Baseline Ride

Baseline Ride

Small consistent improvement: This has fueled my art practice as well as my attempts to keep up my fitness. But before you can improve you have to do the something that you want to improve on to know where you are. For example, to train for a marathon, I would run as far as far as I comfortably can and then each week I would add a bit more distanceI had to start with knowing how far I could run to create a plan to run a bit farther each week.

Small consistent improvement: This has fueled my art practice as well as my attempts to keep up my fitness. But before I can improve I have to do the something that I want to improve on to know where I am. For example, to train for a marathon, I would run as far as I comfortably can and then each week I would add a bit more distance. I had to start with knowing how far I could run to create a plan to run a bit farther each week.


The small improvements eventually lead to incredible results… This is easy to type, harder to do. But for now, I wanted to start somewhere. Since defining my goal of a 4-hour GranFondo Whistler (see blog post here), I was first working through 2022 Zwift Academy in September with the goal of getting a bit of cycling fitness back before heading to the mountains. Having a goal has proven fun, as it has gotten me onto my indoor trainer upwards of 4 x per week, which I can’t remember when I have done last. And I am already sleeping significantly better!


So now that I am feeling a bit more comfortable exerting effort, I wanted to get some baseline numbers in. Since my target event has a lot of climbing (1900m to be exact), I want my baseline ride to be a climb. I used to live on Mt. Seymour so I am very familiar with theclim (it is now a bit of a drive away but close enough to do often), and want to use it as my baseline climb. Likewise, I want to have a virtual climb so I could test myself indoors when it is rainy and dark in Vancouver over the winter.


My first climb up Seymour, 2 Saturdays ago, I was unfocused and not very consistent. Even in the moment I noticed my mind easily going off and away from the climb. However I was pleased with my time of 1 hour 14 minutes considering I haven't climbed a mountain on a road bike in awhile. So I decided to try again and I rode it again a week later (I figured worst case - it is all cumulative training).

The second time, this past Saturday, I had considerable improvement. Not only was I more mentally prepared for the climb. I also forgot my earbuds for the ride, and because I wasn’t distracting myself with music I was able to proactively shift gears and constantly push up the hill rather than shift now and then. I could also hear my breathing and control it better when I started getting heavy. I honestly thought the tunes helped with focus and consistent effort - as I used to be a spin instructor and loud, pumping music is critical to keep 20 people motivated on the bike. Now I don’t think I will be using tunes on my rides as much anymore! My climb ended up being 1:07:08 which was 3 seconds off from my PR up Seymour! I really have to have a lap stop watch on my computer to show my time while I am riding. I am certain I would have pushed harder the last 100m if I knew I could be on track for a PR.


So here are my results in the chart below. I also went and estimated how much I hope to improve over the year based on 2019 time vs. goal 2023 times. I calculated the % improvement based on decreasing my time by 42 minutes.  This leads to 15% time reduction and 17.5% speed increase. That said… My improvements are assuming my power now is equivalent to my power when I achieved the 4:42 event in 2019, which it is not. BUT since my Seymour PRs from 2019 and 2022 are not that dissimilar, it might no be that far off already!

One thing I did not mention so far is that I have lost 10lbs since 2019, so that is a value that will have a positive impact on my times as it will require less power to carry my weight up the mountain.

Another thing I am thinking about as I type this. Because the event is so much longer and requires more endurance -- perhaps I need to be able to speed up more than 17.5% for a shorter climb. At the end of the day all these numbers are a aid to help me train better. They are not the final event. Since I love spreadsheets I am enjoying trying to put numbers to a bike ride.

I've also created a video for this week's blog topic:

 

 

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