Last night I headed down to Akron for the Excel in Cycling class. I must admit I feel pretty foolish driving almost 1.5 hours round trip to ride my bike in a room full of people when I have a perfectly good gym right by my house with a plethora of spinning classes. Plus it costs me $10 a time, so an extra $40 a month, not to mention the gas expenditure. But I cannot even express to any of you dear bloggy friends (except maybe Janet and Brandon b/c they do the classes too!) what a tough class this is. There is no way in hell any gym spinning class or me on my trainer at home or even me out on the road for 2 hours would push myself like I do in this class. Last night in 2 hours I covered 38 miles (which isn’t all that high, but we do a lot of big ring work, one legged drills and hills) with an average cadence of 80rpms, avg 16mph,and avg hr of 138bpm and according to my Garmin I burned 1816 calories! Now I am sure that’s a little high, but regardless I still burned like a days worth of food! All in 2hours and 20 mins. Here is what a class looks like:

It’s extrememly gross b/c everyone sweats all over the place. I for one am not much of a sweater, so there is no pool under my bike, but I would say 80% of the class is male and sweaty and leaves a big nasty deep pool of sweat around their bike. I refuse to wheel my bike through sweat and then load into my car, so I carry it across the floor! When I got to class my calves were already extremely sore, I am not sure why, it probably had something to do with all the stupid step class moves in bootcamp on Monday. But my calves were already hurting but during the lactid threshold ladders my legs literally started burning, I suppose that means I was building up too much lactid acid. But all of that stuff is a bit over my head and I don’t really get it. Regardless I experienced some serious pain, but pushed through it so I was quite pleased with myself. When I got home I went into the yard and sat in the snow. Not for very long, I’m a wuss, I don’t know if I will ever be able to take a ice bath.

I TRIED to get out of bed this morning, but Mushi was being just too kissy and snuggly and I lay with him for awhile after my alarm and it was curtains. Next thing I knew it was 7:30. boo. So now I have to run after work. Which is fine, it’s only 5 miles. But it’s supposed to be speedwork, I hope my legs can handle it. If now, I’ll do the speedwork tomorrow and the easy run tonight.