Interesting conclusion to week 9

Tried keeping my heart rate around 150 today as in theory this is where I should be pacing myself in ironman.

It was very weird.  Usually I go flat out on the bits I enjoy and then suffer the consequences of burn-out later.  It seemed like sound Ironman advice to do the whole ride at an effort level that you can maintain all the way to the end, meaning there's still something left for that end-of-the-day marathon.

I found myself climbing hills at 179 bpm and reigning myself in.  Then once I'd got the rate under control, I felt like I was going painfully slowly.  Or I'd drop the rate down to 135 and have to work like hell just to achieve 150 again.

I'd then top out at the end of the hill and hit the flat.  Far from needing to rocket up to speed to raise my heart rate, I found it was running away with itself, racing back up to 190 before crashing down to 135 again when I put in no effort whatsoever.

Gradually as the day went on I managed to learn the meaning of the phrase, "try hard on the easy bits and go easy on the hard bits"!  I had to spin my legs where the road was flat to make my heart work - and I rocketed away because of it.  On the climbs I had to make myself go really slow to keep the rate down but when I got to 44km into the workout, I knew I could get home and in a decent state to get up and do something else tomorrow.

I have to say, keeping to 150 was great for the cold.  I didn't feel like I stretched my lungs too much today although there were some very steep climbs where I could do nothing but ride up them at upto 190.  When I got back to Sheffield some very weird things began to happen.  As I sat back and freewheeled on the approach to lights, my HRM was hitting over 200bpm and I was doing nothing.  I was pretty tired.

It all worked rather well though in the end.  It's amazing the things you learn when you sit back and read for a day.