Crosssports's Weblog

Howdy folks,

As you probably know by now if you’ve been playing along with us for any amount of time, I’ll almost always queue up a Recovery Spin for Monday’s workout –

– Get on your bike. Roll out into the street – or into your living room if you’re on the turbo –  and just spin around for an hour.

– Really small gear, no hard efforts – heck, no medium effort.

– Spin. You’re looking to move your legs around in circles, almost like there is no chain on the bike.

– The idea is to get your body moving, flush the systems out, and speed your recovery.

– Just get out on the road and spin aimlessly. At a certain point, your legs suddenly feel better.

– As soon as that happens, turn around, go home, eat, stretch, and put your legs up.

…and I usually try to post up the video footage from the weekend’s Euro racing so you have something to watch if you’re trainer-bound –

So… there’s that.

This week winds up being a bit strange, though.

Lot’s of holiday insanity going on, and a pretty good chance that ya’all will wind up with a day off the bike plugged into the middle of the week… chimney sweeping to do, crap like that.

If  ‘ya think ‘ya might be stuck in X-mas hell, maybe plug Thursday into your calendar as a day off, and get a little bit of work in today.

Maybe…

Get High (Knees, that is) – 

Find a set of stairs to do today’s workout on. You’re going to be doing a set of short intervals, so you don’t need stadium stairs or anything like that. Somewhere in the neighborhood of one single flight of standard office building stairs is perfect.

– get on your bike and warm up for 15 minutes or so.

(we’re going to warm up for any running efforts we do, all season, with some time on the bike.)

– Mosey on over to your stairs/knoll/whatever, and get set. Stretch, have a sip of water, turn up the volume on your Ipod.

– Jog up the stairs. Walk down.

– Repeat x3

– Sprint! up stairs, fast, using whatever stride is most comfortable. Walk down.

– Repeat x3

Rest for 1 minute, walking slowly up and down stairs.

– Sprint up stairs, this time using quick, tiny strides, 1 stair step at a time. Jog down.

– Repeat x3

Rest again, same as before.

– Sprint up stairs, this time using long strides, several stair steps at a time. Walk down.

– Repeat x 3

Rest again.

– Sprint up stairs, combining the previous two exercises; long step, followed by 2 short steps. Do 1x.

Walk down.

– Run up stairs, high knees, exaggeratedly so…

Repeat x3

Rest again, 2-5 minutes.

Sprint up stairs, free form, just go as fast as you can. Go until spent.

– Repeat entire damn thing if you’re a freaking animal.

Get back on bike, spin out your legs, go home.

Notes –

– If you can, go really damn hard. If you do this right, it’s a brutal workout.

– If you haven’t been doing much running this season, be careful. Don’t overdo this, and don’t risk screwing everything up for the rest of the season by blowing up a knee or something. Better yet, try this.

Have fun!

M

~ by crosssports on December 22, 2014.

Posted in Cyclocross, Intervals, running, The Workout Of The Day
Tags: Bicycle racing, bike racing, cx classes, cx handling drills, cx intervals, CX practice, cx skills, CXWOTD, Cycling, Cyclo-cross, Cyclocross, cyclocross classes, cyclocross handling drills, cyclocross instruction, cyclocross intervals, Cyclocross Practice, cyclocross skills, cyclocross workouts, Fitness, Health, Heart rate, Howy folks, Intervals, Jim Aernouts, Kannibaal Van Baal, Marymoor CX, Marymoor cyclocross, Marymoor practice, Personal Training, Physical exercise, Running, s: Aerobic exercise, Seattle, Sports, The Workout Of The Day Tags: Bicycle pedal, Van Aert, wootd, WOTD, Wout Van Aert, XC Racing