Becoming an Urban Cyclist

This morning I found myself actually in New York City and without work for the first time in over a month. Since it is spring and the day was warm and sunny, there was only one thing to do: get on the bike.

I was a bit nervous heading out for today’s ride because it was my first time exploring NYC by bike outside the confines of Central Park (I refuse to count last year’s 5-Boro bike ride as exploring by bike because I walked at least half of it due to crowd congestion). I am afraid of bridges, and it turns out I live on an island, and thus any serious bike riding is going to involve at least two bridges. But more than the bridges, I was nervous because I am used to throwing the bike on the back of the car and driving to a ride start out in the open where the roads are wide and contain few stop lights.

I chose a New York Cycle Club ride from City Hall to Rockaway Beach that would be a total of 45 miles. I had been wanting to check out the group for some time now, and today’s ride was billed as a slow, social trek, perfect for my first long ride of the season. And indeed, it was. We headed out over the Williamsburg Bridge and then came up into Park Slope and Prospect Park. Then into Ditmas Park, which I was surprised to learn is a rather suburban neighborhood full of gorgeous houses.  Much of the first 10 miles was stop and go through the streets of Brooklyn, but I did not mind the extra time in the sunshine.

We wove out through Sheepshead Bay, and there I got my first glimpse of ocean for the day. Then over the Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge and we were in Rockaway. Rockaway is, apparently, a peninsula to the south of Brooklyn, home to miles of beach that I had no idea existed in New York City proper. We rode north a bit, grabbed food at a bagel bar, and enjoyed delicious sandwiches overlooking the ocean, watching surfers try to ride tiny waves.  The scene was absolutely perfect: sand, water, blue sky, that amazing ocean smell.

After lunch, we headed over the bridge into Howard Beach, then enjoyed a tour of scenic Queens. Howard Beach was not exactly as nice as Rockaway, but I did enjoy seeing a few new Queens neighborhoods and particularly liked riding through Forest Park. We took the Queensboro bridge back into Manhattan and the views of the city skyline were just beautiful. The group disbanded at 60^th and 1^st, and then came the real challenge: biking through Manhattan streets to get home. Luckily, despite the best attempts by tourists in Central Park to stand clueless in the bike path, I made it. 

I loved today’s ride because it epitomized everything I love about biking: spending warm days outside, learning new things about the area in which you live, and the feeling of accomplishment that comes from taking yourself so far on just your little bike.  Though at points I longed for the open roads of Concord and Lexington, I also appreciated the unique things that one can see by cycling through city streets.

The one downside on the day (well two if you include the awkward sunburn on the lower half of my arms) was that smelling the ocean air reminded me of the “Lobster Roll ride” that the PMC crew and I did the last two years, which in turn made me really “homesick” for biking with them. In particular, for two years, Jen has been right behind/ahead of me on the roads almost every summer weekend, through hundreds of miles of hills, in heat waves and rain storms. Even though we’ll still do the PMC together, training without Jen and the rest of the gang is going to be sad, because that is the essence of summer to me. I am glad to have made new friends today and explored new areas, but I can’t wait to see the old ones on August 4.

Half-marathon Fever

I’m a bit stressed at work today (I’m second-chairing my first trial starting a week from today), and taking a break to plan races always makes me feel better.

The first half of 2012 looks like it’s going to be a giant wash for me race-wise. For various reasons, it’s been a rough couple of months at work, both in terms of hours and stress-level, and I’ve been traveling a ton (some for work, some for fun). Usually training helps me de-stress from work, but what I’m finding right now is that because I am being pulled in so many different directions, my brain and body reach points where they just shut down and all I can do is lay on the couch and watch old Friends episodes on Nick at Nite. I had to give up the dream of a fall marathon because I just can’t handle that structured a schedule this year. I’m signed up for an Olympic triathlon in June (Rev3 Quassy), but right now I’m 50/50 on whether I’m actually going to do it.

But, my trial will be over by May 11 at the latest, and I’d like to do some various stress level improvements at that time, including re-focusing on training. Today’s Boston Marathon inspired me to plan my race schedule for the rest of the year.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

August 4-5 Pan-Massachusetts bike ride. 190 miles and a least 10 fluffernutters.  I can’t wait.

