Interval training is so much fun!

Thursday nights have become nights to look forward to ever since Beth began organizing interval training rides at the port. Tonight, the plan was to do: (1) tempo/tt pace efforts (2) sprints (3) leadouts.

The interval training participants tonight were: Beth, Alicia, Morgan, Laura and myself.





The first interval felt soooo long. We did one port lap and I figured that we would end our effort somewhere before making that first right-curve turn. Nope, Beth, Laura and Morgan were still pedaling hard up ahead so I kept going. I had to start playing games with myself to distract myself from the heavy breathing I was doing (e.g., tell myself I just had 60 more seconds to go, count down from 60 and then start all over again). It wasn't until we neared the train tracks underneath the bart tracks that we went into our recovery mode. Ughhh, that felt hard!

For the second interval set, Beth sprayed two green lines to mark the start and end points for our sprints. Unfortunately, the green paint was hard to see and we kept having to search for them. Despite our difficulty in finding our start and end lines, I really enjoyed doing the second interval set. It was cool seeing my computer monitor read 25 mph. (Nonetheless, I hope to get faster by the end of the summer.)





The third set was a little confusing at first. However, I did a leadout with Beth and it then became clearer what the objective was. I think this is something I'll need to practice a lot.

After we were done with our intervals, Beth, Laura and I headed over to Manzanita Restaurant in Emeryville/Oakland for a vegetarian dinner. Except for the bland thing in the middle, the dinner was really good.




It was during this meal that I learned that I'm not the only one who eats two lunches at work (lunch # 1 for me is around 11 a.m. and lunch # 2 is around 1:30 p.m.) It turns out that Laura & Beth also eat two lunches while at work! Cool, now I don't feel like such a piggy.





The ride back home was chilly but at least I had a yummy meal in my tummy.

By the way, I measured my quads when I got home and I'm now at 58 cm!!!!! If I keep doing these interval rides, I just may catch up to Beth's 59+ cm quad measurements. Yes!

(Other pics from tonight's ride can be found at my flickr album: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yinyangcarol/sets/72157604005149810/

An awesome Valentine's Day ride with some bad-ass ladies

So, Valentines Day started out kinda crappy for me. I felt really sluggish during the day. The one thing I looked forward to was the interval ride with Beth and the other gals. If there's one thing that can distract me from a crappy mood it's a bike workout!

Morgan met me in front of my building and we rode over to the port. We did a warm-up lap and had a nice chat. As we finished our first lap, we saw Beth heading our way. As the three of us rode alongside, Beth proceeded to explain to us what her interval plan was and Morgan and I decided to do it with her. Before we got started on our intervals, who do we see riding in the opposite direction but bad-ass racer, Karla K. Yay!

Although Karla was doing her own tempo ride, she observed our forms on our bikes as we began our intervals. If I remember correctly, it was two 6 minute intervals at a moderate tempo (for me that was at a 165'ish hr) with a 4 minute rest, then we did 10 second sprints with 50 second rests ( can't remember how long we did that for). I'm sure there was a 3rd interval set but I can't remember what it was. In any case, we got some good work in and some great tips from Coach Karla. She suggested that, during off-the-saddle sprints, we shift into a harder gear, keep our upper body still, and maneuver the bike side to side. I practiced Karla's sprint tip a few times and felt like I had a better handle of the bike while at the same time making it go faster. Awesome!

After our training was over, we decided to grab a post-ride dinner. Morgan already had dinner plans so Beth, Karla and I headed over to What the Pho? for some Vietnamese food. We talked about some of our favorite subjects: food, boys, and sex. It was the best Valentine's Day dinner I've had in a long time.

Measurements:
BICEPS: 28 CM
QUADS: 57 CM
CALVES 37 CM