Roger Bikes

Tag: workout

  • Long ride

    Last day in Tubac before the two day drive to Mancos Colorado where we will spend the summer. It’s getting hot here in southern Arizona and after spending 17 years in Phoenix I’m all set for 95+ days.

    I listened to a few podcasts on today’s 2 hour ride. The one I really enjoyed was the Ted Radio Hour titled Meditations on Loneliness. It had a few stories from various perspectives about how loneliness affects us and how we can cope. I enjoyed the one about the family taking on a 100 day challenge for a few reasons. The one on the CoLiving space was also fascinating.

    I’ve read a few articles discussing that remote workers suffer from loneliness more than their office dwelling brethren and it seems obvious to me for a few reasons. Clearly the physical interaction of an office creates more intimate and spontaneous conversations and interactions. Is it possible to recreate some of this in digital environment?

    Workout details:

    2 hour ride in your level 2 heart rate zone. We are still in a recovery week so the rides are a little shorter and easier this weekend. This is basically a low effort ride aimed at cardio training and keeping the muscles moving. If you don’t have a heart rate monitor it’s a ride that is you sweating a little bit you could easily carry on a conversation the whole time.

    I rode south further than I have before and took a left up a steep hill into a neighborhood. It was a great ride and got me prepared for spending 7 hours driving.

  • Force Reps Thursday

    Force Reps Thursday

    It was a beautiful ride this morning. Temperature was comfortable and pretty much no wind or clouds in sight. I was able to sneak out without waking the dogs up but was still able to make my cup of joe.

    We will be leaving Tubac on Saturday and I will miss this sleepy little town. The RV park we have been staying at is anything but a normal RV park. It is much closer to a hippie commune with irregularly placed camping sites and bird feeders liberally placed throughout. The nearby roads are a bit rough but quiet and with enough varying grades to build nice workouts around.

    Today’s Workout Details:

    One of the challenges for mountain biking over road cycling is that the terrain is widely varying. Besides a lot of ups and downs there are also varying sizes of rocks, roots, and other obstacles to rode over. This requires short bursts of intense power to ride through smoothly.

    To train for this type of riding regular intervals are not enough. While intervals help raise your ability to ride with a sustained heart rate or power they don’t necessarily help build the specific strength needed to have short bursts of power.

    Enter the force reps workout. While similar to an interval workout force reps are more similar to weight lifting where a short burst of energy is used to move something heavy. In this case the short burst is 10 pedal strokes and the heavy thing is being in a large gear.