Winter training

Two weeks ago I started my bodybuilding training again. Last year I wrote about my training program, this year  I have a light program. For the first few weeks I am on a come back program. I'm training 4 times a week and I'm doing exercises for all the major upper body muscle groups. For my legs I started training on my trainer at home a few weeks ago. I don't have a training program yet, I try to get on the bike at least once a week and I try to ride for more than an hour.

I am training every weekday except Wednesday when I have a rest day. I usually train from 8:30 am, I am training in the morning because in the morning the testosterone level is higher and the training is more effective. I'm doing one or two exercises for each muscle group but I repeat one exercise only 3 times. I'm doing exercises in this order first chest, then shoulders, back, triceps and biceps. After only two weeks of workout I am starting to get back in shape and I started to increase the weights which I use.

Next year after the holidays I will have another week of warm up exercises and after that I will focus on only two major muscle groups every day. I will write another post when I will have the final program :)

Bucin

Last Saturday I went for a training ride with a few friends. We went out to climb the Bucin. Bucin was the first mountain that I've climbed when I started riding longer distances. I remember that the first time I've climbed it I had to stop a few times. 

This weekend was different, I had just a few sandwiches and a banana and I was with my road bike. And I was with a few friend so we took turns in the front so we could go faster. We got to the beginning of the climb very fast with an average speed of about 31 km/h. There we stopped for a short rest.

The climb was harder than I thought, maybe because I had a hard training ride a day before. At the end of the climb I started to recover and I was enjoying the sharp corners. When we got to the top we stopped for another short rest and I checked the time:

Stats:
    - time: 3:16:58
    - distance: 84,42 km
    - average speed: 26,0 km/h
    - max speed: 56,0km/h

The ride home was very painful especially the last climb to Acatari. You can see the map of the ride here.

Stats:
    - time: 6:05:48
    - distance: 171,04 km
    - average speed: 28,0 km/h
    - max speed: 56,9km/h

Winter on my favorite training path

Sunday I was in the forest and I took some pictures. I hope the snow won't melt and I can go for a ride this weekend.

Yesterday I went for a ride to test my new tires on the tarmac. I knew they are fast (as I said here) but I wanted to see how fast they really are. I went for a ride to Acatari, about 20 kilometers with two climbs. The tires are very fast, my average speed was 27 km/h and the maximum speed was just above 60 km/h.

Before the last climb I saw two bikers folowed by a yellow car with a LIVESTRONG logo on the trunk. I think this is what you can call riding with style :)

Group training

Group rides are FUN. It is a pleasant way to do some training rides.

It also helps you to learn different skills like how to follow a rider closely and safely, how to expend less energy. You can go very fast with the help of a friend if you take turns in front. I went for a ride on Sunday with a friend and my average speed was 29,4 km/h (on 40 km) and we didn't even go with full speed :)

(picture from gzcycle.com)

Another benefit is that you can go out with friends and have a great time.

Bodybuilding

Bodybuilding is one of my favorite sports, I've been doing it for a few months almost every year since the 1st year of university. This year I am doing it slightly different because I developed a cycling specific workout. So about 80% of the exercises and the style of the exercises (smaller weights more repetitions) are meant to improve my stamina on the bike and only about 20% to build some extra muscles.

I only do upper body exercises once a week. I'm planning to do this twice or three times a week at the end of this month. The main exercises are meant to make my back muscles, triceps and abs stronger, these muscles are the most important for a biker.

Here is the list of the exercises I usually do after a short warm up, I do 4 series of 10 repetitions of each exercise:
1. Chest exercises:
 - bench press or incline bench press
 - butterfly
2. Shoulders
 - shoulder press
3. Back muscles:
 - wide-grip pulldown behind the neck and wide-grip lat pulldown (about 10 and 8 repetitions)
 - seated cable rows
4. Triceps:
 - triceps pushdown and cable overhead triceps extension (about 10 and 8 repetitions)
 - cable one arm triceps extension
5. Biceps:
 - dumbbell alternate bicep curl and alternate hammer curl (about 10 and 10 repetitions)
6. Abs:
 - leg raise on parallel bars - I do this between the repetitions of the bench press
 - ab crunch machine - I do this between the repetitions of the seated cable rows (this is good for the lower back to)
 - ab twist - I do this between the repetitions of the first back muscle exercises

This training is about one hour long and after this I usually drink a protein shake :)

You can find all these exercises here.

Budiu Mic

A few weeks ago I met a guy (on the bike) who suggested me this route. It a nice and short route. Budiu Mic is a village at a few hundred meters from Targu Mures with great potential. It is very close to the city, it is a small city with a lot of land so in a few year I'm sure it will become a suburb, who know maybe I will build a house there (day dreaming...)

Until I got out of the city the road was very bad but I liked the view.

The wind was very strong until I got to the first hill and my stomach was burning from the chilies I had at lunch but it was a nice ride.

Stats:
    - time: 1:01:22
    - distance: 24,86 km
    - avg speed: 24,3 km/h
    - max speed: 51,1 km/h (cool )


More pics here.

My training

The opening of this year's season is comming fast so I started training more and harder. Now I'm doing two rides on the trainer every week, two rides of one and a half hour. This week I was very happy because I passed the psychological barrier of 45 kilometer, the distance has increased above 46 km. My average speed is getting higher to, on Tuesday my average speed was 30,8 km/h and yesterday it was 30.7 km/h. I think that in a few weeks I will change the difficulty level of the trainer :)

Besides the trainer rides I try to get out in the forest every weekend at least once. Two weeks I started practicing again one of my other favorite sports, bodybuilding. I go every Saturday morning and do a good workout. This is good for having more strength in my hand and building some back muscles for the harder rides. Last weekend I bought ice skates, which is very good to tone the inner thighs and it is a lot of fun :)

Blood preasure

Yesterday I bought a fan to make the riding on the trainer more pleasant. It is not the real thing but it's a bit better. Now I have to ride with glasses because the fan is set to maximum speed :)

Last night I measured my blood pressure and my pulse. After about 3 minutes my blood pressure was 210/100 and my pulse was 136. Then I was riding for about 20 minutes and I managed to get my pulse up to 166, and my blood pressure to 212/94. I'm sure that on a race day my pulse gets higher  :)

Training stats

Yesterday i mounted the cyclocomputer to the rear tire to have some statistics :)
I am riding for about 40 minutes. I start wit a warm up, about 5-6 minutes. Then 7 minutes at a speed that is slightly hard to maintain (about 40-42 km/h), after that 3 minutes at a lower speed (20-24 km/h). I repeat this two more times. After this workout I stay on the bike for another 5 minutes to relax.

So here are the statistics from last nights work out:
    - time: 40 minutes
    - avg speed: 32,1 km/h
    - distance: 21,45 km
    - max speed: 63,7 km/h

There is an xls file on the minoura website so I looked up my performance. I produce about 200 W :)

I will get back with pictures and more statistics soon.