Bike: Lactate Threshold Test

There we go again... The week of lactate threshold tests continues and this time, I got to suffer on the bike. And what sufferfest that was!! Because I cannot control the road conditions (traffic lights and hills and wind and crazy drivers, that is) I decided to go to the gym and do this test on the stationary bike.

The protocol was almost identical to that of the run LT test, with the difference that I was supposed to hold a speed above 90rpms for 30 min, where the last 20min were meant to determine the lactate threshold. I wasn't quite sure how hard to go off the bat, so I did the following, on a Life Fitness upright bike:

15 min easy at L5-L7, 75-85rpm

10 min hard at L12, 90-92rpm

20 min hard trying to stay above 90-92rpm, incrementally going from L12 to L15 each 5 min

15 min easy at L1-L5

My heart rate kept on raising by bumps throughout the exercise, but I think I overshot the beginning of the 30min interval by a few difficulty levels and I ended up entering the LT interval in a high gear that I could hardly maintain without a large amount of effort, which quickly resulted in a puddle of sweat around the bike and me  holding on the handlebars for my dear life. When I reached 5 minutes before the end of the 20min interval I had to go down a level to L14 as I felt like passing out. Managed to remain on track for the last 5 minutes, but not without wondering if I was going to survive.

The last 15 minutes of cooldown came as a release and I swore not to return to the gym anytime soon. Now, to make you understand how hard I pushed on that bike from hell, here's the graph from my Polar HRM:

You know, naturally you tend to have a lower HR on the bike than on the run, right? Well, I ended up with almost the same LT threshold as the run. So going forward, my coach said that we should look at the overall HR as well and this one is lower by 10bpm than the run, so we're ok, I'm definitely not going to go back near these limits in my regular training.

In the end, I'm still not quite sure what my bike zones are going to be, but I will update the post when I find out.

And that's it with the tests for now, I hope (wait, I didn't do the swim yet, ouch). After the gym I jumped in my car and drove to a cidery a few kilometers north west from home to meet a few members of a local triathlon club, the Fletcher's Meadow Cross Trainers. This past week I joined their club and also became a member of Triathlon Ontario association, yo! They seem to be pretty active, organizing weekly speed work sessions for running and open water swims, which I will start next week, if I receive my wetsuit on time.

I am happy that I met more folks who are passionate about triathlons and are also very nice and welcoming individuals. I am looking forward to training with them in my hood and getting to know them better. Who knows, maybe soon you'll see me wearing a Falcons shirt too.

Run: Lactate Threshold Test

The results are in and I have fantastic news, at least for me (and my hubbs who usually accompanies me on runs). We can run FASTER, baby!! Ok, enough excitement for the day, but I am relieved with regards to my training zones. Here we go for the fun stuff.

I was scheduled to do the Lactate Threshold Test for running zones yesterday, but due to the evening being highjacked by a triathlon clinic on transition held by the fabulous folks at tritrek toronto, I ended up coming back home way too late to put on a good run. So I decided to do something that only triathletes and insomniacs do, set up my alarm clock for 5:30am and do the test while everyone else sleeps. It took me 2 very painful minutes to open my eyes and another 2 to find my way to the closet to retrieve my running clothes, then grabbed a quick breakfast made of a banana and a slice of banana bread because they go together so well, a small bottle of water and off I went to the track.

The test required the following:
- 15 minutes of warm up jog, finished with a few speed bursts to bring the heart rate up
- 30 minutes of incremental, hard running, where I had to hit the lap button on my heart rate monitor after 10 minutes so that the last 20 minutes of the hard run are set aside and averaged to find the lactate threshold (LT).
-15 minutes of cool down jog

The idea of the test was to be able to run hard for enough long time (30min) without bonking before the end, knowing that by the end of the test you left it all out there. I was a bit apprehensive as I found out that I couldn't set a pace target on RunKeeper for a particular interval, but eventually I decided to do the test completely by feel, trying to increase the pace every 4 minutes and hold it there for as long as I could. In the end, there was nothing left in the tank, so mission complete! Nice and steady HR increase, see the pretty graph below:

I highlighted the 3rd lap that corresponds to the LT test. As you can see, the HR average for that lap was 182, so as I thought, my Zone 2 is much higher than what we thought last week. However, since I pushed myself pretty hard during this test, my coach preferred to choose a more conservative LT for my training zones, so we settled on 172, which gave the training zones below:

The complete Runkeeper workout is here. MUCH more manageable than snail pace!!
Next, LT threshold test for the bike. Bring it!

