In preparation for the Ride London race I'm doing I went to BOOM! Cycle today for a 2 hour session with Coack Mark and pro triathlete Daz. Having had all day off and done pretty much nothing my legs felt pretty good when I mounted my trusty Trek and headed to the studio. When I booked myself into the class there was only one bike left, bike 38....right in the back! Now, as the OCD person I am I always like to sit on the right side of the room, on the second or third row, and lovely Rob had moved me to my favourite bike, 12, when that one became availible so I really didn't have any excuse whatsoever to not work hard for 120 minutes.
Today Coach Mark and Daz had decided to treat us to a form of compressed reversed periodisation, meaning that instead of doing a mainly aerobic hour to start with, only to smah our legs to bits in the second half, we did the opposite! Mark took the reins in the first hour, made us climb three hills (one easy, one medium, one hard) and added intervals.....lots of intervals. Speed intervals, endurance intervals, aerobic intervals, near death experience intervals - you name it, we did it. The least three songs of Mark's hour were nothing but brutal and my legs felt like they were made out of lactic acid.
I was pretty much dead after that first hour, so the second one wasn't easy despite being mainly aerobic. The threshold work Daz had us do was downright painful, especially since we did fairly long stretches of time without changing position. I tried to tough it out though, and not give in to the temptation of slowing my RPM or easing off the resistance, and when we were done I was tired with a capital T but also happy to see that go hard for a long time. My legs responded well and mentally I felt pretty strong. When I was leaving the studio Coach Mark said I looked 'strong as an oxe' despite me saying I was feeling like I was dying halfway through.....maybe I should take up poker?!
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