DePLEteD!

Monday November 14,  2011

" Oh what a night!"  ...go ahead, sing with me.  All I can say is WOW! That was a fun ride.  [grinning ear to ear]

So let's recap this baby.  As my title indicates, the theme of a night at power cycling {for me really} is depletion.  They say you gain sea legs quickly via rough waters...and I say you gain "bike" legs quicker when you train tough with accomplished triathlete Leah Prudhomme at Maple Grove Cycle. 

It was a weird sensation for this avid cross-training lover.  I love to mix it up, you know that.  So the weirdness was what my legs felt like after class, immediately and post for ~8 hours.  They hurt!  Can't really explain it because it was not DOMS...it was too soon for that.  They ached, but not in a injury type way...it was an extreme fatigue type way.  My large leg muscles were completely depleted of all glycogen, in a way I have never experienced before.  OK, duh, now I get it. So... I am a bit slow.  This is what triathletes experience on race day but probably more acutely, that I am sure. My glycogen stores were ransacked, left with not-da.  The good news is that I am certain I built some mitochondria that night. Yay!

Well what happened. It went something like this:

Arrived 15 mins early to get Roadie (my bike) set up on a trainer.  First thing Leah explains is that biking on a trainer for 2 hours is like riding on the street for 4 hours.  OK, that is trouble with a capital T.  Second thing she mentioned is that mental toughness makes or breaks ya.  Let me tell you I am stubborn and very motivated by others, so in this environment I excel. But put me on a trainer at home and uhmmm...probably would not have made it more than the first 30 mins.  We spent the first 15 minutes warming up.  That was cool.  The next 30 or so minutes was spent riding hard.  Intervals aimed at hitting 25mph at 90 rpm....as fast as you can go.  Lots of things happened during this first round but it all is a blurrrrr to me now.  Once Leah was satisfied that we were half dead, we were instructed to hop off our bikes and donn our running shoes for a quick two timer around the building followed by a set of wall squats "till the cows came home".  

Next we trained hills.  That was FUN! I loved this part of the class.  Almost felt like I was flying out on the backside paths of Elm Creek.  For kicks and grins [hops] Leah led us through some climbing plyometric stair work. Single leg hops up a rather long flight of stairs X6  and two leg double stair bounds up the stairs X6.  Again, good time. {sick woman that I am, just saying}

Round three was Tabata training.  This kicked my ArsE. Yup, that nearly killed me.  Here is where I could barely hit 20 mph pedaling as hard and fast as I could.  Did I tell you 20 seconds feels like an eternity?  Yes it does.  But all for the better.

The good news was I went home, refueled my glycogen stores and WhaaaLa...no DOMS.  Just to prove my point, this workout was nothing like a hard fast heavy lift in the weight room.  It was a glycogen deplete, endurance building session doing exactly as designed: building power!  Thanks Leah that was great.  Can't wait till next time....

Be Well