The Zone

Opening weekend in Belgium is here, as I type this Omloop Het Nieuwsblad is taking place and my favorite 6 weeks of cycling kicks off.

In other news back in December I was having issues with my Polar FT7 heart rate monitor.  The battery in the transmitter was fading and needed to be changed.  I'd changed it too many times to count so that the cover was pretty messed up and this was the last attempt for this particular back.  When I contacted Polar about getting just the battery cover I was told it would be better to send it in for a $13 service, which would include the battery cover.

Well that's all well and good but I wasn't sold on the idea so I figured I'd just run without a heart rate monitor.  Using a treadmill (or dreadmill as I refer to it) means that my running is static.  The pace and gradient is always the same so I thought I was all set.

I ran through January and into February.  I had a slip now & again & again with the NSNG but overall I was doing good.  In fact at a follow up GP visit I found out that since 28 December I had dropped 17 lbs even with slips.  That was great news, but somehow I felt that maybe I should've done better and I blamed it on the food I ate that I ought not to have.

Now it is true to some extent that the food I ate that was bad would've been "okay" had it been a once in a while.  But most times it wasn't.  I am trying though.

Well I finally decided to try again with Polar.  I'm at heart a thrifty Yankee (but not a Yankees fan - they suck).  And the thought of paying $13 just to get the transmitter back with a battery cover seemed wrong. 

Whenever you deal with customer service you either get the super helpful person or the person who'd rather stick to the script/ not give away the farm.  The second time I called Polar I got the former and thus got the battery cover for free.  It arrived Tuesday.

Wednesday was a fluke day here in New England.  Temperatures hit a high of 74 degrees F and I was not going to pass up an opportunity to ride in jersey & bib shorts.  My first cyclo-commute of the year and my earliest ever was this passed Wednesday.

My running schedule is M-W-F and it wasn't until yesterday that I got my heart rate monitor back into use.  And what did it tell me?  It told me that I had run my way out of zone 2!  In December when I still had it in service I was doing a 4.5 mph pace to stay around 140bpm.  My z2 max based on age and being a bit fitter than most is currently 143bpm.  Yesterday I was in the low 130s - high 120s bpm.  Sigh.  With a bit of pace increase I got my heart rate to 138-139 bpm right where I want it.

Long story short, I feel almost revitalized regarding my work outs.  Yes I know exercise is not a good way to loose weight and that diet matters more.  But knowing that I wasn't doing enough work makes me feel good because now I have the other part of the equation as to why I wasn't losing more weight.

I recently got some new wheels and with temperatures here expected to be in the 50s; I should be able to get out and give a shakedown today.

Bricks or How I Train In The Winter

It’s that time of year again, the period in January when most folks resolutions begin to fray and fade away.  Long ago, I opted to set goals rather than resolutions because I felt goals were a better long term target and thus more achievable. 

To date I have successfully achieved at least one goal that I set for myself that being to take at least one picture when I’m out on my bike.  In doing this I am required to stop and pause somewhere scenic.  Whereas normally I’m just go, go, go.

The second goal is in progress currently and that is this blog entry.  I would like to be more regular as I train for and eventually ride Mt. Washington this year.  Thus, just like my photograph goal while riding, this objective is also a long term goal.

Mt. Washington is of course a multi-layered objective I have set for myself.  There is the training, my weight loss and of course the bike.  The former will hopefully have some upgrades later this spring.  My weight loss is an ongoing process as it does not come off as easily as put on.  And I can state that so far so good, i.e. the physical signs are there that confirm the scales.

My training is the one piece that has gotten off to a slower than intended start.  As previously stated I had the worst vacation ever – for me at least.  And was unable to ride for the majority of the time I was off.  I was cognisent enough to keep things in check via what I was putting in my mouth.  And as a result I kept my weight in line because as Vinnie has said numerous times, exercise is a terrible way to loose weight – it’s all about diet.

I am fortunate that my workplace has a fitness center for employees and that it has all the equipment that I need.  Once back from vacation I began to get back into the swing of my daily workouts.  In years past it has been very crowded around the beginning of January however over the last few years that trend has disappeared completely. 

My workout routine is really quite simple.  During the late fall/ winter I spend 3 days a week on a treadmill for about 30 minutes staying completely in zone 2.  As we know zone 2 is where the body burns fat for fuel not glycogen.  I may not be running fast, but mileage is not the goal, time in zone 2 is.

On the days I run I also do a core work out and stretch.  The core work out comes courtesy of former pro-cyclist, Tom Danielson’s book Core Advantage.  I got this a few years back now and have slowly made my way through nearly all the various routines.  Every few months I go up to the next level or workout.  The amazing thing about his exercises is that they don’t necessarily feel like anything the day of doing them, but the next day you feel it!  The series of stretches I perform came courtesy of a chiropractor I saw a few years back now that got my hips realigned properly and fixed a leg length issues as a result.

Adding Pure Vitamin Club Magnesium to the mix has seen my flexibility increase a lot.  I can actually get into child’s pose and have my butt touch my heels!

