But that's how I feel, fighty. Obviously something's going wrong with the LSD process, where's my mellow high? I'm sitting on this bike (upright) at my 'happy' cadence of around 90 and going for forty-five minutes trying to keep my heart rate around 60-75% maxHR. But is that the right range? I DON'T KNOW! But I'm in it now, I bought the ticket so I might as well take the ride.
Go - The - Distance.
Elite endurance athletes train 10-12 sessions and 15-30 h each week. Is the pattern of 80 % below and 20 % above lactate threshold appropriate for recreational athletes training 4-5 times and 6-10 hours per week? There are almost no published data addressing this question. Recently Esteve-Lanao (personal communication) completed an interesting study on recreational runners comparing a program that was designed to reproduce the polarized training of successful endurance athletes and compare it with a program built around much more threshold training in keeping with the ACSM exercise guidelines. The intended intensity distribution for the two training groups was: Polarized 77-3-20 % and ACSM 46-35-19 % for Zones 1, 2, and 3. However, heart-rate monitoring revealed that the actual distribution was: Polarized 65-21-14 % and ACSM 31-56-13 %.
Comparing the intended and achieved distributions highlights a typical training error committed by recreational athletes. We can call it falling into a training intensity “black hole.” It is hard to keep recreational people training 45-60 min a day 3-5 days a week from accumulating a lot of training time at their lactate threshold. Training intended to be longer and slower becomes too fast and shorter in duration, and interval training fails to reach the desired intensity. The result is that most training sessions end up being performed at the same threshold intensity. Foster et al. (2001b) also found that athletes tend to run harder on easy days and easier on hard days, compared to coaches' training plans. Esteve Lanao did succeed in getting two groups to distribute intensity very differently. The group that trained more polarized, with more training time at lower intensity, actually improved their 10-km performance significantly more at 7 and 11 wk. So, recreational athletes could also benefit from keeping low- and high-intensity sessions at the intended intensity.
Dark thoughts for this time of the morning but I get the gist and confess to falling into the training intensity black hole ending up doing everything half-assed (ie in the middle).
My deep research (google) indicates there seems to be some debate on which burns fat better, Long Slow Duration (or Distance) LSD or intense cardio like intervals. I'm not sure I care and both camps have good points. For me I'm putting increasing focus on sitting on a itsy-bitsy bike saddle for eight hours in August for fun! So the less pounds I place on my derriere the better for all of us. Right now I'm just checking to see if I can turn a bike crank for forty-five minutes in a very controlled environment while maintaining an HR around 70% of my estimated maxHR. Turning said crank for eight hours on some hellish August day is still a big TBD.
I glance over at IronMan, at least I'm better off than that poor bastard. He's hammering the treadmill and pushing metal and God knows what since he's staring down the barrel of day two of eight hour meetings. He has Friday infront of him too, for more of the same. I sooooo wish I had a video of his epic struggle for consciousness which I'm guessing will start right after lunch. I bet he's gonna look like some sort of hapless prizefighter right after getting clocked, "OH OH He's DOWN! He's fighting to get up, fighting to stay awake... NOPE It's all over folks!" I swear that would be all over YouTube.
I give him some pointers on trying to stay awake during Mark or Mary Monotone's big presentation. Little tricks like sticking your hand into a steaming cup of coffee. There's nothing like a nice second degree burn to keep your mind off dozing (I didn't mention the fall back plan of just pouring the fresh cup on his lap, he wasn't ready for that).
I also told him to bring in a big water jug and drink it (for the potty breaks).
He's looking at me closely on the bike, unsure of my sincerity. He kind of chortles and wanders off.
Newbie.
I'm deadly serious and IronMan will know this about 1:30pm when he suddenly realizes that no matter how he sits, or squirms or doodles he's going down to napland. Poor baby. First his eye blinks will get longer and he'll start to daydream. Then his eyes will snap open in alarm a few times with a nervous glance around the room hoping no one has caught him sorta kinda dozing. But he'll return to his daydream, his growing relaxation because anywhere is better than where he's currently at...
until...
ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
He's doomed. It's a lot like drowning.
Zone 3.2? How'd that happen? It must be my latest American Idol rendition of Zombie. I back off the resistance and try and bring my HR down because that's the trap of these LSD adventures. You want to suffer so you should hammer the pedals harder! Nope, nope. One must pace oneself, take it easy. Savor the 'wait' of it.
It's not all about suffering, well except for IronMan. Back to the bike and my deep, deep thoughts...
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