Cycling – Nov 16, 2008

This was another coldest and windiest day's to cycle. I just put on double layered clothing and managed to finish about 15 miles in just under an hour. The one advantage of cold weather is that you rarely sweat even after doing an outdoor activity for a long time. Here is the log from my GPS:

Activity	Type	Activity	Type	Miles	Time (HH:MM:SS)	Avg. Pace (min/Mile)	Avg. Speed	Calories Burnt	Avg. Heart Rate
Morning	Morning	Evening	Evening
Cycling	Cycling	Strength	Chest,Shoulders,Back	15.34	0:58:01	3:46	15.9	826	130

 

Sunday Double: Cycling - Nov 9, 2008

After finishing the gym, I took a one hour break and headed to the campion trail at 5:00 pm. I decided to do a quick one hour cycling. I managed to finish about 15 miles in the one hour. Since it got a bit dark towards the end, in hindsight I should have probably started half an hour early to avoid the danger of cycling in the dark. Here are the stats from the GPS:

Activity

Type

Activity

Type

Miles

Time (HH:MM:SS)

Avg. Pace (min/Mile)

Avg. Speed

Calories Burnt

Avg. Heart Rate

Morning

Morning

Evening

Evening

Strength

Biceps,Triceps

Cycling

Cycling

15:23

0:59:02

3:52

15.5

812

141

Weekend Double – Part 1: Cycling – Nov 1, 2008

Since I was running the DRC Half marathon tomorrow, I just decided to do a short cycling routine in the morning. May be because I didn't do any long run prior to the cycling, I had the energy to do a bit faster than usual. I did about 15.5 miles in 57.5 minutes @ an average speed of 16.2 mil/hour. The faster pace is reflected in the higher than usual heart rate. Here are the stats form the GPS:

 

Activity	Type	Activity	Type	Miles	Time (HH:MM:SS)	Avg. Pace (min/Mile)	Avg. Speed	Calories Burnt	Avg. Heart Rate
Morning	Morning	Evening	Evening
Cycling	Cycling	Strength	Biceps,Triceps,Legs	15:51	0:57:27	3:42	16.2	868	144

 

Sunday Triple Play – Part 1 – Cycling – Oct 26,2008

Sunday is the day meant for waking up late. I woke up at 8:00 am and while having my morning cup of coffee, I noticed the perfect weather for any outdoor activity. There are some advantages of living in Texas such as weather in Winter! I decided to go for a hour and half cycling trip. I decided to do the cycling at each pace as I didn't want to stress my legs anymore. I reached the campion trail at 9:00 am and finished the first lap (about 9 miles) in 36 minutes. I finished the second lap in 35 minutes. My speed for cycling was a mile slower than my usual pace and the average heart rate was also much lesser than any of my other cardio activities indicating the easy nature of the cycling.

Here are the stats form the GPS:

Activity	Type	Activity	Type	Miles	Time (HH:MM:SS)	Avg. Pace (min/Mile)	Avg. Speed	Calories Burnt	Avg. Heart Rate
Morning	Morning	Evening	Evening
Cycling	Cycling	Strength	Gym - Shoulder, Biceps & Triceps	23:25	1:33:16	4:00	15	1225	125

 

The 40 mile Cycling – Oct 19,2008

 

After a long run and a good upper body workout yesterday, I had a good night's sleep. I started the cycling at 7:45 am in the morning. It was the first day that I really felt the cold when I started the cycling. I reached the Campion trial after cycling for 2.5 miles on the road. The trail is a 4.5 mile stretch and I do one full non-stop round before breaking for water and wiping the sweat etc. I did the first round at 16.2 miles an hour which was better than last week. But the speed decreased to 16 mph for the second round. By the time I started the third round, it got windy and I was fighting the wind which reduced the speed. After finishing 29 miles, I was ready to give up since it was very windy and I was damn tired. I decided to give the last round a shot and to stop wherever I couldn't go further. As always, the first mile is the toughest and thereafter I just hunkered down and finished the last round in 15.2 mph.

Cycling is a good cross training workout to improve your leg strength. You burn the same number of calories doing cycling as you would in running (for the same amount of time). Moreover, the heart rate is much lower when you cycle. So, you get a similar work out with much less intensity.

Here are the stats from the GPS watch

Activity

Type

Activity

Type

Miles

Time (HH:MM:SS)

Avg. Pace (min/Mile)

Avg. Speed

Calories Burnt

Avg. Heart Rate

Morning

Morning

Evening

Evening

Cycling

Cycling

None

None

40.08

2:33:35

3:49

15.7

2110

136

 

 

 

Cycling – Oct 12, 2008

Since I missed the cycling schedule on Friday of last week, I wanted to have a two hour cycling on Sunday morning. Tired from yesterday's gym in the evening, I got up late and it was about 8:30 by the time I got ready to go out to bike. The weather was great for any outdoor activity and I was happy to be out with my Trek (cycle). I usually cycle on the same trail where I run on weekdays. It's a 4.5 miles trail which is not that ideal for biking since it curves a lot and that usually reduces your speed.

