Fun & Fitness over 50

Took a ride today. Beautiful day. Clear, dry, cool. After a good warm up, I decided to do "the Stop Sign Game".

The Stop Sign Game is where you sprint between stop signs and then rest between the next set of stop signs. A way to add interest, vary a ride on the same route, get a real workout and practice pacing yourself.

So, for example, if it's only 100 yards between one set of stop signs, I'm going to go all out as hard as I can go. But if it's a 2 mile segment, obviously I can't go that hard for the whole section. If I want to go a consistent pace, I'll have to moderate it quite a bit and learn how hard I can maintain for that long of a stretch.

I will alternate between sprinting and resting so if on another ride on the same route, I start the game at a different segment, the previous short sprints will now be short rests and the long rests will be long sprints. You get the picture.

It was fun and definitely a good workout.

On this particular ride I was wondering what my "anerobic threshold" was. I was wondering this because on the 2 mile Mead's Lane section I usually can maintain 152bpm heart rate or so and at this point I'm doing a pretty rhythmic "huffing". Not gasping or panting for breath but definitely not inclined to "chat" easily. Harder than this point is "real hard".

On another note, I took a ride yesterday, just under an hour. My first since Friday when I came down with some kind of stomach "bug". My stomach still hurt a little bit but I was well enough to ride. Anyway, I didn't write about it and do you know, I can't remember a thing about it although I know I had something I wanted to say at the time.

That would be one good use for a digital recorder. To take notes during the ride. It's not good enough quality to do a running monologue for a podcast because of the wind noise, but would work as far as helping me to remember what I wanted to say later. Still need an easy way to stop and start the recording. I don't know if voice activation would work because of the constant wind noise.

In lieu of that, I really should sit down right after the ride and write ... after my snack, that is! ;-)