Indoor Cycling = :(

Last week I posted about my wonderful weekend biking the Casa River Century.  I loved every minute of it and I plan on doing a century every month this summer, and possibly some in the fall as well.  Today I am back to reality.

I just spent an hour and fifteen minutes on a stationary bike.  It felt 100 times longer than the century last Saturday.

I recently read that two hours on a bike trainer is equal to three hours on the road because you aren't coasting/ stopping at traffic lights etc.  I beg to differ.  My Garmin begs to differ.

I was blessed to have my little brother in town this week and he took the kids so I was able to bike to work Tuesday and Wednesday.  For kicks I wore my Garmin and heart rate monitor.  It's a 5 mile commute each way -- not an endurance ride --  but it was an excellent workout.  Lots of hills.  My heart rate hovered between 120 on flats and 150 on hills.

I haven't been using the gym much lately because quite frankly I'd much rather be outside, but Jamie wanted to run outside this afternoon so I took the kids to Lifetime (side note:  Jack is FINALLY old enough to be in the BIG KID room meaning I don't have to reserve a place in the baby room and can just drop them off whenever I feel like it. Woot woot!)  My plan was to do the bike on my own and listen to 50 Shade of Grey and do five intervals with recoveries and finish with some easy spinning.  

Well the warm up was pathetic.  My heart rate hovered at 98 - 100 beats per minute which isn't even Zone 1.  Fifteen minutes into the workout I heard "Gretchen Lynch, please report to the child center!"  Ugh.  Jack probably did a number in his diaper.  I hopped off the bike, changed him, and decided I'd try spinning class since it was starting at that time anyhow.

It was torture.  I hated every minute of it.  Don't get me wrong, the instructor was good.  But I just couldn't get into it.  The workout consisted of a warm up (heart rate hovered around 110 - still not even Zone 1), 3 endurance hill sessions that were supposed to be in Zone 3 (they weren't -- heart rate was about 125), and a couple of high cadence intervals (heart rate still 130.. Zone 2...barely.)  She kept trying to get us to visualize hills and other cyclists, but all I could see were ceiling fans, hardwood floors and a bunch of spinner bikes that weren't going anywhere. Final digits -- average beats per minute was 112 (yup, that's not even at 65%) and my max was 141 (Zone 2 -- not 4 where it should have been.)

Once school is out I'll be able to bike outside more often.  Thank goodness. Because the spinner is a new form of torture I didn't know existed until this Ironman training began.