February 11, 2006

Flat Line

Morning Workout
BIKE
Tour de Palm Springs (race)
101.8 miles
Heart Rate Zone: All over the board, from Aerobic (Zone 1) to VO2 Max (Zone 6ish), but mostly in Aerobic (Zone 1) and Lactate Threshold (Zone 2).

Random Comments: The thing about wearing a heart rate monitor is that you really start to rely on it. In fact, it isn't too uncommon to be looking at that thing every 2 or 3 minutes throughout a ride. Even if it's a 6 hour ride. That's a whole lotta lookin'. And everytime you look down at that little digital ball and chain, you adjust your cadence, or power, or comfort level, or something, to make sure you remain in the zone/cadence/power/whatever level that you wanted to be at in the first place. As we all know, the worse part about relying on technology so heavily is that eventually technology will fail you. I'm sure you've had a computer crash at one point in your life. Or maybe you've misplaced your cell phone. At the very least, you've had some car troubles at one point in your wonderful existence. So I'm sure you know what it's like to suddenly lack that device you've centered your life around. Well, when my heart rate monitor goes all kerflooie in the middle of a workout, I get really aggravated. So you can imagine my state of being when, 80 miles into the century ride, my monitor all of the sudden listed my heart rate at 233 beats per minute and my cadence at 168 revolutions per minute. To put it in perspective, I'd most likely have a heart attack if my heart rate hit 225, much less 233. And the only way I can pedal at 168 rpm is if I got a bionic leg like my six million dollar hero, Steve Austin. Of course, after a few minutes the digital moniter suddenly listed my heart rate as zero. Flat line. Apparently I was dead anyway, so I suppose none of it really mattered.

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