Tuesday, April 27, 2010

more on the TTT


whatever the cause of such a bad day, it is clear from the HR track that the pace of the first lap was unsustainable for me:
- first lap: 23'46"... average HR 178bpm, which is a level for me unsustainable for more then 15-20min.
- other 3 laps: maybe around 27-28'/lap, and the HR drops down at 167, which is around my anaerobic threshold on the bike, so it makes sense.

Overall it has been a huge effort of 1h40' @170bpm...

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow- 170 average off a 187 max! That does explain a fair bit! I was 164 off 193. For reference, I've averaged 176 in a Tonks led CMS TTT last year and I remember that hurt a lot more!

Inspire said...

Hi! Thanks for a good blog! I am in pretty much the same situation as you. Our running PR's are very similar. I have an achilles injury. And I have also taken up cycling to stay fit. But, in contrast to you, I have never biked before. So, I have couple of questions. Why do you think that cycling is much harder than running ? Is it normal that one's "cycling-threshold" is lower than one's "runing-threshold"? And is biking a good way to stay fit?

thanks in advance

by7 said...

Inspire,

Hope your injury can heal quickly. It is really frustrating...

1) I read sometimes ago that the maxHR for the same person in cycling is lower than cycling (for the same subject) due to fact that the bike carries the weight of the person (for the same reason in swimming is even lower).
So also the thresold will be correspondingly lower.
My personal experience is confirming it:my maxHR is 197bpm for running and around 189-190 for cycling.
So I have thresold at 175bpm for running and 168-169bpm for cycling.

2) IMO, cycling is much harder than running because in a race you must follow the pace set by the other competitors and not only your "confortable" pace.
If you start a running race with stronger runners, you would let them go after 10meters. In a bike race, you will try to stick to their paces as long as you can and suffers…
So you must ready get ready to get over your "confort zone".
You can observe this concepts in the triathles: they might be even very strong biker when they ride at their own pace, but they cope very badly when faced with the varied pace of a road race.

Also the training is much harder. Running is very easy for training: already going out at steady pace makes up a good workout.
For road cycling, you must train a lot more components: strenght, coordination, anaerobic power and recovery, hills, flats.
And you must get ready to race under the rain, cold or baking sun, which can be much more unconfortable than running in the same conditions.

3) I found that biking has brought me a huge fitness level.
Now that I resume running, after a short period to loosen up the legs, I could basically keep almost the same paces as before the injury.
I think that is very important that while training on the bike, you also keep the same "effort" profile as an equivalent running training program: doing hard efforts 2-3 times a week, long climbs, etc…
When in 1994 I quit serious cycling and decided to run a marathon, in 10 weeks I was capable to run a marathon in 2h58' without any specific experience and very little training..
There other cross-training alternatives, but at the end only with cycling you can do long efforts, lasting same or more than an equivalent running training.