August 26: I’m torn between the Queens half-marathon and the Cranberry Olympic triathlon. Queens has two advantages: I don’t have to travel, and it’s a scored race that counts toward my 9+1. But that doesn’t leave me much time to build up the running distance after PMC, and it could be a rather hot 13.1 that time of year. Cranberry is my favorite triathlon course, and some of my Boston tri friends would likely join me.

October 9: Staten Island half-marathon. Local and gets me credit toward the 9+1.

November: Debating between Newton Chilly half (Nov. 11) and Philly half (Nov. 18). Newton is one of my favorite courses despite the hills and represents Nos. 2 and 3 on my list of top times. And many of my friends race it. Philly is supposedly a beautiful and flat course, and it would be nice to try something new.

December 15: Toying with the idea of the Hoover Dam half. I go to Vegas all the time anyways, so it would be nice if one of my trips could enhance rather than detract from my racing. But desert air is not easy to run in, and the early race start time could hamper Vegas festivities. At least the race is on Saturday morning so I could still enjoy Saturday night in Vegas.

I can’t decide whether three halves in three months is a great way to work on speed or a great way to injure myself and have a bad last race. I learned this past fall that three weeks apart is too close for halves if I want to race them hard, but I would get a full month between all of these races.

Thoughts? And more importantly, who wants to join me?

To 26.2 or Not to 26.2?

When I signed up for the 2011 Boston Marathon, I thought that I was just checking an item off my bucket list. But somewhere during the training process, I convinced myself that not only could I run a marathon, I was a marathon runner.

Following Boston, I set my sights on Marine Corp Marathon for 2012. I wanted something in the fall, it has a great reputation, and it has personal meaning to because my brother-in-law and his brother were Marines. But now that registration is in a few days, I’m having second thoughts.

Training for a marathon is probably the most rewarding thing I have ever done. But it took a lot out of me.  I got up at 5:30am most weekdays, did some sort of intense workout, went to work, got home around 8, and tried to get in bed as fast as possible. I was constantly tired from this schedule, and my social life was limited by the strict nature of the schedule. In February and March, there were a grand total of 2 nights when I stayed up past midnight, and 1 night when I set foot in a bar (where I drank water the entire night). I had exactly zero dates during this time. By the time I started my taper, I could barely even breathe thanks to a sinus infection that turned into a lung one due beating up my body for all those months.

And during this time, I was lucky to not be busy at work.

My concern with signing up this year is that between work and various family/life commitments, I have spent most of 2012 feeling like I have the weight of the world riding on my shoulders. I wake up in the morning, look at the pile of dirty clothes I haven’t had time to put away, and wish the world would just slow down its spin for a few minutes so I could catch up. Then I go to the office, where 15 different people want something different from me at all times. I’m scheduled to second-chair a trial in April, which means the next two months are not going to get any better—in fact, they will probably be worse.

On the other hand, while sometimes my workout schedule may make me appear to the world as insane, it is what keeps me sane. When I enter the gate to Central Park, I feel like I leave the world behind me. Running lifts the weight off my shoulders and helps me process the stress. The one thing I see when I wake up in the morning before the pile of clothes is this Adidas marathon-themed ad on my wall that reads “First you feel like dying, then you feel reborn.” It’s there because that is exactly what a marathon feels like, and thinking of that feeling every morning makes me smile.

The other consideration weighing on me is that as a woman who wants to have children someday, I don’t think I have many marathon running years left in the near future. I know that there are people who push themselves to run while pregnant or not long after childbirth, but I have no desire to put my body through that (particularly given the demands my job will likely place on my time as well). Maybe I’ll come back to marathon running later in life, but at least as the plans work in my head, I have maybe 3 more marathons in me before I transition to a different stage in life (although, Cupid has been giving me some rather raw deals lately, so perhaps I have more than I think).

So, there is a serious dilemma in my mind: do I make the big commitment, knowing that it will be an exhausting summer/fall but that I will be devoting myself to something that I love, or do I take it easy and focus on other things?

At the moment, I’m still leaning toward signing up. I did a 4-mile race on Saturday, and when I hit the 3-mile marker, my immediate reaction was disappointment that there was only one more.  The truth is, I’m not happy unless I’m challenging myself. And there’s no challenge like 26.2.  

