Week 18: Bike "Marathon"

Did a "Biggest Loser" inspired cardio workout, the "bike marathon." Basically, 26.2 miles on a spin bike. The resistance was set to wimpy but I was maintaining 22 mph+ speeds. All was fine and I was rocking out to my ipod until the bike computer stoped clocking milage at 24.6 miles. I was somewhere just before 70 minutes when I noticed it, and I kept spinning to see if it would catch up. It didn't, so I just kept riding for a few minutes while impotently pushing buttons, until finally I whacked the thing hard enough to restart it. Clock back to zero across the board and I rode another 1.6 in a bit over 4 minutes. Not really the glorious finish line ending I was looking for. So I'm saying my total time was 1:13-1:14 ish.

The thing that was frustrating to me about this workout, other than the technical glitches, is I barely broke a sweat. 26 miles at 22 mph pace and honestly it was just about keeping my legs moving fast. Heart never went about 120, never felt like I was pushing hard except insofar as my legs were moving as fast as they could. I much prefer the challenge of a varied resistance, with hills (or spin-class mock hills) and recovery, intervals and sprints and variety.

My husband, who is a master of the "shut up and let me just go" school of cardio, loved this workout. He did it just before me and will most likely use it as a benchmark workout from here on out. I will probably not opt to repeat it....the pain in my "sit-bones" is way worse than the pain in my thighs, glutes or calves, so to me it's just not a fun trade-off. Bummer, too, because I loved this idea as a concept, and the low-impact, moderated-heartrate style workout is exactly what I should be doing more and more of as I get further along in pregnancy.