Hill intervals

Good to finally feel like I have my body back after been sick for 3 days. As I was to work on American time today I decided to do a short workout just after lunch instead of this afternoon and in order to still get a good workout I performed the first hill interval workout of the season.

Just 15 minutes from home there is a steep hill that I can climb in 4-5 minutes at max intensity. I will analyze the GPS data from http://www.sportstracklive.com/ later to see exactly how long I spend on each climb.

Now I understand why people say that hill intervals are painful. My legs was burning already at the top of the 3rd interval and by then I was considering not doing a 4th one. However I did finished 4 intervals and I managed to push myself substantially on the last ride up the hill so I feel quite good about today's workout. 

As said, I will analyze the data to get a better view of each interval in order to compare them to each other and also to track improvements over time.

Today's workout can be seen here: 

http://www.sportstracklive.com/track/detail/BigManChanging/Cycling/Bakke-intervall-/551187

First semi-long ride of the season

Today I had planned my first semi-long ride of the season at 07:00 in the morning. However the morning started with my 5 year old boy throwing up and having fever so I postponed the ride until the afternoon. My wife got home an hour early as she was also not feeling to good. She insisted it was OK that I went on my ride so at 16:30 I was on my way.

For those familiar with the area, the route I was planing to take was Alversund - Sletta - Nordanger - Bøvågen - Manger - Alversund for a total of 53.5 km. I did this ride 3 times last year before Bergen-Voss 2011 with a personal best of 2h 26min.

Based on discussions and information I have found surfing different cycling forums on the Internet I have learned, at least that is what I am telling myself, that it is important not to push to hard on the longer rides but rather keep a steady pace (without going to slowly).

I think it is said very well on www.livestrong.com:

"The goal is to build endurance and condition your muscles to stay on the bike for a longer period of time."

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/16403-build-cycling-stamina/#ixzz1qRCZQZix

I did the ride in 2h and 33minutes including a total of 5 minutes stops check tires and eat a banana. So it was 5 minutes slower then my personal best from last 2011. For the last 20km my legs felt very tired and looking at the stats from SportsTrackLive today I see that the last 20km was much slower then I hoped. An hour after I got home I was in the same situation as my wife and son - I was throwing up non-stop. So this was probably not the optimal day for a 54km ride.

I had planned a hill interval session with Beathe tomorrow but I have to skip that until I feel better again, hopefully I will be ok for a hard session on Friday.

Details of the ride can be seen at SportsTrackLive:

http://www.sportstracklive.com/track/detail/BigManChanging/Cycling/Boevaagen/547259#/altitude

First ride around Manger

Together with Terje I did a test ride around Manger. We started at 08:30 and it was a bit cold for the first couple of km's until the morningfog disappeared leaving us with a nice sunny day.

As this was a test ride to see where we stand compared to last fall we both would give our best and in the hardest climb I could not keep Terjes back wheel and I never managed to get back to him.

The last 5km felt never ending and I finished a whole 8 minutes slower then my personal best from last August.

I was quite disappointed with this result!

However as I parked the bike at home I realized that my front tire was more or less flat. I hope this explains a bit of why the last 5 km of the ride felt so terrible and hopefully the time would have been better without the leak in the front tire.

I will do a new test ride around Manger in 2 weeks and see how I stand.

Maiden voyage 2012

Had my first ride out on the road today and it felt great!

I picked the bike up together with Simen after getting him at the kindergarten. He was proud to come with his dad to pick up the bike and bragged to the employees at the bike service center that his dad was going on a really long bike ride. I guess he still remembers the long wait at the finish line at Voss last summer :) 

When we got home I changed the back tire as I still had the TacX tire on. The bike looked better without the flashy blue tire :)

 For my first ride I chose to take a short trip around Olsvoll which is a 19.4km ride. I did it in 50 min and 30 seconds, which was only 2 minutes slower then my personal best and 5 minutes quicker then my first ride around Olsvoll in the spring 2011, so it looks like the TacX Flow has help me through the winter :)

The App from SportsTrackLive still works great and I will use this a lot this season to track my rides.

Tomorrow I am doing a test ride around Manger together with Terje.

Looking forward to it.

Easy 45

Busy day today so I did not get out on the bike until 21:15 tonight. The legs was feeling slow and heavy so I decided to take it easy today. I did a 45 minutes ride with low intensity with a 5 minute high intensity session about midway.

I used my usual playlist in Spotify, the same as I use when doing the 4x8 intervals session. This was not optimal so I need to make a new playlist more appropriate for a slow and steady session. This will probably consist of a lot of hard rock favorites :)

4x8

Another 4x8 minute session today. It gets easier for each session and and I notice it mostly on the fact that I manage to keep an higher intensity between each 8 minute interval. Today I kept it steady at 150watt between the two first intervals and 140 between interval 3 and 4.

I like the new playlist better but still think it has potential for improvements :)

4x8 Playlist

Here is my updated playlist for my 4x8 min intervals sessions:

Track	Artist
Bad Company	Bad Company
Love Lockdown	Kanye West
L'Amour Toujours(Turbotronic Remix)	Clubhunter, Miani
Sexy And I Know It	LMFAO
Beautiful Day	U2
Freak Out(Cj Stone Remix)	Roxfield
Still Loving You (Radio edit)	Level 4, DJ Deamon
With OR Without You	U2
Gotta Be Somebody	Nickelback
Ring Meg	Gabrielle
Motivation	Kelly Rowland, Lil Wayne
Overdrive (Extended Mix)	Wooferman
Be mine Tonight (Radio Edit)	Dj Evil, Jolly Axe
The A Team	Ed Sheeran
Ølbriller (feat, Byz)	Erik og Kriss
When We Stand Together	Nickelback
Far Away	Nickelback