Endurance cycling
Yesterday I went on a long bike ride. 90 minutes. I had actually done research about exercising beforehand tho, because im a nerd and thats what I do.
The original idea I had was cycling long distances, like hundreds of kilometers over the course of days. Endurance cycling.
I learnt 2 important things from my research: do not burn energy quickly and stay calm. Slow and steady wins the race.
We do this so that we can continuously cycle for several hours on end. Ideally we should be in a zone 2 exercise most of the time. This means our heart rate is below 70% of the "maximum" that it ever should be, and we are burning fat instead of carbohydrates. On my smart watch(with fitness sensors and stuff) this is labeled as the weight loss zone but loosing weight is not our intention.
Fat is much more energy dense than carbohydrates, and we have a lot more of it.
This does also mean we will be going a lot slower. However the sustain from a long endurance should make us not exhausted or minimally, even after several hours.
Yesterday in my attempt at this it felt much like I was going slow and not easy, I wasnt struggling to breath, I was talking comfortably most of the time. However after review I was in an arobic state almost the entire time. However I did have flies in my face most of the way, and I was on the lower end of zone 3. Next time I will bring bug spray
On a good note. I did manage to ride consistently for 90 minutes. With a short 30 second stop to drink water every few kilometers.
When I got to the halfway point before I turned back I did the math to see how fast I was going on average, 9 kilomtleters in 40 minutes or something was an average of 13.7km/h. On the way back when I got my watch to actually measure my average speed, that was correct.
One thing I hated a lot was the gravel road i spent half of the time on. It is very bumpy. Like the foundation is bumpy. Thay is what happens when a tractor drives on a gravel road after it rains.