Friday Ride & Musing about Effort (Running AND Cycling)

All kitted out in our Rapha gear and ready to go!

Joy here...On Friday I was set to meet up with Superdave, Cili Padi, The Professor, and the Spinning Instructor so that we could do a long, flat ride (not unlike last summer's post of that same name).  With last Friday's 77km ride in mind, we figured that if we took it nice and easy, we could ride farther than that.

Superdave was to lead us out along the bike paths and then into some country roads...the lone male at the front of his cycling harem!

So we all met up at the meeting spot, and the ride went as planned:  an easy 25km/hr spin out into country roads, reaching a total of 90.6kms before I got home.  Superdave led us, and I brought up the rear, making sure to keep myself going slower than I would usually ride, seeing as how I had the effort of my first bike race ever still sitting in my legs and had in mind the 52km "sportif" event on Sunday coming up, and didn't want to tire myself out for that.

Which leads me to a bit of a musing about training effort.  What follows applies to both cycling and running.  Heck, it might even apply to other sports, but running and cycling are the only ones I know anything about!

The grey water and grey sky at the meeting point on
a chillier-than-expected Friday morning.

There are different kinds of training efforts:
1.)  Hills (Hard) - hill repeats come in two kinds of types.  There's the type where you run/cycle up the hill at a set speed/effort which is almost as fast as you can go, keeping the effort consistent for around 4 reps or so.  Then there's the type where you run/cycle up the hill at a slower pace, but build muscles, thus using the hill repeat as a strength exercise.  For this one, as a runner, for instance, you might put weights around your ankles or carry weights while you do the hill repeats.  As a cyclist, for instance, you would likely put your bike in a harder gear, spinning your wheels more slowly as you do each repeat.

2.)  Tempo (Hard) - tempo runs/rides are where you maintain a high level of effort at near-race pace for a set period of time.  For instance, you might run/ride for 20 minutes at "tempo" pace, and then back it off a bit for a break, and then resume for another 20 minutes and so on.  Ultimately, you want to be able to string together all your tempo sets into one, unbroken tempo session, which builds both speed and muscular endurance.

Cili Padi and The Professor enjoying snack time out on the
country roads!

3.)  Sprint (Hard) - essentially sprinting is kind of like what a time trial is, albeit a bit longer than your average sprint.  Back in high school, I was a 400m sprinter.  Sure I also did 200m and 100m relay, but the one that I was better at was the 400m distance.  In my mind, the 10km time trial on the bike is like a 400m sprint.  You want to go "hell for leather" for the whole time, but you know that it's just a bit too far to go all-out for the entire time, so you have to gauge your effort and go really hard, but save enough so that you can last the entire race.

4.)  Endurance (Easy) - for endurance runs/rides the point is to just get kilometres in your legs, so speed isn't much of a factor.  In fact, for an endurance work out, you should almost feel a bit guilty about how easy you're taking it.  Building up distances for longer durance events should include endurance runs/rides, because from week to week, you can just tag on a little bit of extra time/distance to your endurance workout without over straining yourself.

5.)  Recovery (Easy) - a recovery run/ride shouldn't be too long, and it certainly should be dead easy.  This kind of a work out is merely to move your body a bit after you've done some heavier workouts during the rest of the week.  For instance, the day after a race you might choose a recovery run/ride, or at the end of a long, hard week of training, you might choose a recovery run/ride.

Superdave our mighty cycle tour guide!

Now our long, flat ride out into the countryside was a kind of weird hybrid ride.  It was kind of like a recovery ride, but it was a bit too long to really be a recovery ride.  I guess it was more like an endurance ride...and I suppose what I've realized is that while I'm a-okay with endurance runs where the pace is slow-ish and I'm just trying to run longer and longer, I kind of got a bit bored with this endurance ride.

And I think the difference is in my mindset:  Since I never thought I'd be able to run for any more than 1 or 2 kms, slowly doing endurance runs and building up the distance I was able to run, up to and including that 30km running race I did in March 2011, made me really happy in and of itself.  But now that I've ridden my bike 100kms already, the thrill of hitting that kind of distance again has waned a bit.  Now I'd rather push myself for more specific efforts rather than just kilometres clicked off the bike's odometer.

Which is why...I think...I've signed up for tomorrow's "sportif" event.  It's a timed bike ride, not really a race (so say the organizers), but it'll give me a chance to push myself, have a bit of a "tempo" ride and see what I can do, and for now, that seems to me a bit more fun than just riding slowly but far.

We'll see...wish me luck for tomorrow!

Over and out,
Joy

PS - Just in case we were counting kilometres clicked off the bike's odometer, I did 220kms on the bike this week (and even though the average stage of the Tour de France ranges from 150-250kms in ONE DAY, I'm just happy to hit that in ONE WEEK).