There was an episode of the Monday Vinnie Tortorich podcast last year that resulted in me changing my weight training regimen.  I had been one of those 3 sets of 10 guys pushing massive weight.  And be massive I mean 580+lbs on the leg press.  He suggested to someone to try cutting their weights in half and doubling the sets.  I gave it a go and eliminated some redundant exercises and found a great new weight regimen, which occupies the other 2 days of the week followed by the aforementioned stretching routine.

Anyone that has ever lifted and then stopped for any period of time only to start up again knows the feeling of how sore your legs can become.  In order to alleviate that to some extent rather than go full speed ahead I build up incrementally to my 60 reps by starting with one set of 10, then two sets of 10 and on and on until I reach 60 reps.

On the weekends if weather allows I try to get out on the road and ride anywhere from 20-40 miles on Saturday & Sunday.  This past weekend I managed a total of around 70 miles, which was fantastic.  The rides are a bit of an ego crusher in that zone 2 means I have a lower than normal average speed.  But as stated earlier it’s not about speed this time of year, but putting in the hard work for later on.

Should the weather not allow, which in New England happens a lot, then I am on the stationary trainer inside for about 90 minutes, which is about all of that I can take.

The program I lay out above will get me through April and or late March when I am able to ride outside a lot more.  Last year I was seeing lots of good results doing zone 2 and sticking to NSNG, but something tripped me up and here & there I slowly started picking at things that weren’t NSNG and things stagnated a bit.  I just cannot allow that this year or ever again. 

Mt. Washington won’t be a walk in the park, it’ll be hard and I want to ensure I have done everything I can do to make it slightly less hard.  There are a few events that I plan on using to help keep me in check.  Seeing results in the mirror or moving down one notch in my belt are all fine and good, but feeling a result on the bike is an even greater motivator to stick to the plan.

My beautiful wife is also going all in on the NSNG train.  She wants to hike more and knows that she’ll have more fun if she doesn’t have the extra weight to carry around.  She keeps telling me she is going to win the weight loss battle.  To which I say, nope I will – bring it on!

Speed Bumps

Every January for the last 11 years I have taken the first week and a half of the year off.  Most years whether it be inside or out, I have gotten at least 150+ miles ridden.  This was the first year where that did not happen due to numerous factors both mechanical and involving personal health that I shall not go into because I mostly do not want to relive them.

What I will cop to is that I put a bit too much life into living between Christmas & New Year's.  As a lot of you who will read this are aware, our "guru" Vinnie Tortorich says it isn't what you eat between Christmas & New Year's that matters, but what we eat between New Year's & Christmas.  Did I go whole hog off the NSNG path knowing what lay ahead of me.  Probably.  It also does not help that the cafeteria in my workplace bakes fresh cookies each day.

As stated in other blogs, I am going to tackle Mt. Washington this year.  I am a reformed weight weenie, which means that I no longer believe it is my bike that needs to be light as possible to have performance games.  Paleo and the first 6 months of 2012 showed me the path to brilliant otherworldly form and that is my weight.

Don't believe for a second that my bike won't be as light as possible.  But what I mean as a reformed weight weenie is that I won't shell out an extra $200 on a carbon fiber stem that weighs a few grams less than the top of the line aluminum stem.  In the big picture those few grams will matter much less than the pounds I take off my body.

And so with that in mind and having seen my GP in mid December for an issue unrelated to the malady that befell me during vacation I knew exactly where I was starting from and what damage I had done during the week spanning Christmas & New Year's.  Throw in one last hurrah on my birthday and then on the last night of vacation and that's where I stand now.  Back on NSNG and proving Vinnie's adage that exercise is a terrible way to loose weight.

That's right for those new to NSNG or this blog, you read correctly.  Exercise is a terrible way to loose weight.  Think about that for a second and you will realize just how true that statement is.  How many runners & cyclists do you know who are on the heavy side?  How many folks do you know that hit the gym all the time and aren't on the cover of Men's or Women's Health?

I hardly rode my bike in December.  The stars just did not align and after clocking in a lot of miles last year I basically just put the bike aside.  By the conclusion of my vacation I lost 13 lbs.  How did I do it?  Diet, by focusing solely on diet I was able to eat the right foods, eggs, cheese, meat, veg, & nuts.  Realign the grelin & leptin receptors aka hormones in my body to the original factory settings and thus eat nutrient dense foods less often because I wasn't hungry all the time.  In fact, just because I could and wasn't hungry I threw in some intermittent fasts on a few of my vacation days.

The result of this was that after a week and half off, and riding less than 50 miles I dropped 13 lbs.  Had I not kicked my heels up 2 more times, once on my birthday and once on the last night of vacation, that number would be higher and closer to 15 or 20 lbs.  Now I get that 13 lbs sounds like a lot but you have to realize a lot of that was water weight from being inflammed from bad food. 

I'd have preferred to get some zone 2 miles in during vacation, but it wasn't meant to be.  Instead I reinforced what Vinnie always says about exercise and weight loss.  You can't out run a bad diet - literally.  And rather than sink into remorse about what could've been, instead I looked to what will be.  Me on Mt. Washington in August.