I went back to the cycle class. This morning's instructor was a French bloke, that alone should have set the alarm bells ringing. He was muscly but in an ultra toned not bulky way, extremely lean with not an ounce of fat on him.
Yesterday's class had been very similar to the Les Mills RPM sessions I'm used to. A mixture of pace tracks, hill climbs and interval training with plenty of seated and standing recovery all performed to high intensity, often doof doof, music. It's a fantastic workout. I'd highly recommend it to anyone out there who hasn't tried it. You go at your own rate, you control the resistance. The music and instructor keep you going to a level I've never managed to push myself to under my own steam alone.
Today's instructor innocently told us would be a little different - a hill climb.
Oh My God did we climb:
- Track One: seated hill climb
- Track Two: seated and standing hill climb; soundtrack: Guns N'Roses ballad with a slow, heavy beat
- Track ...I lost count, my brain started to phase out: seated, standing and paced hill climb
- Track Is-this-nearly-over-yet?: mountain hill climb; soundtrack: French Rock which felt strangely appropriate for such physical torture, after all most the world's angriest death metal bands are European
- Track I-can't-believe-I'm-still-moving: hard and heavy hill climbing; soundtrack: Abba! Yes ABBA!!! How can anyone inflict physical pain to Abba? It's like having your puppy, your reassuring and faithful childhood best friend, come towards you with his cute little puppydog face wielding an axe.
By the end of it, even the fittest people in the class were glowing with sweat all down their arms. Me? Well I wasn't glowing so much as drowning in sweat. My face was beetroot. I was the biggest person in that room but I walked down those cycle studio stairs (yes the cycle studio is upstairs... after you've worked your leg muscles to the point of jellification you have to keep yourself together long enough to get your sorry ass down a whole flight of stairs - too cruel to have been an accident me thinks) with my head held high. I just cycled up a bleedin' mountain. Yay for the smug afterglow!
I feel absolutely bloody fantastic!!
8 comments:
That sounds painful, but in the most awesome way!
Very impressive! You're doing awesome!
At least you'll have places you can buy things, even if it's a little last minute. I have to order things online, and finding places that deliver to Japan is difficult. The next time you have an event remember, ebay is your friend.
Great job! My workout also turned out to be more than I bargained this morning! Will write a blog post about it...
Ps. I agree on the ABBA!
You ARE absolutely bloody fantastic! You rock, Ani! :)
Kudos for sticking it out!
And gratitude for bringing up a point I hadn't considered when thinking about going to a cycling class: I'd have to listen to other people's music. I'm not sure I'd get anything out of that. Music is really important to my inspiration, and I choose my songs carefully. Nothing will drain my energy level faster than music I don't love. So I need to think about this some more....
ahh see I may have failed to mention I was a sad old rocker in the 80's, the effort was painful but the music I strangely enjoyed - I sang along to the GnR, smiled with fondness to Whitesnake. And while I did love Abba (my first LPs as a 9 year old were Abba "Super Trouper" and Blondie "Autoamerican") still, so so wrong
@Cammy, true enough. The normal Les Mills style RPM classes often use songs I haven't thought all that much of on the radio, but turn out to be fantastic workout tunes I grow to love fondly. If your gym does Les Mills you can look up the soundtracks on their website first.
that sounds like delicious hell :)
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