Nike team ride

Sunday was the second team ride. 98 kms in the Arnhem area. We went up a couple of hills, mostly around 7% inclination. The climbs were fine. I could keep the hart rate under control and a good speed. We also did a couple of sprints and they were fast. The first one we keep 48km/h and 35 km/h on the second sprint of 10kms against the wind.
The next one is in Limburg area. Bigger inclination, longer climbs. I will bring the best bike...

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Domingo foi o segundo treino. 98 kms na região de Arnhem. Tivemos um par de subidas, a maioria por volta dos 7% de inclinação. As subidas foram boas. Eu consegui manter o coração sobre controle e boa velocidade. A gente também fez alguns sprints e eles foram bem rápidos. O primeiro sprint a gente manteu 48km/h e o segundo de 35km/h por 10 kms contra o vento.
O próximo treino será na região de Limburg. Subidas mais longas e maior inclinação. Vou levar minha melhor bicicleta.

Recovery ride. Recuperação

Today was recovery ride day. I went out with a couple of colleagues and we did 24kms easy ride. It took around 1 hour and we did 2 sprints and I almost couldn't keep up with the other riders because of yesterday training.
My legs were very heavy due to the heavy training of yesterday. I did 1h20m interval training with 10 minutes of warm-up and cool down and 1 hour full push. At the end I was completelly wasted. One thing that helped anyway was that yesterday I started again taking my recovery drink after intensive training. It really work because altough I'm feeling heavy, my legs are not really sore. Another thing is that I'm starting to discover that the hardest is actually the first half hour. Apparently, after this my heart get steady and I can keep going. What I can't do is stop before this half hour because the cycle will start again... Unfortunately the only way to prove this theory is when I'm in France. Because from now until then there is no climb that should take more then 10 minutes.

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Hoje eu fiz um treino de recuperação. Saí com um grupos de colegas e fizemos 24kms. Durou por volta de uma hora and fizemos dois sprints. Eu quase não consegui ficar com o grupo por cause do treino de ontem.
Minhas pernas estão muito pesadas por causa do treino de intervalo. Eu fiz 1h20m com 10 minutos de aquecimento e 10 minutos fácil no final com uma hora de força total. No final eu estava completamente esgotado. Mas uma coisa que me ajudou foi que ontem comecei a tomar meu líquido de recuperação especial para depois de treinos muito intensivos. O resultado é que apesar de minhas pernas estarem pesadas, elas não estão doendo.
Outra coisa que eu estou começando a perceber com esse novo treino é que para as subidas mais longas, meu coração e ritmo ficam mais estáveis depois da primeira meia hora. Depois disso eu posso seguir com menor sensação de esforço. O que não posso fazer é parar antes dessa meia hora, senão o ciclo tem que começar tudo do começo e eu acho que esse era o problema com as minhas tentativas de subir montanhas antes. Infelizmente eu só vou poder provar essa teoria já na França. Porque não há nenhuma subida até lá que seja mais do que 10 minutos...

Good weather. Tempo Bom.

Yesterday I did my long interval training. It was the first one after de cold from last week. I did a full hour on low rpm high intensity. Unfortunatelly my heart rate monitor didn't work but I think I manage to keep it around 170bpm. It was a good workout and I finished feeling good. No pain (not too much).
Of course today i'm very sore. But the weather was so good that I went to work on a recovery ride. High rpm a low heart rate for 1 hour. Tomorrow is interval again.

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Ontem eu fiz meu primeiro treino de intervalo longo depois da gripe da semana passada. Fiz uma hora completa com baixa rpm e alta intensidade. Infelizmente meu monitor cardiaco quebrou mas eu acho que consegui manter o coracao por volta das 170bpm. Foi um treino bom e eu acabei me sentindo bem. Sem dores.. Pelo menos nada demais. Hoje a ava bom e fiz um treino de recuperacao ate o trabalho. 1 hora com alta rpm e baixo nivel cardiaco. Amanha intervalo outra vez...

Milan SanRemo 2010 - What a race

Saturday I've watched the Milan-San Remo race and what a race it was. To beggin with it is huge. It is the longest one day race there is = 294kms. And there is not a single relaxing moment. No big climbs but a lot of middle size ones and those guys go fast = average 45km/h. It is a long one to watch but the scenery is so beautiful that you want to be there.

Take a look in the highlights.

Back to activity

Finally I’m feeling well enough to go back to activity yesterday. The plan was to get on the bike and do a 80km ride. Couldn’t do it for a lot of reasons (one of them being a Feijoada waiting for me on the south of Holland) and just went to the fitness club to do 1 hour spinning. Didn’t happen also because the spinning bikes were busy in an event and had to just to go to the fitness… not great but at least it was back to doing something. Today on the menu: long interval training = pain…

Training stopped: got a cold

Well, this Monday I've waken up with a allergic reaction that turned into a cold. So, a lot of sneezing, headache and fever. It really sucks because the weather is getting really nice (something arouund 15 degrees celsius) and I was planning to do 2 rides this wekend: 55 km with my friend Uzi on the Saturday and 120km towards the south of Holland on the Sunday. Now I don't think it's going to happen... It really sucks.

