Monday, August 16, 2010

I'm Melting


When everyone is hiding inside with their air conditioners, I absolutely love going out for a ride. I love the heat, the hotter the better. When it's 30+ celsius outside, I have the trails to myself. No dog walkers, no hikers, not even cyclists. I can go as fast and as far as I want with no interruptions! However, this summer is beginning to take it's toll on me. It started a few weeks ago when I did the 250Km road ride in 38 Celsius weather. It took awhile to recover from that, but now the feeling is back - when I step outside into the heat, I feel ill. Nautious perhaps. It's hard to explain, but I have had enough of it. I know I'll regret saying this once things begin to cool down, but ultimately I am sick and tired of the heat. So this paves the way for Saturday's mountain bike ride. When I set out, I felt really bad. I could tell my energy levels in this humidity were the lowest they've been all summer. The plan was to hit a bunch of hills to work on my climbing. On the first hill, I damn near had a heart attack. My hearrate screamed out of control and if it wasn't for a cyclist I ran into at the top of the hill, I probably would have quit right then and there. I stopped at the top and had a conversation. Well, he did most of the talking, I just tried to get my breathing under control and not have my head explode. This worked out good as it gave me a chance to recover. After this, I felt my energy level bump up a notch as my body was definitely awake after that episode. I forced myself to hit every major uphill climb I could find in the Dundas Valley area. This is several thousand vertical feet of steep climbing. I didn't realize just how far I had actually gone until the final stretch. I was just about broken at that point. I was close to bonking, probably more to do with lack of nutrition intake but this was compounded by the relentless heat. The quality of this ride trumps any century ride I could have ever done on my road bike. The climbing was just that tough. So sure enough later in the evening I had to hide inside with air conditioning. Again, even Sunday morning I really felt like vomitting when the wall of heat hit me as I stepped out the door. I knew I had to get a run in, but ultimately would have to wait until the end of the day in the hopes things cooled down. Nutrition wise, I could feel that my body was lacking something but just couldn't tell what. I should have taken the day off after Saturday's hardcore ride but I'm desperate to improve my running with IM Muskoka just around the corner. I mixed it up a bit and took my run down a route that has some decent hills in it. I found that uphills use much the same muscle group as my cycling and I felt comfortable on them. The key is to watch my heartrate and not let it climb too high. The downhills, I just don't understand. I can't figure out a proper technique, it just feels awkward and I was dreading the downhills. I'll need to work on this for sure. Regardless, the route was a little shorter than I would have liked but it was better than nothing I guess.
Monday will be an unscheduled rest day as I have to take my son to his soccer game. Fran, Mrs. Lord of the Chainrings, has left me for a business trip. Oh how the world falls apart when she is not around!

WEEK 4
Running: 3 hrs
Cycling: 5 hrs
Swimming: nil



6 comments:

  1. You burned 66,262 calories, how is that possible? I mean I get it was a long hard ride but seriously 66 thousand calories burned?

    Nice job on the run!!

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  2. I dont understand how it could come up with such a number. Usually its a result of a spiked HR or Speedometer reading which throws off the calorie calculation but I do not see anything wrong with any of the readings. The calorie counter seems to have just gone haywire. Perhaps its just one more feature of the Garmin as this thing keep flaking out regularly. I'm not happy with Garmin's quality, but there's not much for options our there ugggh. I could see it saying 6600 calories, as if the decimal place had shifted or something, that would be reasonably more accurate.

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  3. Don't tell me about bad quality, I just bought one on Friday.

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  4. You'll have to setup your GarminConnect account and upload your activities so the rest of us can stalk your progress!

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  5. yeah.. I don't think so. actually I was just looking at my calorie count for Saturday and it says over 1500 calories burned but I only cycled 20km and then walk/jogged about 3km. That's got to be too much.

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  6. Calorie counting is easy. At 70% max HR you can just round it to out to 1000 calories burned per hour.

    That would be about right as your 20km probaby took close to an hour-ish.

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