When I was in college, every Sunday was our long slow distance (LSD) run. It is one of the four elements of a good distance training plan: LSD, intervals, fartlek, and hill training. I’m just now starting to realize that cyclist don’t train much differently than runners do. I’ve been riding “seriously” now for about two years, but I don’t think I’ve actually started training yet. Well until recently. I’ve added a LSD ride on Sundays, and I guess I could consider my spinning classes as intervals, fartlek and hill training.
So today is Sunday and I went out for a ride on the canal trail that runs from 83rd Ave and about Greenway all the way down through Phoenix and on to Tempe and Scottsdale. I rode from the 83rd down to 16th Street and Glendale. It was 30 miles round trip. It took me 2 hours and 11 minutes, and I burned a whopping 962 calories. I love this trail and love that it is only 1.5 miles from my house. I can hop on at any time. The best part is I only had to cross one major intersection (59th Ave & Cactus) and two minor streets, 7th St. and 25th Ave. (no cars both times I crossed). Below is a chart of my heart rate during the ride. The first 5 minutes were chopped off because my data recorder didn’t work correctly. Click the photo to see a more detailed version.
The goal on a LSD run or ride is to stay in the 60-70% Heart Rate Zone. According to a running website, Running for Fitness, that would be 139 – 152 for me with a Max HR of 192 and a resting HR of 60. I still don’t get why those numbers are so high. Clearly 60% of 192 is 115. I like my Timex chart better. As you can see, I was below 140 for most of the ride. The Timex chart says that Zone 2 (60-70%) is between 115-133. And according to this chart and my watch, I was in this zone for 51 minutes. I spent 1 hour 12 minutes “in the zone” (Aerobic – 70-80%), which is between 134-152. My average heart rate for the whole ride was 137.
I don’t know why, but I love stats. You would think I teach math, but I don’t. I teach English, and I hate math. I have three degree and I brag that I only had to take one math class, College Algebra. Apparently stats in grad school is considered math, but I didn’t see it that way. Go figure.
Let’s break down the stats for my LSD ride:
Overall Time: 2:11.26
Overall Distance: 30.11
Average pace: 4:33 per mile
Max Speed: 21.7
Avg Speed: 14.1
First Half/Second Half:
Distance: 15.02/15.06
Avg HR: 139 /133
MPH: 13.1/14.7
Pace: ??/4:04 per mile
Today has been a good diet day. More on that in my Week 2 Summary. Week 2 Diet
Filed under: Beat the Eat, Road Biking
