I was so spent after that interval that I had to hop off my bike to go fill up my glass, and quickly return for a five-minute easy spin. Afterwards, I finished the pyramid by repeating the second hardest effort, and proceeding in the reverse order of the first part of my workout.

I pedaled at a moderate effort at an 80 to 90 rpm cadence for 10 minutes and then decided to finish with three sprints. Each was in a harder gear, as fast as I could pedal while maintaining a little control, and for 30 seconds with 90-second rest periods in between. I then finished with 10 minutes of moderate spinning, because the easy cooldown that I had been doing over the past week now felt too easy.

The good news is that there was a noticeable improvement over my last workout! This is the golden carrot dangling in front of my face, encouraging me to continue my training. My new goal is to complete that pyramid without having to stop. Any bets on how long that will take?

I’ve been doing quite well with my workouts throughout the holiday weekend. Wednesday, December 21 was the first day on the trainer (see Jake’s New Toy). I “trained” again on Thursday for 40 minutes. I sprinkled in three sprints, and my heart responded by saying, “No, not gonna slow down until you get off this damn bike.”

Friday, I got out for a hike at Stony Creek with Kristi, Eric, Nick, Marty, Steve, Walter, Chili, Roxie, Dobby, and Coriander: six people, five dogs. We spent two hours hiking all over the place. I was ready to quit long before we did, but I’m really glad that we were out for as long as we were. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I also really needed it. I guess you could say that my friends took me for a much-needed walk. Here are some awesome photos from that hike:

Saturday and Sunday were travel days for Christmas with the family, so I didn’t get any exercise, but I managed to get back on schedule with a 40-minute walk along some of the streets of Mount Clemens, yesterday. Cori wasn’t quite sure she wanted to leave the apartment. I think she thought I was going to throw her back into the car for a ride to God only knows where, but she perked up when she realized that we were hitting the pavement sans driving.

Today, I took Nick’s advice of popping in a movie during my trainer workout. Since I’m still working my way through Christmas movies, I popped in Holiday Inn. It really did make it easier to get through the workout. I managed to spin for 60 minutes. I did some faster spinning at about 90 rpm, switching between an easier and a medium gear. In fact, the faster spinning felt better than the slower spinning. This is good. It was somewhat of a challenge syncing my cadence with the early-40s music, but I managed, and I realized that musicals are great for trainer workouts. The movie focuses my mind on the plot, while the music encourages me to switch it up a bit. The problem is that I don’t own very many musicals.

I had to do three sprints toward the end of the workout. To make it more challenging, and to shock my muscles into being like little rock stars and fine-tuning their craft, which just happens to be being strong and fast, I like to do sprints or simulate hills as much as I can in my quaint, little living room.

So it seems that I have a bit of a routine, and I intend to keep it up. Instead of going gung-ho on the cycling, I am going to continue alternating cycling with walking. This means that Cori and Jake get equal time. Aside from keeping the dog and bike happy, it also keeps my body happy. While I’m going through the “getting back into shape” phase, I think it’s best to give my legs rest days between trainer workouts. In the past, my legs have responded quite well to rest days, coming back much stronger for the next workout.

If I can keep this up, I’ll be ready for race season.

Thomas Magnum – you know, Magnum P.I. – would head out on his surf ski in celebration of his birthday. It was his day alone. It was how he celebrated his life. I get it.

My greatest gift to myself on my birthday, aside from winning the lottery, is to do that which proves I am truly alive. It seems as though the older I get, the more I have to prove to myself.

I almost thought today was going to be a wash – literally, a wash. This is because we had some massively heavy thunderstorms which brought over two inches of rain to my neck of the woods. Weather.com predicted rain all day, but AccuWeather promised a break at 3 p.m. Bless you, AccuWeather. You are truly superior to Weather.com. I figured this out because AccuWeather is my weather app on my iPhone, which accurately predicted the weather. Had I believed Weather.com, I never would have made it out on my bike, today.