Trial and error

Triathlon training is getting fun, folks. My weeks are now full on tri-mode: swimming and biking 2-3x week, running 3-4x week plus a few walks in between, with total volumes from 80 to 100 miles and guess what? I'm loving it! My body is adjusting pretty well, I think, and I am becoming rather obsessed with everything triathlon related, but I don't hide it, I am a bit anxious about what is coming. So much to learn and so much room for improvement, I hope.

Swim -
I am very slow in the pool, averaging 2:10/100m and loving the pull buoy because it's so much easier to swim with it, and I have a somewhat ok technique, but with a weak catch and pull (I think I am of the Bambino type). One thing I know I've improved upon is bilateral breathing - no issues there, however I know I am still lifting my head a bit and not relaxing my neck properly. Another problem is endurance, without the pull buoy I feel like drowning and I'm trying really hard to find a slow kicking rhythm, otherwise I don't last more than 50m. Also working on using my core muscles more by trying to rotate my body so I don't look like a floating pancake. Hopefully I can take another video of my swimming soon and you can point out all my flaws.
One thing I have not mentioned though - I am terrified of open water swimming. I used to swim in the ocean, without a wetsuit, so I know I can do it, but I haven't tried since I was 20 years old (that's quite a long time ago!). Thankfully today I made the jump, so to speak, and I bought a wetsuit because once you're committed to this sport, and I know I am, there is no point in spending 45 bucks in a rental when new suits go for $160, like this XTerra Vortex 4, which seems to be a good bet, given its popularity amongst triathletes.

Bike -
On the bike, I can hold some decent times for long-ish distances, averaging 16-17mph for a 2h workout, but having some issues with my saddle and aero position. The saddle is supposed to be good, it's a fizik Arione, but it may help if I tilt its head down a little - my lady bits are screaming in pain after most long rides even if I wear the most generously padded bike shorts. I also need to pay attention to my head position when riding in aero as neck gets stiff and a little achy if I don't switch positions every 15 min or so. One last thing is bike control and using appropriate gear ratios. I am not quite sure what to do because I don't have an onboard computer that counts RPMs and I am in love with the big gears like every newbie, so I must be overusing those in climbs instead of gearing down when needed.

Run -
With 2 marathons under my belt this year and another one this coming October, I feel rather confident there, I am definitely enjoying my runs - so far!, but again, I'm not the speediest mouse out there. I am hoping to finish my next marathon somewhere between 4h15-4h30, but today I got a taste of the (Ironman) endurance training medicine, and more precisely, running in zone 2, and it was horribly bitter. I don't know how my coach chose the 139bpm as my zone 2 average, but this better be wrong, it was the most painfully slow, crawling, trying-to-keep-a-running-form-when-I-could-have-walked run ever!! To put it into perspective, today I run 1h at a 8:17min/km pace, 3 full minutes slower than my 5K race pace!! WTF. Even when I started running 3 years ago, I was running faster than this. I know it's normal to feel this way about these runs, but I didn't feel like I was putting in the effort described here: "Starting to work just a little and you can feel your HR rise". This was no workout at all, damn it. Anyway, my coach gave me a Lactate Threshold test to do on Tuesday, so I will come back with my results then, but I think I know where this is going - all over the spectrum. My resting HR is 52 while my max HR is close to 200. When I ran the Paris Marathon I averaged 165bpm, so I was nowhere near my max. I think my zone 2 is rather beween 140bpm and 150bpm, but we shall see.

In the meantime, I found some good links about HR training on Beginnertriathlete.com.
Zone 1 and Zone 2 training explained
Lactate Threshold Heart-Rate Testing Protocol

Enjoy while I torture my brain.