(Music to sympathise with Elly’s sore neck: the tram tracks attacked her and Fidel last Monday and she’s still suffering.)

There and back again

One of the many appealing things about spinning at Lifescycle is the journey there: it’s only 3·5 miles and is mostly downhill on good tarmac*, a fast road with not too many traffic lights. There’s only one hill (Crewe Road, past the Western General hospital) and I can usually keep above 10 mph there. Tonight I took 13 minutes 50 seconds to travel 3·48 miles (average speed 15·09 mph, fastest speed 28·71 mph), so not as fast as last night.

*that is, good compared to many other areas of Edinburgh where the tarmac has been chewed by teamwork-induced over-use, bus-wheel torque and lack of decent maintenance.

The journey home wasn’t anything like fun – wind and rain in my face, in addition to quite, er, exercised legs, contributed to an average speed of 8·47 mph and a fastest speed of only 18·19 mph.

Stand by to repel borders!

Tonight was the first session designed to prepare us for April 2013’s Tour o’ the Borders, a ‘sportive’ over 50 or 80 miles starting and finishing at Peebles, and taking in 5 or 8 hills. Josh and Zara shared the instruction/demo roles, modelling and inspiring ‘jogs’ and ‘runs’. There were no visuals or ‘jumps’*, just 3- or 4- minute tracks at fast but constant cadences, increasing the resistance every 30 seconds or so – with clear instructions about what was to be down, and a lot of encouragement to do it. There were also choices during the standing sections – Josh would demo/inspire running, while Zara did the same for jogging, then they’d swap to give themselves a break and us fresh energy.

*stand on the pedals for 4, 2 or one complete revolution(s), sit for the same amount: repeat many times – I think the idea is that standing is slightly easier because you can use your body-weight, while sitting doesn’t allow this. So the effort required varies on and off. Forcing oneself to stand can be mentally challenging too.

This was a testing but inspiring session – I think I did more jogging than running, and I know I had to back off the resistance after each track or effort, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t achieving the cadences of those around me, let alone the instructors’ paces. Nonetheless, I’m faintly glowing from Josh’s and Jeannie’s encouraging comments after the session. (I think I heard Josh call to check me out about 40 minutes into the session – I was flagging a bit but I was also getting into the exercise-high zone mentally, which is quite were pleasing.)

So I’m looking forward to tomorrow night’s audio-visual back class with Andy (yes, spinning three nights in a row from now until April) and really looking forward to outdoors training and the event itself. I’ve promised myself I’ll do a 100-mile event in 2013, so this will be a good warm-up. I’m even dreaming of doing a triathlon, if and when my shoulder is fixed.