Spin playlist: Endurance training

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've been alternating between endurance classes and interval classes.

I explained it to my class this morning as follows: Endurance classes you try to keep a steady heart rate, around 60 percent (though very few people have monitors). The intervals are longer but less intense, and the rest periods are shorter.

Interval classes have short bursts of really high-intensity followed by longer rest periods.

For today's endurance class I took them up three big (5-6 minute) climbs. After each one there's a recovery then either jumps or sprints to keep things interesting. Each climb was over two songs, so I intentionally made the second song a little faster so the last two minutes or so of the climb would be more challenging. All climbs are a combination of sitting and standing. Here's the playlist:

Rolling Stones: Start Me Up -- warmup

Yael Naim - New Soul: Start climb #1 out easy. About a 3 or 4 on a scale of 1-10. Increase the last minute of the song.

Music Monday: Green Day - Last of the American Girls

I'm going to try and bring back the weekly feature thing, though I've never been very good at it :) On my playlist this week: Green Day - Last of the American Girls

Race Report: Greenswell Triathlon -- MOJO DOMINATION :-)

Manic Mojos after the race!

The Manic Mojos are looking to the future. 

Myself and superstar reporters Abbey Roy and Anna Sudar joined forces to compete in the Greenswell Triathlon as a relay team July 17 (Sunday) at Alum Creek beach in Lewis Center. Anna swam, Abbey rode and I ran. We rocked it, we did the sprint distance in 1:26:38, second place of all relay teams! Full results here. Results for all Greenswell events that weekend here.

My part of it was a 5K that I did in 26:36 with awesome splits. I finally learned my lesson about not starting out too fast!

Timing chip on Anna's foot.

The race started at 8, we were there at 6:30 and the place was packed. Good thing, there was a lot of preparation on Anna and Abbey's part! There weren't that many relays so we had to figure out the transitions for ourselves, which wasn't bad. Our "baton" was an ankle timing chip that we passed off.

Anna in the water.

When they called Anna's wave, she dominated! She was out ahead of the pack and dove into the water! We figured she'd be about 25 minutes, my plan was to run a warmup and come back to wait for her. I get my gear together and run a slow mile. What do I see when I'm getting back? A blue bathing suit jumping out of the water and running through the sand into transition. Miss Anna did the .45-mile swim in 17:25 and was one of the first out of the water! (Continued after the jump.)