Catch up: Bike, Spin, Ski

It's been a while since I last posted, so let's catch up on some workout reports. I finished up the final chores of the Fall semester, and so there was about a week where I didn't do much.



12/12 Spin Class
A tough one! We went almost the whole hour with no recovery, only spinning with less resistance but keeping our cadence high the whole time. We all got to dig deep. I confessed to the group my love for suffering. Not exactly a 12 step moment, but the first time I've said it out loud to strangers. :) Hello, I'm Bill, and I am a cyclist...



12/13 Bike: Climbing Intervals

My weekly ritual, short-lived though it is, of watching Survivorman while riding on the trainer continued with an interval workout. Something like this:

Warmup 10min Fast Spin Low Resistance (50/24)

4 x Climb Interval 8min (50/12), RI 4 min (50/19).

All intervals climb out of saddle for 5min, seated 3min

Cooldown 5 min Fast Spin (50/24)






Saturday 12/20 Ski & Bike Brick

60 min XC ski at fast pace; great snow - perfect fresh powder with a lot of glide. Very little wind and mild temperatures (mid 20's) made this a perfect day to go for a little Nordic jaunt. Awesome. The kind of thing that makes Winter worthwhile.

and then, like some crazy tri-greek, I decided not to waste my warmed up muscles. I got out of the skis, changed, and got on the bike for:

Terrible Twos:

Spin 5 warmup
2 x (6 x 2min WI, 2 min RI)
Spin 5 in between and cooldown

WI is 50/17 max effort
RI is 50/24 at 85%

Yep...back to 6 WIs for this workout. Feeling strong again. Two back-to-back hours of hard effort here, and I felt great the whole time. Making some progress. The goal is to build a strong base over the winter.

Workout: Bike Intervals

Monday 12/8 Intervals on the Trainer, 60 minutes

Terrible Twos:

Spin 10 warmup
2 x (5 x 2min WI, 2 min RI)
Spin 5 in between and cooldown

WI is 50/17 max effort
RI is 50/24 at 85%

Workout: Spin Class

Friday 12/5 Spin Class (55 minutes + stretching)

Well... the typical crazy, end-of-semester. No workouts to speak of since the Thanksgiving break, until today. Happily, I didn't seem to lose much fitness. I was able to dig deep on every drill today and I finished really strong.

Tina had us doing ladders today, a workout I actually do myself on the trainer. Hers looked like this.

1, 2, 3 min WI & RI up
then
3, 2, 1 min WI & RI back down

WI is 90% effort with a medium hill (level 3) resistance.
RI is fast spin (approaching 100%) at level 2.

The RI is really an effort to spin the lactic acid out of the legs, we weren't fully recovering, which was good. This 24 minute set was followed by some pyramids - short bursts of 20, 30, and 40 seconds of max effort with 10 second RIs in between. Those simulate surges out on the road. And we wrapped up with our six-levels of hell hill climbing drill, where we increase resistance incrementally until we are in our heaviest gear and then spend 3 minutes there, climbing out of the saddle.

Good stuff.