trying to recover for the next round of hell. In the biking world this is called block training, with the idea that your body super compensates by abusing it as such. If I feel really saucy I'll try to knock out a third day in a row tomorrow for an even bigger effect. Of course this would entail me going to bed as soon as I get home, a not entirely unrealistic scenario given my current state. Still, chances are slim.
The thing is, block training and a restricted calorie diet do not work well together. In order to really nail these sessions, you need food. Well, any brain surgeon can tell you that food and calorie restrictions do not go hand in hand. I'm sure my garbage man could as well. "You really throwing out this alternator? Hey, you gotta eat more to get the most out of your sessions man."
Regardless, today I was able to maintain a higher power output than yesterday, even though I felt like ass for much of the ride. So it goes. Sometimes you need to experiment to really imprint the details in your mind, details I'm likely to forget in 3 days when the weekend ends. Sometimes repeatedly banging your head into the wall is the only real way to conclude the wall is real. Can you believe some of these people do up to 8 of these sessions in 6 days? This is insanity.
In any event, today's 7 day rolling weight average is 185.71 which is nearly a loss of 15 pounds this year. Sick. I'm fairly sure I can make the 170s before long. Well, I guess it depends how seriously I want to take my block training. I have no answer to that question right now.
Another question I came upon recently is that of my 50 pushups. On Monday I was able to reel off 50 pushups in a single clip. I find that impressive given that I have not done pushups in roughly 6 months. I honestly don't know what's keeping me able to do that. When I stopped doing them 6 months ago I was up to 60 a day, with a one day high of 70. But the I went cold turkey because it was an unnecessary component in my attempt to get ready for the 24 hour race, the results of which would not have been any less with the addition of daily pushups. My best guess is the heavy dose of biking this year coupled with the weight loss and the constant monkeying around with the Doodle. Nothing else comes to mind.
Fast forward...
I'm now on the train back to work where, as you can probably guess, I do most of my blogging. The guy sitting next to me is reading a Harvard magazine. How fucking pretentious is that? Anyway, here's how the night went, and this morning.
I didn't go to sleep when I got home, but my daughter did, in my arms, 2 bites into dinner. Thankfully I had eaten a Kashi bar and an apple on the way home so I wasn't too bad. But dinner wasn't done until almost 7:00. Then we were up for 30 minutes in the middle of the night because Julia is having poop problems (welcome to parenthood). Needless to say I didn't get up at 4:30 to knock out the third day of the block.
The plan was to knock out 3 days in a row then take the weekend off to recover. Well, that was an option and probably not a great one considering the reason behind the title of this blog. But the trails are a mud pit now with the melting and the torrential downpours we got overnight. So it's either road or basement work for the time being. March is a tough one for off road riding.
Ok so that's all I got.
Sitting on the train tonight I keep uttering the word "frog" over and over in my head. Of course I have no idea why this is, other than the obvious Red Flag potential in terms of triggering the early onset of some dreadfully debilitating yet colorful mental breakdown. Or it could be due to the fact that I am tired. Oh, right, that's what it is. I'm tired.
Today was the second day in a row of VO2max intervals, which in laymen's terms equals an hour of alternating between 5 minutes of hell and 5 minutes of trying to recover for the next round of hell. In the biking world this is called block training, with the idea that your body super compensates by abusing it as such. If I feel really saucy I'll try to knock out a third day in a row tomorrow for an even bigger effect. Of course this would entail me going to bed as soon as I get home, a not entirely unrealistic scenario given my current state. Still, chances are slim.
The thing is, block training and a restricted calorie diet do not work well together. In order to really nail these sessions, you need food. Well, any brain surgeon can tell you that food and calorie restrictions do not go hand in hand. I'm sure my garbage man could as well. "You really throwing out this alternator? Hey, you gotta eat more to get the most out of your sessions man."
Regardless, today I was able to maintain a higher power output than yesterday, even though I felt like ass for much of the ride. So it goes. Sometimes you need to experiment to really imprint the details in your mind, details I'm likely to forget in 3 days when the weekend ends. Sometimes repeatedly banging your head into the wall is the only real way to conclude the wall is real. Can you believe some of these people do up to 8 of these sessions in 6 days? This is insanity.
In any event, today's 7 day rolling weight average is 185.71 which is nearly a loss of 15 pounds this year. Sick. I'm fairly sure I can make the 170s before long. Well, I guess it depends how seriously I want to take my block training. I have no answer to that question right now.
Another question I came upon recently is that of my 50 pushups. On Monday I was able to reel off 50 pushups in a single clip. I find that impressive given that I have not done pushups in roughly 6 months. I honestly don't know what's keeping me able to do that. When I stopped doing them 6 months ago I was up to 60 a day, with a one day high of 70. But the I went cold turkey because it was an unnecessary component in my attempt to get ready for the 24 hour race, the results of which would not have been any less with the addition of daily pushups. My best guess is the heavy dose of biking this year coupled with the weight loss and the constant monkeying around with the Doodle. Nothing else comes to mind.
Fast forward...
I'm now on the train back to work where, as you can probably guess, I do most of my blogging. The guy sitting next to me is reading a Harvard magazine. How fucking pretentious is that? Anyway, here's how the night went, and this morning.
I didn't go to sleep when I got home, but my daughter did, in my arms, 2 bites into dinner. Thankfully I had eaten a Kashi bar and an apple on the way home so I wasn't too bad. But dinner wasn't done until almost 7:00. Then we were up for 30 minutes in the middle of the night because Julia is having poop problems (welcome to parenthood). Needless to say I didn't get up at 4:30 to knock out the third day of the block.
The plan was to knock out 3 days in a row then take the weekend off to recover. Well, that was an option and probably not a great one considering the reason behind the title of this blog. But the trails are a mud pit now with the melting and the torrential downpours we got overnight. So it's either road or basement work for the time being. March is a tough one for off road riding.
Ok so that's all I got.
Labels: bike, block training
