Posts tagged as:

cycling

Anticipate the Hills

by Natalie on May 15, 2011

Photo by dvs.

“Anticipate the hill.” Coach Ashley Halsey was behind me in a group ride with the Annapolis Triathlon Club and even though the road was still flat he was reminding me and the other rides to anticipate the hill. And as we approached the incline I heard “Shift…shift…shift.” “Keep up your cadence!” I was pedaling for all my might to maintain a fast cadence up a steep incline and only after we were plateauing and starting to coast the downhill did I really start to understand the purpose of maintaining cadence. And it all starts with anticipating the hill. [click to continue…]

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Measuring Work-out Quality

by Natalie on May 12, 2009

Photo by jontunn.

Photo by jontunn.

I’m on the second week of training for a triathlon which includes two cycling sessions per week. Until now I’ve been going to spin class and needed to start biking outside. I broke out my Gary Fisher mountain bike, checked that the tires had enough air, and headed out for the 40 minute foundation ride the training schedule called for.

Most of the areas where I live that I can bike are relatively flat. I try to incorporate hills into my runs whenever I can and I chose to do the same thing with my bike ride. Even with the hills and keeping the mountain bike on has hard of a gear as I could handle, I felt pretty disappointed at the end of the 40 minutes with the quality of the work-out. Thank goodness I can push myself hard with ab exercises or I would have felt as though I’d done hardly anything.

Spin class to me is possibly one of the best work-outs I do. I think this because I sweat a tremendous amount in the class, I breathe hard, and I know that I am challenged in each class. When I enter spin classes in my training log, I always rate it with a high quality level, usually a 6-8 on a scale of 10. As I was putting my bike away and noticing how little I had sweat, I started thinking about the process and components I use to measure the quality of a work-out and wonder how you think about work-out quality. [click to continue…]

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Starting to Spin

March 26, 2009

The room was dark, a fan was blowing on me from the corner, I was slightly uncomfortable on my seat, I was focusing on the upbeat music the instructor had chosen, and in my mind I was pedaling along an uphill road that I had once biked along in Cape Town, South Africa. Except that [...]

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Training Log Review: RaceNation

March 24, 2009

It’s been just a little over a month since I decided to start reviewing training logs. I am definitely one who learns by doing and once I discovered the endless options for tracking my training online, I decided that the best way to decide which system worked best for me would be to try them [...]

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