The Aging Effect

I love numbers

One of my first memories is being a little blonde, blue eyed choir boy sitting in the Choir Stalls at St Edwards Church in Leek, Staffordshire and, during the sermon, factorizing the hymn numbers and testing them for primality.

So you can imagine how, many years later when I retired and bought a bike, how delighted I was to discover Garmin and be able to amass data streams of every variable imaginable from my rides. Of course, collecting data is one thing, turning that into information and knowledge is quite another.

My last post talked about Virtual Cycling brought on by the fact that my body needed a rest to recover from the stresses of my London 100 adventure. But now, after  two weeks of complete rest,  I thought it time to try and see if my knee ligament had healed. A young whipper snapper ( anyone who is more than 26 years younger than me falls into that category! ) had invited me to go on a slow, sociable ride with him and after I had examined his statistics on Strava it was obvious that he was in need of some serious education in cycling etiquette, namely the NECESSITY to stop at tea and cake shops. So I took it upon  myself to induct him to the Tea Shops of Derbyshire.

As an aside I have noticed that many of the younger generation that I ride with, zoom along, zipping past scores of tea shops without a thought of the calorific delights that lie within. I have decided it is my personal mission to rectify this failing in their lycra clad make up.

The ride itself was only 33km and the pace was a mere 22kph with 287m of climbing. But it was hard work. Indeed it was very hard work and demonstrated to me how just two weeks with zero exercise can cause an OAP's fitness levels to drop off dramatically.

Now it so happens that my companion is also a numbers nerd and has a Garmin Edge 800 like mine and so after the ride was over I thought I would compare his effort expended to my efforts.

Total distance  33.1 km and elevation gained was 287 m

                                          Me                                                         Mr D

Avg Power                        95 watts                                                   94 watts

Cadence                            81 rpm                                                     75 rpm

Avg Heart Rate                 137 bpm                                                  107 bpm

Max Heart Rate                 160 bpm                                                  136 bpm


Now there are many different algorthims for calculating one's Peak Heart Rate before you explode, and the most optimistic one for me gives a value of 169 bpm, so you can see from the above that I was approaching the limit whilst my companion was forever in tick over mode. It did seem to me that this demonstrated the aging effect on one's fitness quite dramatically.

What did surprise ( worry ? ) me though was that I had needed to expend so much effort and so I thought I would compare my performance this time with my Ride of a Lifetime, London 100, which was only a couple of weeks ago.

A breakdown of how my heart performed was interesting.

On the London 100, whilst the journey was obviously much longer, about half of the ride was spent at Moderate Level of effort with the other half at Tempo,  which for me means * race pace * . Only 3% of the time was my heart operating at threshold level and I would need to check but that was probably when climbing Leith Hill.

Compare  this to my Return to the Saddle Ride after 2 weeks complete rest

and you can see that 15% of the time I was operating in Threshold and the majority of the time at Tempo.

No wonder I felt it hard work!

So I have attempted to turn data into information, as for the knowledge gained; does it mean that I should have tried harder at London?

Feeling the Pressure

I am beginning to feel the pressure.

The countdown clock has just ticked under the 100 days to go and 100 miles ( 162 km ) still feels to be an awfully long way.

The raw statistics show that I am putting in the base rides and the average pace is beginning to creep up.

So far this year

Total distance cycled = 2409 km

Total ascent climbed = 18099 m

and used 55584 C in accomplishing that.

The longest distance has been increased to 126 km which is 78% of the target distance.

My cross training, in the form of swimming, has covered 36.5 Km

On the positive side I am now regularly doing 70 km rides without stopping and my plan for London100 is to aim for 2 * 10 minute rest breaks after 50km and 100 km. All the statistics from my Garmin and Strava files show that my average cadence has increased to 80+ rpm ( from 69 rpm last year ) whilst my heart rate is staying well in control in Zone 2 with just the occasional burst into Zone 3 when climbing.

My aim in this Challenge is just to survive, I am not looking for fast times, and to get round in a total elapsed time of 8 hours will count as a huge success for me. 

So why am I worried? Probably a fear of the unknown and the need to push an aging body to extremes of effort that it has never before experienced, and in taking up cycling at the age of 60 I do not possess a reservoir of endurance to call upon.

But then I look at others.

Earlier this week I went to watch a TT held by Derby Mercury, one of our local cycling clubs.

Some people just crumple in the face of adversity when illness strikes. Others fight back, conquor it and go on to inspire others. 

This lady is an inspiration to us all. Having suffered liver failure she was fortunate to get a transplant and has since done great work in promoting the cause of Organ Donation. She has also become a key member of the GB Transplant Cycling Team representing our country around the world.

I need to show some of the guts and tenacity that she has demonstrated and just get on with it.

