Week 2, Complete

As week 2 of training comes to a close, I realize I continually exceed my expectations, riding further than I had planned.  I finished this week at 151 miles, with 5 days of training.  I took both yesterday and today off to relax, with an ab exercise thrown in the middle of the R&R.  The weather has warmed up and the snow continues to melt, but I am still restricted and am unable to hit the trails in my off time.  I'm guessing I'll be spending a lot of time down in the bike room, spinning while watching the same ESPN episodes, hour after hour.  No worries, only 229 days, 13 hours, and 45 minutes until the start of the race, and my training pays off, hopefully...

I added a new column to the spread sheet, average speed in mph.  Sean Zoufaly, a friend of mine in the squad, questioned how accurate the bikes read the distance and calories burned, but after stepping back and looking at my training plan, I figured it out.  The level I ride at, not the zone with the heart rate, but the level on the bike, refers to the intensity of the ride I am on.  A higher level means I am traveling up a steeper hill, it doesn't mean I'm pushing a bigger gear and going further, it simply means I am exerting more energy to cover the same distance.  And also, my heart rate zone does relate to my intensity and time along with my calories burned, but I have yet to graph those numbers to make sense of them.  Don't worry, another week or two and I'll have enough data for an aesthetically pleasing line graph depicting my training over the last month or so.

Here is the excel sheet for this last week.  I can already tell, 6 months from now I will have too much information to even make sense of it, but until then, I'm going with it.  Supposedly, Kevin Lubinski was going to send me an inspirational quote or saying every day to keep me motivated, but after the first day, he quit.  Thanks, Kevin, great friend.



If you have anything inspiring, feel free to share, anything at all will help.  Thanks for reading, have a good week everyone, Happy Valentine's Day to all of you lovers out there!! <3

Take care,
Matt