Stats! I forgot the Stats!

Now, I know that the stats are the ONLY reason some of you check this blog - and I completely forgot them. They're the most interesting part!

PMC - related miles for 2008: 940 miles

March: 61.1 miles

April: 115.8 miles

May: 71.6 miles (I had 3 rides in May. What was I doing instead of riding? I can't remember.)

June: 139.65 miles

July: 438.69 miles (more than the entire year put together up to that point)

PMC - related hours in the saddle: 68.05 hours  (that's 4083 minutes of 'dear lord that hurts')

Vertical feet climbed in Prep for & including the PMC: 12,171 feet (I started tracking that in mid-April, so it's not all-inclusive). We don't have mountains that high around here. I can't imagine doing that in one day. I did do 509 feet in 18 miles this morning as a recovery ride, though, and it was easy.

PMC - related calories burned: 36,339 calories. Thats roughly 202 tall lattes. And I've stopped drinking lattes.

I also started tracking a new stat this year: Calories per mile. My theory on this is it's a very easy way to tell how efficient my body works, and I'd be able to see a trend over time (hopefully).  It appears to be true.   My average cal/mile for the months March through July are below:

March: 47 cal/mi

April: 50 cal/mi

May: 45 cal/mi

June: 38 cal/mi

July: 40 cal/mi

That all being said, the stats for our last 70-mile training ride (on The Cod):

4.95 hours; 2,624 calories burned; average speed 14 MPH; 37 calories/mile. Average heart rate was 149 beats per minute.

Stats for our 112 mile PMC ride:

7.17 hours; 2,405 calories burned; 15.65 MPH average speed; and 21 calories/mile. Yes, 21. My average heart rate was 142 beats per minute over the entire 112-mile ride.

Our PMC ride appeared to be easier than our last long ride. Our PMC ride took 2 hours longer, we rode 42 miles further and we went 1.65 MPH faster on average, yet I burned 16 fewer calories per mile.  It just wasn't as hard. The question is, why?

I had complained about all the starting and stopping on the rail trail, which is likely one reason why - it takes a lot of energy to get up to "cruising speed", and it seemed like we were starting from dead stops every mile or so on the rail trail.  Also, The Cod is a very windy place, which helps explain why wind turbines make so much sense down on The Cod. Both rides were relatively flat, and those are the two big differences that I can think of. 

However, at about mile 83 or so during our PMC ride, I started to feel like a robot. I just biked (legs were going up, down, up, down... not in circles anymore), and didn't think about anything other than biking. If someone had been reading my mind it would have gone something like this: "pot hole....car back....branch.....hole left....pedal faster....shift up now...."  there was none of the mind wandering I'm usually plagued with, like 'what is that guy DOING?' or 'what do we have for dinner, and is there any chance I can convince Ken to make me some brownies tonight?'  I wasn't even day dreaming about getting OFF the bike and grabbing a beer.  There wasn't a whole lot going on in there. I don't think we talked much.

If you are by any chance a Deadliest Catch addict, you may recall that Capt. Sig Hansen likes working his crew for days straight until they become robots (quoted on that page linked). There's no whining, no griping at the point - they just turn into these efficient little robots. Or zombies. Depends how you look at it. 

So maybe a little after the 80 mile mark, I turned into a little biking robot. I was actually a little nervous of making a dumb mistake because I could feel the usual brain chatter fade away. I was afraid I'd space out and not hear a car coming, or not see an obstacle and nail it at 25 MPH. We took several little rest stops in the last 30 miles, which may have helped keep that from happening. 

I am in no way comparing our ride to working on a crabbing boat in the Bering Sea with no sleep for days. Don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that maybe that robot-ability has its place, and perhaps that detached calmness & repetition is the bodies way of conserving energy while doing something that expends a lot of energy. A little like a working meditation. Even when I ran out of gears on the hills on the way home, my heart rate didn't climb above 150 beats per minute, despite the fact that my legs had turned to stone and I was still asking for more from them.

The human body IS an amazing thing.