I am doing this ride on behalf of Mind, and whilst I need your moral support to drive me on, they need your support to continue the work they do in helping those who suffer from mental health issues

If you feel able to sponsor me then I would be very grateful and for every donation, as a small thank you, I will send you a copy of a recipe booklet entitled Cycling Food on the Go - Recipes for Success.

The recipes in this booklet have been provided by cyclists from around the world and each one comes with its own personal story. 

http://thediaryofmybike.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/cycling-food-on-go_15.html

Training becoming structured ? Well..

The weather continues to haunt me and every ride is a battle of will against the elements; and I am afraid to say that the elements are beginning to win. In order to retain some type of fitness I have resorted to cross training and am putting in 1 km per day swimming.  However I did manage to complete another 100km + ride last week and this time had just the single 15 minute stop for lunch. I also remembered to take along some fluid ( Nunn tablet in 500ml of water ) to provide some salt replenishment. The ride itself went well despite the fact that the freezing and foggy conditions meant that my glasses froze over and hence visibility was reduced. Perhaps that was a good thing as I could not see the steepness of the hills in front of me. I just hope that London is not as severe as the Derbyshire Peak District for hills!

My self made training plan consists of getting comfortable with 100km rides before gradually increasing the distance in 20 km steps until I can manage the 160km the London100 will demand.

The route can be seen here :-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_MDOooZbjA

As I have said before it is the 100 miles at the required pace that could well be a challenge too far. I seem to currently ride at the same pace whatever the distance, 20km or 100 km, but perhaps the tow of the 20000 strong peleton will pull me along. Ideally I need to increase average speed from 19 to 21 km/hr

This week a structured training plan for beginners arrived. It gives a day by day plan for the full 12 weeks prior to the race but I am beginning to suspect that it also assumes that the cyclist is in the full flush of youth and pretty fit before embarking on this regime.  What I need is a structured plan for Old Age Pensioners who are about to undertake the longest and fastest ride of their life when they are new to cycling. Some challenge!

This plan makes a great deal of training within particular Zones and my test rides are showing this is difficult. To keep within Zone 2 as recommended, which for me is <121 bpm heart rate , is proving impossible on even the slightest incline though the ride overall stays within that Zone.

So, to the statistics, for whatever my excuses these detail my progress

Total distance cycled  886km

Total climbing            6481m

Total calories expended  21000  ( which MUST be worth a slice of cake :-) )

Longest ride 108km

Total distance swam  22.65km  ( My annual goal here was 25 km so I may have to revisit this )

Any suggestions on training are welcome..providing they are constructive!

And finally, a request.

I am doing this challenge in aid of the mental health charity Mind.  Thank you to all those who have already sponsored me but more sponsors are urgently needed.

You can do this at

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/teamroberts

and for everyone who does contribute, however small, I will send them a copy of

Cycling Food on the Go - Recipes for Success

Lost Time

My training schedule for Ride London100 which I am doing for the mental health charity Mind  in August has taken a severe hit. A combination of deep snow, temperatures continually below zero both day and night, interspersed with fog, mists and blizzards has kept me off the bike.
In the last 2 weeks I have only managed 100km of cycling with 600m climbing.

The vital statistics tell a very sorry tale

Total distance  = 272km

Total Ascent  = 2059m

Longest Ride = 58.3km

The only positive sign is that my swimming , which I have taken up in order to help improve my aerobic capacity is going much better than expected and the yearly goal of swimming 25km should easily be achieved as I have completed 10km already.

When cycling it was brought forcibly home to me that I needed to take on fuel  during the journey  ( hence the idea behind Cycling Food on the Go, Recipes for Success ) and so my total daily calorie intake was increased quite markedly. With exercise now a virtual memory I have managed to reduce calorie intake and weight is remaining stable at 75kg.

The problem of course is that at my age, making up for Lost Time becomes increasingly difficult.

Thinking about Lost Time makes you think of times past, the lost time before i discovered Cycling as a hobby. And perhaps it is that feeling of opportunities missed that is behind my enthusiasm for retro things and the love of hand built bikes made out of Reynolds steel, the aesthetics of beautiful handcrafted lug work, the history behind the traditional names such as Campagnola. 

When I retired I bought both a camera and a bike, never having been involved with either before, and as with cycling, in photography I am drawn to the era before digital when Ansell Adams created pictures using his Zonal System

And so this year, as well as cycling, I am aiming to have a photographic project. The theme will be cycling and all the images will be in black and white. 

Retro World - living the dream. Reynolds steel, down tube shifters, 27inh wheels, the sort of machines ridden by the legends. Black and White photography, zonal schemes.  And then in the tea shops you can believe that you are chatting to Ansell and Tommy. Discussing the developing cocktails and exposure times used in  film, sharing the pain of that last great mountain.

For a while, you too can be a legend, just living the dream of retro time.