Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Tuesday spin

A highly satisfactory session on the condo spin bike. I just did an hour - I didn't start early enough in the afternoon to fit in a longer one, and I also wanted to experiment with heart rate and intensity. The DVD player was rather serendipitously not working, and so I just put on some music and strapped the Garmin around the bike handlebars and did a typical Spinevals-type interval workout. The verdict is that really I must just have been holding back too much when I do the longer ones (also if one is really concentrating on effort level and intensity, with numbers right in front of the face, it is easier to get into the right zone). My bike ride on Sunday was helpful for this too - I was reminded that bike-riding takes effort, it is not just an idle spin!

The Gale Bernhardt plan basically calls for two hour-long bike workouts during the week and a long ride or brick on the weekend; I think of this as an absolute minimum, I'd rather make at least one of the mid-week ones rather longer than that (and add in a fourth ride), but an interval workout like this should work pretty well for me this summer.

10 mins. warmup (5 mins. easy, 5 mins. as 30 seconds high-cadence, 30 seconds easy)

3 x 13 mins. on, 2 mins easy: (1) and (3) as hard-effort, alternating 1 min. seated and 1 min. standing, (2) as alternating 1 min. hard, 1 min. easy

5 mins. cooldown

1hr., avg HR 135, max HR 152

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