Why would you ride a bike indoors

when it's so warm and sunny outside? Well, for a start, limited time. And otherwise? Well, we'll get to that in a second...

So I've started on spin for the season - hoorah! Or something. I skipped the PG Calibration and decided to just go with last year's setting - I'd soon find out if that was ridiculous or not.

Started out all well and good - couple of HCLRs, then the first BGSS. One or two 'clicks' during that, but no problems. Second BGSS - second stroke on the right leg, and bang - off comes the chain on the outside of the big ring. Set it back up, spin it around a few times under moderate pressure to make sure it's sitting snugly, and try again. Same result. Go through it again and switch back to the left leg leading - same result. Front der appears to be aligned, and unlike last time, I can't detect any wobble in the chainring. This is why I didn't want to go out and do hill sprints - in case this happened. It's not an uncommon occurrence, whether doing uphill sprints or maximum power downhill or flat sprints in 53x12 (once even in 53x14, if my memory serves me correctly) and I've skidded along the road, sitting on the top tube with cleats skidding along the ground at ~60km/hr once too often.

I'm stumped as to the cause - I doubt it's because I'm putting out 2500W. Possibly I'm putting out 1500W at 114kg, but that surely shouldn't be too much if the bike's set up correctly. So presumably it's something in my setup. Might have to book a 'fit' session with Carl when I have some dosh, see if we can work it out.

Anyway, I continued on, doing the PGRSes and the rampup, finishing with HCLRs. Well, one MCLR, anyway. Clearly once again I've lost endurance, but my experience is that that should be back as I progress along with spinning, so I'm not fussed with that.

Stats? I have none. I'd noticed, and then forgotten because I've been doing all of my riding outside and not bothering with cadence, that the battery in my cadence/speed sensor has died. Obviously GPS speed isn't much help indoors on the trainer! I'll get that sorted sooner or later.

Remember me?

I used to lift things and ride things. Well, after a bit of time off for life readjustment, I'm back. And bugger me, it hurts a bit right now!

Back in the gym, and just doing warmups basically - so worked up to a double at 115kg in the squats, a single at 60kg for the press (was just going to be a double at 50, but that felt easy, so I decided to chuck in the single since DOMS was unlikely to be a factor there) followed by a double at 140kg on the dead and a single at 65kg for bench.

Nothing too serious or exciting, but enough to make me sore in the best possible way. I'll do some heavy singles next time (at my previous 3x5RM weights) if all feels good, then get back in to normal gym work. Spin and a bit of track work is next on the agenda...

Bitte

Bitte this, bitte that. 3x5 squats, 1x5 everything else - bench, deads, press. Just as a way to get back in to it - repeated 145kg on the squats because I forgot my damn 1.25kg plates. Bugger. 75kg on the bench, 50kg (was meant to be to failure, which turned out to be... 5. Whoops. That's what happens when you don't do them for three weeks!) on the press, then worked up to 155 on deads - a 10% reset. And I still didn't get them. Definitely mental (read in to that what you will!)

Just in case you were wondering...

... what I'm doing now in between these infrequent posts - today was at a client site in Research, spending the day breaking rocks (okay, clay) with a pick to build a path. In between riding there and back along Mount Pleasant and then Reynolds Road (if you've never been, think only this: 17%. For a couple of hundred metres. Twice, because the site was damn near in the middle.)

So I'm not being slack - though, admittedly, that wasn't a typical day. But I'm having to broaden my sprint-specialised training a bit. Swinging a pick once is easy. Swinging it (properly) a few hundred times - less so.

Frenzal Rhomb

That is to say, short, sharp and furious! I've never been that quick in the gym - 30 minutes from walking in to leaving! Just squats, otherwise I would have had to wait until Monday anyway since I had no time. 145kg workset, rather abbreviated rest, staring in to a mirror robbing me of a stable reference point for my eyes because the powercage was being used. But they did all get up, and that's the main thing. It was a little harder to keep the chest up in a good line, but otherwise the lack of rest and the mirror affected me surprisingly little. Stats just for the giggles: including warmups, that was 3330kg squatted in half an hour.

On other matters, I've been thinking about how I'm approaching my training and what I'm doing in life. With Round 5 of the SSS cancelled, and no other track stuff on the radar for a few months, where do I go from here? Life is rather full otherwise - work, study, commuting is a different focus (even if it's exercise rather than training), kung fu for a couple of months? It's all crowding in rather.

So in amongst all of this complexity, I've elected to stop the personal coaching with Carl. As it happens, I made that decision before he announced that his charges were going up, but that would have given pause as it was - not because it's unreasonable, but because, well, I have no money. Such is as it is. But the reason for the decision was that I have no time to fit in 'extra' training/exercise, little flexibility for rearranging other elements of my life, and Carl has little time for working with people who can't commit to training.

I'll still be doing most of the same stuff, and I'll still train with the aboc crew at DISC and so on (though I probably still won't be able to do spin. One never knows though!) I'm still aiming to work on my sprinting and my strength, and to do so in a structured way. How well will that work? Well, I guess you know where to find out if you're interested!

Deadly

142.5kg. Always looks a bit funny when you've got these massive plates on the bar, and in order to keep progressing, you put these tiny little things on the end. It'll look even funnier when I'm down to 1kg or less...

So 142.5 went up well on the squats, better overall form, chest up better, narrower grip - though I don't know if that did anything specifically useful or not. Probably 2 reps out of the 15 were off - the first one, which felt high (or parallel) and the third in the last set, where I went down too vertical and so came up too far forward.

Then bench, and I actually got them all at 75, so happy with that. 1kg increments will be the go here methinks...

Deadlifts, couldn't get 'em. I'm disappointed of course, but upon reflection, not too much so. My deadlifts have been well out of proportion to my squats for a while now, as they continued going up (after a bit of a sticking point) while I reset my squat by 30kgs. Now, as my squat continues to improve, well past the point where I reset, the demands it places on me in a given session have significantly increased. At the same time, my overall fitness is being tested by the commuting that I'm doing, particularly the (for me) enormous hill that I'm climbing up of a morning.

The combination of those two, I think, is what is getting in the way of increasing the deadlift. I'm not failing on the 4th rep, by and large, I'm not moving it in the first place - my back won't stay solid. I got one rep up tonight, but couldn't manage a second. I reset to 160kg, but couldn't get that off the ground, either! So the question is whether or not to reset by 5%, or 10%. The second option would take me back down to 155 or so - which is a big drop. But, proportionate to my squat numbers, it might not be such a bad place to be for now. In isolation, 5% would probably be enough, but I think 10% is right for the overall context of my life at the moment.

And more thoughts arise with respect to the broader picture of training, but more about that next time...

Three Wheels

Well, it's a milestone, no? Three wheels - that's 3x20kg plates on each side of the bar, for 140kg, 308lbs. Still 3x5, still progressing okay, though not always pretty:

I think I need to bring my hands closer together, elbows not up so high! That was a pretty bad rep, but it wasn't quite as bad as it appears from that photo. Interesting left/right imbalance, too.

Press at 58kg was just a little too much on the third set, so I deloaded to 50kg and did a set of 8.

And then I banged myself in the groin with the bar on the first powerclean workset. I wasn't terribly keen to do more than that at that point. Finished off with some chinups. Well, 2.