I headed out on a route with which I was familiar, but I did not get on the computer to plan a route, beforehand. I just kind of went wherever while being mindful of traffic patterns. Riding around Durand, traffic isn’t too bad, but Durand Road is not a preferred bicycling route, especially south of town.

I felt pretty good. I felt strong. After six consecutive days of mountain biking, and a couple of rest days, I showed a marked improvement in my riding. In two hours and 40 minutes, I increased my distance from 31 to 33 miles. Go, Di! My average speed was 14.4 mph, today. On March 15, a day on which I did a comparable ride, my average speed was 13.47 mph. The biggest difference is that I felt really good after today’s ride. I could have gone further. On March 15, I was pretty much done for after that ride.

It is nice to find out on my birthday that I am improving. It is a slow improvement, but it is a motivator to keep training. Happy birthday to me.

I started road riding to get back into cycling shape. The following is my progress:

• March 6 – 15.91 miles

• March 7 – 18.56 miles
• March 9 – 27.4 miles
• March 11 – 30.52 miles
• Today – 30.04 miles.

My goal for March 11 was simply to log more than 30 miles. After that ride, I decided that I would hold at approximately 30 miles for the next few rides to evaluate how I felt and to see if there was any improvement. Both March 11 and today were quite windy. Both days had me traveling into the wind at 9 mph. Of course, the return trips were a blast…at least for last Thursday. Today’s Northeast wind seemed to get me on almost every road.

I love heading away from the wind because I can get up to speeds over 20 mph. There is something about going that fast that makes road riding so much better. It’s exciting. It spurs thoughts such as, “Wow, if I wipe out, now, I’ll get some pretty massive road rash.” Even with fleeting thoughts of pain and failure, I can’t help trying to go faster. I would like to hit 50 mph, someday. I’ve come so incredibly close (47.6), but I just couldn’t break 50. I would be really surprised if that happened in mid-Michigan, but that isn’t going to stop me from trying.

I almost didn’t reach my goal of 30 miles. I got to my road and knew that the .4-mile ride home would not get me to 30. Even though I really wanted to punk out, at the very last minute, I decided to continue. I rode to the next intersection beyond my road and back to reach 30 miles. I even had to do a very short out and back beyond my driveway. I did it, though. Even though I had given myself permission to punk out at 28 miles, I feel much better about myself for going the extra miles.

Today’s ride took a lot out of me. It was quite challenging, especially since my upper body was fatigued from yesterday’s workout. I really should not ride tomorrow. After all, I do show big improvements when I take rest days and eat well. I might head out to my personal trails and work on those some more. I need to do a little benching. Of course, you probably know nothing about that because I haven’t shared anything about my newest project, but I will share at another time.

Mountain biking was my only activity for the first three days of the year. Actually, I only rode the first two days and took the third off for a grand total of 77 minutes of riding. Both days were difficult. Maybe it is because I’m used to using my cross bike with slicks for road riding, but the pace on the mountain bike felt incredibly slow. There was a total of 125 feet of climbing and a fairly respectable headwind on the way home.

Total Time: 1 hour 17 minutes

This version of my workout log has been modified to fit your screen.

The second week was a little more diverse. Monday, I went mountain biking with another person for 67 minutes. We covered 4.5 miles of trail. It was a pretty tough ride. I should have drunk more water in preparation for the ride because I felt thirsty and I felt a little weak. The reason I didn’t have a water bottle was because I didn’t realize my water bottles weren’t clean when it came time to leave. Lesson learned. That reminds me, I need to soak those water bottles.

After that ride, I did not feel like dressing for subsequent rides. While winter riding has its moments, it is not my top choice for winter exercise. Lacking motivation, I skipped my workout on Tuesday and chose to stay inside for Wednesday. I did a heart-pumping, weight training workout complete with a little aerobic activity. That was a 35-minute workout. It wasn’t anything exciting, but at least I did something.

