VAM

 

Or "what I did on my lunch break Wednesday." Here are two excerpts from my Polar HRM graphs. On the left I'm riding up the Big Blue access road on my CX bike. Don't worry, I didn't make the climb in four minutes. I had cut across on the fire road from the state police barracks and did not feel like riding to the bottom, so I was starting part way up. This was an OK time though, and notice that the VAM is just over 1300m/hour. When I was done I rode back to work and changed into my running clothes, then headed back over on foot. This time though, I "ran" up the ski slope. Not the steepest part, but even way over on the left there are some pitches and it's steep enough to be touch and go on an MTB. Anyhow, I cherry picked the best 90 meters or so of climbing out of the total just to show that my VAM running was nearly equal to what I did riding 45 minutes earlier, with roughly the same heart rate. I know it doesn't mean anything, but what else am I going to write about? This was the second time this season that I did this run. It felt a lot easier this time, and I even managed to run down the access road at about a 7 minute/mile pace. Still not as much fun as riding. Thanks for reading.