2008 Cycling Science Symposium Presentations
The presentations from the 2008 Cycling Science Symposium held in Denver, CO were released to the public today on the web. Of interest are Lessons from the Tour De France, Conrad Earnest, PhD, Wind Tunnel testing Using A Power Meter by Jim Martin, PhD and Crank Length and Pedaling Technique by Jim Martin, PhD.
Very good reading though be warned that these presentations are all PowerPoints that have been converted to PDFs.
I See Running In My Future
Though I MUCH prefer cycling over running, I was never really bad at it and have now added it to my routine to give my ass some time to recover from the bike and to burn calories a lot faster.
Using the Bodybugg (God, I hate that name) has been a real eye opener for me in terms of my caloric burn. For example, you can clearly see that I burn significantly less calories on the bike (even while riding for hours at my lactate threshold) than I do while running (at a pace I can easily sustain for an hour).
At my LT, I'm burning approximately 10 calories per minute (2 rides here).
When running, I'm burning about 15.2 calories per minute.
While this isn't surprising, I've learned that running can be a real help when trying to maintain a 1,000 - 1,500 calorie per day deficit. I needed to take today off the bike so I went with Amy down to 24-Hour Fitness and ran on the treadmill for an hour (30 minutes at 165+ bpm) and it went pretty well. I'm not really a gym person but finding flat roads to run on here is just about damn near impossible. It's not the uphill that kills, it's the downhill.
So far, so good on the weight loss front. After a two sketchy weeks, I'm finally starting to drop. About a year ago, I was 269.5 and I checked in this morning at 217.0. Goal weight is 180 by the last Sunday in July and 170 by the end of this year. After that, I'll just want to maintain and work on my power output (more on using a power meter this week) and getting back into racing next year. My motivation is a little different than most peoples. Instead of wanting to look good, fit into certain clothes or be healthy, I just want to go faster up hills. I've already got decent power output and if I can change the "mass" part of the equation, I can be competitive again.
Ok, Maybe This Isn’t Going So Well
Despite putting in 3.5+ hours per day on the bike and a 30 minute walk (with the dogs) or a run every day, I've gained 6.5 pounds since Sunday. This also takes into account a 1,500 - 2,000 calorie per day deficit. I know I have to be patient with this but I had merely hoped to stay the same or maybe even gain one or two pounds. Before I started restricting my calories and upping my time on the bike each day by 30 minutes, I was only gaining 1.5 a week. Time to rethink my strategy.
On the positive side, I hit 2,200 miles on the bike last night and my two mile run is now down below 13:30.
Why I Rarely Use Facebook Anymore
I logged in last night for the first time in about 40 days and cleared out all of my invites. This is how many I've received in less than 24 hours and I only have 15 friends. I used to think they were cool until I learned that people just send these invites to everyone which detracts from their value, at least for me. When I learned that Scrabulous is a person to person game, I played. Maybe social networks just aren't for me. Maybe I'm just not social enough.
Here's the thing though, I feel guilty for not "accepting" the invites or not sending anything out in return. Maybe I'm weird but the last people I want to bother are my friends (even though I don't consider and invite a "bother" if that makes any sense). I understand that Facebook just wants to make their site as sticky as possible but at some point, in become more of a hassle than a benefit when you have a bunch of friends. When sending an invite to someone, the default should be to invite just a single person rather than your entire address book. I want to use FB to keep tabs on what's going on in my friends' lives, not hassle them to death.
Deficit Spending
I'm not a card carrying member of the Bush Administration or a Republican but I do believe in deficit spending. At least calorie wise. It's been a week since I gave up my 1 gallon plus a day milk habit and I've since lost 4.5 pounds when I had been gaining about 1.5 a week before.
Since I'm already riding 3-4 hours a day, six days a week, I knew there wasn't much room to ratchet up my exercise habits. I had to cut calories. In order to do that effectively, I needed a way to accurately measure how many calories I took in and how many I was burning. Enter the Bodybugg.
When Amy first moved here to Colorado, she wasn't working and decided to dedicate most of her time to losing the weight that she had gained after we first met. She joined 24 Hour Fitness, got a personal trainer and purchased a Bodybugg. The Bug program consists of two parts; a device that straps to the back of your arm and a web site that allows you to enter your meals in and graph your physical activity, comparing your intake and output.
Though it was clearly working for Amy (she lost over 40 pounds in 5 months), I was EXTREMELY skeptical. I've had an interest in human physiology since I can remember and I know how difficult it is to measure caloric burn for a person. There are just too many variables and we don't have the technology yet to do this accurately.
The device was pretty expensive (about $200 on sale) and it seemed like a real drag to have to enter every single thing I eat. But there were some upsides. 1) I was desperate. The Mt. Evans hill climb is less than five months away and I am still 40 pounds overweight. 2) I LOVE stats. If it can be quantified, I want to measure and track it over time.
So on leap day, I finally gave in to Amy's incessant nagging about it and took a leap of faith. I've been fairly pleased with it so far and it really is accurate. I can use my Saris PowerTap power meter on my bike to judge my kilojoules of work and translate that into calories burned, comparing it to the Bodybugg. They are both within a 1% variance range.
Will see how it works long term. I was 225.5 pounds on Monday 2/25 and weighed 220.0 when I woke up this morning. I'll report my progress here.
My plan calls for a 1,000 calorie a day deficit to get to 190 pounds by 7/1/08. Here's my data from yesterday. On the graph below, you can see my two rides of 1:15 and 1:41 clearly.