Please Put Your Shirt On and Other Gym Etiquette Tips: An Open Memo to the Ladies of Equinox

I’ve been spending a bit more time at the gym lately due to a sudden and unexplained aversion to running in bad weather, which has made it apparent that the ladies who frequent the New York City Equinoxes lack common sense when it comes to functioning in a large and crowded gym. So I have crafted this handy list of gym etiquette tips for their benefit:

·      Unless you are Gwyneth Paltrow or Cameron Diaz, your midriff should be covered at all times outside the locker room. If I wanted to stare at belly buttons, I would have gone to the beach.

·      If you are an out of shape 60-year old lady, please do not take your clothes off at your locker and then walk naked to the shower. Either take your clothes off in the shower or put a towel around you when you change at your locker. No one wants to see that.

·      The benches between the lockers are for changing, not reading. In fact, perhaps you could find a more appropriate place to hang out and read than the gym locker room.

·      The muscles you should be working on the bike are in your legs, not in your mouth.

·      There is limited mirror space in the locker room. Don’t bring 6 different lotions to put on your face at the gym. No one needs that many lotions to begin with, and you’re hogging the space.

·       If you insist on changing in the shower, you should have your membership revoked. There are limited showers, and pre-work hours, there are always people waiting. This tip should not be confused with the above tips regarding covering up: put a towel on, come out to the locker area, and change with minimal time of nudity.

Enjoy your workouts, ladies!

Why is it so hard to find a decent spin class?

A former colleague of mine often joked that he was going to put a spin bike in a conference room as a way to make it easier for me to combine my love of spinning with my work. He was right that of all my indoor workouts, a good spin class is my favorite. I find it easiest to push myself in that atmosphere and love the combination of great music and sweat to wake myself up in the morning or help me forget a bad day in the evening. But the difficult part is, as I have become more aware of the principles of endurance training, have come to realize how bad most spin classes are; rather than enjoy myself, I spend most of spin frustrated by the lack of skills of the instructor.

My problems with gym spin classes are three-fold: (1) the instructors don’t explain the layout of the class, which makes it difficult for me to figure out how much to push and when to leave a little in the tank; (2) only 30% of the instructors bother to give instructions as to where your RPMs and heart rates should be (assuming you even go to a gym that has put RPM computers on their bikes), which leaves you with little clue as to how hard you should be pushing at any given moment; and (3) their goal is simply to keep you moving for 45-60 minutes, rather than design a workout that is going to push you from a cardio or other athletic perspective.   I’ll also put in a dig against the instructors who think it is okay to use a remixed version of Adele’s Someone Like You in their playlist—it is a ballad and is way too depressing to be a spin song.

When I moved to New York, I checked out a number of gyms and spin classes in the area. Sadly, none were very good. I was most excited to check out SoulCycle, a well-known studio focused solely on spinning and could not have been more disappointed. First of all, the studio charges $30 for 45 minutes of class. I like my weekend workouts to be at least 1.5 hours, which means I would have to pay $60 for just one day of working out. Second, the routine that was used in the class that I went to was just, to put it bluntly, retarded from an athletic perspective. I refer to it as the blow job routine, because the instructor had us bend over the handlebars and bob up and down repeatedly. I think that this was supposed to give the effect that we were working our arms and therefore getting a whole body workout, but I could not discern any actual athletic benefit from the movements. I belong to Equinox, and with the exception of an amazing instructor who worked in Boston who is also a triathlete, every spin class I have attended there has, with varying degree, suffered from the same defect—there is no actual thought given to the athletic benefit of the workout. (My friend Laura Van Orden Rudberg should also be called out as an exception to this, because she runs a great class, but is, alas, several hundred miles from me—but again, she’s a triathlete).