After two days of no activity, I grew restless and decided to work with the newly-fallen snow to build a skate ski trail (see Skating My Own Creation). That was my Saturday project that involved 115 minutes of snowshoeing, some of which was while pulling a roller. It was pretty tough. I also tested the trail with two laps of skating for eight minutes.

Sunday, I hit the skate skiing trail for 38 minutes and also took a 15-minute walk. My body was pretty sore and I began thinking it was time for a day off from a workout.

Total Time: 4 hours 38 minutes

The last half of the week went really well on the exercise front. I am quite out of shape compared to past years, and I am willing to work hard to get in shape in time for spring racing. This last week of exercise can be used as a baseline to gauge my improvement.

Goal for Next Week: Total of seven hours of exercise

I have four years experience with mountain biking, three of those racing, although I’m not really sure if you can count this year’s sorry racing performances and lack of involvement under the scope of “racing experience.” Nonetheless, I have learned a lot about putting together a brilliant training program.

Hill Workouts

Hill repeats? Pishaw. Really, now, who does hill repeats? That is soooo yesteryear. My hill sessions consist of taking Jake for a ride up a long hill, recovering, and then hitting a brutally steep hill. Trust me, this works. No, seriously, I’m not kidding.

Last weekend while I was in Marquette, I took my mountain bike for a little jaunt on part of the Ore to Shore course on a county road. It was mostly uphill. It sucked. I was riding incredibly slowly during the race. This little 7.53-mile, 35-minute road ride was brutal. I pushed hard and fast up the hills, sometimes standing, and I sprinted downhill. I pedaled for dear life downhill so I could wake up those fast-twitch muscle fibers.

A couple of days ago, I took Jake (Jake is my cross bike for those of you not in the know) for a little jaunt up to Paradise Road just outside of Chassell. The uphill ride to Paradise is brutal in and of itself, but it is Paradise Road that is known for the long climb. Usually, that climb is done away from Houghton, but I chose to head toward Houghton. Either way, it’s a climb.

I managed to set a decent pace and gradually increased my speed as I pedaled to the top of the hill. That made me feel great. When I reached the top of the hill, I shifted into my second hardest gear and sprinted down the other side.

The bottom of the famed Paradise Road hill quickly transitioned into another uphill. The grade of the hill presented some difficulty, so I shifted into my second easiest gear. I turned onto Pilgrim Road to ride the really steep hill up to the Tech Trails. That hurt. I started climbing in a seated position. When it got to be almost impossible, I stood and pedaled. My legs burned and my chest heaved in desperation for more air. I wanted to quit, but I had something to prove. I made it to the top of the hill, sat on the saddle, and gently pedaled as I regained my breath. The hard part was over.

Committing to Social Rides and Carbo-Loading

Accountability comes with commitment to others. Last night, I ran into a friend at The Library Restaurant and Brew Pub. I asked him if he wanted to ride “tomorrow” and he said yes. This morning, we met at the Tech Trails and had a great ride.

Did I mention that we did a little carbo-loading, last night?

Just Ride

This morning, when I first straddled my bike, I felt a surge of excitement and happiness. Get your minds out of the gutter, people. I was excited because I suddenly recalled how mountain biking makes me happy. This is a feeling I haven’t had in a while. I knew today’s ride was going to be great.

I was at the top of my game. My pace was much better than it had been all summer. I felt “on.” My riding was dialed and fluid. I felt like I belonged on the bike. It was just so effortless.

We rode around many of the new trails and then climbed to the top to ride some of the older trails. We did a little technical riding followed by some easy, fast riding. We made our way back down the hill to finish riding the new trails. We rode up some difficult, steep hills. Even when I was huffing and puffing, I felt great and I climbed well.

The trails were in great condition. It had rained a little, this morning, so they were damp, but not muddy. Traction was excellent, so the opportunity for speed was definitely there. I even got quite the climbing workout during the ride.

