Tag: Cross Training

Thursday: 10K run / walk in Kumamoto

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Weather: Hot!  80F and 95% humidity.

Plan:

  • 45′ to 60′ of threshold done as 10K run outside.
  • Objective: maximize time at HR > 165 (TR range)

The hotel had no fitness center, and Komamoto is a really beautiful city with a remarkable castle on a hill, so it was a perfect opportunity for some aerobic sightseeing.

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Well, that did not go to plan.  I started off fine, but it was so hot and humid that I was drenched in sweat within minutes.  Then, added to that was the challenges of road closures because of the Earthquake here in April.  The damage to the Castle and the grounds was quite extensive.  There were places where the whole castle wall had just collapsed.

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Later in the day, I was speaking to the governor of Kumamoto perfecture, and he told me that reconstruction of the castle and grounds will cost more than $600M, but his government and the national government were committed to restoring it completely.

All of this damage also busted up the roads around the hilltop where the castle sits, so I was shuttled in all sorts of unexpected directions, but the big factor was the heat and humidity.  After about 30 minutes, I found that I could not run any appreciable distance without gasping for air.  A one point during the run, I started to wonder if I was getting a heat stroke, which seems pretty melodramatic.

Anyway, after about 40 minutes, I finally asked Google maps to get me home, which it did.  There was a lot of walking in the second half of this adventure.  It was not the session I intended, but another 70′ of mostly low intensity cross training.

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Tomorrow:  I have an early start and tired legs, so I think I will pass on the planned steady state session.

 

Wednesday: 3 x 30′ UT2/UT1

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Still in Shanghai.  I fly to Kumamoto early this afternoon, so I had time for a nice(?), long session in the fitness center.

  • 30′ incline treadmill (15% grade, 3.3mph)
  • 30′ Stationary bike (random profile, 15/25 load)
  • 30′ elliptical (rolling hills, 15/25 load)
  • HR limit ~150.  OK to exceed that briefly with variable load
  • ~1′ between machines

What a bore.  Listened to NPR’s “Ask Me Another” game show, and then a the “Daily Tech News Podcast”.  That got me into the last 30 minutes, when I needed a bit more motivation.  I switched over and listened to Steely Dan’s “Gaucho”, which brought me home in mellow style.

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Tomorrow: 60′ treadmill threshold run.

Tuesday: 45′ Threshold on Treadmill

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In Shanghai.

Nice fitness center, but no ergs in sight.

Plan called for a 10K run, but at 6am, I was surprised with an invitation to a conference call scheduled for 7am.  I only had time for 45 minutes in the gym, so I just set the treadmill to 2% grade, 6mph and 45′ and went.

It was just about right in terms of training effect, maybe I could have pushed just a little bit harder, but not much.  I saw some weird HR monitor effects in the second half of the run, but it was above UT for the last 25 minutes.  I’ll try the H7 tomorrow to see if that’s better.

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Tomorrow:  Plan calls for for 80′ of UT2/UT1.  I’ll probably do some kind of a fitness center triathlon.

Wednesday: 80′ of UT2

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Still in San Francisco.  I headed down to the fitness center around 7am.  The training plan called for a 4×20’/1′ with a HR cap at 150.  What I ended up doing was.

  • 30′ on the elliptical
  • 30′ on the stationary bike
  • 20′ on the treadmill at 15% incline
  • HR cap of 150. (I got no where near it)

My HR was remarkably low today.  Maybe it was fatigue in my legs from the two treadmill sessions that was holding me back, but this felt like a lot more work than the HR indicated.  I flirted with the idea of doing 3 x 30′, but I was running out of time and cut the last chunk down to 20 minutes

I am going to be trying to err on the side of going too slow for my long sessions versus pushing the pace, and HR up against the high side of the limits.  I’ll get plenty of intensity on my hard distance days, I really just want to pile up easy meters on the other days.  This will be a challenge for me.

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Tomorrow:  The plan calls for another hard 60′ session, but I don’t think I’ll be able to fit a session in.  I need to drive down from San Francisco to San Jose and get there for a 9am meeting.  I also have a customer dinner tonight that I won’t get back from until around midnight.  It’s likely that sleeping with win over exercising tomorrow morning.

Then tomorrow night, I fly back home on the redeye.  I’m hoping to do a good technique session on Friday afternoon.

 

Tuesday: 60′ Threshold

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Again in the fitness center.

Plan:

  • 10km
  • Treadmill at 2% grade
  • Pace at 9.0 km/h

The idea was to mimic a hard 60′ erg session.  Typical my HR will rise slowly through these types of workouts and finish up in the low 170s.  I was having all kinds of HR sensor troubles today.  Not sure why.  I thought it was just a contact issue since it seemed to get better when I would reposition the strap on my chest, but eventually, around 55′, the whole wahoo fitness app crashed on me.  When I restarted it, it seemed like the readings were much better behaved, so maybe the app was just in a unhappy state before it died.  I think the high HRs recorded are accurate and the low ones are erroneous.   The red line is my best guess as to what the HR was actually doing.

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I was starting to really struggle in the last 15 minutes, and at 60′, with about 1000m to go, I needed to back off the pace.  I slowed down to 8mph and that took a lot of the pressure off.

