Hey,
I'm very analytical about my training/racing. If somthing goes wrong I want to know why and fix it. My bad ride on Saturday left me knowing that I was doing somthing very wrong. I knew it was my pacing and that my preparation(nutrition) wasn't great either. I still didn't have the confidence and was dreading my next longer ride. Anyways yesterday I read a bunch of stuff off Gordo's site and also heard a very very good ironmantalk interview with Gordo. He talked mostly about power but also touched on some ironman pacing stuff. So I went home later and went out for my ride as usual. I wore the heart rate monitor since I can't afford more expensive electronics that measure my output and somthing hit me while I was riding. I never realized how hard it was to keep a steady heart rate. I know I tend to try and keep in a certain gear when I'm bucking wind and will not shift down till I absolutely have to. This ride I noticed my heart rate go up and I shifted down accordingly. I saved energy, kept my cadence up, also kept in the zone. This may seem rather trivual, you shift down and your heart rate goes down. Well I found the opposite isn't quite as easy to do. When I turn and get a tail wind. I'd shift up as normal, but when I'd check the heart rate, it would still be too low. So I'd shift up some more and get wayyyy more benefit out of the tail wind while keeping my heart rate in the zone. Sorry for the long winded explanation, here's my summary.
I need to shift more to keep my heart rate/effort steady. Don't be afraid to shift down for a head wind, as well as shift up for a tail wind.
Anyways yesterday was a confidence builder. I did a 62km bike ride feeling great the whole way(although the wind was good to me for a change) followed by a 38.5 min run. This saturday the plan is to ride 5.5-6 hours. I will wear my monitor and the goal is to keep at 130-135 bpm the entire ride. GG
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