Technique.
Anyone who remotely follows this blog, knows that I always go on about technique. I know first hand how important good technique is. Sometime ago I swam fairly seriously. Occasionally, I'd get my butt kicked in a race by someone who was smaller and not as strong. They simply had better form. I vowed to become better by attaining better technique. I watched videos of Olympians, I practice mental imagery and most importanly I listened to what my coaches told me. It took awhile, but it worked. Today, the muscle memory that I had from 20 years ago is still alive and well and that I'm still a decent swimmer despite hardly training it. It's all due to technique.

I bring this up because I've dedicated all my riding in December to soley focusing on technique. For that I'm using spinscan that comes with Computrainer. See previous post if you're curious about spinscan or click here:
http://www.racermateinc.com/spinscan.asp
Last week my spinscan high for a mere 30 minutes on the bike was 77. This week it's 86! A 9 point improvement! Might not sound like much to you, but I was shocked. If I really concentrate while spinning, I can actually feel how I'm suppose to spin. ie: slightly changing when a muscle fires or changing my maximum torque angle. It takes alot of concentration and when my attention wonders, the numbers go down. I'll be routinely incorporating technique sessions throughout my winter training.

I'm an idiot. Wanted to do the Chili half marathon at the beginning of March. I procrastinated to the point that now the race is sold out. On the waiting list.

Last weeks totals:
Run 5 times: 60.5k
Spin 5 times: 3+ hrs.
The highlight was doing a 20k'er with Cliff on the Trans Canada Trail at 9 am on Saturday morning when it's -15 degrees. Afterwards, I bought myself and Sally snowshoes from Caledon Hills Cycling, who've recently branched out into winter sports. It was good timing as we almost got a foot of snow yesterday. So Sally got an early Christmas present and we snowshoeing in the middle of a blizzard yesterday. Might not be your idea of fun, but we had a blast!

Cheers!

Spinscan numbers

Ran 6 times this week for a total distance of 73.5k. Ran disciplined, ran smart. Discpline in the sense I kept my heartrate down to the magic number of 145 and smart in the sense that the effort was low intensity followed by excellent stretching afterwards. Paying particular attention to my IT and hip flexors. I'm feeling pretty good and just trying to be hyper aware of any 'bad' pain. Even massaging the IT band is not ringing any warning bells, so I must be doing something right!

Also got in 4 short sessions on the bike for a total of just over 2hours. Really focusing on technique. Computrainer has a program that analyzes your pedal stroke, as it analyzes, it assigns you a number for each leg. The higher the number, the more efficient you are pedaling. A number of 100 is the highest you can go and is really only attainable by a motor. It would signify complete and uniform force through the entire 360 degree pedal stroke. Pro level cyclists routinely hit 80 for their spinscan. It's a tough thing to toy with, you start to play with the numbers as you spin and eventually you start to get 'it'. If I'm not paying attention and just pedaling away, my spinscan number is routinely about 67. I want to get the number up, so I'll sit on the computrainer, run the program and just concentrate on getting high spinscan numbers and pedalling as efficient as possible. I set my new record on Friday with a spinscan of 77!
Now I'm only doing this for 30 minutes at a time, but it's a good start. Got to burn that perfect technique into muscle memory.

Cheers!

Cheater hours

Wah, wah, wah..
Yes winter is here. Big time. We have snow. We have white-out conditions. We have freezing rain. We have more snow.
Despite the inclimate weather I still squeaked out 4 runs for the week. (3X 60min, 1 X 90min) and actually *doubled* my bike trainer hours to ....
Two!
I'm sort of forcing myself to only workout once a day and keep the weekly training hour to a minimum. Going too hard now will must make me all burnt out by July - not a good thing.
I also managed to do 3 X 15 minutes of weights and core. This got me to thinking, when I think of training hours, I think of 'aerobic' training hours. Stretching (and I stretch alot), core work and weights don't count as part of my training hours. If you include these, you're just padding your hours. Hence, cheater hours. Gosh, I probably could have padded my hours by +20% this week if I included the extra stuff. Aerobic hours - that's where the money is at.

December is here. Just like that. This time last year, I was definately more fit. Just interesting to note that. I'm still hoping to train smarter this year and by the time racing starts - I will be faster. So what's the plan for December? Pretty much more of the same, still keeping the aerobic hours fairly low. I'm offically keeping track of mileage and getting much more disciplined in keeping my heartrate in check. I'll be getting on my bike more frequently. A slow, methodical increase in hours is the plan. The last week of December will be super easy, just in time for Jan '08 - when things start to get interesting.