Conclusion

In short, go to the local brew pub to arrange group rides, hit up the trails, and ride a few hills. Most of all have fun. When you master this art, you can become faster, as well.

Tomorrow and Wednesday, I am going to hit the pavement for a couple of short rides ranging from 60-90 minutes. This will be a little wake-up call for my body – a little message that hard work is coming pretty quickly. Jake (cross bike) and I will be heading down to Marquette, next weekend. I am going to visit a friend, but I’ve decided that this might be the perfect opportunity to try out the bike paths in and around town. My goal is to do quite a bit of riding – three rides ranging from three to four hours, Friday through Sunday. Wish me luck.

With what I have planned over the next three weeks, I fully expect to lose the ten pounds I gained, last fall. Not only do I wish to get back down to last year’s race weight, but I want to lose an additional ten pounds. I’ve recognized that dropping additional weight is the best way to get faster. I also expect that a new saddle will be in the works. Four hours on a bike without a super comfortable saddle can be hell.

Of course, I reserve the right to quit this little endurance cycling program and postpone it to a later date. It is possible that snow and rain are in the forecast, but I will do my best to get through it. I’m really not concerned about fitness. My leg muscles are stronger and more defined than they were at the beginning of winter, and the skate skiing I’ve been doing has been quite intense. Cardiovascularly, things are good, but there is always room for improvement.

After calculating the mileage, I was quite satisfied, but the hours significantly lacked:
• 1997: 212 cycling hours, 1520 miles; 292 total exercise hours
• 1998: 178 cycling hours, 1610 miles; 276 total exercise hours

I traveled 90 miles further by bike in 2008, but spent 34 fewer hours on the bike. This may be due to commuting, which covers more distance in less time than mountain biking. I did not bicycle commute in 2007. I also spent 16 fewer hours exercising in 2008 than in 2007. That really is not a huge difference, and there are some very good reasons for this. Actually, there are three very good reasons.

• I started the year off with a bang. I hung out with a friend for New Years, and drove to my parents’ house from Lansing on New Year’s Day. My family and I headed to Frankenmuth for the chicken dinner I love so much at the Bavarian Inn. As dinner progressed, so did my illness. I didn’t know it when I arrived at the Bavarian Inn, but the drive home was going to be miserable. My throat felt incredibly raw and my coughing was out of control. It took a couple hours to get home because traffic on I-75 was very slow due to the snowstorm. I was in a lot of pain. I spent the next week bed-ridden with a fever that wouldn’t break, and I lost my voice for three days. No exercise.
• At the end of January, some friends came to visit, shortly followed by my parents. I developed another illness at this time. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the New Year’s bug, but it did force me to call into work for the one shift I had the fortune of picking up.
• With March came a trip to Marquette. I love visiting my friend, Sandee, down there, because we always have fun snowshoeing and sledding. It was going to be a great week to recharge my batteries. I made it down, did a little sledding, then came down with tonsillitis for the first time in my life.

This little hell of illness actually started in Moab during Thanksgiving Week 2007. I was sick through half of December. That makes four illnesses last winter.

This winter is off to a better start, and so is my exercise. It is going to be difficult to combat illness when the Tech students return to the Keweenaw in the height of disease season, but I will find a way to continue doing what I love.

With the New Year come transitions. People make resolutions, clean things out, throw things away, and embark on new and lofty goals while I simply switch to a new training log. I created an Excel spreadsheet back in 2007 to track my exercise hours and distances. In 2008, it evolved to simply recording time for most activities, but recording distances for biking and skiing. Those distances help me to determine whether I’ve improved and have been doing enough.

It really helps to look at my training log. If I see a large gap, it’s a sign that I haven’t exercised for a week or more for whatever reasons. That gap is a great motivator to get back on track.

