I rode over to meet Marie for her first interval bike workout. She’d had a good run the day before and was feeling healthy. I asked her how she was feeling.
“Well...good...but nervous. You’re going to hurt me, aren’t you?”
That wasn’t my intention, but what we were about to do was going to be painful. I’d brought along my heart rate monitor and had her put it on. I was going to base the difficulty of the workout on how high we drove her heart during the pickups. She was 20 years old and her age-predicted maximum was 200 bpm. It is not unusual for highly conditioned athletes to be able to push beyond these maximums since their pain threshold exceeds the normal person. I’d likely be trying to hold her back and having the heart rate monitor on her would help me keep her in check.
We rode out through the park heading for some rolling hills on which I wanted to do the workout. I was going to put her through 10 pick-ups with a heart rate of 180 to 190. As we rode easily, she registered a heart rate in the 150’s.
“You beat like a little canary. I’m betting you’ll be exceeding 200 before this is over,” I said as we approached our first hill and her first challenge.
I had her get up out of the saddle for the half-mile hill. She pushed hard and reached a heart rate of 195. It was only the second pick-up and I could detect distress in her body and knew we’d have to ratchet the effort down if she was to survive with her guts intact. The next two pick-ups generated heart rates above 190 and by the sixth, she was turning green.
“Marie...easier. No more than 180 on the next pick-up,” I admonished.
I don’t know if she heard me since she was likely delirious at this point. The pick-ups were averaging two minutes with recoveries running about the same time. I lengthened the recovery on the next two and by the final repeat, she was looking strong again. We finished the tenth and she breathed a sigh of relief.
“Wow...that was REALLY hard,” she said when she could speak again.
“We’ll do that three more times before you go back to Purdue. I think your body will feel ready for some hard running after that,” I said.
It was also Jack’s birthday and he’d requested two different dinners...and Holly made them both. An hour before company was scheduled to arrive, he asked me to make him three grilled cheese sandwiches.
“Jack...really? You’ve got two dinners to eat here in an hour,” I said.
“Really? Mom made the spaghetti and the chicken, noodles, potatoes and gravy?” he asked. “Maybe you should just make me two.”
And he was serious. I miss those days.
I didn’t eat like I was 18 but did feel the need for a hike after eating. Holly and I put in an hour in the hot, humid conditions of the metroparks. It wasn’t a hard double, but it was the first time in a month that I’d done something resembling two workouts in the same day.
Bike Duration: 2 hours. Hike duration:60 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 120 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 1700 cycling and 300 walking.
No comments:
Post a Comment