All posts by Tim

Comparing Heart Rate Zones and Rate of Perceived Exertion Zones

Comparing HR Zones and RPE Zones

When preparing my training sessions on the turbo, all workouts and articles emphasise the importance of training in the correct zone in order to get the most benefit. Using a heart rate monitor and a display that you can watch whilst training means that the cadence and resistance (or gear) can be tweaked during an interval to keep the HR in the recommended zone.

Some videos/workouts use heart rate zones (HRZ) as the measurement, others use the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) method.  I originally wanted to find a quick way to translate RPEs into HRZs because the cycle GPS units I used (first a Bryton Rider 50, and now a Garmin Edge 800) can display a heart rate zone, as well as the BPM figure.

I originally started this spreadsheet to give me a quick sheet to print out sop that when I used an RPE scale workout, I could just translate it into the HRZ method so it would be consistent with my cycle computer.

Of course nothing is every as easy or straightforward as it first appears ….. Continue reading Comparing Heart Rate Zones and Rate of Perceived Exertion Zones

Supplemental summer turbo training

More Turbo Training Videos

Even though it is now spring and the weather is getting better, using the turbo trainer in summer  can still pay dividends.  Introducing some supplemental training provides an easy way to focus on specific areas of technique or to gain some quick interval training.

As I wrote in a previous post,  I didn’t really start to get the benefits of the turbo training until I bought some training videos from 3LC Cycling, Success Cycling and the (in)famous SufferFest.

These got me through the winter months and kept my fitness at acceptable level during the dark nights and bad weather, but even though I’m out on the roads more, I still have my trainer bike set up, and I thought “why not use this over summer also?”. Continue reading Supplemental summer turbo training

HeartBleed Bug: Password Change

Since this bug came to light, there has been a lot written about it in both the popular and technical press (& blogs, websites etc).  A simple search (for example on https://startpage.com/) will bring up pages of technical details.

From a practical point of view,  the most important advice is change your passwords.  However, before doing this make sure that the site have verified that they have addressed the bug. There’s no point in going through the exercise of changing a password on vulnerable site as the protections are not in place so a bit of forward planning is crucial.

 Take a systematic approach to changing passwords

If you’ve been using the internet for any length of time (over a week), you will have probably registered on at least one  site.  If you’ve been using it any longer, you’ll have registered on multiple sites.

Continue reading HeartBleed Bug: Password Change

Update Freenas 9.2.1.2 to 9.2.1.3

The new point update version of Freenas has now been released to update Freenas 9.2.1.2 to 9.2.1.3.

As usual with Freenas, the whole process only takes about 5 minutes to complete.

Note:  The system automatically reboots itself after the update is applied, so make sure that the system can be restarted (i.e.  there are no active users on it) before you start this process.

Continue reading Update Freenas 9.2.1.2 to 9.2.1.3