Bike Fit
I was reading Chris Carmichael's book the other night and it mentioned Greg LeMond's formula for seat height (inseam x .883). I took mine which came out to 28.25 and then went and ran the ruler on the three bikes. The fixxie was closest at 30" and that's after I kicked it up an inch last week. So it was really close. The tri bike and the road bike were both set to 33". The considerably over the 28.25 with the LeMond formula. I drug out my bike fit measurements that Jerry at Castle Hill Fitness did last year or the year before and it was 75.3 cm or 29.6". Crap. No wonder I have no power on the flats. I was overextending the legs big time.
Labels: bike fit, Chris Carmichael, Greg LeMond
Intervals To A New Level
I received my latest issue of Bicycling Magazine in the mail yesterday. The only part I've absorbed from the issue was Chris Carmichael's interval workout called Bust A Gut. It's basically like mine but the intervals are based on time (2 minutes) rather than reaching a certain heart rate and then sustaining it for a certain time. I think it works out to longer intervals and more of them. I definitely hurt more, sweat more and felt like I had ridden harder with these changes.
Bust a Gut!
- 6 minute: warmup
- 1 min.: fast pedal, spinning a light gear as fast as you can
- 1 min.: recovery spinning
- 1 min.: fast pedal
- 1 min.: recovery spinning
- 5x2 min. @ max intensity, w/ 2 min. recovery spinning between each
- 6 min. recovery spinning
- 5x2 min. @ max intensity, w/ 2 min. recovery spinning between each
- 8 min. cooldown
- TOTAL TIME: 60 MIN.
Labels: Chris Carmichael, cycling, intervals
Almost Ready To Start
The swelling in the legs has come down. It should after having to sleep with them elevated every night and with the steroids causing a little acid reflux action, my head had to be elevated as well. With the legs and head needing to be elevated, that meant my body was bent in a "V" position for most of the night. The poison oak is working it's way out of the body with little itching now. The high contrast between red and white skin is going back to normal. That's why I didn't even bother going to the pool as it would cause all kinds of stares and unwanted conversations.
So in the meantime, while I'm on my last steroidds to clear this crap out of my body, I've been putting the finishing touches on the next program that'll get me through the half-ironman distance in October. I think I've worked out all the kinks and next week I'll be starting on some more strength training. I read the other day Chris Carmichael's column in Bicycling Magazine where he discusses the PWR (Power-Weight-Ratio) rating and how to calculate it. He also provided some figures where he thought Cat-5 and Cat-3 riders should be and let's leave it at I'm a little short. I should be ok once I get to race weight but that's about fifteen pounds down the road. I should be striving for at least 225 or 250 average watts for 30-60 minutes. Besides looking at the bike numbers, I'm going to be working on swim technique so drills and more drills will be the order of business for June.
Not that there's any blessing to having poison oak but during this time my new Macbook Pro came in which means there's at least three days of downtime for everything else in my life until everything is transferred to the new machine. So Monday the new triathlon training program will start with some seriousness.
Labels: Bicycling Magazine, Cat-5, Chris Carmichael, cycling, PWR rating
