The butt on fire reference workout

As you may have noticed, I didn't swim yesterday. The main reason is that my arm was still aching, but mainly I was hoping to miss some traffic on the way to work. What everyone else was doing getting on Deerfoot at 6am I don't know.

I wanted to get one more swim in before the pools close before Christmas, so today was the day. At least it wasn't as cold out as it has been. Shared a lane with another guy and the mental pain was almost as bad as the physical pain. He swam quick enough, but he was sloppy. I burned to show him how to swim smooth and fast. Sigh.

What's interesting is that I could pull fairly hard, and get a reasonably long stroke in, and feel reasonably smooth about it at first. I'm still not fast, not by any means. Still, the arm didn't last all that long. I gave it a rest, then started doing 100 m sets with a rest. And when I couldn't do those I did 50 m. I worked it pretty hard, but it feels good, in a painful sort of way. The shoulder, elbow, forearm and wrist all hurt in what I hope is a good way. They're tired. I think I'm getting close to the natural limits of motion, so I need to start working on building strength through the entire range. Did some core work in the dive tank.

Me and another co-worker cleaned out the fridge of what was remaining from the Friday office party, and generally tidied. Then bailed out shortly after lunch with no guilt. Five days off, then 2.5 on, then another 4.5 off. Yeehaw!

Got home and hung out for a while, enjoying the novelty of being home while the sun was still up. Still I couldn't forget the regular Tues spin workouts. I would feel so much guilt if I didn't do something, and I know IG would be sadly disappointed. So I hope he likes this one. I didn't want to keep track of intervals, so many minutes at this, so many at that, and changing gears, and all that. Too complicated for my simple brain today.

Warmed up 15 min, even doing some one leg drill (the audience goes wild!) and slow accelerations. Then settled in. Found the 5th gear down from the biggest cog, on the small chainring, and dialed in 95 rpm. I started about mid 120's for heart rate, and slowly drifted up to 128 to 130 or so for most of the workout. The last 5-7 minutes it started drifting up to the mid 130's. Total time doing this was 30 min, just pedaling, trying not to move much, trying to make my feet light and smooth, imagining myself on a long flat straightaway with a headwind. I wanted see how long I could sit and spin. Toward the end things were getting a bit jerky, but my legs felt fine. I even found myself up over 100 rpm at one point. My butt was on fire about the 25 min mark. My left hand was going to sleep, so I think was was leaning on it more. Stood up right on the 30 min mark, and made sure the saddle hadn't become permanently attached, and was tempted to pour some water down the back hatch. Did a few minutes of slow accelerations and cooled down. Then did a little bit of stretching, might do more later tonight.

This was an interesting workout; mentally very tough to just sit there, maintain the same rpm, and try to keep the heart rate under control. I was never even close to being out of breath, but I was sure sweating up a storm. IG sent around some spin workouts for us to try over the break. I'm looking to get those in, and hopefully some nice long spin sessions.