Sunday, November 25, 2007

Spinning, Eating and Resting

Here’s to everyone who extols the virtues of spinning: last week I took to the cycle and spun my way through a low-intensity class and surprisingly no soreness, but a little fatigue in my legs. I can definitely see how spinning warms and strengthens your muscles for cycling, even if I don’t know how it feels to ride a really great bike. Yet.

spinningThe instructor at the rec. center led us with oldies, and as I only almost wiped out 3-4 times, I was still able to lip-synch to “Build Me Up, Buttercup.” What a good song. It’s funny, though: I absolutely pushed myself much harder than I should have. But pump up “Beat it!” or “YMCA” and I’ll pedal my heart out.

One of the only downsides (except for offending my sundry left-leg issues) was that my legs felt like jell-o as I wiggled my way up to the third floor for my 12:30 class. Spinning ended at noon. As I sat through the 1.5 hours of class, I tried to kick my legs around and keep them warm. I imagined myself getting up at the end of class and my legs just collapsing beneath me. I would think that.

My legs weren’t sore at all and they never hurt, but they just felt tired and energyless from Wednesday through Saturday. In fact, I hit the road on Thursday morning for an outdoor run and five minutes into it I had left-leg pain. I stopped running immediately and walked four miles. Walking felt fine and I didn’t feel any residual pain in the days that followed. But I did feed myself some ibuprofen to ward off the swelling demons.

For the remainder of the week I stuck to low-impact exercises, including yoga, weights and eating. In lieu of the challenge of Turkey Trot, I cooked my first Thanksgiving dinner this year. And the days leading up to it were filled with recipe-testing and ingredient-snacking. It can get tiring. Lugging around the extra 50 pounds of pies, cakes and fondue I packed on this week should be tiring as well.

Curry-roasted butternut squash and chick peasSo, it’s only fair that I give this installment the Iron G Chef treatment. Thanksgiving 2007 at the G household included:
My favorite was the Boston crème pie, which Daniella made and which I ate all weekend long. She also cleaned much of my post-dinner apartment when I passed out from cook’s exhaustion. Thanks, girl!

Now a new week begins. I have to slow myself back into some regiment, which should really include more swimming and less excuse-making about it being too cold to go swimming (it’s only getting worse). But at least I have spinning on my list now.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

cool blog, good luck in the iron man!

Joy | Love | Chaos said...

OH GOOD LORD does that squash and chickpea disk look nummie!

I just printed it out and can't wait to find an excuse to eat it. Do you think my boss will mind if I call this a culinary emergency that I have to go home and roast instead of finishing that agenda we talked about?

Mnowac said...

It is just like boys to leave out important details! I am a bit slower than you, but if you ever want a long run partner let me know! I belong to the Jewish Community Center in Beachwood on Woodland. It's a great gym with a vast amount of classes and the pool is open at 6 am. The only downfall is that they close early on Fri and Sat night, so you can't workout then. Boo. But since I am an AM workouter, it doesn't bother me. There are masters swim groups at Hathway Brown and Orange high school, both of which are close. I can walk to HB. I also started a running group that runs at 6 am on Tues/Thurs and we meet at the Shaker Hts nature center. I think the CH area is the best! You have Coventry and Lee road for good bars/food. You have serveral good gyms and shaker lakes makes a great running backdrop. Best of luck in your search, I hope you find something soon. Feel free to email me at mnowac@gmail.com for any questions about my hood. And I'm not a triathlete...yet! But I'm tri ing to get there!

Monica

Mnowac said...

If you go to bikauthority.com, and click on the calendar, you can find out info on their seminars. I am going to the one on the HRM on Dec 4th and the Nutrition for an Endurance Athlete on the 11th. If you like to run with groups, drop me an email and I will include you on my run email. I have a great group of gals that I run with on the weekend, usually we run around s.chagrin or the towpath. We run anywhere from a 9-11 min pace depending on who you line up with. There are usually 4-6 of us, ranging in age from 28 to 56! It's a fun group and we gab the whole time and the next thing you know - look you ran 8-13 miles!
Monica