I realize that not everyone who attends a gym spin class is training for an endurance event like I am—in fact, I’m sure many are there to burn a few calories and get out the door. But things like interval training and giving structure to the workout would help everyone, no matter what their athletic goals or abilities—and that’s why I don’t understand the refusal of Equinox or other gyms to incorporate these principles into their classes.  (And FYI, Equinox instructors, having different moves that last 30 seconds and repeat is not interval training. Interval training incorporates real rest periods that challenge your heart to go fast and then slow down). The New York Times health blog had a great post early this week on a study earlier this week showing that interval training is more beneficial to the heart than a short moderate intensity workout (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/how-1-minute-intervals-can-improve-our-health/?src=recg if you are interested). I’m not sure if the issue is that the spin instructor certification is not rigorous enough or the gyms just think the path of least resistance is the one of most profits. Whatever the reason, it frustrates me that I pay a not insignificant amount of money for a monthly gym membership and they can’t do a good job at this basic workout.

So I am stuck with traveling 30+ minutes each way for spin class with my triathlon group at 5:30am or trying to put my own print on the gym classes because at least they have good music.  I think I’ll just start counting down to outdoor cycling time.

Fighting the Winter Workout Blues

I have to admit, I hate the gym. I like running and cycling because the feeling of getting somewhere makes me feel like I accomplished something. And the routes entertain me.   Sitting in one place and moving my legs in circles for an hour while watching the same spot on the wall bores me to tears. So, this time of year, when the weather gets ugly and the mornings are dark, staying motivated to workout becomes a challenge.

Last year, I survived the winter workout blues because I didn’t have a choice. I was training for my first marathon, and I had to get in those morning miles no matter what. I also survived because I had a very structured workout schedule where people I knew expected me to show up for things (admit it, BPC folks, you would have been lost without my ipod playlists).  This winter, I have neither a pressing goal or workout buddies, so staying motivated when my bed is warm and the walk to the gym cold is an issue.

I have two goals for this winter.  First is to stay fit without pushing too hard. In January of 2010, I began training for a triathlon. I went from that to a half-marathon, to the PMC, two more tris, two more halves, and then my first marathon. And I went from that to my first Olympic tri, another PMC, and another tri. Despite being completely worn out at that point, I pushed myself through two fall half-marathons. I need to scale it back a bit and let a few injuries heal so that I will be in proper shape to attack a marathon next fall.

The second goal is to work on core strength. I became an endurance athlete at the age of 27, with little prior training and very little muscle. I’ve built up my cardio strength a lot in the last three years, but my core strength remains undeveloped. Part of this comes from having spent the last two years in race mode—I couldn’t do strength activities like kettlebells or TRX or even pilates because I would pull the hamstrings and ab muscles I needed to get me through my log runs. My next race is not until March 25 (NYC duathlon), so that gives me a good 4 more weeks to focus solely on my core.

I have been experimenting with the various classes to help me accomplish this goal. I did a kettlebell class at the JCC when I arrived in New York, and while the instructor was phenomenal, the classes were too expensive and the schedule too inflexible for me to continue.  I’ve tried kettlebells at my gym, and but when there are 30 people in the class, it’s impossible to get the attention from the instructor required to do it correctly. Last week I checked out a TRX class at a new boutique fitness studio in NYC, which I greatly enjoyed despite the face that it kicked my butt. Two drawbacks, though, is that it’s a bit further from my apartment than I would like (15 minute walk from the subway on the other end), and paying by the class is a bit expensive when I already pay for the Equinox membership.

My friend Patty recently introduced me to Pure Barre, which is like pilates but with a ballet bar, and that has been my favorite new workout to date. The NYC studio has only been open a few months and is relatively unknown, such that classes are rarely full and I get plenty of help from the instructors.   I’m not great at getting out of bed and turning on the cardio first thing in the am, and I love the Pure Barre workout because it is calm and I can close my eyes if I want to. And I’ve been discovering ab muscles that I never knew I had.  The studio doesn’t have a shower, which is frustrating, but my gym has a branch right outside the subway stop where I get off for work, so it adds very little extra time to my morning for me to pop into the gym and shower. 

My current plan is to get as much Pure Barre as possible in before February 11, when my new client unlimited package expires, and then go down to one day a week while I build up cardio in anticipation of March 25 duathlon. I’m also signed up for a half-marathon on April 15, so I’ll need to reintroduce long runs into my schedule shortly. After having to spend last winter training despite the weather, however, it’s nice to have the flexibility to stay indoors on a crappy day!