Over the past few days, I realized just how tough its going to be for me to get in long and continuous bike rides during the week. The DC metro area has a lot of great trails or roads to bike on, and there are even several bike lanes throughout the city. This makes commuting and recreational biking spectacular. However, biking to work just isn't going to work for ironman training. First of all, work is only 6 miles away. That's only 5% of the distance I need to go for the ironman. Second, I get a 15-30 second break after every block I ride--There are about 20 stoplights from my house to work. Lastly, it is now policy to take home our laptop every night in addition to papers, a change of clothes, my lunch, and so on. My bag weighs about 25 lbs! As nice as it is for the environment and my mental state, its not really improving my overall fitness.
Today I went to the gym and got on a spinning bike for an hour. Excruciating. Two reasons--
1. I loosely followed a workout from my ironman training book. It had me doing repeats where I was just using one leg and letting the other just kind of spin along. How is riding a bike so hard for my right leg?! Then I did some "resistance" work--Apparently, I'm not as strong as the last time I spun bc the resistance was pretty lame!
2. One spot, no music, no incline or decline. Need I say more?
I will find other solutions and opportunities for good biking training, and I actually think today's workout was worthwhile, but if every weekday bike ride is spinning, I might go crazy!
Monica
Week 1, Day 3
Swim 1000m
Bike 33 miles
Run 5.5 miles
Funny, I saw an ad just last night for Le Tour de France indoor training bike. It looks crazy. You can program it to any course with Google Maps. It has both incline and decline. It also adjusts for wind resistance. It doesn't seem to cost any more than a new road bike.
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