Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Bike/Strength Work | Chelsea Piers

Today's spin workout was exactly the kind of work that I hate doing: long intervals. In my former life as a rower, I used to dread any erg workout that included pieces that were longer than 10 minutes (6k, 10k, and the "hour of power" being the worst). I have zero interest in dull pain for extended periods of time. I much prefer quick, intense bursts of speed such as climbing hills on the bike or any anaerobic work on the erg. My preferences probably stem from the fact that, compared to the rest of my crew team, I was always much faster/stronger on a relative basis on the shorter pieces. Today's steady effort intervals (15 and 20 minutes, respectively) were out of my comfort zone (probably slightly above what would be considered "steady" for me), but exactly what I need to work on at this point. Building a strong base this early in the season will pay dividends come race day and set the team up nicely for blazing lap times around the park.

We had a smaller group doing strength work today, so the team went up to the strength deck to use dumbbells. After hitting our shoulders, lats, legs, bis, and tris, Scott has us do a few monster ab moves.

Workout of the Day:

CYCLING SET

5 min ez intensity effort
15 min steady effort aero
3 min climb solid effort
20 min steady effort aero
3 min climb solid effort
2x (1 min seated hard effort aero / 2 min steady effort seated)
5 min steady effort aero
3 min ez effort cadence at 105

(For effort/intensity zone definitions, see the Full Throttle official website)