One Thirty by One Three Ohhhhh

Steely resolve, that should be my motto if I'm going to get through today and the century I'm now facing. I had a buddy on facebook ask me to post an image of myself, "change your profile picture to someone you look like. I am dying to see what you come up with."

Unfortunately for her I appear to be in something of a mood, why so serious? I don't know. I decided to interpret her request as a 'self image' sort of thing and went with it. I could feel the onset of it last night when I pulled the mental trigger of attempting 1:30 by 1:30 on the bike today. It was time to try...

What it means (1:30 by 1:30) is a minute thirty seconds of work followed by a minute thirty of rest. This is a step up from my one minute of work, two minutes of rest interval workout I had been doing.

I knew I had to build reserves and started the night before, eating fistfuls of chocolate covered blueberries. That should cover it on the needed calories. yeah...

So I'm warming up on a upright bike, shooting the breeze with IronMan a couple of bikes down from me. He's just returned from a hiatus of sorts having won (I think) some sort of month trial at a swanky gym near his home. I've missed him. He's telling me about the bikes there and how neat they are. They have a display in front of them where you can do various courses (road or BMX) and what not, along with some screen on your route and shifters.

It sounds pretty sweet, or fun anyway if you can't do the real thing since it's freezing outside! sigh (stupid mood). He's also yakking about their version of a StairClimber which doesn't look like it was purchased from some Soviet warehouse like ours does. Don't get me wrong on that, what I mean is when you glance at our StairClimbers you immediately discern their soulless, evil intent. This one apparently tries to hide behind good, modern looks like some hot vampire chick or something. A mental image of it formed in my mind...

IronMan was all into the technical aspects of the thing, how you could adjust the length of your stride and the height of the stairs and what not.

I glance down the row of bikes at him, "So, are you going to join this place?"

"Well I love that it's only two miles from my home but the showers leave something to be desired."

"What's up with the showers?" I can see that I only have four minutes left of warm up and I'm starting to get tense in that way you get when you're about to try something for the first time and you're pretty sure you wont like it, like boiled spinach.

"There's only one so you have to wait for whoever is ahead of you to finish. If they didn't have that problem I'd probably join."

This will sound selfish but I'm secretly relieved that this place doesn't understand basic traffic flow through a gym keeping IronMan off of fancy bikes and stair climbers. I know, I'm selfish but I already know that the gym is a better place with IronMan in it.

Sighing with resignation I see my warm up is done (this is another thing I've taken from Bike Life, warm up so that you can get those joints lubricated), "Time to get to it."

I reset the bike for thirty minutes, plug in my ear buds, jack the level up to 12 and go. Right around the third 'sprint' the extra thirty seconds begins to noticeably take its toll. Towards the end I 'break' on two of the sprints. Breaking is an interesting experience, I'm dying on the bike, gasping, lost in it and suddenly my legs just slow way down and stop. After a few gasps I notice this and trying to grind back up to my over 100 cadence at level 12 is a problem. I keep the level but I'm frantically looking at the clock seeing how much time is left.

It's awful!

Either I mistimed it or I messed something up in my delirium but my last sprint was only thirty seconds. I was good with that.

And now I'm in a mood. Oh if you're wondering what my facebook profile picture was:

Why so serious?