The Blender

Back in the day when I dared to enter road races, I used to do this weird training routine that I called The Blender. The name comes from the fast spinning (110-120 rpm) that I would force myself to keep up for up to an hour in some occasions.

HUGE DISCLAIMER NOTE HERE: I'm not a personal trainer or a cycling coach, nor do I claim to be one. What I talk about on here is just stuff that I do and has worked for me in the past. Every person is different and therefore, everyone reacts differently to training routines. If you want personal training, don't come here looking for answers because you are probably better off talking to someone who has the know-how and the experience. In other words, someone who knows what he/she is talking about, unlike me :-)

Ok, now that I got the legal formalities out of the way, back to The Blender. It all starts with a loooong warm up for me on the trainer, about an hour of a progressively faster cadence. I start at 80 rpms and work myself up to 100 rpms by the time the 60 minute mark hits. Once the hour is up, it's all between 110 and 120. Trust me, your legs will feel those extra 10 rpms! The trick is trying not to bounce on the saddle too much and keep the cadence constant. If you have a weak core like me (need to work on it) you will feel it in the middle portion of your back as well once the workout is over. Oh, I completely forgot to mention that I do the first month or so (only once, maximum twice a week) of this routine with a very light gear ratio, about 39-16 and once I'm comfortable doing the whole hour at a high cadence, then I move onto the 53-19 combination.

Well, that was about a decade ago. Today, I felt pretty good after being able to hold that pace for 41 minutes straight.

Here are a couple of pictures of the Polar HR after I finished the session, showing the AVG and MAX hear rates from today's session. I feel so old school, as power output training is the hot trend these days. In fact, my heart rate monitor is almost as old as my bike frame and I'm not 28 anymore :-)

Instruments of Torture

Wow! I didn't think anyone was going to read this blog but some people actually did! Thank you Brenda! Gracias Fernando!

At Fernando's request, I'll keep a weekly (daily is a bit too much) record of my weight loss to keep me motivated and on track. As of last week, I was 171.5 Lbs. but I had my doubts as the batteries were running really low on the weight scale :-) Anyway, I'm not sure where I'm at this week because the weight scale finally died today, boooo!

Some of you might have seen my instrument of torture before. Meet Greta, my hybrid bike, which has become somewhat of a permanent fixture on my trainer.




Greta will soon be replaced on the Trainer by Lance, my trusty 11 year-old road bike. I called it Lance because it's a Trek 5200, the same bike frame Lance Armstrong used to win his first three Tour de France. Little did I know back then that "It's Not About The Bike". Actually, it's all about your lungs, heart and legs and if those aren't in shape, there's no bike on this planet that will help you ride faster, unless you have one of those electric-powered bikes (what's the point of those anyways?).

Ok, enough rambling! I finished this week with five (5) workouts completed as of today (Friday, April 15, 2011). Planing on doing a tempo ride tomorrow for three hours, but according to the weather forecast it looks like it will be another trainer workout.

Take the first step, get off the couch and be active!

The Long Road Back: Getting Back Into Shape

It all started as a plan to lose weight, as the number at
the  weight scale had been slowly and steadily
increasing for the last year or so. My fitness level had dropped dramatically
and I had become somewhat of a couch potato. However, the real wake-up call
came when during our Christmas trip to Colombia to visit my family, many relatives
commented on my weight gain. “Luces gordo” they said, which means “you look fat”.
I knew I had put on weight, but I just hadn’t realized how far I had let myself
go. At that point, I had not stepped on a weight scale for the last 6 months or
so and I decided to wait to do so until a few weeks after we came back from our
trip. When we came back in January, I was in a state of disbelief when I
stepped on the scale; I was looking at the number (179 Lbs), but I couldn’t quite
believe I had let it go this far without doing anything about it. Now, 179 lbs.
might not sound like a whole lot, but it definitely is for a guy my height (5’8”).

It was time to put a plan in place and get back to an active
lifestyle. It was time to get back into cycling! However, my fitness base was
gone and I realized it the moment I tried to do some cross training by using an
elliptical machine. It only took fifteen minutes on that machine, at what I
thought was a moderate effort and the cold sweat started trickling down my
forehead and I felt dizzy. Needless to say, I had to get off the elliptical and
lay down on the floor because I felt like I was going to puke.

Travel back in time 10 or 11 years and I was actually racing
road bikes, mostly in the middle of the pack and on occasion even placing in
the top 10. That’s why my current state of fitness had hit me even harder,
because the colossal drop had not been anyone’s fault but my own. Anyway, the
past is the past and now I had to look ahead and take the steps I had to take
to change things around. At the same time, my love for cycling was coming back
and I was yearning to get back into the kind of shape that  allowed me to make a long ride enjoyable rather than some sort of sadistic endeavor.

My road bike, a Trek 5200 from the year 2000, had been
collecting dust for the better part of the last two years. The original Ultegra
components (shifters and derailleurs) on it had thrown in the towel and I just
didn’t want to put the money into upgrading them, as buying photography equipment
was more of a priority at that time. The frame is the same frame that Lance
Armstrong used to win his first three tours and yet it was sitting in our
parking spot collecting dust with the tires deflated and looking overall as if it
had seen way better days.

Well, that was back in January, I graduated from 15 mins. on
the elliptical to 30, then 40 and eventually I started riding the stationary
bike at our condo building gym right after the elliptical. To make a long story
short, the exercise routine had moved from 1 hour to two hours and along with
cardio,  I had introduced some weight lifting. I had been doing the routine for nearly two months and felt that the very basic aerobic base I had built was enough to move to the bike.

To be continued…