Thursday, October 23, 2008

standing starts and quad measurements


I commute on a forty pound bike with fenders, heavy tires, moustache bars, rack and panniers. One of my favorite workouts is doing standing starts in the 53x14. It's actually a barely rolling start from about 3-5mph. The trick I am learning out of necessity as to not rip the bike apart is to do these without swinging the bike. All of the torque has to go straight into the pedals. It takes 20-30 seconds to get up to 24-26 mph and a cadence of around 90rpm and is a total body workout. I prefer these to the standard SFR (slow frequency revolutions) because you have to use quite a bit more force. This exercise is much more like weight lifting because the loads are so much heavier and the reps far fewer and I don't need to find a 3-5% hill that lasts five minutes. There are no weight lifting programs that I know of that advocate doing 250 reps per set. You get the super compensation by doing 1-20 reps to failure. Oh ya, it's Thursday and that means quad measurements...57.3. I'm gonna grow bigger quads than Beth, I think that's a reasonable winter goal. Tomorrow I'm starting the process of getting fitted for my race bikes.

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