Bike, Steady State & Experimenting

Wednesday

No training. Took the 7:40 train to Prague. Worked at our Prague office. Then had a nice dinner down town with my old rowing friend. Walked through Prague Old Town after dinner, talking about the old times.

Took the 8pm fast bus back to Brno, arriving at the bus station at 22:15, at home and in bed by 23:00. I read an interesting article on elite athletes in the bus. Will talk about it later.

Thursday

A long day at work. Then I cycled home:

Namiddagrit 11-26-2015, Heart rate.png

About an hour after a light dinner, I headed down to the erg room. I prepared two lactate strips in the cold (5-8 degrees C), next to the erg, and left two lactate strips in their container in the kitchen (21 degrees C).

Did a 2km warming up. I didn’t feel top form, despite the resting day. I even suspect a light head cold may be coming up.

The original plan was to do a 60 minutes, but I convinced myself that my experiment would work at any lactate reading, so a 40 minute exercise would be OK.

I rowed for 40 minutes. It was not nice. My heart rate was higher than usual. It felt hard. I had to stop after 17 minutes to get my audio going again (a 30 second stop only, just switched from “lecture” to “radio”).

40min.jpg

Average pace 2:03.7, 185W.

The plan was to do a lactate reading immediately after the row.

Unfortunately, when I stopped rowing, I got unbearable cramp in my right calf, so I spent the first minute in pain before I could start preparing for a lactate reading.

lactate 001.JPG
20:22 After exercise. Cold strip. Cold meter.

I did an easy 1km in 2:19 pace and took another measurement.

lactate 002.JPG
20:29 After cooling down. Cold strip. Cold meter.

Then I went upstairs to the kitchen and did a measurement immediately with one of the strips that had waited in the kitchen.

lactate 003.JPG
20:30. Warm Strip. Cold Meter.

Then I washed my hands with warm water and did another measurement.

lactate 004.JPG
20:32 Warm hands. Warm meter. Warm strip.

After that I took a hot shower. I mean hot. Really hot. I usually end showering by gradually lowering the water temperature until I shower off cold, to stop sweating. This time I didn’t. After the shower I took a final measurement, from my second container. My 26th Lactate strip this week.

lactate 005.JPG
20:48 Hot hands. Warm meter. Warm strip

In conclusion, I don’t think it is detrimental to keep the strips at 5 degrees. I have to believe that my 26 lactate measurements of this week were real, at least to withing 0.5 mmol/L. I think the increase from 0.6 to 1.1 while I was standing in my kitchen can be explained by the muscle lactate being cleared, temporarily increasing blood lactate.

Still leaves unanswered the question what my good steady state intensity is. I am afraid 200W is too much, but let’s see how I think about it a week from now.