I am going to stop talking about my Garmin watch for a bit even though it is precisely because of this handy piece of equipment that I know about what it is that I am about to talk about and that is... Getting better at something by repeating the process over and over.
In the past, my running or cycling was something that I just did without paying much (or any) regard to how fast I was going or at times, not really even pushing myself all that much because I was out there primarily for the calorie burn and not much else.
For the past 2 weeks or so I have been taking a similar route on my cycling almost every single day save 1 per week, because that is what my schedule looks like.
I have in that time become much faster on this path and I know that this is mainly because I only recently started cycling again, but I'm not going to rain on my own parade, I am just going to be happy that it is happening.
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Now the path that I take isn't terribly vigorous because of the fact that nearly the entire area I live in is at sea level and if there are any hills, they are slight and normally don't last that long. This works out nicely for my single-gear carbon-fiber bicycle, and simplifies things for me as far as detecting progress is concerned. I can't blame a bad time or attribute a good time to changing gears better because that is not a factor since the only way I can change gears at all would be if I was to break my chain thereby going from gear 1 to gear 0.
Instead, I just plug away pushing as hard as I feel like it on that day and getting through a certain course. There are a number of factors that can impact my route time such as how many other people are on it, but for the most part I choose a time of day where there wont be a lot of people on it and even though cyclists have a reputation for being road-hogging assholes, the people here seem to follow the rules and stay in their lane, literally.
The first time I did the route that I have been doing ever since, it took me over an hour to get it done. In the past two weeks I got well below 50 minutes on the same route. Yesterday, I did the entire thing in damn near 40 minutes. I am relatively certain that I could do it in under 40 minutes as well if I really pushed myself.
However, since I am older and not really training for anything in particular, I think I am just going to plan a different route instead and get my total exercise time up to an hour or more again.
But before we abandon the current path let's look at something that makes me even more happy than the fact that I am completing the circuit far faster than when I first started.
You can see here that not only am I completing the circuit faster, but my heart rate is mostly in lower zones than when I first started. Previously, if I was trying to go for "mama speed" I would spend a lot more of my overall time in the "threshold" zone but instead I am now spending most of my time in the zone below that. So not only am I faster on the same track, but I my body also considers it to be easier. I suppose this is the ultimate objective of all exercise and in particular, cardio where you aren't actually racing anyone other than yourself.
Since I consider this exercise to be "easy" now, I need to step up the difficulty, and that is exactly what I am going to to starting this afternoon.
It's great to see some improvement, but that slows down as you get fit. I found that my recovery times improved a lot as a short run would leave me breathless for a while when I started. I may have plateaued on speed, but I hope there's potential to improve. I know my resting pulse is fairly low, so I hope that means my heart is healthy.
!BEER
I am looking forward to my resting heart rate being lower as well. I sometimes get a bit concerned about how high my heart rate can get from just doing something normal and I don't like it because I exercise quite a lot so having my BPM spike up to 110 just from walking to the other side of my house is irritating when I do about an hour of cardio every day.
Crazy how much the time has dropped and now you need to add to the route or find another one. The watch which we are not talking about has definitely improved your cycling.
I'll probably just add to the trail that I am on. Unfortunately being in such a metro area my options are kind of limited because I have no interest in joining the streets where you are constantly waiting at red lights and dodging traffic. I also don't want to accidentally become a cliche and be one of those bicycling nuisances on the road.
Its cool to see how you improved over time. Even at a higher age you still can see so much progress.
If you want to go for longer distances theu say you need to keep your heart rate in zone 2 or 3 for most of the timemduring your training. If you want to get stronger of faster you need to get it in 4 or 5 a lot with interval trainings.
But I don't know if you have seriously set yourself a goal like this.
Anyways; nice progress and well done!
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I don't really set any goals about getting stronger. For me I am not really training for anything in particular, I just want to have reasonably decent health while at the same time not hating whatever exercise it is that I am doing. I appreciate the kudos from you though!