Pedal Hard

Today's workout:
Bike-60 minute trainer
Run-20 minutes treadmill

Santa got us a session at Pedal Hard, which is Kevin Livingston's Training Center at Mellow Johnnys. Pretty darn cool. Last time I did a workout there, Kevin himself actually taught the class. Tonight there was someone else, I don't think she rode in the Tour de France, but she certainly looked like she could have! Before class started I took a couple photos of Lance's bikes that are on display.

I was hoping that Lance would show up to cheer us on tonight, but no such luck. Here's a pic of what the studio looks like.

There are only eight spots set-up and every two bikes shares one tv monitor. The whole thing is completely computerized. The person working there gets your bike all set up on the Compu-trainers and enters your weight and then calibrates the system once you start pedaling.

This is the start line. It's cool-as you bike the scenery changes. It's like you're riding through the country. Kristi and I had a hill workout on our monitor and Wayne had a sprint workout on his.

The computer tells you your wattage/output, your cadence, speed, calories burned, and distance. The lady in charge walks around and tells you what your workout is. So after the warm-up Kristi and I had to maintain watts at 160-180 on the hills and then recover at under 100. The watts are different than the cadence. It's pretty neat to see what your effort is compared to speed and cadence. I can see how the more often you attend Pedal Hard classes, the better you can tailor your training.

The training was good, but I think we all agreed that our regular Tuesday night trainer workouts are more difficult! There seemed to be a lot of recovery time tonight.

It's been raining on and off all day and it's pretty chilly (low 60s) and just kinda miserable outside, so we decided to run the 20 minutes on the treadmills at Club Macca. Club Macca is my new name for the gym at Kristi and Wayne's place. Macca is a nickname for anyone in Australia who has a last name that starts with "Mc" or "Mac". So, Club Macca it is.  It's amazing to me that Kristi and Wayne can both just jump on the treadmill and start running 10 minute miles. I got on and was groaning at 13 minute miles! It definitely takes me at least a mile to warm-up. Kristi thinks that I'm playing around when I grunt and groan my way through the first 10-15 minutes of a run. Old age is catching up to me! (Or rather I'm catching up to it!) We ran for 20 minutes. By minute 10 I was going a good pace-up to 8:20 minute miles for a few minutes, then an easy cool-down. I love that we run after almost every bike ride. I can tell it's going to make a difference when we do a real transition from bike to run in the race.

This probably won't be as funny to anyone else, somthings definitely loose their funniness in the telling, but here goes. Bonnie sent an email to Kristi and I recommending a really inspiring book about the fireman in NYC who decided to become an athlete after 9/11, ran a marathon, and a month later was run over by a bus. He had 40 surgeries, and tons of rehab, and worked his way back to running another marathon. (That's not the funny part....) So tonight, Kristi said that she's almost done with the book she's reading and that she wants to read the book that Bonnie recommended, the book about the triathlete who was bitten by a shark. (Now that's the funny part!) But I must admit, a shark bite would make a pretty inspirational story too!

Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy again. Texas winter, I tell ya.

TTFN!
M :)