Double take

Sunday was a double take: 3 hours cycling and 1 hour swimming. Very nice day and with a result: went to bed at 9:00 and slept until 6:30 with the feeling that could keep on sleeping for another 2 hours.

The cycling part was interesting. It was against wind or with cross wind the whole time. Strong wind (Did I say wind enough times to give you the idea?). I think I only got the tail wind for 500 meters. I did 3 hours ride = 65.5km. Kept my heart rate at 150 bpm regardless of speed. At the end my right lower leg and lower back were hurting like hell. I think the injury from November is still there. I’m fighting the need to go the fisio, but I guess I have to surrender…

The swimming was interesting. I has been more than 10 years the last time I was on the water. Hell, I think it was probably 20 years for a real swim. I did one hour of alternated 25 meters of free swimming and chest stroke. I don’t know what distance I did, but at the end I was exhausted and almost couldn’t keep myself awake to play with my daughter…

Today I’m resting and feeling like an allergy attack… Maybe I’ve overdone yesterday. Tomorrow: interval at home in the trainer = boring.

Quick ride

I've done a quick 1 hour ride today with two colleagues. Basically a recovery ride using my old steel bike. It was ride against the wind with heart rate at 170bpm and although the weather was not that great, at least it wasn't so cold. Something around 5 degrees positive. The good part is actually that it was fun to break the spinning/gym workouts for a day and enjoy a small and quick ride with nice people. Tomorrow: interval = pain.

Another day on Interval

Today was another day on interval training. Did 2 sessions of 12 minutes at lactate threshold and a session of 20 minutes going to 185 bpm. Really hard. With 2 minutes rest between them. 8 weeks of that 3 times a week and I should be ready to face Drolenval in Belgium.

After that I’ve completed a series of squats with 20kg in each side and it went really well. It is actually a surprise to me that I’m able to do that just after the interval training. Actually it goes even better comparing when I was doing it just after the warm up. It also means I can keep the gym workout from the base phase and do interval training at the same time. The only down side of it is the constant hunger!

COLDER

Ride log: blue line is the altitude, green is speed and red is heart rate.

If I was complaining about the cold last friday, today got worse. Left home at 7:00 and it was 6 degrees negative. It was soo cold that I thought parts of me (that I'm not going to name) would fell on the ground... I did 85km with a first leg of 22 km and the rest on a second leg. Overall I was a good ride staying most of the time on 27 km/h and heart rate 150bpm. The sun was shining and riding again with 2 guys made it more pleasurable. Now is to hope that the temperature will keep up. Tomorrow recovery ride...

COLD

Ride to work today was COOOLD = 4 degrees Celsius NEGATIVE. My feet was very, very cold. And my hands were cold even using winter gloves… Made me push harder to get earlier = faster…

New Training Plan = POWER

After talking to some people and reading (thanks Joel Friel book and blog…) I’ve decided to change my training.

It was still too focused on endurance and long rides training as well as speed training. Because the learning from last year is that my weakness is keep power at long climbs, I changed to power training all the way down to end of May.

So, to start the new training I did yesterday one hour of spinning on lactate threshold by 50 min with 1 break of 2 min rest and finishing with 4 sprints (flat out power) for 30 seconds with 1.5 minutes rests. I will keep that up for 3 times a week and 3 hours ride on Sundays. That should give me better results to climb the Steven Rooks and Limburgse Mooiste hills. The real test before the etape…

 

Riding to work = it hurts

On the bike again going to work. Wake up 1 hour minutes too late and couldn’t take the longer route (40km). So, have to use the short one = 25km.

But at the end I’m glad I did. Mainly because it was very cold, 1.5ºC, and I even get a bit of hail on the way. Let me tell you that Ice falling from the sky in your face hurts, very much…

To get things worse I’ve forgot to put the shoes and shoe covers close to the heating after the Sunday ride and they were still wet. My feet were so cold that they were numb and painful at the same time! Anyway, I did it in 48 minutes and with average of 28km/h. If it wasn’t for a couple of traffic lights on the way it would be a solid fast ride.

And I still have to go back home at the end of the day…

First team Ride = my name is mud

In case you wonder, that is me in white and that
is the result of following the guy in green for too long...

Well, the first team ride is done. We’ve got earth (mud), wind, water, and fire - in the legs (pain)… I missed the team departure but fortunately other 2 guys also missed and we did our own team ride. Fast ride at pics of 42km/h and long stretches of 35/38 km/h. Heart rate around 170 going to 180 during a couple of the climbs (3 to 4 % at 20km/h). So, I’m not really in shape and it was hard to keep up with the 2 guys in the climbs but overall satisfied with the result of the first 80k ride of the year.

It was so muddy that I’m not sure how much of what I drank and ate was food or was mud…