Wednesday, June 9, 2010

6 9 2010 Anaerobic Capacity workout


I decided to ride the spin bike - racing at the track was rained out today. It has been almost five weeks since I have trained hard on the bicycle, although I have been going three days a week to the gym to do squats and power lifting - maintenance workouts.

Today was a tough one hour workout targeting anaerobic capacity. It was the Chris Carmichael video class number eleven "Power Interval Ladder". This class targets power and recovery with a one to one work to rest ratio. Basically I had to do nine intervals ranging from 3 minutes to 1 minute (total of 15 minutes worth of work) at my current anaerobic capacity range of 240 to 290 watts. These are mentally tough.

If you think about it, every Wednesday evening of racing on Kissena's 400 meter track is about 15 minutes worth of racing for a typical three race evening. An eight lap scratch race takes about 4 minutes to complete, a miss and out with 10 people takes about 5 minutes to complete, a chariot race takes about 35 seconds and a three lap snowball race takes about 2 minutes to complete.

Spin bike workouts are fine, but nothing beats an actual workout or racing on the track where you are subjected to centrifugal forces, other riders and the elements, which in turn forces your muscles and brain (neuro muscular) to work on tactics, agility, balance and power simultaneously. Also no indoor workout will substitute the lean in turn four during a flying 200 meter or 500 meter effort.

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