New Personal Record...

[sylvan]

...for max heart rate, 208. I'm kinda like my childhood hero, the Grinch What Stoled Christmas - my heart is two sizes too small. So it has to beat pretty hard to achieve mediocre athleticism. My old record was 205, set twice. Once was on a bike on a trainer at Commonwealth Pool, actually doing a max heart race test. The other time was in a horrific 3k or 4k cross country running race. Highest in the past couple of years was 202 a couple of times, once on a Tuesday morning box sprint and once on an Interurban sprint at the end of a Thursday night IRC ride. I did a 3.44 km cross country running race tonight, after only doing 4 or 5 runs in the past couple of months. Not so smart. Do not try anything like this at home. I felt horrible just jogging over to the race, working really hard just to go about 8:00/mile. There was a 10 km race at the same time as the 3K, so all the good runners were in that. I was running with mostly little kids and felt like a doofus. After a couple of minutes running mostly downhill, I looked at the HRM and it was at 185, a minute after and it was 190, but it felt so easy! I've always found it so bizarre, impossible to explain, how different it is to be running a race and how the brain reacts to a race situation and makes it feel so different to solo training runs/rides. I've never been able to come anywhere close to race effort in training except for very short periods with extreme feeling of stress. I hit 200 on the HRM at 6:43 into the race and it never went below 200 for the next 7 minutes. Now it was not easy, it sucked. Between 8 and 10 minutes it was all hurting pretty bad and I was wondering if I really wanted to keep doing this. I knew I didn't but kept thinking of reasons why I should. Then it went uphill in pretty nasty fashion for most of the last km and I decided that if anybody wanted to pass me they'd have to hurt just a little bit more. Turns out I had about a minute gap on 2nd but always thought somebody was close. It was tough to tell since we were passing so many 10 km runners who'd started 5 minutes earlier and were doing 3 loops of the course. The HRM data trace looks EXACTLY like most other short races I've run decently - small peak around half distance, then back off a teeny bit 'til 3/4 distance, then ugly ugly 'til the end. This one just went a few beats higher than ever before, probably because of the perfect terrain layout - hill right at the end, and maybe lack of fitness. It was incredibly horrible but fun.

http://connect.garmin.com/player/107129358

[RyanC]

Ouch

I think one of the reasons I don't use an HRM in races (other than the fact that I no longer own one) is that the numbers scare me too much. I also noticed I could push my HR waaay higher in competition than in training. Adrenaline?

Hey, Sylvan. If the racing thing ever gets boring for you, you and Carly could always become a Hollywood dream team. Just check out the intensity on those faces at 0:14!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I99Z9pzU1kg

R

[Josh.E]

Hey, Sylvan

Is that film from the day you came out to the saturday sufferfest solo riding the tandem?

[sylvan]

Is that film from the day you came out to the saturday sufferfest solo riding the tandem?

Yeah, i think so. IIRC, I didn't have time to do the Sufferfest plus go change bikes in time to make the photo shoot so I rocked Carly's mega Comotion racing tandem on the West Saanich loop and pulled in to PISE near the end of the ride. I ended up getting really cold so somebody, I think Tubbs McGee, gave me a big plastic hoodie to wear on the video shoot.