Looking at the spreadsheet makes me realize that I do a lot. I had to include a great number of columns on the spreadsheet, but one sport is divided into types, since that is my primary sport:
• Cycling: Mountain, Road, Cyclocross, Commuting, Spinning
• Skiing (I cross country skate ski)
• Kayaking
• Snowshoeing
• Hiking/Walking
• Weight Training
• Trail Work

Cycling

Cycling is divided into five categories because of my ingenious reasoning abilities. Mountain biking, road riding, and cyclocross use different bikes, tires, and terrain. It simply is not wise to compare one’s time on the road bike with that on the mountain bike. Commuting is separate because it is simply that: commuting. I am trying to turn it into simple, enjoyable time on the bike, but I really don’t like carrying a backpack. Spinning is recorded in minutes only. The only purpose of spinning is to get time on the bike, and you really can’t [accurately] measure distance on a spinning bike. I only spin when absolutely necessary.

Skiing

Our skate skiing trails are marked with great signs, so distance is not a mystery. It is also nice to see how fast I can get around a loop. Distance and time are recorded to gauge improvement, just like with cycling.

Other Activities

The other activities either can’t be gauged by distance, or are activities that shouldn’t be gauged by distance. I figure it’s bad enough that cycling is a highly competitive sport, for me, and skiing is kind of treated as such, even though I refuse to ski race. Winter is my time off of racing. I record the times for the other activities, however, because it is a good way to measure the amount of exercise I am getting. It is also a good indicator of whether I should hold back on the food a little bit. I record trail work hours because I have a goal of at least 20 hours per year to meet my volunteer efforts for the Michigan Mountain Biking Association and the International Mountain Biking Association.

Get the Spreadsheet

This year, I consolidated all of my sports onto one spreadsheet. My spreadsheet is designed to fit my widescreen monitor, but it may work for your computer if you like micro words and numbers, or if you also have a widescreen monitor. If you are computer literate, you can make it work for you.

Click here to download the 2009 spreadsheet.

Click here to download the 2010 spreadsheet.

You must have Microsoft Excel to use this spreadsheet. It was created with Microsoft Excel 2002. I suppose there may be other spreadsheet programs out there that will read this file, but I will leave that up to you to find out.

I took the time, last winter, to develop a broad training schedule for the year. I wasn’t aware that my laziness was causing me to follow this schedule. I just looked at the training program, today, but I am on track, nevertheless.

Under November, it says, “No training. Just do what you want when you want.” Well, I did that. I didn’t really do much, but I still did what I want when I wanted it. I went for a couple of bike rides, skied a bit, and lifted weights a couple of times. December, however, marks the beginning of getting back on track.

December through January

Season prep: Build it back up

• strength training two or three days a week
• ski

I haven’t been strength training that much, but it has been getting done. Now that I’m on Christmas break, I haven’t been to the gym at all. I did have one heck of a strength day, yesterday, when I hoisted many logs onto a wood splitter. I also attempted a few pushups. Since I have the good mind to lift with my legs, my legs also got a great workout.

I haven’t been skiing, though. I’ve only been out a few times, this year, which is a shame since the snow has been great. I have snowshoed several times, though, and that is a wonderful cardio workout, even when the effort is intended to be mild.

Tomorrow, I am most likely going to join a group of people on a snowshoe trek lasting three to five hours. I might die. It is going to be very difficult, but I am willing to give it a go. I am going to pack some food, fill my camelback, and get ready to capture some spectacular scenery with my camera.

Monday and Tuesday will be ski days, then snowshoeing will resume with a trip to Copper Harbor. A trip to Marquette for more snowshoeing, sledding, and skiing will follow, next week. Basically, the rest of my Christmas vacation will be a physical jolt to my system, preparing me for regular training throughout the rest of January.

December has pretty much been a reboot for my exercise and diet routines. Things are getting on track and there is some evidence of my success. In an effort to promote motivation, I am enacting a new rule: no internet until after exercise. There is no point in sitting on my caboose unless I’m too worn out to do anything but.