Spin

I know that there are some people who read these worthless blog entries that I post, so if I offend anyone who goes to my gym with what I am about to say, I apologize in advance. Part of my responsibility with this blog is to report on the cold hard facts. I am like a hard-charging journalist pounding the street looking for the story, to report the facts. I am like the Steve Langford of blogging.

I took an easy spin class this morning only because I am going to be slogging through four miles of trails this afternoon marking the Pickle Course for tomorrow's big Pickle Run, and there is a *slight* chance that I might run the Swarthmore Independence Eve 8k tonight. Plus, running a five spot yesterday kinda made me a bit sore*.

I dont know the name of the spin instructor who taught my class this morning, but I have blogged about her class format in the past. It's awful. Her music is atrocious. Like as in take a hostage atrocious. She goes from an up-tempo song to a down tempo song. We do way too much standing climbs. She has no idea how to moderate the levels of resistance. I guess I should explain the resistance control on the bikes that we use in class.

The bikes are rather nice - brand new with digital readouts for level, rpm, HR, wattage, average wattage and time. There are 25 levels on the bike. Everyone has a baseline level - the recovery level. My recovery level hovers around 13 or 14.

Depending on the class, the instructor will have the people in the class increase the level of resistance in small does over the course of an internal. Obviously the number of level increases and the frequency of the increases varies with whatever workout we happen to be doing at any point in time. Most instructors will peak out at about 4 or 5 levels above baseline at the peak of the interval, with an occasional "max effort" which is the maximum resistance level you can maintain for that interval at whatever cadence the instructor is calling out for that interval.

My girl will have us at 7-8 level above recovery. I am glancing around the room and people look like they are about fall off of their bikes. For real? None of these people are Lance Armstrong. not to boast, but there are probably 4 or 5 of us in the class at anyone time that can maintain that level of effort. To make matters worse, she'll keep repeating those intervals over and over again. I am assuming that she's assuming that most people have a very low baseline, hence the fact that she'll keep bumping the levels up so high.

I'm glad that today was a rest today because I wouldnt have been able to sit in that class for more than 30 minutes without my own music.

Rant over.

* Wah