CompuTrainer Class: Tough Tempo Ride

We had a fabulous ride this morning. It was approximately 70 minutes of tempo riding, which basically means staying right near the top of your aerobic threshold for the entire time. It was broken up slightly, into six 11-minute intervals with 1 minute between 1 and 2, 4 minutes between 3 and 4, and 1 minute between 5 and 6. In the 84 total minutes of riding, we rode between 30–35 miles, keeping our cadence between 95–100 the entire time.

I enjoyed watching my HR supposedly go up and up—according to the stats, my max was about 213 (every time I took my own HR, it was around 180, so I'm thinking the monitor was a little off). I hit 37 MPH (sometime in the last minute, because during the last 3 minutes I changed gears to make myself work harder) and did 34 miles during that effort (including the warmup). I kept watching Parri, Lisa, and Lee get closer and closer, but thankfully they never caught me. They were riding hard and I was worried, even though their side had started almost 5 miles behind our side!

My legs felt great during the entire ride. I didn't feel like I got tired at all, and I kept my cadence and speed steady the whole time. I actually felt like I was getting stronger as we went along—like right where I was riding, I could have stayed all day. Todd set my wattage based on the results of last week's test, and my threshold was up to 197. I still had a hard time keeping my WPK around 2.0 but definitely worked hard.

Yesterday I said I felt accomplished because I did everything Will had given me to do. Then Bree reminded me of real accomplishment:

Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished! Luke 1:45

The evening workout was a fun one. Will introduced something new: tonic exercises. They're like the phasic exercises only you keep your muscle turned on the whole time and it's smooth. The methodics looked something like this: phasic 20 seconds, tonic 30 seconds, 5 deep breaths rest, phasic 10 seconds (PTP), 3 minute ISO. The exercises looked something like this (may or may not have been in this order, but it was definitely upper body/lower body, lower body/upper body):

• Bent over front delt PTP
• Wall squat ISO
• Bent over lateral delt PTP
• Wall squat ISO
• Leg curl PTP
• Push up ISO
  
• Hip flexion PTP
• Push up ISO
• Biceps curl PTP
• Wall squat ISO
• Bent over triceps extension PTP
• Wall squat ISO
• Leg extension (knee bent in front, kicking foot out, keeping knee still) PTP
• Push up ISO
• Hip extension PTP
• Push up ISO