The training effect was basically what I was looking for.  Push HR up into the TR zone in the last third of the workout and work on just grinding it out.

Tomorrow:  Long and slow.  I will probably do a fitness center triathlon.  4 x 20′ / 1′ rests with a HR cap of 150.

Monday: 40′ UT2

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I was planning a rest day, but after I checked into my hotel, I had a little extra time.  So, I popped down to the fitness center for a quick session.  I just wanted to work out the kinks from flying all day, really.

Plan:

  • 40′
  • Inclined walk on treadmill (15% grade)
  • Start at about 3.5mph and slow down as required to stay below 145 HR cap

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I finished at about 2.9mph.

Wednesday: 50′ in the Fitness Center

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Nothing special, just trying to not lose fitness while I travel.

  • 30 minutes of a flat run (around 3% grade and 5.5 mph)
  • 1′ break
  • 20 minutes inclined walk (15% grade, 3.0 to 3.5 mph)

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Tomorrow:  Probably another session in the fitness center, or maybe a run (but it’s pretty freakishly hot here).

 

Thursday: 8K run

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Nice sunny morning in Chicago.. Actually a suburb called Buffalo Grove.  I went for a easy run, but you wouldn’t know it from the HR.

Tomorrow:  I think I need a little bit of intensity.  Maybe something like 6×1000 at r26 with 4 minute rests.

Catching Up: Thursday to Tuesday

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Things remain a bit hectic.  I’ve been focused on trying to squeeze in what I can.

Thursday:  I was down in Austin for a customer meeting, a big “Supplier Day” where a company invites in their largest suppliers and tells them where their business is going and what they need from suppliers.  A useful way to meet a lot of key people, but the whole time I keep thinking about other things that I need to get done.

In the morning, I popped down to the fitness center and did 30 minutes on the treadmill (max incline – 15% and around 3.5mph), aiming to upper end UT1 heart rate.  Then 30 minutes on the stationary bike, aiming at UT2.Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 10.11.20 AM

It was kind of interesting.  There was a huge thunderstorm going on while I was working out.  Lot’s of thunder and lightning and it was raining like crazy!

Friday:  Up at 4:15 to get to the airport to catch an early flight.  Then straight into meetings on the phone once I got home.  No time to work out.

Saturday:  Busy day, rushing around.  shopping.  Painting a ceiling.  I managed to squeeze in an erg session.  I wanted a bit of intensity, but I wasn’t in the mood to go really deep.  So I decided to do a 10K push, but start off slower (at 2:04), and end at 1:55.

It was harder than it should have been, but I actually enjoyed it.  I started with a 2K warmup.

The main event.  Starting target was 2:04 for 1K, then 2:03 for 1K, and so on until I got down to 1:55 target for the last 1K.  Of course, I just went for broke in the last bit.

It stung a bit.

The cool down.  2K slowing down from 2:00 to 2:15 in 500 chunks

Sunday:  I caught a plane at 9AM out to Las Vegas.  We are having an internal team meeting here for a few days.  I arrived around 3PM and headed to to gym, hoping for some fun workout options.  There were none.  I was consigned to the usual treadmills, bikes, ellipticals, etc.  I did 30 minutes on the treadmill at a 2% incline, and a slow trot, maybe 4.5 mph.  I slowed a bit in the last 5 minutes of that to try to stick to a HR cap around 150.  Then I grabbed a drink, and did another 30 minutes on the treadmill on the max incline (15%, around 3.5 mph).

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Monday:  We got back to the hotel around 10 and I escaped the bar by around 11.  I headed straight up to bed, pounded down a liter of water and collapsed into bed.  I woke up with the alarm at 5:30, and then headed down down to  the depressing little fitness center to workout.  This morning the menu was 30 minutes on the treadmill at maximum incline (15%) and about 3.5 mph.  Then 30 minutes on the one of those new, improved elliptical machines that have more independent leg motions

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Tuesday:  On Monday night, I crawled into bed around midnight having had a bit too much to drink and feeling a bit worse for wear.  But I felt pretty alert at 5:30 in the morning when my alarm went off.  This morning, I was certain that I had no interest in returning to the sad little fitness center, so I decided to run the strip.  This was a great decision.  I ran along in front of all the fancy casinos and hotels for about 4 km down and 4 km back.  One thing that made it a bit more interesting and tiring was all of the pedestrian overpasses.  Each of the pace decreases below is me climbing a couple of flight of stairs, and the coming back down.

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Now, I am sitting here at the airport   My flight has been delayed almost 2 hours and I am getting very tired and sleepy.  This could be a pretty rough wait.

Tomorrow:  First priority, enough sleep.  Second priority is a quick erg session.

 

 

Sunday: 3 hours of yard work

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Finishing up the mulching.  Worked from about 9:30 to 12:30.  I was stiff at first, but loosened up with the first 30 minutes or so.  The labor was dominated by a huge flower bed on front of our house that required 24 wheelbarrows of mulch to cover.

I didn’t wear a strap, but by my rule of thumb, this was 3 hours of sub-UT2 exercise and burnt 1800 calories.