I went to the gym earlier than normal today, and it was much more crowded than I was used to. As such, the stationary bikes that I normally use (well, the two or three that actually work, of about six) were all occupied.
As such, I went to go lift first. It wasn't a bad workout. In absolute terms of how it "felt", it wasn't the best, but it felt good, productive. Afterwards, I went over to find one of the bikes finally free.
The ride did not feel good. I upped the resistance a bit, like I did last time, but I just did not have it today. It had been 4 days since my last bike ride, and I thought I was good and recovered from leg cramps before, but this must be something else.
It was very clear early on that I was not going to reach my sort of "target pace", but I just went with it. On my last ride, the aforementioned leg cramps hit and I couldn't do cooldown nor hit the target time I shoot for (usually around 40 minutes). Rather than repeat that, I just lumbered along, feeling wholly uninspired about this plodding ride.
I have been plotting my times in Google Sheets, doing all sorts of number crunching, because I'm kind of a statistics/metrics nerd. In any case, Sheets has a "color scale" function in Conditional Formatting, which will allow you to color, on a gradient, all your results, with the highest (or lowest) number on the scale lit up, and fades on the other end.
Putting the numbers in was quite miserable. My average speed/pace were significantly lower than all other sessions - over 20 seconds slower per mile than what I'd been hitting recently. I put the numbers in and watched the gradients shift accordingly, with miserable outputs for today's results on the raw metrics.
It wasn't all bad, however. Given that I was increasing my resistance/elevation, my calculated "calories per mile" was right there near the top of all results!
After the last two sessions, more than anything, I think I have finally hit my "ceiling" on bike performance. Not 'finally' as in "throwing in the towel", but rather, even if I know I won't continue to improve on the pace I was, I now know what ceiling I can strive to make my floor in the future!
As such, I went to go lift first. It wasn't a bad workout. In absolute terms of how it "felt", it wasn't the best, but it felt good, productive. Afterwards, I went over to find one of the bikes finally free.
The ride did not feel good. I upped the resistance a bit, like I did last time, but I just did not have it today. It had been 4 days since my last bike ride, and I thought I was good and recovered from leg cramps before, but this must be something else.
It was very clear early on that I was not going to reach my sort of "target pace", but I just went with it. On my last ride, the aforementioned leg cramps hit and I couldn't do cooldown nor hit the target time I shoot for (usually around 40 minutes). Rather than repeat that, I just lumbered along, feeling wholly uninspired about this plodding ride.
I have been plotting my times in Google Sheets, doing all sorts of number crunching, because I'm kind of a statistics/metrics nerd. In any case, Sheets has a "color scale" function in Conditional Formatting, which will allow you to color, on a gradient, all your results, with the highest (or lowest) number on the scale lit up, and fades on the other end.
Putting the numbers in was quite miserable. My average speed/pace were significantly lower than all other sessions - over 20 seconds slower per mile than what I'd been hitting recently. I put the numbers in and watched the gradients shift accordingly, with miserable outputs for today's results on the raw metrics.
It wasn't all bad, however. Given that I was increasing my resistance/elevation, my calculated "calories per mile" was right there near the top of all results!
After the last two sessions, more than anything, I think I have finally hit my "ceiling" on bike performance. Not 'finally' as in "throwing in the towel", but rather, even if I know I won't continue to improve on the pace I was, I now know what ceiling I can strive to make my floor in the future!
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