Milestone Achieved! - 317.0

As I mentioned earlier . . . 317.0 was the next milestone I wanted to hit. After my workout this morning, I weighed myself . . . 317.0 on the dot!

Next Miletone Ahead - 299.5

Triathlon Training - Day 2 - Bike Day

So this morning I headed to the YMCA again (TWO days in a row!) to do a little biking. Last night daboyz and I got together to discuss our goals, etc. for the coming month and the topic of the Triathlon came up. There was some confusion as to how the stationary bikes worked in terms of resistance and speed. Erick was under the impression that if the resistance were set to the lowest setting, the highest possible speed could be achieved and therefore, everyone should have their resistance set the same when we do the Tri. Scott and I didn't think that was the way it worked. So this morning, in addition to wanting to see how long it took me to do 12.4 miles on a stationary bike, I was going to determine how the resistance level affected speed. My goal was to keep my cadence around 100RPM throughout the ride. At the minimum resistance level, I was spinning out and it was not comfortable at all. I was going about 12 MPH. So I increased the level to where it was comfortable, level 5 and my speed increased along with it to about 17 MPH, still spinning at 100RPM. After warming up for a few minutes, I increased the resistance to level 7 and left it there for most of the ride. My speed was anywhere between 18 - 19.5 MPH. So IMHO, resistance is directly related to speed in that the more resistance at the same cadence = faster. BTW, this is the way a real bike works too . . . maintaining the same cadence in a higher gear (more resistance) gives you greater speed. There is no way I could go 20MPH on my road bike in the smallest gear, even downhill with a tail wind, but in the top gear, I can hit 20 fairly easily (can't maintain it, but I can get there!)

Anyway, I did 12.4 miles in 42 minutes 52 seconds.

My knee is still killing me from my racquetball workout a couple weeks ago. So my left leg did most of the work today. Standing on the bike to re-adjust was a painful experience and I had to really think to put most of my weight on my left side when I stood. I know that working out frequently is probably NOT the best idea for my knee right now, but I certainly don't want to take many days off either. Doing one of the three legs is hard enough now . . . but putting all three together is REALLY going to challenge me!