Weekly Totals and Review, Feb. 21st Through 27th.
Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 6:58PM Local cycling fan on Sunday's ride.
I built a widget that takes my automated Movescount Twitter posts with the details of each workout and puts them all in stream for the blog. If you click on one of the links, it takes you to the workout notes, speed & HR graphs, and more. It will definitely help get the weekly review done much faster!
It has been a wonderful week, chock full of little enlightenments about my training and nutrition. Basically, the inclusion of Carbo-Pro into my workout fuel has created a revolution in my performance. At this point, my conclusion is two-fold:
- I wasn't taking in enough easily digested carbs in training, so sustained workouts were fuel-deficient and frequently resulted in low HR and low power.
- To make up for low energy during my workouts, I was overeating at meals in preparation for the next training session. I eat mostly whole foods, and the body has to work harder to digest it, so I was having terrible sleepy spells after eating as my blood left my brain to work in my stomach. Not only that, but if I ate a meal and then went into a workout, the sleepiness was harming my energy level and creating super-low HR results.
Carbo-Pro delivers tons of energy that's easy on the stomach, so last week's workouts were much easier to do. Many times I found myself having to hold back to stay in a specific HR range instead of the usual having to push harder to maintain it. This is a complete 180 in my performance and I'm extremely happy to be experiencing it.
An interesting side effect is that I'm finding it easier to eat less at meals because I have a reliable workout fuel. My weight is slowly dropping back to what it should be because I'm not overeating like before.
I'm still testing Carbo-Pro as a primary fuel source, finding out how to use it under more severe conditions. For example, it has no electrolytes and I have to figure out how to manage that situation in the Texas summers where we have days with the heat index at 130 degrees.
The next podcast's "Training Log" has extensive audio notes about this whole experience as it happened. Make sure to check it out!
Here is the totals for the week, followed by the links to some of the individual workouts:
Total time - 14 hours, 18 minutes.
Swim distance/time - 6.05 miles/2:48 hours
Bike distance/time - 117.2/6:55
Run distance/time - 35.32/4:35
And some cross training mixed in...
Reader Comments (3)
I'm glad you're figuring out your intake situation, your low HR perplexed me as well last year. I use Cyto-Carb II and Cytomax (for electrolytes) during longer workouts and recover with fluid (thanks for the discount code) during my sessions and have begun to dial the mix in after a couple of months.
Thanks for the blog & podcasts, looking forward to ZTC!!
Interesting to hear your initial results with the carbopro and similar to when I discovered carbopro last year. Something I really like about it is the ability to use it as a carb spike for just about anything. I mix it in with Gu Brew or what ever else that needs higher caloric density.
I used carbo pro and got great results as a food source for long rides,since moved over to perpetuem for some flavor.