I reached the trail at 8:53 am and started the first lap of 9 miles. I wanted to do each lap below 36 minutes i.e. less than 4 min/mile. I finished the first lap in 35.5 minutes. I took a break, wiped off the sweat, had some Gatorade and started the next lap. Finished the second lap in 35 minutes and took a water break for 2 minutes. I finished the third lap in 34.5 minutes.

In running or cycling or any other endurance physical activity, the first mile is always the killer. If you can hold on your nerve for the first one mile, then there is a high chance that you can achieve your goal for the day. I finished about 31 miles in 1 hr 59 minutes. Here are the stats from my Forerunner GPS.

Activity

Type

Activity

Type

Miles

Time (HH:MM:SS)

Avg. Pace (min/Mile)

Avg. Speed

Calories Burnt

Avg. Heart Rate

Morning

Morning

Evening

Evening

Cycling

Cycling

31.06

1:58:38

3:49

15.7

1687

130

Cycling – Oct 3,2008

I woke up late in the morning, at 8:00 am, and decided to do a quick cycling for about an hour. I did about 15 miles in an hour. Here are the stats from the Forerunner.

 

Activity	Type	Activity	Type	Miles	Time (HH:MM:SS)	Avg. Pace (min/Mile)	Avg. Speed	Calories Burnt	Avg. Heart Rate
Morning	Morning	Evening	Evening
Cycling	Track Cycling	None	None	15.5	1:02:40	4:02	14.8	822	133

 

Marathon Cycling – Sep 28, 2008

After doing my long run yesterday (15 miles), I slept for about 10 hours in the night but felt good in the morning albeit had some soreness in the leg. It was fine by the evening and I decided to do some cross training on my Trek Cycle. I started about 6:30pm and was doing about 15 miles / hour. I wanted to do only 20 miles but I was feeling really good after 20 miles and so decided to at least do a cycling marathon (>26 miles). It was really dark by the time I finished 23 miles but I managed to pull off 6 more miles in the darkness (although I don't recommend it to anyone!). I was not too exhausted even after 2 hours of cycling and it's a really good cross training exercise. One small trivia is that I tend to burn as many calories during 2 hours of cycling as I do in 2 hours of running. I have noticed that I tend to burn about 125 calories for any kind of cardio exercise (Elliptical / Cycling / Running / Stairs etc..) Looks like the body has a way of figuring out how much energy to use irrespective of the challenge you throw at it. Amazing..aint' it ! The other thing is that my cycling pace has also improved a bit and the heart rate is also coming down. Signs that my lungs/heart are improving! Here are the stats from my Forerunner. Note that you can change the settings on your GPS watch depending on the activity you are doing (running/ Cycling / Other Activities).

Date	Day	Activity	Type	Miles	Time (HH:MM:SS)	Avg. Pace (min/Mile)	Avg. Speed	Calories Burnt	Avg. Heart Rate
28-Sep-08	Sun	Cycling	Cycling	29.1	2:00:00	4:07	14.6	1525	131

Running and Cycling – Sep 21,2008

Because of being busy at work, I was not able to do any kind of exercise for the past 5 days. I decided to run the weekend long run of 9 miles in the morning. After about 2.5 miles, I met some Asha runners who were also getting on the running routine after a hiatus. I was also feeling really tired after 2.5 miles. So, I just ran with these guys for the next 2 miles and finished after that. Since I started late (about 7:45 am) and was running on a concrete track, I was not able to run the quota of 9 miles and end the run with 4.2 miles.

 

I decided to cycle in the evening since I was not able to complete my running quota in the morning. I started about 5:45 pm and finished at about 7:45 pm. I did a total of 23.4 miles. Here are the stats from the running and cycling today.

Date

Day

Activity

Type

Miles

Time (HH:MM:SS)

Avg. Pace (min/Mile)

Avg. Speed

Calories Burnt

Avg. Heart Rate

21-Sep

Sun

Running

Long Run

4.18

0:47:00

11:20

5.3

525

157

21-Sep

Sun

Cycling

Cycling

23.38

1:43:41

4:26

13.5

1233

140

 

Strength Training and Biking – Aug-21-08

The day started at 6:30 with some strength training for an hour. I did the usual core strength, chess and shoulder routines. A bit of leg strengthening was also involved. One of my buddies from Asha wanted to do the biking at 7:30 am. I came home at 7:30 and took out my Trek and was off to the Campion trail to join him for the biking. The trail is about 2 miles from my house and the trail runs for 4.5 miles from end to end. We decided to do one round trip of the trail (9 miles) and back to my house. So, a total of 2 + 9 + 2 =13 miles. I did better than the 8.9 miles per hour average pace that I did on Aug-17. I ran 13.3 miles at an average speed of 14.2 miles an hour. Apparently, the best bikers do it at 30 miles an hour. So, 50% of the best is not bad for a beginner J The other important thing that I noticed in biking is that my average heart rate is below 140 where as in running, it is consistently above 160. This means that I have a lot of room to improve the speed in biking but since it is supposed to be cross training, I am not laying much emphasis on speed right now. Again, here are the stats from my Garmin.

Date	Day		Type		Miles	Time (HH:MM:SS)		Avg. Pace (min/Mile)	Avg. Speed	Calories Burnt	Avg. Heart Rate
21-Aug	Thu		Cycling		13.3	0:56:16		4:13	14.2	757	137